I really wonder, too - does a dog care as much about a salamander as a human? How about a crow? Do crows think we're interesting at all? It's impossible to say.
Ultimately you're right though, we're just creatures trying to survive in various ways. Humans have very sophisticated ways of doing it, but they aren't inherently more amazing outside of the human lens.
I'd suggest as individuals of our species, we're not much more interesting than ribosomes -- one could say that ribosomes execute all the stuff in the salamander video (hey, they print the DNA into proteins).
Humans are maybe just biological machinery in the organism of culture, like ribosomes are the molecular machinery in the organism of biology. Culture does all those amazing things, and humans just skim along the unfathomably long and multi-dimensional ticker tape of language/culture :)
Just my 2c, of course, and the way I stay humble about humanity
You would say it's not humans, but human culture that is causing global extinction event?
Well, okay.
In any case, you may find the book 'Sapiens' interesting. It argues that the fundamental change that caused sapiens to dominate all other life is our ability to abstract and conceptualize.
Respectfully, it doesn't feel like splitting hairs to me... but quite a significant frame-shift. (Defensive credentializing: I'm a former biochemist and now technologist and event facilitator, with a fascination for the always-evolving fields of social physics & complexity science.)
I'm increasingly a believer in something called the Leiden Theory of Language, or Symbiosism: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/316665359_Symbiosis...
This theory proposes that language is a separate strata of organism/information that co-evolved with the host biology of the human mind. i.e. We're unique not because we're simply "the smartest biology", but rather, we're more like a cyborg of two organisms, one biological and one semiotic. As a assemblage, we have vastly overrepresented dominance of the semiotic organism compared to other creatures who host very primitive semiotic organisms.
In this frame, humans can be conceptualized as individuals, but alternatively as simply hosts to the mind, which functions as the replication machinery of the larger social organism that takes shape between minds in the strata above (organizations, nations, culture).
I'm still chewing on all this stuff, mind you :) And thank you for the recommendation -- I really need to pick up that book!
Cat's and dogs abstract and conceptualise. So do crows and whales. But more than that, before you get too carried away with the importance of this "fundamental change", consider the possibility that the ability to "abstract and conceptualise" doesn't yield a "fundamental change" at all.
How can that be?
Consider the ends to which all this abstract thought is being applied.
Why do humans spend hundreds of dollars and countless hours buying and applying makeup to their faces?
Why do humans spend thousands of hours in the studio creating the latest dance music hits?
Why do humans buy the biggest, fastest cars?
Why do humans spend weeks comparing and assessing home insulation materials from multiple vendors?
Why do humans spend thousands of years developing steel making traditions that result in the finest weaponry?
Why do humans use google maps navigation?
Are humans, with all their advanced skills at abstraction and conceptualisation, and vocabulary and communication sophistication, doing anything that birds and bees and whales and cows aren't already doing?
All us animals are just waking up every day, checking on the kids, going to work, getting hungry, fixing lunch, getting horny, feeling frustrated, lashing out, seeking to impress, preening our feathers, and, from time to time, thanking our lucky stars.
What else can we do? Technology doesn't change that. It just gives us different ways to do the same things we and other animals have been doing since the dawn of life on earth.
I like your questions.
I'm not disagreeing (unsure myself), but this talk of what "the fundamental" is, it makes me want to share about another hypothesis: that the mind's ability to operate via "recursion" is the feature from which a bunch of other things emerged. A good book that lays the case, still reading, but very thought-provoking: https://www.amazon.ca/Recursive-Mind-Origins-Language-Civili...
So if that's true, it's less about there being some fundamental core difference between us and animals. I think I agree that the same underlying drives motivate. I understand that the core drive of all life (below the particulars of our biological strata) are perhaps seeking the right alchemical mix of (1) entropy/micro-diversity and (2) cycles/periodicity and (3) compartmentalization [1]. These drive information-creation about the environment -- mapping information of the environment into the structures "trying" to buffer themselves from change in a chaotic environment. But "trying" is anthropomorphizing (and applying false agency), and in essence, this simply allows a structure of any scale or medium to "persist" better into the next tick of the engine ;) And a structure that persists tends to have information about the environment (and the environment's future) encoded within itself. This encoding in persistent structures is what we tend to read as free-will and agency.
But anyhow, in a round-about way, I'm just proposing that perhaps "recursion" was the "new innovation" that biology of human mind stumbled upon, that really expanded the capacity to persist. And language, which not a result of new drives, fell out of that new ability of minds :)
[1]: https://sci-hub.st/10.1016/j.cocis.2007.08.008
ps, sorry for rant, i get excited about this stuff! sorry if overload, and apologies for not citing the web of readings that led me here. Happy to linkshare, if you're interested, as I certainly have sources and go back to them often! e.g., [2] [3] :)
[2]: https://knowm.org/thermodynamic-computing/ [3]: https://nautil.us/issue/9/time/life-is-a-braid-in-spacetime
I agree about recursion. When I first heard about it in CS101 a lightbulb lit up. It's an elegant computational mechanism to resolve complexity, given enough stack space.
When I later heard the theory that the human neocortex is so large so as to accomodate data structures to manage social contexts of communities of 150 people, it made more sense.
Our social reckoning depends on knowing or anticipating or game theorising what other people are thinking, so as to be able to assess group dynamics. But these assessments are contingent. A might support us, but only if she doesn't know what happened with B, which only C knows about, and I trust C. But I'm not sure where D stands in all of this, and I haven't seen E for a while, but she has a connection to both C and A.
Your last paragraph describes exactly what motivates me to work on an open source platform called https://pol.is/home . Or rather, the loss of the ability to navigate those dynamics in high-volume, low-empathy digital spaces we've created, that's what motivates. The platform is big in Taiwan, and is being used to crowdsource national legislation. It allows the opinion landscape of thousands to be made legible in aggregate to all participants so that everyone can build the nuanced and deep stories around complex issues, instead of collapsing into emotional tribalism. We lose all that good stuff in online spaces, that our wetwares gives us for free in meatspace :)
Anyhow, take care, fellow traveller
Are you sure that has happened?
Do humans dominate insects, fungi, and bacteria?
Do humans dominate the biomass of Earth?
If you limited the scope of your remark to mammals, fish, reptile and birds, I would understand what you are saying. Humans have excelled at habitat destruction. Still, I would point out that the "domination" of which you speak is less than 300 years in duration, with no certainty to last beyond 500 years.
Yes, we do.
https://news.berkeley.edu/story_jump/when-it-comes-to-climat...
https://nautil.us/issue/95/escape/we-crush-poison-and-destro...
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/2021/01/we-havent...
>Do humans dominate the biomass of Earth?
Yes, we do. https://www.pnas.org/content/115/25/6506 "the total plant biomass (and, by proxy, the total biomass on Earth) has declined approximately twofold relative to its value before the start of human civilization. "
>Still, I would point out that the "domination" of which you speak is less than 300 years in duration, with no certainty to last beyond 500 years.
The Cambrian explosion happened 500 million years ago. Photosynthesis is projected to last another 600. We've used all easily available complex elements, and extracted much more. It will all oxidize once were are gone, and it will not regenerate in this time period. Even if we are gone, our impact and legacy will outlive us, likely ensuring we are the last advanced civilization this world will produce.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Future_of_Earth#:~:text=Howeve....
We dominate. Arguments to the contrary seem to be an attempt to avoid responsibility.
Avoid responsibility? For what?
I understand what you are feeling when you contemplate the wonder of humankind's technological achievements, which, by some measures, necessarily narrow, far surpass the capabilities of any other species. It's worth reflecting on this feeling, which comes reflexively to anyone who is presented with the intellectual challenge that you answered with your complete response above.
When Darwin first published his theory of evolution, he got a lot of pushback from people because of this exact feeling.
19th century British humans resented being "relegated" to the relations of apes. They scorned Darwin for saying it.
Why?
I personally think humans are largely pro-social, and this reflex is partially an extension of the human tendency to innately cheer for humanity. It seems literally in our nature to promote ourselves in this way.
At the end of the day, I’m largely vegetarian (I eat some fish) because rationally I know that I can’t really differentiate my human experience from that of a cow or chicken, and I’d rather not risk that killing and eating a cow would be no different from a cow killing and eating me. Space exploration isn’t enough for me to justify killing an animal that’s ultimately not much different from me.
Perhaps somehow we could learn that that’s ridiculous and all animals are basically robots and humans are the only conscience on the universe. Until then I’d rather assume some cow out there is wondering about humans and wondering why we aren’t as clever as they are.
Just wondering ;-)
My intuition is that most animals can’t or don’t distinguish much in what life they feed on and so if they eat humans, it’s simply according to nature and not problematic in the least.
I agree with the second part of your statement, and also much of the first part, sort of... but what I'm about to write may at first glance sound like a snarky gotcha. That's not my intention at all. It is an informed, educated view, and I don't like it any more than you might, because it bursts an illusion, at least for now.
Firstly, I think animals can distinguish what they eat in a very sophisticated way. At least as sophisticated as humans. Animals, after all, feed themselves with their own energy, guile and knowledge. They don't rely on supermarkets like many humans do, so they know exactly what is going on.
I am mostly vegan, because I prefer vegan food. When I eat animals on occasion, I do it in the same spirit you described in your consideration of animals who kill humans and other animals for food. It is part of nature, and I can embrace that.
You also said this is "a choice". Ethically, morally, spiritually, and out of shared interest, I can agree with you. However, I learned something recently from a radio show that followed a group of people who set up on virgin land, trying to be self-sufficient. What they found is important for our discussion.
It isn't possible for everyone who wants to live self-sufficiently to grow enough protein to survive. The soil in most places, and the climate won't support it. In order to live as a pure vegan, we need supermarkets and globalism, or at the very least, food transit on a global scale. Those giant South American soy plantations are built on destroyed forest habitat. :-(
The people in the radio documentary had to grow animals in order to obtain protein to survive. When they ate those animals, they did it with profound respect and understanding for the value of life, having raised the animals themselves. I've heard conventional farmers speak this way about animal lives too. It's something I think we need to understand and come to grips with intellectually, because the pure choice some people have of going vegan, is not a choice for everyone on the planet, at least, not with current technology and environmental constraints.
Which yet has to be proven they are really working in the long way, because we are still on trial. Also let's see if we can retain our humanity whilst surviving as a species.
> The very existence of a salamander... says very clearly a few points.
What does the existence of a salamander "say"?
You may think humans are more amazing than salamanders, but no other species agrees with you.