Re:Spiders are much smarter than you think
by nickpeterson on Sunday November 07, 2021 @08:14AM
(#29139194)
I think the horrifying thing about humans is we do understand what we’re doing and choose to do it anyways. Spiders kill things to eat them to survive. Humans do it for much more complicated or arbitrary reasons.
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Re:Spiders are much smarter than you think
by resonious on Sunday November 07, 2021 @09:51AM
(#29139863)
I can't speak for spiders but there are plenty of animals that do horrible things for reasons other than eating and surviving. Seals come to mind (with what they do to penguins). Also cats.
At the very least, mammals will kill for sport and for status. The biggest difference with humans is scale.
Re:Spiders are much smarter than you think
by Falling3 on Sunday November 07, 2021 @01:20PM
(#29141964)
> we do understand what we’re doing and choose to do it anyways
Seems like you glossed right over the most important part of their comment.
Re:Spiders are much smarter than you think
by swayvil on Sunday November 07, 2021 @09:02AM
(#29139501)
Our whole intellectual/scientific/technological culture is founded upon our ability to focus our attention.
And the flipside of focus is blindness. Ignorance.
One thing is focused upon, seen and controlled with vast depth and clarity. While 1000 other things are obliviated away.
That obliviated part. There's a lot of bad stuff going on there. (And a lot of good stuff too, no doubt)
Re:Spiders are much smarter than you think
by Retric on Sunday November 07, 2021 @09:35AM
(#29139727)
Attention isn’t binary. Stubbing your toe is a great way to pay a lot of attention to something you normally ignore, but conversely we are paying attention to the lack of pain without it diverting any effort.
Intellectual/scientific/technological culture is really the mind sitting around going nothing critical is going on let’s focus on something arbitrary. And if nothing critical happens for long enough you can start to assume that’s just how things are.