....
Continued
Your argument is fundamentally premised on this. You don't need to say it out loud - not least because I am sure you would immediately note what a silly notion it was - but that is exactly what your argument entails.
As are the majority of humans. What percentage of people would you estimate could make a bike from scratch? Barely any of the culturally heritable skills are held universally, but remain specialist occupations that could be largely wiped out by a relatively small disaster. Lucky we write stuff down in books.
And I am saying that's completely the wrong way of looking at it for the reasons I've given.
Yes, you're repeating yourself, and repeating the idea that being able to intentionally burn shit down equates to human exceptionalism. I told you why I don't find this very persuasive, so you're either going to need to address the reason WHY I don't find it persuasive, or opt for some other point. Repeating it, unsurprisingly just invokes the same lack of persuasion on my part.
Repetition, and already addressed in spades.
And are dramatically more expensive at doing it than fish.
I noticed. The content you've offered so far reminds me of Ken Ham saying 'see there's this book'. The actual fact is that there are many books, and they may offer deeper, broader or more comprehensive insight than Harari's brief synopsis of other people's work he employs towards a particular argument or perspective.
More importantly, because his treatment is often brief, it's also often not exactly right. I enjoyed his books and course very much, and thought some of his ideas were genuinely novel and worth considering, but there were still plenty of parts I was dubious about, or which I knew he was over-simplifying to the point of being misleading.
Perhaps most importantly, you should remember that only about 5% of Harari's books are his own ideas. The vast preponderance of content is him taking other people's work and employing it towards a particular argument. So aside from that meaning he may not be accurately rendering that original work, there's also the question of whether his argument actually holds water.
Maybe I can phrase this a different way: I clearly took something very different from his books than you did.
No, we're not exceptional in the slightest in that regard. All extant species have successfully navigated those selection pressures. That's what it means to be an extant species.
And yet we don't have two stomachs, have no built in rumen to pre-digest our food, and suffer deaths from a combined trachea and oesophagus.
Cherrypicking's fun when you're just after cherries, but if you want to make claims about the distribution of fruit in a landscape, you can't just look at one tree.
The same could be said for all other animals ever.
And then hunters still die every year through failing to kill from a distance and being torn to shreds from an animal that gets in close. Dem cherries!
https://www.standard.co.uk/news/world/poacher-hunting-big-cats-mauled-to-death-by-lions-in-south-africa-a3764096.html
Allowed us to hunt so many animals to extinction = 'rule over animals'
This is what I mean. You refuse to revise your arguments even when they're challenged, and simply restate them as before.
Give an average person a bow or a gun and set them on a tiger. Who do you think wins?
In reality, the individual human needs to be reasonably exceptional even among HUMANS to be able to kill a predator even with a gun. Whereas, all mature lions are individually capable of killing a typical human who lacks the requisite skills or is too stressed or just plain unlucky with their one shot.
But these discussions are really silly, I am going to stop replying to them from now on, just striking through to show what they're worth in my estimation. If I want to talk about who wins a fight between an X and Y, I'll do so with my 5 year old son.
Well, you kind of did ask what it meant - first you misused the term, then I explained the mistake, then you said you didn't understand what I meant.
And?
It's becoming something like an argumentative version of whack-a-mole. Error pops up, it gets knocked down, then another pops up in its place. What exactly do you think albatrosses are flying about for?
Please don't assert bullshit as fact at me in my own discipline. You're wrong. Not slightly wrong, just plain wrong. Go learn what evolution is. Evolution hasn't stopped or slowed down one iota. We've evolved plenty, thanks all the same.
Yes, you said all this before and I responded to it.
Collectively, influenza kills up to 750,000 people a year globally. So tell me again how sapiens über alles. Considering it is literally your argument - that humans shooting shit and burning stuff down equates to being dominant - then it's funny how you suddenly refuse to apply it when it doesn't serve your position.
Repeated errors make for poor arguments.
1) You only started talking about speed when your previous absolutist argument was shown to be trivially wrong.
2) Humans are animate beings.
3) Humans accomplish design and production of airplanes with wholly natural means.
Or are you trying to claim that magic is involved in the workings of aircraft? Because that's the opposite of 'natural'.
It's like playing Top Trumps with banal observations.
Humans are exceptional because we can fly higher than anything else! :lol:
Because flying animals were trying to fly higher.... and because flying animals needed to fly higher... and because.... because all the things that have already been explained to you about the banality and bizarreness of your arguments.
Dat wet water again.
Doesn't mean it IS the case either. That's why arguments need to be made, rather than irrelevant observations stacked together with an irrelevant solution being nominally derived from them.
Ostriches want a word with you, as do all the other bipedal animals which somehow fail to become special even though they're bipedal too.
As I said to you many times. If you want to make an argument for human exceptionalism, perhaps don't choose traits which aren't unique to humans?
Of course, one wonders what the utility would be for a crocodile to walk on two legs, but as I think we've firmly established now, such not-even-nuance will simply be dismissed as the pea moves to another shell.
You said 'humans' and every other time you used humans, you've used it in context of Homo sapiens.
Contradiction in terms: more of something is not a radical departure by definition.
More repetition.
As did all other animals. Another pointlessly banal observation.
Wut?
Firstly, orangutans want a word with you, as do the massively geographically distributed hominoid ancestors of today's extant species.
Secondly, zebras are equids and are distributed all over the world.
Thirdly, elephants - as even you note - are not confined to sub-Saharan Africa, and until relatively recently were found across Eurasia and the Americas.
Fourthly, megafauna is typically defined in biological terms as an animal over 40kg, and consequently there are hundreds of species of extant megafauna, and I am surprised after talking about whales that you'd forget them considering the blue whale is the largest animal ever to live.
Finally, there's that word 'success' again. Why are you defining success in humans as distinct from other animals which are successful in exactly the same terms? I predict shell game response.
40,000 years is the evolutionary equivalent of a gnat's fart.
Ants have inhabited all the continents bar Antarctica for over 100 million years.
Penguins 'discovered' Antarctica 40 million years ago, as did thousands of other species. But we only care when humans did it, right?
Another absolutist declaration made in confidence, but sadly also in ignorance of relevant facts.
As far as YOU know, perhaps... but as far as factual reality knows, there are plenty of examples wholly in contradiction to your confident assertion. Ants again, for example, started farming 50 million years ago. That's around the time basal primates evolved. Ants also rear and nurture aphids. In fact, there are symbiotic relationships between ants and dozens of species stretching back millions of years.
Bluntly, if you don't know this, why are you so confident in the formulation of your assertions? Is it as Darwin suggested?
By the way, they're not. See ant farms. Also, see subsistence farming practiced by humans - the majority of human farming throughout history.
Certainly, but wrong again.
How can you be so certain and wrong at the same time?
That's where I am at in this discussion now. All I am intrigued by is how you read one book then appear to consider yourself a guru on a range of topics even when exhibiting very shallow knowledge of the topic matter.
Repetition again, and yet more just-so fairy tales.
Factually, the gut and jaw had been getting smaller, and the human brain getting larger for millions of years in human ancestors prior to the use of fire. Ergo, your story is factually in error.
And you are, once again, repeating an error that was already corrected.
Humans don't have the largest brains by any measure. You even engaged in this correction and moved your goalposts when shown wrong before, but now you've moved them back again.
No matter how confidently you state something, bullshit remains bullshit.
Ooh look! A new claim!
Sadly, it's wrong too.
Giraffe, okapi, sunbears, chameleons, hummingbirds, pangolin, ant-eaters, tamandua and a host of other animals want a curly tongued word with you.
Unless, of course, you can stick your tongue down a twisty hole to slurp up ants, or use your tongue to stretch past long spines and strip leaves off a tree?
1) Banal, only humans have a spoken language that would be considered as such by humans
2) Many other animals can make a vastly wider range of sounds than humans. Go have a sing-off with a lyrebird. Bet you can't make 1% of the sounds it can make.
You keep making statements that are patently false.
Yes, I know I am wrong, but I am still right if you just ignore the bits which are wrong.
It's funny because I am now beginning to see the bits of Harari's book you are rehashing. This was a section about cognition, not about language. Obviously, because language cannot exist without the cognitive apparatus to understand it.
Humans can make up shit. Therefore, humans über alles!
No it wasn't. Please provide a credible citation of a study from a peer-reviewed journal to support your claim, or cease stating falsehoods as fact. Harari didn't make this claim: this one is wholly on you and it's because you don't understand that evolution doesn't operate like Pokemon.
How is it you can repeatedly fail to define a term you keep using?
Success isn't 'can dominate continents' (whatever that is supposed to mean) or 'keep other animals on farms' any more than success means 'can juggle and play the xylophone'. At best, you're question-begging.
Thus, please define what success means or actually acknowledge that success in terms of biology is nothing like the same meaning you're using it for.
:lol:
Such replies should indicate to you why you need to stop ad hoc rationalizing and start listening, because you are sorely lacking in a suite of requisite information and knowledge.
The reason why I asked you was to show that you just made this up wholesale. Your reply is sneaky, I'll give you that, but it's also transparent to someone who knows what they're talking about.
Human hands are no more 'completely evolved for tool use' than noses are 'completely evolved to wear glasses'. Amusingly, you are once again engaging in religious teleological argumentation that is wholly antithetical to science, and even more amusingly, such nonsensical gum-flapping was parodied hundreds of years ago by Voltaire.
As I already educated you before in the very post you're supposedly replying to: all primates use their hands to forage and eat - remember the 3 F's? - and that long evolutionary heritage was co-opted by humans, together with the dexterity, hand-eye coordination, and relevant cognitive processes in the making of tools many tens of thousands of years after the modern human hand's anatomy evolved.
Rather, what actually happened, albeit ambiguously in details, is that human ancestors used their hands in much the same way as their other primate ancestors. To pick up food and place it in their mouths, to move obstacles out of the way, to wrestle with their fellows, to carry objects about, to hit out when attacked and so on... this suite of behaviors was already in place and coopted by early tool users then manufacturers. The fact that other primate species use tools should give you a clue that using tools does not a 'perfectly evolved for tool use hand' make.
Here we go again. Absolute claim made. Claim challenged on factual grounds. Claim recapitulated in relative fashion. I am not sure why you find this form of argument so compelling, but I have to tell you that it's not compelling for me.
You're misusing terms because you're operating under a faulty paradigm. I've tried to explain this to you, but you're not interested in learning why you're producing so many errors.
And the use of exothermic chemical reactions for defense systems sets bombadier beetles apart.
And the use of a water-soluble mucus sac which can last through years of drought set Pyxie frogs apart.
And the use of toughened inner mouth tissue and robust digestive system which allow peccaries to eat spiny cactuses set them apart.
And so on, and so on, and so on.
Cherries are only exceptional if only cherry characteristics are permitted to be exceptional.
Porcupines. Next.
Funny how you suddenly don't know what I mean when you can't think of a way to evade acknowledging an error.
What's so difficult here. Your claim was that because humans can manufacture weapons, they can 'outperform' anything that runs on four legs (your wording).
So I give you the opportunity to prepare for hours with all the materials you like, then you stroll into an arena with a lion.
What's the outcome, would you say?
I would suggest you'd be taken down before you knew what hit you.
Or the way other people use it.
I've read the two relevant books, and I don't recall it. Fancy finding it and citing it? Otherwise, I think I'll withhold belief on that contention and just consider it you who said it.
Do you see any problem with reading just one book, written by a non-specialist, for a non-specialist audience being the solitary source you have for all the information you appear to want to expound to others?
For example, wouldn't it be even slightly necessary to read the original peer-reviewed scientific articles and studies that Harari references in his book to verify they support what he is saying?
Similarly, if you had read A Brief History of Time by Hawking, do you think it would furnish you with sufficient knowledge to argue about cosmology and physics with a professional physicist? Do you think a book written for non-specialists would furnish you sufficiently to contend on the subject matter with specialists who haven't just read one book, but have spent their lives studying the subject?
Something like he says =/= what he actually said.
Also, what he said is complex - on the one hand, he's using simple synopses of other people's work towards his own argument. You're then taking his simplified synopses and making another argument. Are you sure that works? On the other hand, Harari spends thousands of words setting out the remit of meaning, on explaining why he does what he does and acknowledging the limits and flaws in his approach. You don't make any such admissions yet you're basing literally everything you say on your memory of his book.
Finally, he is wrong, or at least not right, in many cases. It's very rare even for a specialist to make no errors whatsoever in a long book in their own subject. Harari's subject is history, not palaeoanthropology, not early hominid sociobehavior, not comparative anatomy, not the dozens of fields you have wandered through here, so he's not a legitimate source, and I can assure you, he wouldn't claim to be.
That's why his book is published for non-specialists. He has the will and ability to write well. He's fascinated by all the stuff leading up to history. And he has an opinion, a perspective he wants to share. But none of this means he's right, neither his argument nor his premises, and your rendition of even his work is not comprehensive or accurate. So there are plenty of ways in which you can be wrong while he's not, and both of you can be wrong, and even more ways in which both of you can be not quite right.
I've studied humans my entire adult life. I wouldn't be able to easily run out a book trying to convey the entire sweep of human evolutionary and pre-history. I also expect I'd make numerous errors and would need to brush up in so many topics, the project would take me years to complete. But you seem to think just by reading one book your knowledge is sufficient to exhibit such confidence even when confronted with contradictory facts. I will inevitably find that permanently perplexing.
And again. The challenged absolute pea gets shuffled around until it's under the relative shell.
Let's watch it in isolation:
It can't be related to the topic thread question because, as mentioned already, the evolution of intelligent life predates humanity by hundreds of millions of years, so focusing on humans seems odd content in a thread so titled.
What intelligent life
What do you mean 'what intelligent life' - are you under the outlandish notion that only Homo sapiens exhibit intelligence?
No, just 'more'.
It's perfectly binary.
Either a) you contend that humans are the only intelligent life
or b) you acknowledge that non-human animals also exhibit intelligence
If b, then when did intelligence evolve? Assuming you acknowledge that other species haven't evolved from humans, then logically human intelligence is retained from evolutionary forebears which also possessed intelligence.
Assuming the latter, your response to my initial question should have been something like "I wasn't clear before, I meant 'the evolution of human intelligence'" or somesuch acknowledgement of the obfuscatory nature of your initial statement.
Instead, you've changed your argument again to a comparative: 'more'. Worse, that argument was already challenged and you didn't sufficiently address it before.
I am not sure. Does Harari claim that pyramids are a yard-stick in intelligence? Does he say that only species which build pyramids are intelligent?
If not, then that's how he could not be wrong while your previous contention would remain so.
Well, it assuredly is the way you've used it. As I've explained to you, there's a paradigm here under which your claims are operating. That paradigm is comparative evolution. Considering we're talking about biology, then success is measured in survival. All species play the same game, we just have different strategies. Those which went extinct were unsuccessful (often purely by bad luck rather than by actually being deficient), while those which have survived are 'successful'.
In those terms, perhaps an argument could be made about success in terms of how long a species remains on the planet, especially given the fact that 99.9 percent of all species in planet Earth's history have gone extinct. That means we 0.1% are all successful by definition.
You could approach this in a number of different ways, for example looking at efficiency - or how many resources a population relies on for its survival and consequently how exposed to risk it is - or you could look at what degree its genes remain stable, or you could look at the diversity of daughter species that evolve from it... there could be many definitions applicable for 'success', but the one you're using, aside from not being defined at all, is just a begged question. List stuff humans do, call it unique to humans, then claim that as indicative of humans being most successful.
It's just not convincing.
Continued
Myrtonos said:Sparhafoc said:Thirdly, you have to establish why it is that an ant, a bird, or any other animal would need control over fire or airplanes in the first place. You're assuming that because X is useful for a human, it's absolutely useful to all species. Clearly, that's nonsense. Fish simply don't need bicycles, so I don't think we need wring our hands as to why fish seem a little slack in the wheeled-transport area.
I didn't say that other animals would need control over fire, aircraft, or wheeled transportation.
Your argument is fundamentally premised on this. You don't need to say it out loud - not least because I am sure you would immediately note what a silly notion it was - but that is exactly what your argument entails.
Myrtonos said:And even non-human land animals are also "a little slack in the wheeled-transport area".
As are the majority of humans. What percentage of people would you estimate could make a bike from scratch? Barely any of the culturally heritable skills are held universally, but remain specialist occupations that could be largely wiped out by a relatively small disaster. Lucky we write stuff down in books.
Myrtonos said:I'm saying that control over fire does put us at a great advantage over other land animals,...
And I am saying that's completely the wrong way of looking at it for the reasons I've given.
Myrtonos said:a single human with flint stick can burn down a whole forest in less than a day.
Yes, you're repeating yourself, and repeating the idea that being able to intentionally burn shit down equates to human exceptionalism. I told you why I don't find this very persuasive, so you're either going to need to address the reason WHY I don't find it persuasive, or opt for some other point. Repeating it, unsurprisingly just invokes the same lack of persuasion on my part.
Myrtonos said:And only sapiens can build or design any wheeled vehicles or any aircraft, many of which can go faster than any animal naturally can, and have a greater carrying capacity than what any animal can naturally carry.
Repetition, and already addressed in spades.
Myrtonos said:Fish may be better swimmers than, well, any land animal, including sapiens, but sapiens can design, build and pilot submarines which can carry people and are not such clumsy swimmers.
And are dramatically more expensive at doing it than fish.
Myrtonos said:Sparhafoc said:You need to understand the missing paradigm here: it's within the field of evolutionary biology, and it's not something that Harari has any expertise in, which is presumably why he gave only the most basic details without plumbing any of the requisite complexity, and you have followed suit through repeating his ideas in your words. You need to consider what evolution actually means.
I thought he was one of the smartest and wisest people on the planet.
I noticed. The content you've offered so far reminds me of Ken Ham saying 'see there's this book'. The actual fact is that there are many books, and they may offer deeper, broader or more comprehensive insight than Harari's brief synopsis of other people's work he employs towards a particular argument or perspective.
More importantly, because his treatment is often brief, it's also often not exactly right. I enjoyed his books and course very much, and thought some of his ideas were genuinely novel and worth considering, but there were still plenty of parts I was dubious about, or which I knew he was over-simplifying to the point of being misleading.
Perhaps most importantly, you should remember that only about 5% of Harari's books are his own ideas. The vast preponderance of content is him taking other people's work and employing it towards a particular argument. So aside from that meaning he may not be accurately rendering that original work, there's also the question of whether his argument actually holds water.
Maybe I can phrase this a different way: I clearly took something very different from his books than you did.
Myrtonos said:Sparhafoc said:There are many interesting idiomatic attempts at explaining it. One is the concept of the Red Queen Hypothesis, where competitors run and run and run as fast as they can just to stay equal. All species on the planet at all times are constantly undergoing competing and contradictory selection from a huge number of sources. If an organism cannot navigate these selections while doing the vital 3 F's: cannot feed, cannot flee or fight, or cannot fuck, then it loses the race for all eternity. Assuming the other competitors (species) can do these things, they're all 'winning'. They're all successful, whether they're 'advanced' in some aspect, or 'behind' in some other. There are no relative components here; it's absolute. They're either winning, or they're extinct.
As as humans, we are very good at navigating these selections.
No, we're not exceptional in the slightest in that regard. All extant species have successfully navigated those selection pressures. That's what it means to be an extant species.
Myrtonos said:Not only can we feed, but we can cook food, and so spend less time chewing it, and can digest it with less effort.
And yet we don't have two stomachs, have no built in rumen to pre-digest our food, and suffer deaths from a combined trachea and oesophagus.
Cherrypicking's fun when you're just after cherries, but if you want to make claims about the distribution of fruit in a landscape, you can't just look at one tree.
Myrtonos said:And we have prevented many other animals from doing at least one of the three vital F's and thus making them extinct.
The same could be said for all other animals ever.
Myrtonos said:For example, other animals can't fight against human hunters because we can hunt them from a distance, they can't hunt us, in order to do so, they would have to come right up to us, and many humans either flee from them or shoot them before they get too close.
And then hunters still die every year through failing to kill from a distance and being torn to shreds from an animal that gets in close. Dem cherries!
https://www.standard.co.uk/news/world/poacher-hunting-big-cats-mauled-to-death-by-lions-in-south-africa-a3764096.html
'Poacher hunting big cats' mauled to death by lions in South Africa
Police are investigating if a man killed and eaten by a pride of lions at a private game reserve in South Africa was a poacher who had been hunting big cats.
His screams for help raised the alarm but the lions quickly killed the man and devoured most of his body before being chased off.
The head was left untouched and is the only means available to police of identifying the man who was carrying no documents.
It comes just months after poacher Luteni Muhararukua was charged and killed by a rhino he was hunting for its horn in nearby Namibia.
Myrtonos said:Sparhafoc said:So yeah, it's a trivial observation that humans can build amazing stuff that lets us do things our bodies never evolved for, but that doesn't actually make us 'more successful' on some undefined hodgepodge of ideas intimating an absolute scale.
It has allowed us to hunt so many animals to (near) extinction, no other animal can hunt humans to extinction. Yes many people have been killed or even been eaten by wild animals. But a human with a weapon such as an arrow or especially a gun will beat many four legged animals, even if they can run faster.
Allowed us to hunt so many animals to extinction = 'rule over animals'
This is what I mean. You refuse to revise your arguments even when they're challenged, and simply restate them as before.
Give an average person a bow or a gun and set them on a tiger. Who do you think wins?
In reality, the individual human needs to be reasonably exceptional even among HUMANS to be able to kill a predator even with a gun. Whereas, all mature lions are individually capable of killing a typical human who lacks the requisite skills or is too stressed or just plain unlucky with their one shot.
But these discussions are really silly, I am going to stop replying to them from now on, just striking through to show what they're worth in my estimation. If I want to talk about who wins a fight between an X and Y, I'll do so with my 5 year old son.
Myrtonos said:Sparhafoc said:The carrying capacity of a biological species in an environment is the maximum population size of the species that the environment can sustain indefinitely, given the food, habitat, water, and other necessities available in the environment. In population biology, carrying capacity is defined as the environment's maximal load...
I wasn't asking what carrying capacity means, I just wasn't sure about something else you mean that mentions carrying capacity.
Well, you kind of did ask what it meant - first you misused the term, then I explained the mistake, then you said you didn't understand what I meant.
Myrtonos said:Sparhafoc said:They don't need to carry food. They're flying about collecting it as and when. What else were they supposed to be doing?
Apparently some birds do carry food.
And?
It's becoming something like an argumentative version of whack-a-mole. Error pops up, it gets knocked down, then another pops up in its place. What exactly do you think albatrosses are flying about for?
Myrtonos said:Sparhafoc said:Balderdash, we've evolved dramatically. Evolution doesn't stop. If you think it does, you need to understand that evolution is about the distribution of alleles in a population, not some Great Chain of Being.
In the past 10,000 years or so, we haven't evolved that much,...
Please don't assert bullshit as fact at me in my own discipline. You're wrong. Not slightly wrong, just plain wrong. Go learn what evolution is. Evolution hasn't stopped or slowed down one iota. We've evolved plenty, thanks all the same.
Myrtonos said:but lifestyle has changed alot, think of the rise of farming and later cities. In fact, we hardly evolved at all between the rise of farming and the rise of cities.
Yes, you said all this before and I responded to it.
Myrtonos said:Sparhafoc said:I want to hear you tell me that sapiens rules the world next time you finally manage to pull yourself out of bed after 5 days of the effects of influenza.
It seems you are thinking about the individual level, what about the collective level?
Collectively, influenza kills up to 750,000 people a year globally. So tell me again how sapiens über alles. Considering it is literally your argument - that humans shooting shit and burning stuff down equates to being dominant - then it's funny how you suddenly refuse to apply it when it doesn't serve your position.
Myrtonos said:Sparhafoc said:Hair nets and watches have exactly the same thing to do with 'it' as airplanes, constitutions, and moon-landings.
Airplanes can achieve much greater speeds than any animate being can naturally accomplish,...
Repeated errors make for poor arguments.
1) You only started talking about speed when your previous absolutist argument was shown to be trivially wrong.
2) Humans are animate beings.
3) Humans accomplish design and production of airplanes with wholly natural means.
Or are you trying to claim that magic is involved in the workings of aircraft? Because that's the opposite of 'natural'.
Myrtonos said:... and at such speeds can achieve heights well in excess of what any land animal (including humans) can naturally accomplish.
It's like playing Top Trumps with banal observations.
Humans are exceptional because we can fly higher than anything else! :lol:
Myrtonos said:Commercial jet planes can even fly higher than any flying animal.
Because flying animals were trying to fly higher.... and because flying animals needed to fly higher... and because.... because all the things that have already been explained to you about the banality and bizarreness of your arguments.
Myrtonos said:Hair net and watches are neither weapons, nor conveyance devices.
Dat wet water again.
Myrtonos said:Constitutions might not be weapons nor conveyance devices but they do help with co-operation with coutless strangers, for the very reason(s) that Dr. Harari says in his book, I know his book is quite simplified, but that doesn't mean that's not quite the case.
Doesn't mean it IS the case either. That's why arguments need to be made, rather than irrelevant observations stacked together with an irrelevant solution being nominally derived from them.
Myrtonos said:Sparhafoc said:Millions of years, radical departure. These two concepts are in contradiction.
What I mean is that the way hominids lived diverged greatly from the way all other animals have ever lived. Walking upright on two legs, and pretty much all the time, more often than any of the great apes.
Ostriches want a word with you, as do all the other bipedal animals which somehow fail to become special even though they're bipedal too.
As I said to you many times. If you want to make an argument for human exceptionalism, perhaps don't choose traits which aren't unique to humans?
Of course, one wonders what the utility would be for a crocodile to walk on two legs, but as I think we've firmly established now, such not-even-nuance will simply be dismissed as the pea moves to another shell.
Myrtonos said:Sparhafoc said:In reality, it's not Homo sapiens that learned to use fire, it was over a million years ago with erectus. Over generations and species, our lineage slowly developed control over fire. Ergo, not a radical departure, but a progression.
While sapiens can certainly build more sophisticated tools than their forebears, so their forebears could build more sophisticated tools than theirs, and so on for quite some time. Ergo, progression, no departure.
I didn't say it was sapiens that learned to use fire.
You said 'humans' and every other time you used humans, you've used it in context of Homo sapiens.
Myrtonos said:It may be a progression, but being able to use more sophisticated tools than any other animal ever has was part of the radical departure.
Contradiction in terms: more of something is not a radical departure by definition.
Myrtonos said:Among those tools were flint sticks, which could be used to light fire, something no other animal could ever do. Developing control of fire did lead to a radical departure, due to a dependable source of heat and light, and powerful weapon against other animals such as lions.
More repetition.
Myrtonos said:What is radical about this is that species of genus homo, over time, diverged greatly from all other animals ever lived in lifestyle.
As did all other animals. Another pointlessly banal observation.
Myrtonos said:To illustrate the success of sapiens, consider the fact that the great apes most closely related to us are confined to sub-Saharan Africa, like zebras, giraffes and the larger of the two extant Elephants, the latter being the largest extant land animals. Elephants are the last surviving megafauna, unless giraffes count, I'm not sure if they do.
Wut?
Firstly, orangutans want a word with you, as do the massively geographically distributed hominoid ancestors of today's extant species.
Secondly, zebras are equids and are distributed all over the world.
Thirdly, elephants - as even you note - are not confined to sub-Saharan Africa, and until relatively recently were found across Eurasia and the Americas.
Fourthly, megafauna is typically defined in biological terms as an animal over 40kg, and consequently there are hundreds of species of extant megafauna, and I am surprised after talking about whales that you'd forget them considering the blue whale is the largest animal ever to live.
Finally, there's that word 'success' again. Why are you defining success in humans as distinct from other animals which are successful in exactly the same terms? I predict shell game response.
Myrtonos said:But for 40,000 years sapiens have long inhabited every continent north of the Antarctica, by the way, Antarctica was only discovered comparatively recently.
40,000 years is the evolutionary equivalent of a gnat's fart.
Ants have inhabited all the continents bar Antarctica for over 100 million years.
Penguins 'discovered' Antarctica 40 million years ago, as did thousands of other species. But we only care when humans did it, right?
Myrtonos said:Sparhafoc said:With agriculture, human nomadic groups roved around seasonally available crops, first adding to their dispersal unintentionally, then cultivating them to increase their ranges, then finally settling down near those sources, then eking out a meager existence farming them, then generationally improving techniques and tools in a progression sometimes lost through human or natural activities until we arrive at mechanical automation and chemistry, coopted for agriculture.
This is something that sapiens has achieved that no other animal has ever done.
Another absolutist declaration made in confidence, but sadly also in ignorance of relevant facts.
Myrtonos said:No other kind of animal has ever produced its own food, as far as we know, even other species of genus homo never did.
As far as YOU know, perhaps... but as far as factual reality knows, there are plenty of examples wholly in contradiction to your confident assertion. Ants again, for example, started farming 50 million years ago. That's around the time basal primates evolved. Ants also rear and nurture aphids. In fact, there are symbiotic relationships between ants and dozens of species stretching back millions of years.
Bluntly, if you don't know this, why are you so confident in the formulation of your assertions? Is it as Darwin suggested?
Darwin said:Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge
Myrtonos said:By the way, farms are a system of human co-operation.
By the way, they're not. See ant farms. Also, see subsistence farming practiced by humans - the majority of human farming throughout history.
Myrtonos said:Sparhafoc said:Radical change is not something measured across millions of years or multiple generations. Radical departure is about fundamental, structural changes occurring almost without precedent. That isn't the human story for the most part. Rather, there's a fairly slow progression throughout thousands of generations which has sped up in recent centuries.
The evolution of the ability to walk upright on two feet and use more sophisticated tools than any other animal may have happened over millions of years but was certainly without precedent, I mean tools like spears that could be used to hunt animals from a distance. Tools that could control fire (including lighting and extinguishing them) were also historically unprecedented.
Certainly, but wrong again.
How can you be so certain and wrong at the same time?
That's where I am at in this discussion now. All I am intrigued by is how you read one book then appear to consider yourself a guru on a range of topics even when exhibiting very shallow knowledge of the topic matter.
Myrtonos said:And finally, cooking, the best thing that fire did, made way for shorter intestines and smaller jaws,...
Repetition again, and yet more just-so fairy tales.
Factually, the gut and jaw had been getting smaller, and the human brain getting larger for millions of years in human ancestors prior to the use of fire. Ergo, your story is factually in error.
Myrtonos said:... and for larger brains than any other animal (at least other land animals or any flying animals) has ever had,...
And you are, once again, repeating an error that was already corrected.
Humans don't have the largest brains by any measure. You even engaged in this correction and moved your goalposts when shown wrong before, but now you've moved them back again.
No matter how confidently you state something, bullshit remains bullshit.
Myrtonos said:and (it seems) more flexible tongues than any other animal ever lived,...
Ooh look! A new claim!
Sadly, it's wrong too.
Giraffe, okapi, sunbears, chameleons, hummingbirds, pangolin, ant-eaters, tamandua and a host of other animals want a curly tongued word with you.
Unless, of course, you can stick your tongue down a twisty hole to slurp up ants, or use your tongue to stretch past long spines and strip leaves off a tree?
Myrtonos said:so we could develop a spoken language with a wider range of sounds than pretty much any other animal can produce.
1) Banal, only humans have a spoken language that would be considered as such by humans
2) Many other animals can make a vastly wider range of sounds than humans. Go have a sing-off with a lyrebird. Bet you can't make 1% of the sounds it can make.
You keep making statements that are patently false.
Myrtonos said:Yes, I know parrots can be trained to talk like humans, but our kind still has an communicative advantage over the that isn't vocal.
Yes, I know I am wrong, but I am still right if you just ignore the bits which are wrong.
Myrtonos said:A non-human primate may be able to vocalise a call to fellow band members warnings of dangers like eagles and lions, say if an eagle or lion is coming. But a modern human can tell friends and relatives something like that they can see an Eagle flying over the river, or a cheetah tracking a herd of wilderbeast. They can describe the specific location and paths leading to that area and together, a band or tribe of humans can discuss what to do, whether to chase away the cheetah and hunt the wilderbeast.
It's funny because I am now beginning to see the bits of Harari's book you are rehashing. This was a section about cognition, not about language. Obviously, because language cannot exist without the cognitive apparatus to understand it.
Myrtonos said:Human language can also describe things that aren't even objective realities, like gods, myths, legends, religious beliefs.
Humans can make up shit. Therefore, humans über alles!
Myrtonos said:And the rise of farming and later cities, this was indeed radical change relative to the rate of evolution.
No it wasn't. Please provide a credible citation of a study from a peer-reviewed journal to support your claim, or cease stating falsehoods as fact. Harari didn't make this claim: this one is wholly on you and it's because you don't understand that evolution doesn't operate like Pokemon.
Myrtonos said:Sparhafoc said:As I've already complained: the term 'successful' here is perfectly opaque. What does success mean? Are you going to apply human centric metrics of success to compare against other animals again? Or are you going to acknowledge now that you need to be thinking about what paradigm you're operating under?
What I mean is that sapiens dominate every long inhabited continent and keep animals of many other kinds on farms and lock yet other kinds up in zoos and laboratories
How is it you can repeatedly fail to define a term you keep using?
Success isn't 'can dominate continents' (whatever that is supposed to mean) or 'keep other animals on farms' any more than success means 'can juggle and play the xylophone'. At best, you're question-begging.
Thus, please define what success means or actually acknowledge that success in terms of biology is nothing like the same meaning you're using it for.
Myrtonos said:Sparhafoc said:Please cite a peer-reviewed article in a science journal showing that 'our hands are completely adapted to tool use'.
To what else would our hands be adapted?!?
:lol:
Such replies should indicate to you why you need to stop ad hoc rationalizing and start listening, because you are sorely lacking in a suite of requisite information and knowledge.
The reason why I asked you was to show that you just made this up wholesale. Your reply is sneaky, I'll give you that, but it's also transparent to someone who knows what they're talking about.
Human hands are no more 'completely evolved for tool use' than noses are 'completely evolved to wear glasses'. Amusingly, you are once again engaging in religious teleological argumentation that is wholly antithetical to science, and even more amusingly, such nonsensical gum-flapping was parodied hundreds of years ago by Voltaire.
Dr Pangloss said:It is demonstrable," said he, "that things cannot be otherwise than as they are; for all being created for an end, all is necessarily for the best end. Observe, that the nose has been formed to bear spectacles — thus we have spectacles. Legs are visibly designed for stockings — and we have stockings. Stones were made to be hewn, and to construct castles — therefore my lord has a magnificent castle; for the greatest baron in the province ought to be the best lodged. Pigs were made to be eaten — therefore we eat pork all the year round.
As I already educated you before in the very post you're supposedly replying to: all primates use their hands to forage and eat - remember the 3 F's? - and that long evolutionary heritage was co-opted by humans, together with the dexterity, hand-eye coordination, and relevant cognitive processes in the making of tools many tens of thousands of years after the modern human hand's anatomy evolved.
Rather, what actually happened, albeit ambiguously in details, is that human ancestors used their hands in much the same way as their other primate ancestors. To pick up food and place it in their mouths, to move obstacles out of the way, to wrestle with their fellows, to carry objects about, to hit out when attacked and so on... this suite of behaviors was already in place and coopted by early tool users then manufacturers. The fact that other primate species use tools should give you a clue that using tools does not a 'perfectly evolved for tool use hand' make.
Myrtonos said:Sparhafoc said:Incidentally, one of the earlier errors you made but which I left considering the number I already had to deal with is the notion that other apes are 'completely adapted to knuckle-walking'. They're not. Our common ancestor was already at least partially bipedal, and this is hardly surprising given that all primates readily stand on their hind legs and use their front legs for foraging. It's a characteristic vastly more ancient than sapiens or even Homo.
The great apes don't stand on their hindlegs as often as humans.
Here we go again. Absolute claim made. Claim challenged on factual grounds. Claim recapitulated in relative fashion. I am not sure why you find this form of argument so compelling, but I have to tell you that it's not compelling for me.
Myrtonos said:Okay, I didn't say that apes are completely adapted to knuckle walking but still partly adapted to it and less adapted to tool making and tool use.
You're misusing terms because you're operating under a faulty paradigm. I've tried to explain this to you, but you're not interested in learning why you're producing so many errors.
Myrtonos said:Sparhafoc said:And the point therein of this banal observation is...?
The ability to control fires set humans apart from other animals because of power of fire, as explained above.
And the use of exothermic chemical reactions for defense systems sets bombadier beetles apart.
And the use of a water-soluble mucus sac which can last through years of drought set Pyxie frogs apart.
And the use of toughened inner mouth tissue and robust digestive system which allow peccaries to eat spiny cactuses set them apart.
And so on, and so on, and so on.
Cherries are only exceptional if only cherry characteristics are permitted to be exceptional.
Myrtonos said:Sparhafoc said:The only way the usage of this word would have any semantic sense is if you're comparing the skills of human and other animals when it comes to employing ranged weapons.
No other animal is capable of making their own spears, let alone bows and arrows. Most aren't even capable of throwing spears or arrows.
Porcupines. Next.
Myrtonos said:Sparhafoc said:And, imagine for a moment that I gave you several hours with any material you liked to whip yourself up a weapon. Then you faced off against a hungry lion. How do you see that going? Would you expect to 'outperform' the lion?
I'm not sure what you mean.
Funny how you suddenly don't know what I mean when you can't think of a way to evade acknowledging an error.
What's so difficult here. Your claim was that because humans can manufacture weapons, they can 'outperform' anything that runs on four legs (your wording).
So I give you the opportunity to prepare for hours with all the materials you like, then you stroll into an arena with a lion.
What's the outcome, would you say?
I would suggest you'd be taken down before you knew what hit you.
Myrtonos said:Sparhafoc said:You have a strange notion that 'rule' means 'capable of [defecating] on things'. I don't understand the word 'rule' the same way as you use it.
No I don't.
Or the way other people use it.
Myrtonos said:Sparhafoc said:Well, to clarify what? I don't have the vaguest idea what your argument is. At present it seems to be something like humans are the most successful because we can intentionall burn down local environments with fire and other animals can't, also we're good at stabbing them.
This is indeed sort of what I am am saying and Dr. Harari has too, especially in one of his books.
I've read the two relevant books, and I don't recall it. Fancy finding it and citing it? Otherwise, I think I'll withhold belief on that contention and just consider it you who said it.
Myrtonos said:Sparhafoc said:Otherwise, excuse me saying, but aren't you just repeating what you read in Harari's book? While I am not saying he's wrong, many of the topics he sweeps over aren't plumbed very deeply they're more just an overview for non-experts employed in the service of making a particular argument.
While I don't entirely get what you are saying, but yes, it is based on what is mentioned in sapiens.
Do you see any problem with reading just one book, written by a non-specialist, for a non-specialist audience being the solitary source you have for all the information you appear to want to expound to others?
For example, wouldn't it be even slightly necessary to read the original peer-reviewed scientific articles and studies that Harari references in his book to verify they support what he is saying?
Similarly, if you had read A Brief History of Time by Hawking, do you think it would furnish you with sufficient knowledge to argue about cosmology and physics with a professional physicist? Do you think a book written for non-specialists would furnish you sufficiently to contend on the subject matter with specialists who haven't just read one book, but have spent their lives studying the subject?
Myrtonos said:Sparhafoc said:So perhaps you might want to mention your source in the original post, because it really seems like a list of statements without anything underlying them. Harari had a coherent argument running throughout his book: an agenda to explain aspects of human history in what he considers to be a useful framework for a non-specialist audience.
But I'm saying something like he says, yet you claim I'm wrong, how could he not be?
Something like he says =/= what he actually said.
Also, what he said is complex - on the one hand, he's using simple synopses of other people's work towards his own argument. You're then taking his simplified synopses and making another argument. Are you sure that works? On the other hand, Harari spends thousands of words setting out the remit of meaning, on explaining why he does what he does and acknowledging the limits and flaws in his approach. You don't make any such admissions yet you're basing literally everything you say on your memory of his book.
Finally, he is wrong, or at least not right, in many cases. It's very rare even for a specialist to make no errors whatsoever in a long book in their own subject. Harari's subject is history, not palaeoanthropology, not early hominid sociobehavior, not comparative anatomy, not the dozens of fields you have wandered through here, so he's not a legitimate source, and I can assure you, he wouldn't claim to be.
That's why his book is published for non-specialists. He has the will and ability to write well. He's fascinated by all the stuff leading up to history. And he has an opinion, a perspective he wants to share. But none of this means he's right, neither his argument nor his premises, and your rendition of even his work is not comprehensive or accurate. So there are plenty of ways in which you can be wrong while he's not, and both of you can be wrong, and even more ways in which both of you can be not quite right.
I've studied humans my entire adult life. I wouldn't be able to easily run out a book trying to convey the entire sweep of human evolutionary and pre-history. I also expect I'd make numerous errors and would need to brush up in so many topics, the project would take me years to complete. But you seem to think just by reading one book your knowledge is sufficient to exhibit such confidence even when confronted with contradictory facts. I will inevitably find that permanently perplexing.
Myrtonos said:Sparhafoc said:What do you mean 'what intelligent life' - are you under the outlandish notion that only Homo sapiens exhibit intelligence?
No, it is just common knowledge that homo sapiens exhibit greater intelligence than any other animal ever has.
And again. The challenged absolute pea gets shuffled around until it's under the relative shell.
Let's watch it in isolation:
It can't be related to the topic thread question because, as mentioned already, the evolution of intelligent life predates humanity by hundreds of millions of years, so focusing on humans seems odd content in a thread so titled.
What intelligent life
What do you mean 'what intelligent life' - are you under the outlandish notion that only Homo sapiens exhibit intelligence?
No, just 'more'.
It's perfectly binary.
Either a) you contend that humans are the only intelligent life
or b) you acknowledge that non-human animals also exhibit intelligence
If b, then when did intelligence evolve? Assuming you acknowledge that other species haven't evolved from humans, then logically human intelligence is retained from evolutionary forebears which also possessed intelligence.
Assuming the latter, your response to my initial question should have been something like "I wasn't clear before, I meant 'the evolution of human intelligence'" or somesuch acknowledgement of the obfuscatory nature of your initial statement.
Instead, you've changed your argument again to a comparative: 'more'. Worse, that argument was already challenged and you didn't sufficiently address it before.
Myrtonos said:Sparhafoc said:Because pyramids suddenly became a yard-stick in something? Intelligence?
Ants, as we've already seen assuming that links have been read, have built structures hundreds of miles long - considerably bigger than the pyramids. The Argentine ant, as we have already seen, is essentially a globe-spanning mega-colony comprising the most populous recorded society ever on Earth, be it human or otherwise.
Then how could Dr. Harari not be wrong?
I am not sure. Does Harari claim that pyramids are a yard-stick in intelligence? Does he say that only species which build pyramids are intelligent?
If not, then that's how he could not be wrong while your previous contention would remain so.
Myrtonos said:Sparhafoc said:The point, of course, is that even if every single thing you said was true (which it factually isn't) there's still little rhyme or reason underpinning it. Wouldn't it work out better if you just made a kind of thesis statement? Topic & Controlling Idea. Then, define what you mean by woolly terms like 'successful' and, while I'm giving advice, modify your argument when you find out that your propositions are wrong.
I didn't realise that 'successful' was such a "woolly" term.
Well, it assuredly is the way you've used it. As I've explained to you, there's a paradigm here under which your claims are operating. That paradigm is comparative evolution. Considering we're talking about biology, then success is measured in survival. All species play the same game, we just have different strategies. Those which went extinct were unsuccessful (often purely by bad luck rather than by actually being deficient), while those which have survived are 'successful'.
In those terms, perhaps an argument could be made about success in terms of how long a species remains on the planet, especially given the fact that 99.9 percent of all species in planet Earth's history have gone extinct. That means we 0.1% are all successful by definition.
You could approach this in a number of different ways, for example looking at efficiency - or how many resources a population relies on for its survival and consequently how exposed to risk it is - or you could look at what degree its genes remain stable, or you could look at the diversity of daughter species that evolve from it... there could be many definitions applicable for 'success', but the one you're using, aside from not being defined at all, is just a begged question. List stuff humans do, call it unique to humans, then claim that as indicative of humans being most successful.
It's just not convincing.