Thread 16762507

anyone else think animals are smarter than we give them credit? not even famously "Smart" animals like dogs or dolphins or whatever. I just mean animal life in general. Basically i believe intelligence isnt a heirarchy with humans on top, but rather a lateral system where each animals intelligence is tailored to its needs and niche
I think the way we categorize animal intelligence is wrong. IE we seem to measure animal intelligence by human standards IE tool use, puzzle solving etc, even though animal species have no use for those abilities and therefore dont have the certain intelligence levels to complete them, because those problems we create for them to solve dont exist in their ecological niche
Like dragonflies are fucking badass, they are apex predators and have been more or less the same over 300 million years. They have no use for whatever measures of intelligence we assign to ourselves. They have survived fine and will probably outlive humans. They might not be "intelligent" but theyre lethal and complete their evolutionary purpose very well.

On the other hand, i also think human intelligence is almost a flaw. Sure, it allowed us to basically conquer, subjugate, eradicate or fragment every other species on the planet. But is that actually a good thing?
We're driving our own species into extinction and causing a 6th mass extinction.
We have mass starvation and poverty, entire countries of humans are literally starving to death because we have bypassed all natural ecological population self-regulation constraints and artificially exploded our population.

Meanwhile humans and our "superior intelligence" is going to cause our species to go extinct in under half a million years, while the "unintelligent" dragonfly will love another hundred million.
Thoughts?

>>16762507 (OP)
>dogs
>famously smart
Dogs are famously dumb cunts with the manner of drunk toddlers.
As a reminder, "domestication" frees the mind from the hardwired fight/flight loop. Intelligence is a function of free processes, not total processing capability.

>>16762514
Dogs are what ????

>>16762514
>Dogs are famously dumb cunts with the manner of drunk toddlers.
t.

>>16762507 (OP)
>causing a 6th mass extinction
Imagine a dragonfly keeping count of some arbitrary mass extinction metric. Deprogram yourself.

humans are so smart they could destroy anything and everything on earth

>>16762546
Funny

>>16762507 (OP)
intelligence and motivation go hand in hand
dragonflies hunt bugs really intelligently because that's one of their main motivations

>>16762580
humans destroy stuff because our motivation is "it's fun"

>>16762507 (OP)
No I think the opposite. I think most living things, including humans, are far dumber than we give them credit for. Life is just a carbon-based finite state machine and little different from a bunch of if-else statements implemented mostly through hormones

Humans have this pattern matching engine we call a mind and it's working on overdrive to assign meaning, individuality, and rationality to what is essentially pre-ptogrammed responses to stumuli. Neither people nor animals know why they're doing what they're doing, humans just rationalize a cause afterwards so that they feel in control

>>16762675
>if I deny all possibility of agency then agency doesn't exist
One thing you can do to step off that carousel of logic is to understand what agency is. Ie, your body is craving sugar. Do you eat fruit, or empty calories? If you chose number two, then congratulations, you have both demonstrated agency and mind numbing stupidity at the same time.
Free will. It's only free because you didn't track the cost.

>>16762685
Is your house full of fruit or full of candy? Did you buy bananas at the store, or chocolate? Was your first though to eat sugar, or fruit? Why are you craving something sweet in the first place?

I'm not in any way denying that your conscious thoughts can influence your decision making, but it's far from the main system of decision making in your body. Most decisions you make have already been decided subconsciously and by chemical signals, and you're often not even aware of the fact that it wasn't a rational choice.

I don't believe most animals have any capacity for "free will", I don't believe most humans are an exception, and I don't believe that the humans who are capable of actually making rational decisions make most of their decisions consciously.

>>16762690
>I don't believe
Fundamentally, that is your issue. You are using the wrong method to evaluate your decision making process.
What you actually said was "I refuse to ever consider the harms I cause myself by my own actions."

>>16762696
>>I don't believe
>Fundamentally, that is your issue.
I cannot prove otherwise, so I will not pretend to be speaking absolute facts. You are responsible for evaluating what you are told and choosing to believe what sounds more likely and what hurts your feeling less. I know for a fact that some of the simplest animals are very literally little more than state machines and this has been proven scientifically, but if you going to ask me to dig for papers to quote then I'm not going to bother.

>What you actually said was "I refuse to ever consider the harms I cause myself by my own actions."
Sounds like you're projecting

>>16762697
>sounds more likely
This is a constantly updated operator. Refusing to acknowledge that you don't understand and choosing instead to call it belief is not a demonstration of this.
>hurts your feelings less
This is not a function of conscious thought. This is your subconscious screaming at you to fucking fix yourself.
>the simplest animals
...are not the subject of this discussion. Did you just call yourself a tardigrade?
>projecting
What part of "feel free to be more harsh with yourself, it's good for you" did you not understand? Are you a victim of female "morality," or a perpetrator of it?

>>16762507 (OP)
I have considered this when dealing with mosquitos. As far as their skill of hiding, sneaking up on you and sucking your blood without being noticed is concerned, they are geniuses. I do wonder if they are only good at that or also smart in general but they cant express it