Is man just a really smart monkey

pinqy said:

All the talk of intelligence is irrelevant. "Animal" is a biological category. Biologically, we are animals.

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Intelligence certainly IS a biological category. What else could it be? A magical category? A mystical category? It's quite amazing the positions some DP members will take.

And in any case all talk of what category intelligence belongs to is irrelevant because the whole point of OP was a deprecation of the difference between humans and other animals, and there is no reasonable way to depreciate our intellectual differences, no matter what category you try to force intelligence into.

USViking said:

Intelligence certainly IS a biological category. What else could it be? A magical category? A mystical category? It's quite amazing the positions some DP members will take.

And in any case all talk of what category intelligence belongs to is irrelevant because the whole point of OP was a deprecation of the difference between humans and other animals, and there is no reasonable way to depreciate our intellectual differences, no matter what category you try to force intelligence into.

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So, that makes the correct choice "man is just a really smart monkey." Most correct, anyway, as we are great apes and not monkeys.

The statement "Man is something different than an animal, something superior even." is totally wrong, as we are a part of the animal kingdom.

sawyerloggingon said:

I have been seeing alot of stuff lately on elephants, dolphins etc that show compassion for other beings and seem to understand death at some level and mourn the passing of others. I always thought things like this is what separated man from animals but now I am beginning to wonder.

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Humans are a virus, a flaw which soon the flow of time will extinguish and erase all record of. In a sentence: We have been too successful for our own good.


Currently half of us are fat. Think about what that means for a minute. We are literally eating ourselves to death while depleting the planet of its precious resources. Eventually, this will result in a major fail. I cannot see how there could be any other outcome.

Amanda1858 said:

Mark Twain said: "God created man because he was disappointed in the monkey".

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Disappointed? ****. Imagine how He feels about us.

Considering the number of people that support socialism, the fact Obama is president and many other things would tend to support that if mankind is a monkey, it is actually a pretty dumb example of one.

DVSentinel said:

Considering the number of people that support socialism, the fact Obama is president and many other things would tend to support that if mankind is a monkey, it is actually a pretty dumb example of one.

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The post above has about the same intellectual content that a monkey might have been able to put into it, but all Obama supporters possess the infinitely higher intelligence I have been talking about.

tacomancer said:

I would go with something more than simply "smart"

For example, it appears humans are the only animals capable of thinking about purely conceptual ideas, which helps allow us to build tools on tops of tools and create new concepts for social cohesion. Those two things are, from what i can tell, our primary evolutionary advantage over other animals.

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That perspective was developed because of anatomy and environment. We had many things to manipulate in our environments and we had thumb, or even just fully articulated appendages.

Cetaceans are in a much more stable environment with less things or need to manipulate and their anatomy has developed to maximize their survival in such an environment.

Brain development evolved acccordingly. Humans didnt develop the highly specialized ability for sonar....

Dittohead not! said:

I don't think they've developed a way of writing underwater just yet.

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Surely devices of some kind could easily be designed to test the hypothesis that dolphins have literacy potential- perhaps a set of letters on blocks with some kind of slotted boards to put them on.

Dittohead not! said:

How about gossip?

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This link is completely suspect because it has a section favorable to the infamous scientific quack Thomas Van Flandern. Van Flandern, among other things, believed the "face" on Mars is of ETI origin, and that gravity propagated 20 billion times the speed of light.

Dittohead not! said:

So, that makes the correct choice "man is just a really smart monkey." Most correct, anyway, as we are great apes and not monkeys.

The statement "Man is something different than an animal, something superior even." is totally wrong, as we are a part of the animal kingdom.

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I was debating the sense conveyed by the modifiers "just" and "really" which distort the significance and degree of the intellectual gap.

"Just" means "no big deal", right? Well, I kind of think it's a big deal in the sense of a hugely, enormous, gargantuan fabulously big deal that humans and only humans have done stuff like build machines capable of flying to and landing on Mars. That makes us a f*** of a lot more than a no big deal "just" any goddam thing.

And "really" could encompass such a great range of values that it does nothing to impart a sense of the huge, enormous, gargantuan fabulously big difference between how smart we are and how smart any other animal is, as measured by countless accomplishments of ours, staring us in the face every waking moment, which no animal has come close to beginning to replicate. That makes us a f*** of a lot more than a "really" smart any goddam thing.

Furthermore, you went much further than OP:

(from reply #4, emphasis added):

Dittohead not! said:

...the gulf between humans and other animals is really not all that great.

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Which is what originally moved me to take part in the thread.

We all have our dream worlds, which we cannot to happy without, so go ahead and dream Flipper = Einstein if that's what it takes for you.

calamity said:

Humans are a virus, a flaw which soon the flow of time will extinguish and erase all record of. In a sentence: We have been too successful for our own good.


Currently half of us are fat. Think about what that means for a minute. We are literally eating ourselves to death while depleting the planet of its precious resources. Eventually, this will result in a major fail. I cannot see how there could be any other outcome.

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Literally none of what you said is true. We aren't a virus. We are not in danger of imminent extinction nor are our memorials. We have not been too successful for our own good. Half of us are not fat.

Sherman123 said:

Literally none of what you said is true. 1. We aren't a virus. 2. We are not in danger of imminent extinction nor are our memorials. 3. We have not been too successful for our own good. 4. Half of us are not fat.

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1. I disagree

2. If we go extinct our memorials will vanish within 10,000 years. Are we close to extinction? Depends how you look at it.

3. Sure we have--look at how we've killed almost anything on the planet that is not directly used by us for food or other purposes.

4. Fine, 1/3 of us are.

And according to the new study from Overseas Development Institute (ODI), over one-third of all adults across the world – 1.46 billion people – are now obese or overweight.

Study: World Obesity Triples Since 1980, Nearly 1.5 Billion People Overweight « CBS Atlanta

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calamity said:

1. I disagree

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Well then it's a good thing you aren't teaching others and it casts doubt on any of your other posts.

calamity said:

2. If we go extinct our memorials will vanish within 10,000 years. Are we close to extinction? Depends how you look at it.

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That's not even close to true. Even if we were to be wiped off the planet today, we have memorials and societal info engraved upon and constructed from non-perishable materials. For instance, we have the Bible micro-engraved upon diamond.

calamity said:

3. Sure we have--look at how we've killed almost anything on the planet that is not directly used by us for food or other purposes.

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Not even close.

calamity said:

4. Fine, 1/3 of us are.

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Not even that species wide.

clownboy said:

Well then it's a good thing you aren't teaching others and it casts doubt on any of your other posts.



That's not even close to true. Even if we were to be wiped off the planet today, we have memorials and societal info engraved upon and constructed from non-perishable materials. For instance, we have the Bible micro-engraved upon diamond.



Not even close.



Not even that species wide.

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Of course we are not literally a virus.
1/3 of all the human adults being fat is pretty bad.
10,000 years and most of what we have created is covered in sand, water or overgrown jungle
Look at the current man-made mass extinction below:
Holocene extinction - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Q: Is man just a really smart monkey?

A: Depends on which member of DP you are referring. Some aren't very smart at all.

USViking said:

I was debating the sense conveyed by the modifiers "just" and "really" which distort the significance and degree of the intellectual gap.

"Just" means "no big deal", right? Well, I kind of think it's a big deal in the sense of a hugely, enormous, gargantuan fabulously big deal that humans and only humans have done stuff like build machines capable of flying to and landing on Mars. That makes us a f*** of a lot more than a no big deal "just" any goddam thing.

And "really" could encompass such a great range of values that it does nothing to impart a sense of the huge, enormous, gargantuan fabulously big difference between how smart we are and how smart any other animal is, as measured by countless accomplishments of ours, staring us in the face every waking moment, which no animal has come close to beginning to replicate. That makes us a f*** of a lot more than a "really" smart any goddam thing.

Furthermore, you went much further than OP:

(from reply #4, emphasis added):


Which is what originally moved me to take part in the thread.

We all have our dream worlds, which we cannot to happy without, so go ahead and dream Flipper = Einstein if that's what it takes for you.

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Humans lived in much the same way as their simian counterparts for much of our existence, in small hunter-gatherer groups making shelters out of whatever happened to be handy, gathering wild edible plants, and hunting other animals for food. Yes, we did carry tool making to a greater degree than most other animals, so there is some difference.

The real question, IMO, is how is it that modern man has accomplished so much more than our ancestors did for the first 95% of our existence?

And, how do we know that other animals don't have the potential to advance just as quickly, given the chance?

I other words, the contrast you describe is just as much between humans and humans as it is between humans and other animals.

Dittohead not! said:

Humans lived in much the same way as their simian counterparts for much of our existence, in small hunter-gatherer groups making shelters out of whatever happened to be handy, gathering wild edible plants, and hunting other animals for food. Yes, we did carry tool making to a greater degree than most other animals, so there is some difference.

The real question, IMO, is how is it that modern man has accomplished so much more than our ancestors did for the first 95% of our existence?

And, how do we know that other animals don't have the potential to advance just as quickly, given the chance?

I other words, the contrast you describe is just as much between humans and humans as it is between humans and other animals.

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Knowledge leads to knowledge squared.

Dittohead not! said:

Humans lived in much the same way as their simian counterparts for much of our existence, in small hunter-gatherer groups making shelters out of whatever happened to be handy, gathering wild edible plants, and hunting other animals for food. Yes, we did carry tool making to a greater degree than most other animals, so there is some difference.

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Even our paleolithic tool making was carried to a degree far surpassing all animals. That was so from when stone was first bound to wood. After then per Wiki an explosion in the diversity of artifacts began ~50,000 years ago, about 150,000 years after the appearance of the human species.

Dittohead not! said:

The real question, IMO, is how is it that modern man has accomplished so much more than our ancestors did for the first 95% of our existence?

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The question ought to be narrowed down to why the agricultural revolution took as long as it did to occur. That was the development from which all that is modern flowed. It may be that the ratio of the number of people to the amount of land was so favorable to hunting and gathering that there was no need to seek an alternative.

Dittohead not! said:

And, how do we know that other animals don't have the potential to advance just as quickly, given the chance?

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I think it is likely such potential can be decisively ruled out on an anatomical, neuroscientific basis for all other animals except maybe for cetaceans (i.e. Flipper), and that it has been ruled out for cetaceans by the 24/7/365 observations of the last several decades.

Also, almost all other animals now in existence have already had as much of a chance as us, and only a few have only the crudest unfashioned tools to show for it.

Dittohead not! said:

I other words, the contrast you describe is just as much between humans and humans as it is between humans and other animals.

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Addressed, I think.

I think the main thing that sets us apart from all other animals is complacency and acceptance.

We're not complacent - never happy - ergo we seek out ways of continually improving and altering all things in our lives. Once we reach our individual or social level of acceptance we are more willing to ease off and stagnate.

But then the cycle begins again.

Not everyone has this drive, of course: leaders and followers.

Other animals use tools which is where many define 'intelligence' per various scales - birds create skewering sticks from leaves in New Zealand, apes use sticks to skewer mouthfuls of termintes. However, all of this is for food gains, no other reason. These advancements are merely to increases chances of survival through improved subsistence.

That's where early man was tens of thousands of years ago, I imagine. But once we were able to better feed ourselves our need for advancements (lack of complacency / lack of acceptance) pushed us beyond seeing to our basic needs.

An interesting episode of Nova equated advanced intelligence and problem solving skills with body-to-brain mass differentia. Not overall physical size, but 'big brain for __-sized animal. Humans, certain types of birds, and a few other species have brains that are bigger than required for us to function - thus - with that extra brain space we're able to problem solve. All such animals that have a larger-than-needed brain for their sized body have advanced intelligence which usually equates to higher problem solving skills.

Humans, however, are the only ones who act on this without *just* trying to obtain food.

sawyerloggingon said:

I have been seeing alot of stuff lately on elephants, dolphins etc that show compassion for other beings and seem to understand death at some level and mourn the passing of others. I always thought things like this is what separated man from animals but now I am beginning to wonder.

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You lost me at "monkey." Did you mean "ape"?

USViking said:

Even our paleolithic tool making was carried to a degree far surpassing all animals. That was so from when stone was first bound to wood. After then per Wiki an explosion in the diversity of artifacts began ~50,000 years ago, about 150,000 years after the appearance of the human species.



The question ought to be narrowed down to why the agricultural revolution took as long as it did to occur. That was the development from which all that is modern flowed. It may be that the ratio of the number of people to the amount of land was so favorable to hunting and gathering that there was no need to seek an alternative.



I think it is likely such potential can be decisively ruled out on an anatomical, neuroscientific basis for all other animals except maybe for cetaceans (i.e. Flipper), and that it has been ruled out for cetaceans by the 24/7/365 observations of the last several decades.

Also, almost all other animals now in existence have already had as much of a chance as us, and only a few have only the crudest unfashioned tools to show for it.



Addressed, I think.

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Where homo sapiens really began to diverge from the other animals is around ten thousand years ago when we started to experiment with agriculture, writing, mathematics, animal husbandry, and building more permanent structures. Just why that happened, after 95% of our history had already passed, is one of the great mysteries of human progress.

The cetaceans have no opportunity to develop any of that living in their watery world.

nota bene said:

You lost me at "monkey." Did you mean "ape"?

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Monkey is derogatory term for ape I used

Dittohead not! said:

Humans lived in much the same way as their simian counterparts for much of our existence, in small hunter-gatherer groups making shelters out of whatever happened to be handy, gathering wild edible plants, and hunting other animals for food. Yes, we did carry tool making to a greater degree than most other animals, so there is some difference.

The real question, IMO, is how is it that modern man has accomplished so much more than our ancestors did for the first 95% of our existence?

And, how do we know that other animals don't have the potential to advance just as quickly, given the chance?

I other words, the contrast you describe is just as much between humans and humans as it is between humans and other animals.

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"Given the chance" is really a subjective term here. It wasn't any one thing, or even a dozen things that helped us rise to the top. Even if dolphins were smarter than us, they lack the physical appendages to build and conquer like we have.

I remember a while back I watched a documentary on human evolution and it stated that one of the primary catalysts that separated us from the rest of the simian family was a genetic anomaly which caused our jaws to stick out further, which in turn allowed more space for the brain to grow, which led eventually to our heightened intellect.

sawyerloggingon said:

Monkey is derogatory term for ape I used

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Monkey and ape are actually two different sets of species, is what people are trying to tell you. Calling a gorilla "monkey" is biologically inaccurate because a gorilla is an ape, not a monkey.

Certain animal species are so clever I sometimes wonder if the difference between us building cities and them was just that we invented cities first.

RabidAlpaca said:

"Given the chance" is really a subjective term here. It wasn't any one thing, or even a dozen things that helped us rise to the top. Even if dolphins were smarter than us, they lack the physical appendages to build and conquer like we have.

I remember a while back I watched a documentary on human evolution and it stated that one of the primary catalysts that separated us from the rest of the simian family was a genetic anomaly which caused our jaws to stick out further, which in turn allowed more space for the brain to grow, which led eventually to our heightened intellect.

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Yes, they also think that walking upright allowed the head to grow bigger as well, as the neck could support more weight vertically than horizontally.

But it still took us most of our existence before beginning to experiment with agriculture, animal husbandry, writing, and mathematics.

Dittohead not! said:

The real question, IMO, is how is it that modern man has accomplished so much more than our ancestors did for the first 95% of our existence?

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I would say agriculture and, consequently, the emergence of large communities (cities).

Most animals, including our ancestors, have to devote a huge portion of their lives and effort into securing a continuous energy supply just to stay alive. Mastering agriculture gave us the ability to produce that energy more efficiently and at a surplus. This allowed two important developments. 1) Humans had more time to devote to other pursuits than obtaining food and 2) Large, non-nomadic communities were able to begin forming (which were previously unsustainable in hunter-gatherer societies because the hunter-gatherer energy sources are diffuse, they aren't dense enough to support thousands, much less millions, of people in one single location).

Now, because of the power of agriculture not everyone living in the community had to devote time to farming. This facilitated the development of crude economies. Let's suppose half of the inhabitants of the community needed to be farmers. The other half could devote their time to doing other useful things. Maybe chopping wood for structures, harvesting clay and forming pottery, etc. The farmers would trade the potters some wheat for a clay jug and so forth.

It snowballs from there. Fast-forward to today, and you'll see only a tiny fraction of the world's population needs to be farmers to produce enough food for 7 billion people. This frees the vast majority of the population to devote themselves to other useful pursuits.