[quote]LIFTICVSMAXIMVS wrote:
What is the unit of measurement of human intelligence?[/quote]
x2
[quote]Mattlebee wrote:
Oleena wrote:
Mattlebee wrote:
One approach to simplfy this is to state an uncontroversial truth, which is that whatever intelligence is, it’s something that humans have to a greater degree than other animals.
I hate to break it to you, but this is actually a “truth” still in controversy. So far we have not been able to construct a puzzel that dolfins can’t solve almost before it’s complete. There is a line of thought resulting from this work that dolfins may be a “super species” with perhaps greater processing abilities than humans.
Whether or not dolphins, a single species, are as (or more) intelligent than us doesn’t change the basic claim. In fact they may be a way of defining it. If problem-solving = intelligence then mathematical problem-solving is an abstract, but highly advanced demonstration of problem-solving.
We humans tend to think our language is definitely the most complex and wonderful of all, but we’re still having trouble figuring out what whales and dolfins are talking about.
Maybe it’s about how they’d get so much inventing of shit done if they just had fingers like those damn apes in their boats.[/quote]
lol. Maybe it’s about how much the water sucks now that those boat things are so popular.
[quote]Lastly, in the middle one experiment conducted by a scientist named doctor Lily, ten dolfins reportedly held their breath and commited suicide!
Whales apparently beach themselves to commit suicide too. I’m not sure how it suggests intelligence. Many animals, like salmon, die shortly after or even during reproduction so an animal choosing to do something that causes its death can’t credibly be a sign of intelligence.[/quote]
The difference between those two examples would be instinct. The salmon isn’t choosing to reproduce. I don’t know of any salmon that decides not to take the trip up the river. When the time is right, they just do it.
On the other hand, there are plenty of dolfins who have lived for years in captivity, died of more natural causes, and never held their breath at the bottom of the tank. It would appear that a decision to die was made. This implies that dolfins may have emotions and opinions about events, and may try to change their lot in life by making decisions in the present. I know scientists everywhere cringed at that statement, but what else can be concluded? There is a large difference between the instinctual actions of the salmon breeding and the dolfins holding their breath in a tank.
[quote]Oleena wrote:
The difference between those two examples would be instinct. The salmon isn’t choosing to reproduce. I don’t know of any salmon that decides not to take the trip up the river.[/quote]
Not to dispute how tight you are with your salmon homies, but natural selection would have wiped out the genes of any who didn’t feel the urge, millenia ago.
They have an urge to do it rather than deciding to do it, but equally, dolphins in conditions those ones were in may have had an urge to close their blowholes, without it being a clear decision. My breathing becomes more shallow if I’m in a smokey or smelly environment, but how much is deliberate on my part and how much my nose/brain does for me is hard to tell.
There’s also the curious feature that human babies will automatically hold their breath if they are submerged in water. They aren’t clever enough to choose to do it, but it would be construed as a sensible and deliberate course of action in adults.
We as humans can’t accidentally hold our breath to death, but maybe dolphins can. Maybe they aren’t smart enough to realise that keeping their blowhole closed will kill them.
Of course, but just because one is a behaviour programmed into all individuals and the other is a behaviour only seen in a few, under unusual conditions, doesn’t mean it must be conscious behaviour. Under extremis humans can display utterly untypical, irrational and bizarre behaviour, but until those conditions are encountered there is no hint of what they’d do.
Then why, after years of less cruel experimentation on other dolfins, was this the only time the event occurred? Also, Dr. Lily ceased experimenting on dolfins after the happening, kept more dolfins in the exact same enviroment, and it never happened again.
[quote]Mattlebee wrote:
Oleena wrote:
The difference between those two examples would be instinct. The salmon isn’t choosing to reproduce. I don’t know of any salmon that decides not to take the trip up the river.
Not to dispute how tight you are with your salmon homies, but natural selection would have wiped out the genes of any who didn’t feel the urge, millenia ago.
When the time is right, they just do it.
They have an urge to do it rather than deciding to do it, but equally, dolphins in conditions those ones were in may have had an urge to close their blowholes, without it being a clear decision. My breathing becomes more shallow if I’m in a smokey or smelly environment, but how much is deliberate on my part and how much my nose/brain does for me is hard to tell.
There’s also the curious feature that human babies will automatically hold their breath if they are submerged in water. They aren’t clever enough to choose to do it, but it would be construed as a sensible and deliberate course of action in adults.
We as humans can’t accidentally hold our breath to death, but maybe dolphins can. Maybe they aren’t smart enough to realise that keeping their blowhole closed will kill them.
There is a large difference between the instinctual actions of the salmon breeding and the dolfins holding their breath in a tank.
Of course, but just because one is a behaviour programmed into all individuals and the other is a behaviour only seen in a few, under unusual conditions, doesn’t mean it must be conscious behaviour. Under extremis humans can display utterly untypical, irrational and bizarre behaviour, but until those conditions are encountered there is no hint of what they’d do.
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[quote]Oleena wrote:
Then why, after years of less cruel experimentation on other dolfins, was this the only time the event occurred? Also, Dr. Lily ceased experimenting on dolfins after the happening, kept more dolfins in the exact same enviroment, and it never happened again.[/quote]
If you’re saying it was a one-off event that was never replicated then it becomes even shakier. I can understand that Dr Lily having considered them intelligent, sapient even, would have felt it morally reprehensible to repeat the experiments, but still.