Philosophers haven’t been able to give a solid answer to this for thousands of years, and now you’re expecting to get The Answer from T-Nation’s most troll-infested waters? 
[quote]asusvenus wrote:
Cause human males have the largest penis compared to their body size, that’s why.[/quote]
The faculty would like visual proof of your statement, sir.
[quote]asusvenus wrote:
Cause human males have the largest penis compared to their body size, that’s why.[/quote]
but bonobos still have bigger balls.
[quote]AHA wrote:
Philosophers haven’t been able to give a solid answer to this for thousands of years, and now you’re expecting to get The Answer from T-Nation’s most troll-infested waters?
[/quote]
touche
Back to the original post, I agree with Honest Lifter. I constantly research(read) on the subject, but don’t believe I have read a good case for that often asked question. Humans do seem to have arrived almost by accident. Even looking back a branch or two in the evolutionary tree, Homo Erectus or whatever humanoid you want to use seemed largely disadvantaged against the world. Especially when it didn’t have the ability to use language or even complex tools. Without some form of society, an individual’s intelligence means little. Alone, it is mostly physical traits that seperate the prey and predators. What did the early human types do before they figured out spears, fire, and the like? I am constantly in awe that we have made it this far without fangs, claws, shells, or immense physical strength.
Considering evolution supposedly functions primarily via random mutations, it seems a lot like our evolution had some type of guiding hand along the way…
[quote]Grneyes wrote:
They just found a species of octopus using “tools.” They filmed them taking huge shells and dragging them a certain distance and then making caves and hiding spots out of them.[/quote]
Get back to me when they conquer space, build skyscrapers to the clouds, develop Relativity and String theory, develop the equivalence of the works of Shakespeare, virtually conquer their own environment, and are able to even start to contemplate the meaning of their being.
[quote]TheCoolestLuke wrote:
I continually find it funny how humans assume they are superior to other species just because they are more intelligent, when in fact it hasn’t been proven that intelligence mean they are superior.[/quote]
And this makes you a dumbass, of course we are superior we are at the top of the food chain. Do you see animals domesticating us? No. Plus, it is because God put us in charge of the animals. 
[quote]Brother Chris wrote:
[quote]TheCoolestLuke wrote:
I continually find it funny how humans assume they are superior to other species just because they are more intelligent, when in fact it hasn’t been proven that intelligence mean they are superior.[/quote]
And this makes you a dumbass, of course we are superior we are at the top of the food chain. Do you see animals domesticating us? No. Plus, it is because God put us in charge of the animals. :)[/quote]
You could make a point that some animals and plants have domesticated us quite well.
A lot of you are very arrogant. If anything Cockroaches are the most “superior”. Who did you think would survive after we nuked ourselves to hell?
And I’m amused by the assertion that we are “in charge” of the animals. You should go assert that (male) dominance to a Bengal Tiger, or go swimming with the Great Whites (sans the cage obviously) and show us how much “charge” you really have over the “lower” beings.
[quote]Brother Chris wrote:
[quote]TheCoolestLuke wrote:
I continually find it funny how humans assume they are superior to other species just because they are more intelligent, when in fact it hasn’t been proven that intelligence mean they are superior.[/quote]
And this makes you a dumbass, of course we are superior we are at the top of the food chain. Do you see animals domesticating us? No. Plus, it is because God put us in charge of the animals. :)[/quote]
wow you are really the only dumbass here
I’m not sure why your post seems so high and mighty. The guy talking about the octopus isn’t saying that we aren’t superior, he was merely pointing out, like others have, that other species do use tools. The OP asked why no other species use tools, so people were just bringing the fact that some do to his attention.
Why without the cage? I don’t think anybody is arguing that we’re physicall superior over all species. Our edge as humans lies in our intelligence and the technology it has cultivated. I won’t win a hand-to-paw fight with a tiger(though why would I want to fight when I can observe one, locked up in a cage in a zoo), but I’ve got the tools and the ability to use them that more than puts me at an advantage.
[quote]WormwoodTheory wrote:
[quote]TheCoolestLuke wrote:
I continually find it funny how humans assume they are superior to other species just because they are more intelligent, when in fact it hasn’t been proven that intelligence mean they are superior.[/quote]
the fact that we domesticated one of the most fearsome pack hunters on the planet is a good indicator.
speech, but more importantly writing.
i’ve never seen cows in space.
also the fact that you “find it funny” is a good indicator, i’ve never seen an animal laugh outside of a Disney movie, so you can chalk up complex emotions as another point for humankind.
i said COMPLEX emotion. not territorial displays and mating rituals.
[/quote]
We didn’t domesticate dogs, the relationship evolved naturally through packs of “follower wolves” who took to following human bands & eating our scraps, read Wolf in the Parlor.
Also emotion, even complex emotions come from the mammalian brain that all mammals possess, not the primate brain, which gives us the ability to use logic to override emotions.
I’m not arguing against the superiority of humans, but these are poor examples, this is not a personal attack either.
[quote]Makavali wrote:
A lot of you are very arrogant. If anything Cockroaches are the most “superior”. Who did you think would survive after we nuked ourselves to hell?
And I’m amused by the assertion that we are “in charge” of the animals. You should go assert that (male) dominance to a Bengal Tiger, or go swimming with the Great Whites (sans the cage obviously) and show us how much “charge” you really have over the “lower” beings.[/quote]
Well, I got my .577 let’s go. See there, when confronted with the Bengal Tiger it will end up being Bengal Tiger center rug in my family room (apologies imhungry).
[quote]thick88 wrote:
[quote]WormwoodTheory wrote:
[quote]TheCoolestLuke wrote:
I continually find it funny how humans assume they are superior to other species just because they are more intelligent, when in fact it hasn’t been proven that intelligence mean they are superior.[/quote]
the fact that we domesticated one of the most fearsome pack hunters on the planet is a good indicator.
speech, but more importantly writing.
i’ve never seen cows in space.
also the fact that you “find it funny” is a good indicator, i’ve never seen an animal laugh outside of a Disney movie, so you can chalk up complex emotions as another point for humankind.
i said COMPLEX emotion. not territorial displays and mating rituals.
[/quote]
We didn’t domesticate dogs, the relationship evolved naturally through packs of “follower wolves” who took to following human bands & eating our scraps, read Wolf in the Parlor.
Also emotion, even complex emotions come from the mammalian brain that all mammals possess, not the primate brain, which gives us the ability to use logic to override emotions.
I’m not arguing against the superiority of humans, but these are poor examples, this is not a personal attack either.
[/quote]
You must not deal with animals very much. I’m sure a feral dog will just “follow” you. Another example is horses, I have never met a wild horse that I could just sit on its back and ride, however I have broken horses to the point that they will let me sit on their back and ride.
[quote]DunnJH4 wrote:
Back to the original post, I agree with Honest Lifter. I constantly research(read) on the subject, but don’t believe I have read a good case for that often asked question. Humans do seem to have arrived almost by accident. Even looking back a branch or two in the evolutionary tree, Homo Erectus or whatever humanoid you want to use seemed largely disadvantaged against the world. Especially when it didn’t have the ability to use language or even complex tools. Without some form of society, an individual’s intelligence means little. Alone, it is mostly physical traits that seperate the prey and predators. What did the early human types do before they figured out spears, fire, and the like? I am constantly in awe that we have made it this far without fangs, claws, shells, or immense physical strength.
Considering evolution supposedly functions primarily via random mutations, it seems a lot like our evolution had some type of guiding hand along the way…[/quote]
Basically you put forth a version of the strong anthropic principle which is not quite a fallacy but assumes too much.
The very fact that you can even pose such questions already presupposes a universe where we made it this far.
It is true that we had quite a good run in the last few hundred thousand years, but that does not necessarly mean that this world was made for us, only that we were the lucky ones to profit from mutations more than most… so far.
If things had been only slightly different maybe intelligent rats would praise their very rat like creator or make very ratopocentric arguments.
Thought you folks would consider this very interesting.
Even if brain size accounts for just 10 to 20 percent of an IQ test score, it is possible to conjecture what kind of average scores would be made by a group of people with 30 percent larger brains. We can readily calculate that a population with a mean brain size of 1,750 cc would be expected to have an average IQ of 149.
This is a score that would be labeled at the genius level. And if there was normal variability among Boskops, as among the rest of us, then perhaps 15 to 20 percent of them would be expected to score over 180. In a classroom with 35 big-headed, baby-faced Boskop kids, you would likely encounter five or six with IQ scores at the upper range of what has ever been recorded in human history. The Boskops coexisted with our Homo sapiens forebears. Just as we see the ancient Homo erectus as a savage primitive, Boskop may have viewed us in somewhat the same way.
They died and we lived, and we canâ??t answer the question why. Why didnâ??t they outthink the smaller-brained hominids like ourselves and spread across the planet? Perhaps they didnâ??t want to.
So… After reading that article, I felt like a common retardo. Damnit.
this:
proteinpower.com/drmike/peta-cspi-and-other-menaces/are-we-meat-eaters-or-vegetarians-part-i/
and this:
proteinpower.com/drmike/low-carb-library/are-we-meat-eaters-or-vegetarians-part-ii/
and this:
explore. learn. be open minded.
The imagination is the key to our intellectual supremacy
Without our imagination knowledge would not be infinite.
[quote]Brother Chris wrote:
[quote]thick88 wrote:
[quote]WormwoodTheory wrote:
[quote]TheCoolestLuke wrote:
I continually find it funny how humans assume they are superior to other species just because they are more intelligent, when in fact it hasn’t been proven that intelligence mean they are superior.[/quote]
the fact that we domesticated one of the most fearsome pack hunters on the planet is a good indicator.
speech, but more importantly writing.
i’ve never seen cows in space.
also the fact that you “find it funny” is a good indicator, i’ve never seen an animal laugh outside of a Disney movie, so you can chalk up complex emotions as another point for humankind.
i said COMPLEX emotion. not territorial displays and mating rituals.
[/quote]
We didn’t domesticate dogs, the relationship evolved naturally through packs of “follower wolves” who took to following human bands & eating our scraps, read Wolf in the Parlor.
Also emotion, even complex emotions come from the mammalian brain that all mammals possess, not the primate brain, which gives us the ability to use logic to override emotions.
I’m not arguing against the superiority of humans, but these are poor examples, this is not a personal attack either.
[/quote]
You must not deal with animals very much. I’m sure a feral dog will just “follow” you. Another example is horses, I have never met a wild horse that I could just sit on its back and ride, however I have broken horses to the point that they will let me sit on their back and ride.[/quote]
Horses are different then dogs, we did intentionally domesticate horses. I have no doubt you have more experience with horses then me, I'm not talking about horses. I've kept dogs my entire life, & I'm not talking about feral dogs either, I'm talking about entire pack's of wolves that took to trailing bands of primitive humans around to take advantage of the fact that humans are litter bugs. Again check out the book "the Wolf in the Parlor"
[quote]TheCoolestLuke wrote:
[quote]Mascherano wrote:
[quote]WormwoodTheory wrote:
[quote]TheCoolestLuke wrote:
I continually find it funny how humans assume they are superior to other species just because they are more intelligent, when in fact it hasn’t been proven that intelligence mean they are superior.[/quote]
the fact that we domesticated one of the most fearsome pack hunters on the planet is a good indicator.
speech, but more importantly writing.
i’ve never seen cows in space.
also the fact that you “find it funny” is a good indicator, i’ve never seen an animal laugh outside of a Disney movie, so you can chalk up complex emotions as another point for humankind.
i said COMPLEX emotion. not territorial displays and mating rituals.
[/quote]
How do you know animals don’t laugh?
Someone already said this, but i agree, its language that makes us the more intelligent species. And our ability to communicate in some pretty sophisticated symbols, like religion, makes us fairly superior.
[/quote]
You make good points, I have never seen a cow in space, and language is pretty useful, but I believe that there is still no long term evidence to suggest that intelligence is a trait that is beneficial to our long term survival.
For example, our intelligence means we can utilise fossil fuels such as petrol, to get places at a faster speed, but at what cost? Arctic shrinkage, temperature increase, extreme weather, drought and poor air quality to name a few.
Intelligence also means we have the ability to forge powerful weapons, of biological, chemical, radiological and nuclear nature, which can cause widespread damage. One might argue that they are merely strategic weapons used for intimidation, which was certainly plausible during the cold war, now however, in the age of terrorism, with martyrs and their 100 virgins, widespread use of these weapons is clearly a real threat.
How about we wait a while, before we go off spouting that intelligence makes us superior, you never know what may be (or may not as the case may be) in tomorrows newspapers, and I for one, don’t want to tempt fate.
P.S. Intelligence also means that I wasted far far too long writing this reply, when I should clearly get to sleep.
[/quote]
First off, who is to determine what is long-term? A thousand years? Ten thousand?
Secondly, of course human intelligence has made us superior to every species. Without technology, we would very likely at least have much smaller population due to our lack of intelligence, and we would very well be extinct as well. Every environment has animals that are physically dominant and possibly weather that can kill us. Being as physically weak as we are, we just wouldn’t have any defense against a tiger, bear, or even a mountain lion or wolf.
Thirdly, “Arctic shrinkage, temperature increase, extreme weather, drought and poor air quality to name a few”? Correlation does not justify causation. Sure, poor air quality is real, but not much else can be proven yet from that list that we are the cause. There is absolutely no confirmed evidence to say that we are destroying our own planet. Just recently, in Russia, thousands of research journals, articles, and emails that had evidence against global warming were all uploaded onto the internet. These documents were being hoarded by those who were for global warming. The US just had one of its coolest summers on record. How do you explain that? The earth may very well go in cycles in terms of temperature. It goes through ice ages, periods of slightly higher temperature and so on.
Fourthly, there will always be idiots with power on this planet. Don’t let one bad apple spoil the bunch in case we do get blown up by one guy setting off 100 nukes, causing nuclear fall-out and winter.
[quote]asusvenus wrote:
Thought you folks would consider this very interesting.
Even if brain size accounts for just 10 to 20 percent of an IQ test score, it is possible to conjecture what kind of average scores would be made by a group of people with 30 percent larger brains. We can readily calculate that a population with a mean brain size of 1,750 cc would be expected to have an average IQ of 149.
This is a score that would be labeled at the genius level. And if there was normal variability among Boskops, as among the rest of us, then perhaps 15 to 20 percent of them would be expected to score over 180. In a classroom with 35 big-headed, baby-faced Boskop kids, you would likely encounter five or six with IQ scores at the upper range of what has ever been recorded in human history. The Boskops coexisted with our Homo sapiens forebears. Just as we see the ancient Homo erectus as a savage primitive, Boskop may have viewed us in somewhat the same way.
They died and we lived, and we canâ??t answer the question why. Why didnâ??t they outthink the smaller-brained hominids like ourselves and spread across the planet? Perhaps they didnâ??t want to.
So… After reading that article, I felt like a common retardo. Damnit.[/quote]
Didn’t want to survive? Every species on the planet is programmed to want to survive. Why do we go through a stress response (fight or flight) when we see danger? And are you suggesting an entire mass suicide of a species? Could the Boskop species even go through the deliberation process in order to do so? And, even so, the entire species would have to make that decision to end their lives together, which is impossible because they lived all over the place. It is highly unlikely that they wiped themselves out. Also, the boskops were not a separate species, but simply a variation of today’s modern humans, homosapiens.
[quote]thick88 wrote:
[quote]Brother Chris wrote:
[quote]thick88 wrote:
[quote]WormwoodTheory wrote:
[quote]TheCoolestLuke wrote:
I continually find it funny how humans assume they are superior to other species just because they are more intelligent, when in fact it hasn’t been proven that intelligence mean they are superior.[/quote]
the fact that we domesticated one of the most fearsome pack hunters on the planet is a good indicator.
speech, but more importantly writing.
i’ve never seen cows in space.
also the fact that you “find it funny” is a good indicator, i’ve never seen an animal laugh outside of a Disney movie, so you can chalk up complex emotions as another point for humankind.
i said COMPLEX emotion. not territorial displays and mating rituals.
[/quote]
We didn’t domesticate dogs, the relationship evolved naturally through packs of “follower wolves” who took to following human bands & eating our scraps, read Wolf in the Parlor.
Also emotion, even complex emotions come from the mammalian brain that all mammals possess, not the primate brain, which gives us the ability to use logic to override emotions.
I’m not arguing against the superiority of humans, but these are poor examples, this is not a personal attack either.
[/quote]
You must not deal with animals very much. I’m sure a feral dog will just “follow” you. Another example is horses, I have never met a wild horse that I could just sit on its back and ride, however I have broken horses to the point that they will let me sit on their back and ride.[/quote]
Horses are different then dogs, we did intentionally domesticate horses. I have no doubt you have more experience with horses then me, I'm not talking about horses. I've kept dogs my entire life, & I'm not talking about feral dogs either, I'm talking about entire pack's of wolves that took to trailing bands of primitive humans around to take advantage of the fact that humans are litter bugs. Again check out the book "the Wolf in the Parlor" [/quote]
I disagree. We have domesticated dogs. You could very well be right (and I think you are) that there was an original relationship between man and canine, but it eventually evolve into an all-out domestication of the animal. A very small percentage of dogs actually hunt anymore, and it’s all out of sport. We control what these animals do. We have tamed them to our will, and we generally don’t require much out of them–at least, out of necessity, we don’t.
Question. What exactly happened after the wolves started following humans? Did they start living in the camps with the humans? Did they help the humans hunt? Just curious.
And, this next tidbit isn’t directed at anyone except for the question at hand itself.
It really is impossible to determine what species is the most dominant due to the subjectivity of the word. One could argue that the cockroach is the most dominant species due to its ability to survive almost anything as a species. I would have to suffice by ending my note with a quote concerning the superiority of one species over another.
â??You have your way. I have my way. As for the right way, the correct way, and the only way, it does not exist.â?? - Friedrich Nietzsche