Comment by throwaway2562
4 days ago
Good grief. This is what 20 years of language policing has wrought. People who are nervous (hiding behind ‘skeptical’) about words like ‘advanced’ when, by any number of dimensions, human cognition is uncontroversially superior, more advanced, more fluid, more deep, more adaptive, more various (pick one, nervous people) to that of spiders or cows.
Or is that all just a ‘myth?’
This entire subthread belongs on the 'HN Simulator' story.
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Ever since humanity crawled from the muck it’s had some dude yapping about how uniquely cool and special humans are because it feels good to do and to listen to. As we’ve learned more, we’ve realized that the underlying principles of our thinking apparatus are more similar to those of animals than we thought and we’ve continually found more high-level capacities, like surprisingly complex language, in various animal species. In my opinion, it’s valid to want to talk then about a non-dichotomous view of species’ cognition and, personally, I like it because it’s a whole lot less boring.
I'm not nervous, I just don't see the utility. Perhaps you can elucidate this for me.
You're communicating ideas across unknown thousands of miles with a stranger in near realtime and are able to comprehend each other, for one.
No cat or dog has managed that feat yet.
No cat or dog has managed to reproduce fire to the degree that evolution has changed their gut to adapt to the increase in available calories.
The big brain comes with down sides, but one thing it does have is utility.
Germ theory of disease has made it so a scratch isn't fatal anymore. Why, after all, do cats play with their prey? To tire it out so there's less chance of injury when they go in for the kill.
We just figure out how to farm it instead and mold it to our needs.
I don't disagree with any of this, but what is the utility of viewing this ability as "more advanced"?
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The utility is that it's predictive of future observations, like all good language.
Tool use allowed humans to colonize the planet and outcompete all rivals. We became a super predator species. We even gained the ability to look beyond our home. We look for evidence of other such advanced tool users in space.