why are we so dominant

[c.grant]

I do not have a scientific background but all the same I have a question that I think there is no straight forward answers too .

Why are we so dominant on this planet?

Nothing living even comes close .From my knowledge of the history of earth nothing has ever been so far and above the rest in terms of intelligence and adaptation to different environments in such a brief existence on our planet than the human race .

I talking about everything we have achieved ,how we have moulded the planet as tool makers, our views on religion, science our seriously complex social structures our rapid mental development . The world we have built today is simply amazing from a evolutionary point of view .

Forget about the politics of what people think we have done right or wrong how we have abused the planet about global warming. No actually global warming ,look what the out come could be if we are responsible for this ,that just shows how quick we have managed to alter this planet because of our impact on the planet ,not clever I agree but an amazing feat for one species. What can a chimp do without human training it cant even start a fire and they are possibly the closest competition we have got .

We are possibly superior by a country mile to all that has existed before!

 

To me though this does not seem natural.

Has there been some sort of intervention along the line? This could explain our evolutionary jump forward or are we evolutionary anomalies ? or is this the shape of the next phase of evolution for other species as well in time?

 

THIS QUESTION IS BASED ON 33 YEARS OF LIVING LIFES EXPERIENCES not from a singular subject point of view e.g science,religion

p.s I don't buy the thumb theory as the total answer.

[bascule]

Uhh, consciousness perhaps?

[Sisyphus]

I'd say there's a certain threshhold of problem-solving ability and memory that allows these things. We're not that much smarter than chimps, but its enough to make the difference between being able to develop complex language and not. With complex language, complex ideas can be communicated and buillt off of by another individual. It's not a coincidence that we progressed beyond hunter-gatherer cultures at the same time we develop written language. And don't discount thumbs entirely. The fact that we're evolved from climbers means we can grab and manipulate things, and so the ideas we pass on naturally have a lot to do with manipulating our environment. Dolphins would have a far more difficult time manipulating the environment in a permanent way or of recording ideas.

[silkworm]

It's because we are a scientific species with sophisticated communication skills. As a species we owe all that we have to science. Everything.

[sunspot]

The thing that puts it over the top is culture. In other words, on their own most people would still be stratching an existance from the earth. The few innovative ones, pass on their improvements via culture. Others copy this and advance in the process. Culture is a like a giant prosthesis device for the human mind. It allows humans to advance further, as well as create the illusion of advancing further than they would on their own. The practical use of water power started the industrial revolution. Without that handful of inventors most would still be on the farm.

 

If there was some type of world wide disaster and the cultural prosthesis was disrupted, such that all the integrated background support provided by culture was suddenly gone, most people would regress back to very primative conditions. This is probably the natural sophisication of the majority of humans, with the majority of the cultural sophistication based on the smoke and mirrors stemming from the prosthesis. There would still be a sprinkle of memory and new innovation everywhere. This would be collected, recorded, and shared until the cultural prosthesis is restored. This would allow humanity to advance once again.

[silkworm]

Culture is more of a side effect than an essential, but I can see your point.

[sunspot]

I guess the affect comes down how much time one was in culture. If anyone in the forums were never a part of culture, from the beginning of their lives, until now, we would be a fraction of what we are intellectually. Although we may be more natural. If we departed from culture, after much learning and maturing, we could relie on that learning and experience to carry us along.

[PhDP]

We are superior ?

[Sisyphus]

We are superior ?

 

As measured by breadth of behaviors and capacity to affect our environment, yes.

[bascule]

We are superior ?

 

According to many value systems, yes

[c.grant]

I'd say there's a certain threshhold of problem-solving ability and memory that allows these things. We're not that much smarter than chimps, but its enough to make the difference between being able to develop complex language and not. With complex language, complex ideas can be communicated and buillt off of by another individual. It's not a coincidence that we progressed beyond hunter-gatherer cultures at the same time we develop written language. And don't discount thumbs entirely. The fact that we're evolved from climbers means we can grab and manipulate things, and so the ideas we pass on naturally have a lot to do with manipulating our environment. Dolphins would have a far more difficult time manipulating the environment in a permanent way or of recording ideas.

To me the difference between us and the apes looks alot different between say 2 species of the cat family .All have progrested into pretty much the same sort of behaviour to survive ,although sizes differ hugely .There does not seem to be a huge difference in there mental capability.

I agree that developing complex language is probably the key to speeding up our development but look how different we look to the apes ,there are similarities but it just doesn't add up .

How far behind would you say chimps are to us 10 thousand years 100 thousand, 1 million years behind us in development. say they are 50-100 thousand years behind is this an acceptable difference in which one species of a family could develop infront of another .I cannot see it else where in nature .

Take the whale family, all I am aware of seem to be extremely intelligent none far exeeding the other though in the same way humans do to apes:confused:

[Sisyphus]

I wouldn't say they're "behind" us. They've evolved for just as long as we have. I don't think we're that biologically different, either, though clearly we have significantly better problem-solving and learning ability, which allows all the rest. It should be noted, however, that for most of human history, our behavior was probably not much different from the rest of the great apes. I don't know about relative intelligences of different species in a given family, but we don't seem that out of the ordinary to me.

[insane_alien]

have you ever watched a documentary about primates? watch the behaviour of the primates in the wild. Even if you know nothing about them you will notice behaviour patterns that you recognize(when they're angry, happy, sad) without much difficulty. and chances are their behaviour will remind you of someone. if they are so different then why is this so easy to recognize.

[Red_Ninja]

We think, remember, visualise and plan, and we have opposable thumbs. We can modify the world around us.

 

That's why there's six and a bit billion of us and counting.

 

Funnily enough I don't think we're smart enough for there to be similar numbers of us around in fifty years or so. One of those things I suppose

[YT2095]

why are we so dominant...

 

we`re better at kicking a$$ and subjugating than other creatures (currently at least).

[eruheru]

i have a problem with this thread. How are humans dominant? how do you know animals dont have a concience? and what is a concience? concience is just electrochemical impulses. everything is as such, because our sensory organs are connected to the brain by nerves that simply release electrical pulses that are interpreted by the pulses in the brain.

[padren]

i have a problem with this thread. How are humans dominant? how do you know animals dont have a concience? and what is a concience? concience is just electrochemical impulses. everything is as such, because our sensory organs are connected to the brain by nerves that simply release electrical pulses that are interpreted by the pulses in the brain.

 

We do seem to have a knack for long term planning and abstract thought. I don't think people are meaning to say animals aren't conscious, I think its more they are not sentient. And by sentient, it does seem evident that most animals mostly advance though evolutionary pressures and some limited learning capacities. The learning capacities seem to be more in line with "trial and error + identification of benefit = choosing to utilize best methodology for a task" type, and not based on a principled predictive understanding of the causes and effects.

Monkeys that learned to eat charcoal to not get sick when eating certian foods are an example of this.

 

Anyway, I think humans see anything that nearly as dominant as a preditor to us. We don't really like those, and have hunted them down pretty mercilessly.

 

I wonder what would be considered more dominant though, bacteria, or humans? I like "our stuff" better than "their stuff" but I am admittedly biased.

 

If we include viruses, then we are often largely at their mercy.

[ecoli]

Sure, human's are great, but our ability of self-destruction as a species is equal to, if not greater then, our potential for good. I wonder how close we came to MAD during the cold war.

[padren]

Sure, human's are great, but our ability of self-destruction as a species is equal to, if not greater then, our potential for good. I wonder how close we came to MAD during the cold war.

 

Cuban missile crisis, training programs thought to be real at NORAD, and my favorite is the bear incident.

 

 

October 25, 1962- Cuban Missile Crisis: Intruder in Duluth

 

At around midnight on October 25, a guard at the Duluth Sector Direction Center saw a figure climbing the security fence. He shot at it, and activated the "sabotage alarm." This automatically set off sabotage alarms at all bases in the area. At Volk Field, Wisconsin, the alarm was wrongly wired, and the Klaxon sounded which ordered nuclear armed F-106A interceptors to take off. The pilots knew there would be no practice alert drills while DEFCON 3 was in force, and they believed World War III had started.

 

Immediate communication with Duluth showed there was an error. By this time aircraft were starting down the runway. A car raced from command center and successfully signaled the aircraft to stop. The original intruder was a bear.

 

 

The thing about that one is that by all factors of protocal, WWIII had started, and there were no means by the pilot could be recalled. It was only by chance and improv they managed to come up with and get a car on the runway in time to stop the take off.

 

This list of about 20 events seems decent.

 

 

Anyway, I think we shouldn't think in terms of humans being dominant in the stuggle of the species. I think we've officially transended that whole struggle awhile ago.

We have other things to deal with, such as our own nature and many unknowns ahead.

[Royston]

we`re better at kicking a$$ and subjugating than other creatures (currently at least).

 

We've manipulated tools to such an extent they have an effect on GMST...in essence we've created an environment we can't compete with.

 

We kick our own arses!

[JohnB]

As Douglas Adams said; "Humans think they're the superior species because they invented the opposable thumb, fire and the wheel while all the dolphins did was muck about in the oceans. The dolphins think they are the superior species for exactly the same reasons."

[aguy2]

The thing that puts it over the top is culture.

 

I've come to this thread rather late in its 'evolution', but I think you have 'hit the nail on the head' here. I think 'silkworm' et al are wrong if they see 'culture' as a 'side issue'.

 

I tend to see differing 'cultural' prospectives as a very real replacement of 'speciation' and 'biological evolution' as the central 'driving force' behind adaptive change, and our common tendency to 'dehumanize' or 'despeciate' cultural 'adversaries' as our greatest threat to intermediate range survival and continued 'dominance' of our environment.

 

aguy2

[Norman Albers]

This sign is on my neighbor's front porch. I think an important principle has been touched on here and there, here, namely that of thresholds. Given a very large multiplicity of simple elements (doy) new forms of organization manifest. Look at cultural changes which I see happening with a sort of 100-year component. Maybe it takes three generations to absorb and create the desire to move beyond what was given to us. This principle is surely relevant at every level.

[gcol]

This sign is on my neighbor's front porch. I think an important principle has been touched on here and there, here, namely that of thresholds. Given a very large multiplicity of simple elements (doy) new forms of organization manifest. Look at cultural changes which I see happening with a sort of 100-year component. Maybe it takes three generations to absorb and create the desire to move beyond what was given to us. T[/i']his principle is surely relevant at every level.

 

If I caught your drift correctly, It echoes some coments I made in a couple of unrelated threads concerning the knee-jerk dismissal of new ideas that dare to question "textbook" science taught by salaried encumbents. I suggested, tongue in cheek perhaps, that it might take 100 years or three generations (a pure guess) of continuous chipping away to demolish the stone idols of accepted dogma. This means that the "chippers" will not, in their lifetime, see the fruits of their labours.

 

While searching through the millions of hits for "cultural evolution", I came accross a couple of passing references to the same 100 year idea, including one in a report of the Darwinian Society. Very curious.

 

Good luck with your own attempts to upset the applecart.

[Norman Albers]

I ran two ideas together. There is the concept of colony and organism arising from a large collection of simple elements. Then there is cultural growth with its own dynamics. I love your misspelling of 'incumbents' to encumbents. That's partway to encumbered, and I like that. Thanks for your support, mate.