We are trying to draw a correlation between intelligence and survival but first we should ask the question whether the two necessarily should have a correlation. Does high intelligence imply enhanced survival ability? Should we make this assumption? Have a look at species which have existed for long periods of time without substantial mutation in form. We have already stated that birds are considered highly intelligent but what about sharks? Reptiles? Amphibians? And while on that point, about what you said Chris about the whales: giving up a lot - surely you meant it was giving up a lot to choose to remain on land? There is more water and more life in the water than the reverse on this planet.
Also what about the land based civilizations in our past? If we are going to talk about survival and hence sustainability lets look at the longevity of different approaches that have been tried. How about the highly technological civilizations? They lasted in the hundreds of years. A thousand for Byzantium. Three times that for Egypt. Now contrast that with peoples who lived much more in harmony with nature. Europeans came here with all their superior intelligence and world dominating nature subduing technology and destroyed the way of life of my ancestors who lived sustainably here for at least 10,000 years. Their legacy is rapidly destroying everything needed for sustainable survival. Who was more intelligent then if we are going to quantify intelligence in terms of survival rate? You are right wisdom and intelligence are two entirely different things and we really need wisdom. What is that saying....something like 'wisdom comes from experience and experience comes from inexperience'. Well that saying leaves out the possibility of learning from other than experience. There are a small percentage of people who can be taught and can learn the lessons learned by others and not have to make the same mistakes themselves in order to gain the wisdom. Perhaps these are the most intelligent of all? But aside from this academic question, it seems clear that those who live in accord with nature appear to have the advantage in longevity while those who try to dominate, manipulate and subdue nature undo themselves. From that perspective it would seem that the proposal that our frontal cortex is a deadly mutation holds a lot of water. Maybe Robert, this is what is alluded to in all the variants of scripture which admonish us that life is some kind of proving ground where we are given the ability to choose and therefore the responsibility for the consequences of that freedom? Maybe judgment day is in every moment, not just at the end, and the ideas of heaven and hell are metaphors for how this life can be manifested right now, according to how we choose. Is this where ethics ties in with concepts like intelligence and free will? I think I just hurt my frontal cortex. Hey, maybe that will help me survive! Joe On 14/05/2011 1:23 AM, Chris Burck wrote: > some define intelligence as the ability to comprehend; or to compute. to > "grok". > > others like to define it as the ability to think adaptively, i.e. to learn > from experience. > > those are probably the two most common uses of the word. people don't > usually think of intelligence in terms of morality. which is why > discussions such as this can get thorny. it's hard to keep questions of > morality out of a discussion about raw survival; not just our own but, > conceivably that of all life as we know it. > > it's very popular (and convenient, for the agenda-setters) to trumpet human > intelligence and ingenuity, and leave wisdom (i began writing this last > night, so i've been preempted by your contribution, robert) out of the > discussion entirely. it's truly remarkable, though IMO no accident, how > truly rarely you hear the word "wisdom" used nowadays, in almost any > context. > > in any case, the question of wisdom puts chomsky's proposition in an > entirely different light. is it about sheer brain size? or the kind of > brain? the homo sapiens brain is not the largest. it seems whales and > porpoises (or many of them, at least), have bigger brains than us. and i've > read somewhere that neanderthals, also, may have had more brain than we do. > > the nature/natural history programs on television like to point out that > their brains "must have" been (read "we need to believe that they were") > less evolved. because the art and tools they left behind indicate this. > perhaps. but, even supposing this, does this mean they were less happy? > less fulfilled? > > we know that they coexisted with humans for a time. when it was proposed, > based on some remains that were found, that homo sapiens and neanderthals > interbred, there were a few who accepted the proposition as worthy of > further investigation. but many more who categorically rejected it. > > the "nays" have since been proven wrong by genetic analysis. but the > immediacy and vehemence of their rejection of the idea was noteworthy. > clearly motivated by a pro-human bias. they couldn't imagine themselves > intermingling with an "inferior race", so why would early humans have done > so? yet a few, at least, obviously did. maybe that's why we killed them > off, you know? the oldest story in the book. "them so-and-so's is stealin' > our women! we ain't gonna stand fer that!!" > > seriously, though. interbreeding happened. but not often: how do we know > it wasn't they who scorned us? > > then there's the whales. we know their ancestors were land dwellers. in > other words, sea creatures gave rise to land creatures, and some of them > chose to return to the sea. > why would they do that? this is a serious question. after all, you're > giving up an awful lot. > > think about it. _______________________________________________ Biofuel mailing list Biofuel@sustainablelists.org http://sustainablelists.org/mailman/listinfo/sustainablelorgbiofuel Biofuel at Journey to Forever: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Search the combined Biofuel and Biofuels-biz list archives (70,000 messages): http://www.mail-archive.com/biofuel@sustainablelists.org/
