what do you think of the concept that the primary factor of the evoloution of intelligence and the rise of civilization was brought about by the helplessness of our speices as the speices evoled?
208356
Each step in evolution, even cultural evolution, has to be an improvement over the one before, or it won't last.\n\nI think that the evolution of culture shows that when people cooperate, they all do better.\n\nI think it was Desmond Morris who wrote that the huge amount of learning that human children have to do to live in a culture was made possible by their extremely slow rate of growth before sexual maturity (about 12-18 years), compared to other primates.  And often our culture stretches this out even further, causing a lot of tension between the generations.\n\nIn highly complex cultures like ours, children are often 20 years old or older before they have finished their education and are ready to be fully responsible adults.  In less complex societies, you might see that a child of 12 or 13 has learned enough to become a member of adult society.
203490
Depends on your definition of intelligence.They are most definatly able to problem solve and communicate but they cant nip down the shops for some fags and a newspaper.Although would you really say that a species that doesnt seem to have its own survival at its highest priority was intelligent?i think not.It depends on your definition!
601146
Hey sans! I think that the saddest thing is the sheer number of otherwise perfectly intelligent people that stunt their mental growth by imprisoning themselves withing a system of beliefs. Einstein refused to publish several important papers for years, for fear that they would be seen as evidence of the lack of existence of God.
4492
For sentience one must be self aware "I think therefor I am", concience of oneself that one is living and is able to effect one's own being. There must also be intelligence the expansion of knowledge to cope with one's surrounding and understand it.
308072
This assumes that people were brighter in the past.\n Which they just were not.   Hence, Hitler ; Stalin;Mao;\nKim il Sung.   To name but a few. \n I have found that those who think everyone else is not as smart as themselves, are usualy quite thick and ignorant.\n\n                              Victor
578162
I believe in evolution and it is a normal process called "acceleration",which made us,human getting taller every generation.
481556
The author is saying that human beings have developed very quickly: from cave-dwelling, club-wielding hunter-gatherers to modern, technological, artistic beings, in a very short amount of evolutionary time, and that this bodes well for our species.  The author gives Bach as an example of the high art which mankind has become capable of producing, in a relatively short time since the emergence of our species.  To paraphrase, any species capable of developing this far, this fast, has some positive potential.
224580
you know. i thought closely about it, used some imagination i got this idea that maybe we are the result of not a product but we are the creation of an alien civilization. it could be that the aliens created us a million years ago from chimps. oyherwise how do you think that a monkey could get tdown from the trees and start making empires just in a few 1000 yrs considered the slow rate of evolution. the aliens must have intervened in some sort of way and made us. \n   \n    i came to this conclusion also due to historical records. you se there are many incidences where alien intevention is very obvious. for example:\n    in the ancient drawings and written records of some ancient tribes, vehicles very similar to modern day tanks n helicopters have been found. i am not exaggerating. i read this in a book on UFOs. so i think that aliens did ssomething to us in the past\n    and now i'm thinking that the so called gods of the anvient people were aliens themselves. the Great Flood mentioned in the Bible might have been caused by them because they might have made some mistake. there records of things like the holy grail which possess undescribable powers. an explosion very similar to a nuke explosion has been described in the Mahabharata. where could they have got nuclear warheads? so i think that we r the rsult of alien interventionn and not the result of a product.
357628
I could never do this topic justice in the space provided, but here it goes. :)\n\nHomonids have been getting 'smarter' for almost 15 million years now, and this trend certainly hasn't been limited to a single species.  For example, there were several homonid species in the genus Australopithecus whose evoltionary progress rivaled that of our earliest ancestors in the genus Homo (i.e. H. habilis).  The most notable species among the australopithecines were A. garhi and A. africanus.  Like early species in the genus Homo, both of these australopithecine species were bipedal and had relatively large brain sizes (i.e. when compared to earlier australopithecines). For these reasons (and several others), it was originally thought that at least one of these species might have given rise to the genus Homo.  However, genetics and fossil evidence have suggested that H. habilis did not arise from these australopithecines.  And recent findings in the fossil record suggest that these early humans and late australopithecines may have actually co-existed!  Cool, huh?  Even more surprising, is that aout the same time these species began to co-exist, the australopithecines became extinct.  This has led scietists to speculate that early humans might have driven the australopithecines into extinction by 'out-competing' them or perhaps even by killing them off.\n\n'Traits that make us more capable as a species' may be much more important than you think.  Specific traits like the opposable thumb and bipedal ambulation (which frees up the hands and allows them to be used for other tasks than just walking) are crucial to the development of intelligence.  Anlytical skills, such as tool-making, have driven the development of human inginuity and intelligence, and they wouldn't be possible without these key physical traits.  Even today, we can see that other species who share these physical traits are starting to show early signs of intelligence.  For example, both chimpanzees and gorillas have basic tool making skills.  Give them another million years or so, and they might be just as smart as we are today.. assuming that we don't kill them off as well. ;-)
581556
Actually- just because we are at the top of the food chain doesn't mean that we aren't still subject to selection pressures.  It is true that predation is one selection pressure that we no longer have to worry about, but disease is a selection pressure that we cant fully avoid.  \n\nWhile science has made tremendous progress in terms of preventing/curing "old-world" epidemics like polio and smallpox, new viruses and pathogens are constantly emerging through an evolutionary process of their own.... some diseases are such that they're only fatal to certain groups of people (for example, those with compromised immune systems), as well.  So theoretically, if such a disease were to grow out of control, those groups of people would be selected against...   \n\nAlso, culturally we're seeing that certain groups of people are reproducing more frequently and in greater numbers than others, while some populations have a negative birth rate.  If these sort of culturally-based reproduction trends continue, it's logical to assume that humans will look significantly different in the future. \n\nIt is safe to argue that we as a species have broken free of most of the evolutionary constraints that were once upon us- but there are still some factors that limit our evolutionary fitness.
32353
Wow, this could almost be asked under Philosophy, too.  There is so much I could say in answer to this provocative line of thought, but maybe I will just keep it simple for once in my life:\nIf we think of men and women simply as the two inseparable halves of one whole, without both of which being in healthy existence, there would be no human species, then the question of equality becomes moot.\nYes, each half has by nature been given strengths and genetic "jobs" to fulfill, both necessary to the ultimate survival of the species.\nOn top of that we have been given awesome intellect and deep emotional and spiritual reservoirs to allow us an existence raised above the mere day to day survival necessities of food, shelter and procreation.\nSo, my answer to your question is that we are equal by our natures.  Different, but no less equal. We are partners, not combatants.
578942
I think racism shows a lack of intelligence...and, since we will always have a range of intelligence in humans...I think we will always have racism. It's a shame.....
191275
"Man, as a curious accident in a backwater, is intelligible: his mixture of virtues and vices is such as might be expected to result from a fortuitous origin. But only abysmal self-complacency can see in Man a reason which Omniscience could consider adequate as a motive for the Creator. The Copernican revolution will not have done its work until it has taught men more modesty than is to be found among those who think Man sufficient evidence of Cosmic Purpose."  \n\nThe most ridiculous concept ever perpetrated by H.Sapiens is that the lord god of creation, Shaper and Ruler of the Universes, wants the sacharrine adoration of his creations, that he can be persuaded by their prayers, and becomes petulant if he does not recieve this flattery. Yet this ridiculous notion, without one real shred of evidence to bolster it, has gone on to found one of the oldest, largest and least productive industries in history.
588218
Accident. Coincidence. Chance. These shaped the universe as we know it. Organisms have slowly evolved and become humans as we are today... And we've stopped evolving almost completely because we've learned that, rather than adapting to our environments, we can adapt our environments to US. We no longer need changing survival skills for heat or food, because these are grown and raised and manufactured for us... and this will probably be our eventual downfall. If ever we are failed by technology, our inability to adapt and grow and evolve will cause us all to perish.
656752
Although humans have evolved to have the greatest level of intelligence on earth,  intelligence is not only the preserve of Homo sapiens. Many physical and behavioural characteristics of animals occur among a disparate number of species for example, even though the Thylacine or Tasmanian Tiger was a marsupial it had the physical and behaviour characteristics of a wolf. This is called parallel evolution. The same can be said for intelligence, for example, cephalopod mollusc's such as squid and octopus (the most intelligent invertebrates) and dolphins and whales have both evolved seperately to become highly intelligent within their realm. \nAs for a species being a 'threat' in the race for the most intelligent \nin the future, this is very unlikely as evolututionary processes work on the order of thousands of generations. It is also unlikely that humans will survive long enough for another species to supercede us as mammals as a species generally only live on the order of 1-1.5 million years (we have passed our due date!) say compared to insects that live between 10-15 million years as a species.\nThe biggest threat from an intelligent species is more likely to be extraterrestrial!?
566792
No no no no no no... I think we are all part of an experiment gone wrong !!!  You know, abandoned by whoever started it.  We are like a culture dish allowed to .... germinate, or.. multiply, develop the bad way, out of control....   otherwise how can we explain what we do everyday on this planet... we kill our own fellow human beings for pleasure... for profit....  for petrol...  we torture and abuse OUR OWN children... Or perhaps the experimenter?) ran away in horror...  long ago !!!   We will never be visited by other intelligent beings from other galaxies... they will never find intellectual stimulation on this beautiful planet.. so they do a sort of tangent instead and move on...
469278
I believe it was when we gained knowledge. I don't believe in the Adam and Eve story as anything but mythology, but I do believe in both God and evolution. I believe it was just a metaphor for when our brains evolved to the point of intelligent reasoning and the thought processes that made us the dominant species. That was what eating the apple represented. So I'm sure our having souls and the entire concept of souls developed out of that accomplishment.\n\nNow I'm kinda going to have to rethink that considering I believe cats, dogs and horses have souls too, but I think it's because they have an emotional intelligence that chickens and cows and bugs just don't have.