What do you think separates humans from other animals?
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"Man is the only animal that laughs and weeps; for he is the only animal that is struck with the difference between what things are, and what they ought to be." - William Hazlitt
There's many a thing one could think of.
I'd go for big brains and hands. Walking on our hind legs so we have our hands free, even though it's generally a bad idea on ice.
Intelligence is said to be higher in humans than other species, but I take it that is to be taken with a grain of salt.
I've seen dogs and apes and crows do some evil and nasty stuff, like not so cute monkeys ripping other apes to pieces just for some territorial clan thing, dogs going berserk because trigger x freaked them out or crows killing other birds out of what looked like nothing more but boredom.
But when it comes to evil, mankind is king. There's no creature as nasty as we are. Religion is a cool concept to ward off evil, but even that hasn't stopped us being evil and nasty and selfish and vile and silly-stupid creatures. On came communism, which limited the number of genuine evil individuals, and maximized the number of victims. The French Revolution cost a lot of people their heads. While Christianity meanwhile sits in the corner wearing the Jackass hat, other religions step in to deliver our daily dose of witch-burning, hangings and beheadings. You need to teach people to be decent and good.
You don't need to teach them to become raping, ravaging, raving-mad murdering maniacs - they come up with that themselves, be it with knives and guns, or just a simple piece of wood.
I'd go for big brains and hands. Walking on our hind legs so we have our hands free, even though it's generally a bad idea on ice.
Intelligence is said to be higher in humans than other species, but I take it that is to be taken with a grain of salt.
I've seen dogs and apes and crows do some evil and nasty stuff, like not so cute monkeys ripping other apes to pieces just for some territorial clan thing, dogs going berserk because trigger x freaked them out or crows killing other birds out of what looked like nothing more but boredom.
But when it comes to evil, mankind is king. There's no creature as nasty as we are. Religion is a cool concept to ward off evil, but even that hasn't stopped us being evil and nasty and selfish and vile and silly-stupid creatures. On came communism, which limited the number of genuine evil individuals, and maximized the number of victims. The French Revolution cost a lot of people their heads. While Christianity meanwhile sits in the corner wearing the Jackass hat, other religions step in to deliver our daily dose of witch-burning, hangings and beheadings. You need to teach people to be decent and good.
You don't need to teach them to become raping, ravaging, raving-mad murdering maniacs - they come up with that themselves, be it with knives and guns, or just a simple piece of wood.
fucking for pleasure's sake instead of breeding...
oh wait... chimpanzees...
well, opposable thumbs for videogaming... though you don't really need them for Beat 'em ups
:/
well, not that much difference then, eh?
Oh wait, the ability to argue on the internet 8D
That's pretty much human-exclusive!
oh wait... chimpanzees...
well, opposable thumbs for videogaming... though you don't really need them for Beat 'em ups
:/
well, not that much difference then, eh?
Oh wait, the ability to argue on the internet 8D
That's pretty much human-exclusive!
-Intelligence? No: humans aren't the only intelligent creatures, animals are also capable of establishing strategies to get food, hunt and other things, even ants have intelligence, nt as individuals but as a colonie the can create amasing structures designed to adapt to the environment.
-Self awareness? Nope: all mammals are self aware and most are capable of thinking and planning for the future.
-Tools? Again no: crows, and other birds are capable of not only choosing a twig to get at bugs beneath the bark of trees, but also building better tools with said twigs to make them more efficient. Primates as well and beavers build dams.
-Creativaty? Wrong again: as said before elephants and dogs have painted pictures, so have primates.
-Language? No: all animals have language: pheromones, screaches and cries, bird songs and marking physicaly their territory is a sign of language.
-Religion? We can't know for sure if other animals have religion but remeber that elephant mourn their dead and can stay by the body of a deceased of their pack for days fending of scavangers.
-Technology and soul? BS technologie is the same as tools, and as with religion, you can't tell for the soul. Hell we don't even know what soulls are, let alone if they exist.
-Ego? Come on animals care about themselves, not about you. Thats also ego.
We don't have something that animals don't. We have the same, it's just that we have MORE of certain things and LESS of others. We are smarter, have more tools, are capable of projecting ourselves farther in the future, have a more developped language, more creativaty. Anything that implies the use of our brain is better than whatever animals can come up with. But on the other hand we have less fur, no claws, less stregth (in certain cases), etc. Get the picture?
-Self awareness? Nope: all mammals are self aware and most are capable of thinking and planning for the future.
-Tools? Again no: crows, and other birds are capable of not only choosing a twig to get at bugs beneath the bark of trees, but also building better tools with said twigs to make them more efficient. Primates as well and beavers build dams.
-Creativaty? Wrong again: as said before elephants and dogs have painted pictures, so have primates.
Who cares about for how much the paintings sold? A kindergarderner also paints shitty paintings, nevertheless it's proof of creativity. Are you saying that an child is as creative as an elephant, cause I can tell you that kids have a wild imagination, aka creativity.TestECull said:
-Language? No: all animals have language: pheromones, screaches and cries, bird songs and marking physicaly their territory is a sign of language.
-Religion? We can't know for sure if other animals have religion but remeber that elephant mourn their dead and can stay by the body of a deceased of their pack for days fending of scavangers.
-Technology and soul? BS technologie is the same as tools, and as with religion, you can't tell for the soul. Hell we don't even know what soulls are, let alone if they exist.
-Ego? Come on animals care about themselves, not about you. Thats also ego.
We don't have something that animals don't. We have the same, it's just that we have MORE of certain things and LESS of others. We are smarter, have more tools, are capable of projecting ourselves farther in the future, have a more developped language, more creativaty. Anything that implies the use of our brain is better than whatever animals can come up with. But on the other hand we have less fur, no claws, less stregth (in certain cases), etc. Get the picture?
Yes they do: cats kill mice, play with the body and then leave it to rot. Another example: wolves. Do you know why wolves are hated and feared by sheperds? Wolves, when they hunt sheep, don't just kill one or two (just enough to eat) but as far as 20 or 30. Why? cause there's so many that they can't stop and don't care if one is enough.Adam Jensen said:
First of all i don't think we're just animals. Most things we do, the way we live, things we value is far from natural flow of life and that is both the proof that we're not animals and answer to your question i guess.CulixCupric said:
For example : we're persistently trying to invent some drugs instead of using natural medicines.
Our ability to communicate, everything else is build on that. We can communicate complex ideas, over vast distances, to a wide variety of audiences, and we can preserve that communication for future generations, as well as understand and learn from communications from previous generations.
One thing would be language. Whilst other species appear to have a very basic form of language, I feel that relies more on tone than on the individual sounds of the 'words' in most cases, and is only able to get across reasonably simple ideas. Human language depends on tone, what is said, how and when it is said, and is that complex that we can explain very complex ideas to one another. Language has allowed us to work together towards a common goal and advance ourselves further than any other species.
Likewise, those achievements were made by lots of people working on a complex task in unison - something language has enabled us to do yet no other animal I know of has the language complex enough to allow them to work together to achieve these sorts of things, even if they were creative and intelligent enough to do so.
Finally sentience is not necessarily creativity/intelligence. The dictionary defines it as: 'sense perception not involving intelligence or mental perception; feeling'
That has nothing to do with creativity, and I would dare say that other animals in the world have the capacity to sense things and perceive those senses. Hence why some animals will lie down of W/E before a storm, will cry out in pain, will shake water off their coats. Apollo and such has little to do with sentience, and more to do with intelligence, creativity, language, and natural and artificial capabilities. It is the result of the individual mix of traits that is humanity more than it is the fact that we can use our senses more than any other species.
You have responded to sentience with creativity. However, all that that has proved is that humans are the first species with enough creativity, intelligence, and natural and artificial tools to complete this feat. Those other creatures with opposable thumbs may not have been as creative or intelligent as us, but something like a Dolphin might be. A dolphin however lacks the tools to accomplish something like that.TestECull said:Here's some proof for you:
Why are we the ones that did that? We're by no means the first creatures on this planet with opposable thumbs, not by several million years. We're not the only species on this planet physically capable of designing, building and operating that, nor are we the first.
You want more proof? Watch the Apollo 11 launch. There's your proof. Don't want to accept that? Look at the computer you're using to post this. Look at your car. Look out your window...fuck, look at the blooming window itself. EVERYTHING you see around you exists because of human creativity. Not animal creativity. Everything around you, everything from the Saturn V rocket I posted to the clothes on your back, all of it exists because humans are more creative than any other species on this planet. The proof is literally draped over your shoulders waiting for you to accept it.
Likewise, those achievements were made by lots of people working on a complex task in unison - something language has enabled us to do yet no other animal I know of has the language complex enough to allow them to work together to achieve these sorts of things, even if they were creative and intelligent enough to do so.
Finally sentience is not necessarily creativity/intelligence. The dictionary defines it as: 'sense perception not involving intelligence or mental perception; feeling'
That has nothing to do with creativity, and I would dare say that other animals in the world have the capacity to sense things and perceive those senses. Hence why some animals will lie down of W/E before a storm, will cry out in pain, will shake water off their coats. Apollo and such has little to do with sentience, and more to do with intelligence, creativity, language, and natural and artificial capabilities. It is the result of the individual mix of traits that is humanity more than it is the fact that we can use our senses more than any other species.
Flaws:TestECull said:
1. It took us thousands of years, not hundreds, to make it this far. Man was around before 0AD, and that was 2000 years ago.
2. You are arguing that he is right, which when you take such a hostile tone doesn't make a lot of sense. He is saying we don't have unique traits, but a unique mix of traits that gets us this far. You state the same thing, whilst with your tone and language implying he is wrong. No, Fido may not be as creative as his owner, but his owner doesn't have fur or claws like Fido has. Different mixes of traits.
3. We are a part of the animal kingdom's evolution to reaching the stars. If you start from our first ancestor that would eventually evolve into humans, we have taken the same amount of time as the rest of the animal kingdom to come this far, we have just made it further in that time. We are the animal kingdoms success story. We are not different from animals in some intrinsic way, indeed we actually are animals. We are just the most successful animals on the planet. Your whole tone in that section makes out that we are special, chosen and placed here by God or by aliens after animals and managed to do what they couldn't. More like it is that we are animals that have finally evolved to the point where we can achieve this.
Maybe the major difference between us and animals is that we can survive without going natural, look at it this way, an elephant would survive in heat modestly, due to rising the blood heat in their ears and simply flapping away the heat, wheras humans just switches on a fan.
Our reliance on technology has probably gotten to the point where Humans probably wont evolve as much as animals does in the next million or so years, assuming that there isnt anything that destroys all trace of knowedge and technology.
Plus, as Humans, we're not that special, sure we can construct automotous devices and throw things, but without weapons and something to protect ourselves, do you think we can survive tiger attacks or being devoured alive by elephants? D:
Our reliance on technology has probably gotten to the point where Humans probably wont evolve as much as animals does in the next million or so years, assuming that there isnt anything that destroys all trace of knowedge and technology.
Plus, as Humans, we're not that special, sure we can construct automotous devices and throw things, but without weapons and something to protect ourselves, do you think we can survive tiger attacks or being devoured alive by elephants? D:
- Nothing can be done out of nothing. Everything is done from something that exists, or resembles something already existing, however only people merge components into things they don't really need.volX said:
- We're pretty close to sailing into space. We reached this technological advancement across thousands of years which, compared to the age of universe is more or less "blink of an eye". Billions of billions other civilizations could evolve prior to our own, however universe is silent. We're listening but there's no answer, no sign of intelligent life anywhere. So either we're alone or natural flow of life isn't about going into space. Either way we're unnatural in what we do.
- As far as i remember i joined thread regarding differences between people and animals and not between people and virueses or parasites. Am i right ?
Its not technology that stops directly stops evolution. Evolution isn't like Spore or something where some part is needed, thus we evolve it. It goes more like we evolve it, and if it is useful/attractive, that specimen survives longer and breeds more and thus that trait that was evolved is spread, in a general sense. As such, technology is not inhibiting us from evolving.Plucky said:
There is also nothing to say we aren't evolving either. These processes take a LONG time to happen, and just because you don't notice anything that different between the man of 100 years ago and now, doesn't mean there isn't going to be any difference in a thousand years time.
A lot of you guys are saying things about intelligence, culture, empathy and things like that, but fundamentally it all comes down to the same thing.
Humans have the largest brain, proportionate to their body, of any organism on the planet. This allows us to communicate in more complex ways, solve problems with more creativity/success and theorize on matters which do not necessarily affect us in a direct way.
Other animals are incapable of performing at the same standard of these activities as we are, but are specialised in other ways, usually with increased sensory development e.g. a dog's nose, an eagle's sight and a bat's echo location.
Humans have the largest brain, proportionate to their body, of any organism on the planet. This allows us to communicate in more complex ways, solve problems with more creativity/success and theorize on matters which do not necessarily affect us in a direct way.
Other animals are incapable of performing at the same standard of these activities as we are, but are specialised in other ways, usually with increased sensory development e.g. a dog's nose, an eagle's sight and a bat's echo location.