What are humans?

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That particular distinction may go to some crows, species of which have been observed to engage in considerable tool usage.

They'd spend their time complaining that they didn't have opposable thumbs.

Twoshots, what's the language ability of crows though?

Q: What's the language ability of Greys?

A: Who'd know; animal language experiments are the motherload of confirmation bias.

I suppose tool use would be more objective, though Alex seemed to be fairly intelligent.

Alex did indeed seem smart, I will not deny. Still though, I remain skeptical as without reading up on Dr. Pepperberg's methodology and judging just from her character she sounded like a prime suspect for confirmation bias, being too close to her subject made her too prone to read stuff into it. I tend to place lower weight on animal communication experiments just because the difficulties of evaluation what's going on.

Humans are a mistake. As a species, most of us are so unlike the others that it's amazing we are all considered human.

Old men in some sects do that in America too. And to a lesser extent, here in Canada, though they are apparently less interested in minors.

I'm speaking of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamenta ... Day_Saints

and probably some other small sects.

Humans (homo sapien sapien) is an evolutionary end product which occurred in the genus homo. All living things are the product of chance and natural selection. Since there was no purpose or design that produced us, we cannot be called a mistake, which would characterize an attempt that failed of its goal. We are accidental and contingent.

Your harsh judgment appears to flow from some kind of disappointed expectation. If so, you have made an error. We are contingent and essentially accidental beings to expectations (ours or of anyone else) do not apply. Reserve your disappointments for artifacts that are poorly made. We are not artifacts. We are happenings.

ruveyn

For a closer look of how life would be if cats were up on their paws, check out the "Hassat" race from Dungeon Siege's expansion. :p Or you can check the Kajit race frm Morrowind too.

I'll also add that gorillas have harems (the whole silverback concept), and when a new male takes over the old one, he kills any babies the females have, since it removes any chance of him wasting energy on another male's offsrping, and stopping the nourishing of the young causes the mother to restart her fertility cycle sooner (er, i'm not too good with english specific terms regarding that...) so he can fertilize her. <.<

For my part on this, i'd say we're curious little critters, capable of great deeds and accomplishments but also capable of doing the worst cruelties none could fathom. We've come this far, and i'd hope we could do more without hurting our beautiful planet, which some see a huge gold mine and garbage container. However, being humanitarian, i'd like to think that we can do better, but i,m not expecting major changes soon -.- The world seems to be caught up in a bad wave of (neo) conservatism almost everywhere. Everyone seems contempt leading their life without trying to change anything about it. =(

I think this is actually a very fine line of cause and effect. Letting people die quickly from heart disease, diabetes, etc would remove them from "primitive' societies rapidly where general mortality rates would be higher and life expectancies shorter. The survivors may be healthy, but the other 30% died before the age of 30. So sure, if you use technology to keep people alive, the portion of people kept alive by technology will increase and new ailments will "appear" as a cause of the technology.

As far as stress and stress related illness goes, I concede my point to you. I do not think the animal component of most humans is yet prepared for human captivity.



Every stupid animal does exactly this. Yeast produces alcohol waste until there is nothing left to convert or the waste kills it. Almost all animals keep breeding to the limit of resources within their habitable niche or are kept in control by predation. This is exactly what we are doing, except the only natural predators of any significance we have is each other. The tragedy of this is we know we are going to destroy ourselves but the animal "instinct" part of humans prevails. No matter how different it looks to the rest of nature, no matter the scale of what is happening, the fundamental forces and consequences are the same.

I think technology is the key to get out the other side. One observation is a population explosion on a given level of technological advancement such as is happening in China and India, followed by a population downturn as the technology "settles in". Will the world get over the hump before we are destroyed? Will we become full humans before we die like animals?

I love how you put this.

I see what you mean, but for what little we *really* know about how humans used to be and the few people that have been untouched by technology in modern times, the evidence is that they just *don't* get the diseases of the civilization.

On expected life spans, I did a bit of research for another thread recently and found an article comparing Innuit & Candadian lifsespans. Sure enough the Innuit life expectancy was less than the 'city dwelling' Canadians, by around 10 - 15 years. The punchline was that the Innuit have virtually NO access to health care,whereas the city Canadians have continual health care cradle to grave. The city dweller life span would by much shorter than that of the Innuit *if* the city dweller had no access to antibiotics, chemotherapy, kidney transplants etc etc.

Humans have no inherent tendancy to disease on the scale we see it today. I believe a lot of the unhealthiness of the city dwellers is diet related, stress related and pollution related. Much of the diet, stress and pollution is related to technology gone awry. In terms of health, technology helps us cope with problems of our *own* making, these problems are not inherent in the environment. It's not giving us much extra to how we were for the hundreds of thousands of years before we discovered electricity, or whatever.

It depends whether you see the capability to provide a lifetime supply of medicine as a strength, or the need for a lifetimes supply of medicine to get past 40 as a weakness. Seems to it is far better and safer to have the capability to survive in our environment inside us, not to depend on technology and it's fickle economic masters.

Yes, populations of other species rise and fall. But throughout recorded history, I read recently that the average is 1 extinction per million years. And that would be due to climate and geological change. The scale of destruction by humans is like nothing else ever recorded. We are pulling the ground out from under our own feet and need to wake up and realise this instead of pompously crowing about our irrelevant glories.

Humans are animals. We are hominids Version 5.0.

ruveyn

Humans : the only animal to think he's not one. ~.~

Humans: the only animal to whom the thought "I'm an animal" could occur.

I am human and I have no illusions about what I am. I am a primate. I am one of the baddest smartest apes in The Monkey House.

ruveyn