On Defining Ourselves as Most Intelligent

Did you read "Lots of Animals Learn, But Smarter Isn't Better," by Carl Zimmer in yesterday's New York Times? It begins with:

Why are humans so smart?” is a question that fascinates scientists. Tadeusz Kawecki, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Fribourg, likes to turn around the question.

“If it’s so great to be smart,” Dr. Kawecki asks, “why have most animals remained dumb?”

Dr. Kawecki and like-minded scientists are trying to figure out why animals learn and why some have evolved to be better at learning than others. One reason for the difference, their research finds, is that being smart can be bad for an animal’s health.

The odd thing is that intelligence appears to be defined as the ability to learn. You know, like how we have learned that smoking is deadly, yet many of us still do it, or that many animal products are very unhealthy yet most of us still eat them.

Reuven Dukas, a biologist at McMaster University spends his days breeding generations of fruit flies so he can experiment on them and demonstrate how well they learn (according to him) and what the cost is for that learning. Supposedly, as his knowledge of "intelligence" in "nature" increases, he "will understand more about humans' gift for learning."

“Humans have gone to the extreme,” said Dr. Dukas, both in the ability of our species to learn and in the cost for that ability.

This begs the question: How smart are we if we continue to do things that put us, individually, or as a species, in mortal danger? And why would you need to breed and manipulate generations of fruit flies to ask or answer that question?

In today's NYT, Verlyn Klinkenborg asks similar questions in "The Cost of Smarts." He begins with:

Research on animal intelligence always makes me wonder just how smart humans are.

And he ends with:

Research on animal intelligence also makes me wonder what experiments animals would perform on humans if they had the chance. . . . I believe that if animals ran the labs, they would test us to determine the limits of our patience, our faithfulness, our memory for terrain. They would try to decide what intelligence in humans is really for, not merely how much of it there is. Above all, they would hope to study a fundamental question: Are humans actually aware of the world they live in? So far the results are inconclusive.

What irks me, but what many (including scientists!) do not appear to notice, is that the definition of intelligence--and even of learning--is based on what we have and do, and which of our behaviors or traits we want the "subject" to manifest. It's completely speciest. We should leave other species alone, and try to figure out why, if we're supposed to be so smart, we're such a mess and we've irrevocably abused our own home. What is this intelligence we're so proud of?

Comments

[The Vegan Countess]

I think you make some excellent points, but your undercurrent is the muddy definition of the term intelligence. When we think of intelligence we tend to think in human terms as that is our limit, but I have yet to find a clear or satisfactory definition of that word. When one bases a study on a subjective term there can be no useful conclusions.

[Dan]

There seem to be three distinct abilities which, especially taken together, have enabled humans to “create our world” in ways that go far beyond building a nest or a dam. The one of the three (that we’re not unique in) is having an opposable thumb, which led to tool making and the ability to write. The second one is language use, which enables us to pass know-how and tool use down through generations even in pre-literate societies. The third is writing (which is derived from the first two), which in its modern developed state, has enabled us to accumulate and pass down highly complex knowledge; that is, science and technology.

All of this has enabled humans to develop science and technology that seems to be literally beyond our evolutionary moral and ethical capacity to handle it in the long run. We appear much more brilliant than we actually are due to the ability to accumulate scientific knowledge, which is to say that we’re “smart enough to be dangerous”. We’re amazing in technology, but ethically and morally, still swinging in the trees – it’s an ugly combination and explains much of why we have an overpopulation problem (unprotected sex is fun), a war problem (the 20th century saw more millions die in industrial warfare and genocide than ever), a general killing problem (we slaughter over 50 billion nonhuman beings annually for no good reason, and sometimes just for plain fun), a health problem (heart disease and obesity which is related to the killing problem), and an environmental problem (again, because of our voracious appetite).

Natural selection will catch up to this disparity soon, and perhaps in a variety of ways. By the clock of natural selection, our time with technology has not even really started. We will have to evolve morally at lightning speed, or natural selection will “cull our herd” in the coming centuries, and possibly in the coming decades.

[Ron Kearns]

Based on available paleoanthropological research, I think the principal reason we are more *intelligent* than other animals began with verbal communication. Had the human larynx not migrated “south” (descended), we humans would still be Neanderthaloid-like bipedal mutes with big brains. Speech is the key to our *intelligence*; however, people nowadays seem to communicate less and that is a major cause of humankind’s worldwide conflicts.

One of my pet peeves is writing an e-mail and having the recipient acknowledge only the first item or, at most, the second. Most newspapers seldom use long paragraphs and reporters must break their comments into single sentences to keep the attention of people with minimal attention spans.

As some of you know, I am often at odds with my past employer, the USFWS. To refute and rebut their illegal, unethical, and unjust actions, I often write long detailed e-mail attached letters so I can get my comments into the public record and to ensure that those public servants cannot say ‘ well, I did not hear you say or see you write this or that’. However, they misunderstand either what I say or they state that there is no time to read my long letters. I am not a concise writer, because what I am countering requires detail, not the conciseness that they request. I have learned to more concisely bullet my main points at the beginning of my letters and then follow-up with fleshing out the bulleted highlights.

I am amazed that I have learned that so many government employees somehow ‘lose’ their *intelligence*, regardless of their fine and often extensive educations. So-called *intelligence* has resulted in:

• we humans fouling our own nests, as Mary alluded to earlier
• abject fools such as *president* George Bush who must not be too *intelligent* if the speech premise is correct and the fact that he ascended to such a high office

Therefore, the non-intelligence of nonhuman animals appears increasingly and self-evidently preferable in many ways to humankind’s *intelligence*. That is the foundation of why I diligently strive to use my *intelligent* speech and voice to save the voiceless and non-intelligent wildlife and biodiversity within a unique area called Kofa National Wildlife Refuge; an ecosystem forged out by purposeless and non-intelligent evolutionary forces that cannot be improved on, and should not be over-manipulated, by *intelligence*.

Ron Kearns

[Nathan Schneider]

We certainly aren't a very rational bunch. After all, theism and other spiritual/metaphysical/superstitious nonsense still rule the day. Also, most humans passively accept (or don't even recognize) the irrationality inherent to the bureaucratic rules and processes that stem from large-scale hierarchical/authoritarian organizations. Of course, this speaks to our obsequious disposition — the lack of individualism and critical thought we demonstrate. Norms, and other environmental factors, pretty much determine the overall life course of any particular human.

Gender has a descriptive element: describing observed/empirical differences between the biological sexes. However, the more interesting aspect of gender is prescriptive (normative): that which defines and informs what our biological sex should mean or represent. Gender tells us how to behave, process the world around us, and what to expect. Simply put, gender defines normal for one's underlying biology.

Gender is continually socially constructed and enforced by those around us. One way or the next, people let us know when we get out of line. However, growing up within the context of gender, we generally internalize the pressure it represents. We know to avoid enforcement, for fear of penalty, and interest in maintaining our social standing and respect. The normative pressure of gender is a sociopsychological prison for every member of society. Though most humans obviously embrace this arrangement, for if they did not, gender norms would not exist, because they are constituted by enforcement.

Gender is acutely irrational. Simple example: colors and infants/children. Generally speaking, here in America... pink is feminine, blue is masculine, and yellow is gender neutral. Suggesting otherwise represents a gender violation that confuses and/or upsets people. Surrounding an infant/child in the "wrong" colors will probably bring significant pressure down upon the rearer. Even if nobody says anything directly, it will intuited and felt. Extending the violation into toys will amplify the reprimand. Color clearly has no rational connection to biology. Nonetheless, dawning a pink and purple jogging suit on a walk around town could be disastrous, at the very least to my ego, but potentially my health. Make the jogging suit a flower patterned sundress, and the negative results amplify. In this sense, gender stands for a dearth of freedom.

There are really endless instances of human irrationality, from everything deemed gross and disgusting that represents no health risk and is otherwise quite insignificant, to obsession with what type of humans other humans have sexual/romantic relationships with, to the belief that welfare reforms are helping lead to the abolition of anything.