Originally posted by Mexico
But just because your more creative doesn't make you better than the cat..... Are you a agile as the cat? Are you better able to survive in the same room as the cat? Actually are you as happy as the cat?

it does make us more superior, if it wasnt for creativity we would still be living in caves, the human race is superior due to its nature to ask, seek knowledge and create using this knowledge

Originally posted by eatmybishop
it does make us more superior, if it wasnt for creativity we would still be living in caves, the human race is superior due to its nature to ask, seek knowledge and create using this knowledge

Creativity and abstract thinking are just parts of our intelligence. To say that we are superior due to just one trait out of hundreds is ridiculous. The reasons for our intelligence evolving to this level was survival, to give us an edge over the surrounding competitors. In the same way that the evolution of bipedialisim gave us an advantage (longer range) over our quadropedal competitors. Our intelligence allows us to out think competitors. But thats just intelligence, what about speed, agility, toughness, etc. If you put an average human in direct competition with an average tiger in an environment where intelligence isn't as important as say aggression or strength, who do you think would come out on top?
And actually if you want to get into it the success of Homo, and particularly ourselves, can arguably be attributed to the evolution of bipedalisim and the range it gave us, not our intelligence and abstract reasoning which came much later. We we're already on top by the time art came around.

Originally posted by eatmybishop
this is a silly response and has nothing to do with the evolution

A silly response to a silly question, I suppose.
After all, it was you who presumed that if B comes from A, there must be no longer A. I just extrapolated it a bit to help you see how silly it is.

Originally posted by Retrovirus
A silly response to a silly question, I suppose.
After all, it was you who presumed that if B comes from A, there must be no longer A. I just extrapolated it a bit to help you see how silly it is.

it may be easier to say from a mental point of view, who is superior, the human or the cat?

bear in mind this has nothing to do with physical design, this question is based solely on the intelligence both have

Originally posted by eatmybishop
it may be easier to say from a mental point of view, who is superior, the human or the cat?

bear in mind this has nothing to do with physical design, this question is based solely on the intelligence both have

Well, yes. As I said - decide you're going to define superior based on a quality that you know humans are the best at, and they'll be superior. But it's a pretty arbitrary choice.

Originally posted by eatmybishop
but its not the same analogy, your example is about survival, this has nothing to do with my point, a cat does not have to learn a piano to survive therefore he doesnt, neither do we to survive but we desire to learn, want to understand.... animals do not crave creativity

Creativity is again linked to the "brain trait", thats why humans would come out on top.

You don't think the evolution of the brain aided our survival?

Originally posted by timebombted
Creativity is again linked to the "brain trait", thats why humans would come out on top.

You don't think the evolution of the brain aided our survival?

no, because we survived from the very start

Originally posted by FabianFnas
I have thought about our so called intelligence...

Say that whole humanity is died away, only a small group of people survives, me included. We have no technology left, no clothing, no food supplies, no nothing, we have only the intelligence and experience we have in our brains.

How would we start a new civilization? We can't build new computers, we ...[text shortened]... s gone for ever.

Humans are not intelligent, if we have to start from the beginning again.

I think the average person knows that rubbing sticks together can make fire and its easy to make a bow and arrow to increase your hunting range. The first humans used animal skins for clothes so I see our intrepid group surviving. A better test would be for several isolated naked groups in several kinds of environments surviving or not. Randomly, a group might end up in a place like Hawaii where food and predators are not a problem. Or maybe they might end up in the middle of the Gobi desert and all die in a couple of weeks. It would depend on where the group started out. There is a TV show here in the US called 'Survivear man' where this survival genius is stuck out in a lot of differant wilderness areas with no help and no tools outside of a knife and has to survive for only a week, but he shows a lot of survival techniques. He also is his own cameraman so there is nobody there to rescue him in case he gets in a scrap he can't get out of. It would make a differance what season your group was let out in. Winter in northern Alaska would be devastating, summer on Vancouver Island would be a cinch.

Originally posted by Retrovirus
If the Founding Fathers of the U.S. were originally of British origin, how come there still British people in world? Why are they not becoming Americans?

I thought we were

Originally posted by eatmybishop
it does make us more superior, if it wasnt for creativity we would still be living in caves, the human race is superior due to its nature to ask, seek knowledge and create using this knowledge

Making and using tools. Extending mind. That seems incontrovertible.

Originally posted by FabianFnas
I cannot either write a sonata, does it mean that I'm not intelligent, or just intelligent as a cat? I cannot either catch a mouse, less eat it.

I'm sure you could if you really put your mind to it ...

Originally posted by mtthw
Quite. It's a bit disingenuous to take the things we know humans are good at (yes, we're the most intelligent animals on the planet), and conveniently decide that this is how we're going to determine the pinnacle of evolution.

The idea of a 'pinnacle of evolution' is flatly ridiculous.

Originally posted by eatmybishop
no, because we survived from the very start

Your logic is senseless.

So you truely believe that brain power hasn't resulted in anything to increase the survival of the human race?

Surely there are hundreds (if not more) medical discoveries?

How about engineering achievements which help us live in inhabitable places?

Originally posted by timebombted
Your logic is senseless.

So you truely believe that brain power hasn't resulted in anything to increase the survival of the human race?

Surely there are hundreds (if not more) medical discoveries?

How about engineering achievements which help us live in inhabitable places?

The problem is we have to get off the planet if we want true longevity. We cannot be tied to one planet for our existance. That much is clear from the impacts of asteroids on earth, moon, mars and most recently on Jupiter, if you remember the 'string of pearls' collisions.
So we have to overcome our own reluctance to long term programs and get on the ball or the weather, climate, ecodisasters, disasterous energy crises, whatever, all these things have to be overcome or we will reach a peak soon where its downhill enough that we lose our ability to do spaceflight, all that effort will be for nothing if we can't grow crops for instance. How long would the space program last if all the developed counties were fighting every day to keep farms going enough to feed an ever diminishing population from some climate crunch? Its not even close to inevitable that we become a spacefaring species, by that I mean establishing self-supporting colonies on Mars, Europa, or even on some planet around Alpha Centauri if we play our cards right. All that can be gone in a trice and no way to get it back. In that case, as a race we are doomed, at least driven back to 1000 years in the past but the climb back up if our present civilization takes a dive, we will have used up so much of the earth's resources there won't be much left for another one to flourish, say, 10,000 years later or whatever. We basically have this one chance, this one century to get it right and get the hell of the planet if we are to have any hopes of surviving our natural racial lifespan.

Originally posted by sonhouse
The problem is we have to get off the planet if we want true longevity. We cannot be tied to one planet for our existance. That much is clear from the impacts of asteroids on earth, moon, mars and most recently on Jupiter, if you remember the 'string of pearls' collisions.
So we have to overcome our own reluctance to long term programs and get on the ball ...[text shortened]... he hell of the planet if we are to have any hopes of surviving our natural racial lifespan.

My previous post should have read "UNinhabitable"

Your post is a perfect example of how human brain power may aid the survival of mankind.