We’re Not So Special: A new book challenges human exceptionalism

https://democracyjournal.org/magazine/78/were-not-so-special/

by nobet • 11 months ago

123 257 11 months ago

nis0s6• 11 months ago

As noted in the article, this thesis isn’t exactly new. Human reasoning is what ultimately makes humans exceptional—they both prod consciousness in themselves and other beings. The point that we’ve underestimated the cognitive complexity of other animals is an important one. No other animal is capable of going beyond the confines of this planet, and the fact that only humans can enable such thing is quite exceptional.

ljlolel8• 11 months ago

When we go to space we will absolutely take fruiting plants with us. Are we just the legs and reproductive organs of the plants?

dvrj101• 11 months ago

we might as well take a cat, are we still serving goddess Bastet ?

breckenedge• 11 months ago

We’re just meat tubes for microbe mobility.

ghssds• 11 months ago

Maybe someday we'll be the reproductive organs of the biosphere as a whole, giving birth to other biospheres on another planets.

armchairhacker4• 11 months ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egregore

Or we're just the cells of cultures, or religions, or corporations, or governments, or the ecosystem consisting of all biological life, or the universe.

Or each of us is the more-structurally-defined society or construction of a group of cells, or DNA, or molecules.

nis0s6• 11 months ago

Sure, and then we’ll change any aspect about that fruit or plant to suit our needs in a new environment. Co-evolution and parasitic evolution is a pretty cool thing itself.

goatlover2• 11 months ago

The robotic ships we send out aren't. I never understand that need to deny that in certain ways (but not other ways), humans are exceptionally different from all other life on this planet. Which results in sophisticated, world-altering, space-exploring technologies. For better or worse. And it's what we look for most in the stars. To detect not just alien life, but technological civilizations.

somenameforme17• 11 months ago

It's not reasoning that makes humans exceptional. Reasoning without execution is completely irrelevant. Humans are exceptional because of what we do. For instance we've managed to use our skill sets to do things like put a man on the Moon.

And in fact this sort of achievement will be critically necessary for the survival of any species. Earth has had numerous mass extinction events, and we're well overdue for another one. And on a long enough time frame, even the Sun itself will eventually engulf the Earth. The only way to 'win' this game is technology and expansion outward into the cosmos.

And it may well be that that elephant beaten into a parlor trick of painting from the article (seriously, don't look up how elephants are 'trained'), is brought along so that its species may too eventually continue to persist into the future, thanks to humanity.

glial• 11 months ago

No other animal is capable of going beyond the confines of this planet, and the fact that only humans can enable such thing is quite exceptional.

One thing humans seem to be uniquely good at is picking goalposts that separate us from other species.

Helmut100013• 11 months ago

Just thinking of bacteria who possibly escaped planet earth at sometime. Given this argument, such bacteria would be classified more intelligent than humans.

y-curious• 11 months ago

He/she says as they type on a keyboard to post on the internet using electricity they pay for with currency :P

I would say very complex tools are one way to differentiate ourselves

card_zero11• 11 months ago

We're also unique for worrying about our arrogance, and about the future of other species, and we seem to have a unique urge to spin nebulous arguments for animal rights out of any wisp of an idea.

N_Lens• 11 months ago

Exceptionalism seems to be a phase in our developmental journey, and a feature of certain stages of conscious development. For example, in Chinese, China is called “the middle kingdom”, with the characters 中国. You can see that the first character is “middle” (box with a line through the middle). This is also an example of exceptionalism because the underlying meaning is that China is the Central kingdom, much like people believed Earth to be the center of the Universe in the past.

Similarly, the American philosophy of “manifest destiny” (ugly as it is), also carries that same scent of exceptionalism. And so does the “divine right of Kings” from our history. Modern prosperity gospel exploits those same flaws in our cognitive make-up.

In contemporary times we see these philosophies as egocentric and perhaps outdated. But just like children pass through very egocentric stages (well some never grow past that), so too does collective human consciousness evolve past exceptionalism and towards maturity and humility.

Espressosaurus• 11 months ago

It’s a nice idea, but evidence needed. We’re still plains apes underneath it all, and that has implications about our ability to plan long term, cooperate in groups larger than 1000, and especially cooperate with groups that are not part of what we perceive to be our in-group.

As witnessed by worldwide developments over the last 15 years.

Or all of human history if I’m taking a broader scope.

ljlolel8• 11 months ago

Maybe after AI there won’t be need more than 1000 people on the planet

energy1232• 11 months ago

We are a nasty, self-centered species on a biological level. You can patch that with prosperity and culture, but these things are impermanent and subject to regression, so it's not a durable solution. The only durable solution is altering the biology, but that itself is not without significant risk.

russelldjimmy2• 11 months ago

Thanks for sharing this perspective. It’s given me something to think about.

card_zero11• 11 months ago

Specify what.

rz2k• 11 months ago

I often read the top comment to Hacker News articles believing they are unlikely to be a heuristic response. That means reading each sentence, digesting it, and thinking through everything carefully.

I'm confused by this one, because I am missing original thought. It sounds more like a collection of response patterns related to how various targets are supposed to be assessed in value.

LoganDark• 11 months ago

I'm confused by this one, because I am missing original thought. It sounds more like a collection of response patterns related to how various targets are supposed to be assessed in value.

I feel like the comment is meant to propose that exceptionalism is like a collective phase, by pointing out a bunch of places where exceptionalism has appeared historically.

satvikpendem• 11 months ago

HN's comment sorting algorithm means the top comment changes often, so I don't think it's worth it to do as your first paragraph states.

card_zero11• 11 months ago

Those are all examples of people looking down on other people.

To describe humans as exceptionalist, you must claim "animals are people too", but you didn't say that part. Or perhaps "rocks are people too", that would also work, but we don't tend to anthropomorphise rocks because they don't have faces. Or maybe "LLMs are people too". Whatever the claim is, it's an extraordinary claim, and yet you've chosen to present it in the form of a patronising telling off as if it was a foregone conclusion.

frotaur2• 11 months ago

There is a philosophical/probabilistic argument that explains why 'rocks are people too' holds less weight than 'pigs are people too'.

We cannot be sure pigs feel anything or have qualia, but from comparison to humans, and let's say, human babies, they at least exhibit the exteriorities of e.g. feeling pain, fear. So, I would assign a non-negligible probability that they do, in fact, have qualia and can feel pain.

Scale that up to a billion farmed pigs, the expected suffering inflicted is huge. Now yes, 'Pascal's wager' and so on, but for rocks, the argument does not work as well.

If you claim for example that rocks suffer when you walk on them, I can claim an equally substantiatex claim that rocks feel sublime extasy as you walk on them. As it stands, we don't have much reason to believe one more than the other, and they cancel out.

All that to say that you don't need to be certain that 'pigs are people too' for its consequences to be seriously considered. And each argument for why you consider pigs to not be people, ask yourself whether it is equally applicable to human babies.

Geee• 11 months ago

Religions show this anthropocentrism extremely well. In Abrahamic religions there's supposedly God whose sole purpose of existence is to be there to guide and save humans. How does that make sense? Doesn't he have anything else to do? Why would he care?

We are like vibe code to him. I think it's quite narcissist to think that there's an omnipotent being who cares about us, and values us as the next best thing since himself, worth of saving after death. Which is a ridiculous, but nevertheless quite a natural delusion for humans, because we are human.

I'm just saying that religions would be more realistic if God had some other purpose and humans are a side effect of that, or maybe just a hobby. The anthropocentric perspective is a dead giveaway that God is a human hallucination.

naveensundar• 11 months ago

Eagles see a lot better than we do. Sea sponges live much longer. Dolphins are really good at echolocation; people are generally really bad at it. And yet we keep proclaiming how special we are. As Webb puts it, “Hamlet got one thing right: we’re a piece of work.

Oh yeah? But which one of those species is writing a book challenging their own exceptionalism.

xeonmc2• 11 months ago

    For instance, on the planet Earth, man had always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much -- the wheel, New York, wars and so on -- whilst all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. 
    But conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more intelligent than man -- for precisely the same reasons.

    - The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

account428• 11 months ago

Yes, the ability to conceptualize fictional worlds is a great example of human excellence.

keiferski3• 11 months ago

I understand the popularity of these kinds of theses, and I definitely support better treatment of animals.

But in general I think this is also reflective of a negative trend in Western culture, which is something like a collapse of the “divine potential” of man. I don’t mean it in the literal religious sense (although that’s where it came from), but in the sense that many people increasingly see themselves as just evolved apes, not as creative beings with limitless potential. There are many reasons for this cultural trend (evolution, secularism and the collapse of religion as a foundation for our idea of self), and so on.

The key, to me, is in understanding that this “evolved ape” narrative is a fundamentally a narrative. What’s needed is a new story that factors in these scientifically true facts of evolution etc. but isn’t so flat and unimaginative in placing them into an arch-narrative.

It probably needs to start with a shift from essence to process as foundational. In other words, the deflationary account of humanity sees itself as “just an evolved ape” because we categorize things as if they were unchanging, static entities. A shift to a process-oriented idea means that value can grow in complexity and develop over time, and so therefore there isn’t anything deflationary about being descended from microscopic organisms.

It reminds me of philosopher Feuerbach’s ideas on God, which are essentially that humanity has externalized its own qualities and greatness into an abstract being, and become estranged from our own potential.

qwerty59• 11 months ago

Well put

exe3410• 11 months ago

Have you read any Carl Sagan? I'd say most of his texts put humans on a pedestal of responsibility, rather than admiration.

card_zero11• 11 months ago

The "pale blue dot" is really irritating too. He thinks we need to learn a lesson in humility because we're physically small. Makes no sense.

ceejayoz4• 11 months ago

many people increasingly see themselves as just evolved apes, not as creative beings with limitless potential

I mean, we are. Other apes also have creative potential. I'm probably better at it than most of them are, but they're probably better than me at climbing trees.

keiferski3• 11 months ago

You missed my point, entirely…

Humans are considered “evolved apes” because of our (culturally defined) system of categorization. Humans are just as related to every other species (itself a word that implies a static entity that actually isn’t) in our ancestry. It also isn’t really accurate to claim a microorganism ancestor of humans is some kind of proto-ape, or proto-human.

The point is that process is more accurate as a label. The choice of focusing on apes is a cultural one, not something inherent to the structure of biological reality.

account428• 11 months ago

Yet you can cut down those trees to build housing more suited to you or plant new ones which requires long-term planning. If climbing trees was important to us we'd build machines to do it better than any ape that ever lived. That's human exceptionalism. It's why humans have conquered the globe while apes live in the space we let them.

narrator• 11 months ago

Have a kid and tell me it's just the same as having a dog or a cat.

People can say random strangers are no better than animals no big deal, but random strangers have been getting little respect and the bad end of the deal for quite a while. It's different when it's someone you actually care about.

hereme8883• 11 months ago

Humans developed methods to empirically study the best ways for consoling bereaved mothers, and develop statistically-guided time-frames for normal vs. pathologic grieving periods. Then we use functional MRI imaging to study if monkeys undergo similar brain-signaling patterns (previously academically theorized to be similar, based on other research studies), decoded by advanced software, powered by advanced chips, powered by nuclear power plants. The report is curated by artificial intelligence, and handed by a robot to the human. That's human exceptionalism.

darkwater• 11 months ago

Yes, but it also just could be that we are at a more "advanced" stage but given enough time some other species has the potential to do the same.

self_awareness5• 11 months ago

All you've written is important only to humans. Other species don't give an F about MRI. So if you value your humanism based on traits important only to humans, then it's about egocentrism, not exceptionalism.

account428• 11 months ago

You don't think other species would value the ability to diagnose and treat internal body conditions if they could conceive of the concept?

dijit2• 11 months ago

what you say is true, but I think we become a bit too optimistic about our own individual exceptionality.

Many people forget the animals feel emotions very much the same as us, that they act and feel very much like us, and what separates is our ability to work together- and specialise, our individual intelligence is not terribly far away - but we have specialised in education so we’ve optimised our minds to work in a collective society and to specialise in certain trade craft.

we think of animals as being “dumb” and we get surprised when they show signs of intelligence.

- sent from my iPhone, which I can’t build a single component of; using software I can’t write, using electricity I can’t generate, while sitting on a sofa I can’t manufacture in an apartment I can’t build.

moi2388• 11 months ago

As long as you’re not chewing your couch and barking at your phone, I still think you’ve got the dogs beat

Tarq0n• 11 months ago

Animals have emotions, but jumping to their qualia being the same as ours seems unjustified.

bmitc5• 11 months ago

All of that is predicated on our technology, which does not make us inherently exceptional.

account428• 11 months ago

Where do you think that technology came from then?

bryanrasmussen• 11 months ago

in short human exceptionalism became clear about 300 years ago, and has been becoming more clear with each succeeding year?

If so that is a relatively recent demonstration of exceptionalism. Given the long timeline of human existence it could even be argued that it is accidental that this proof of exceptionalism developed among the humans and not among some other species.

I actually believe in human exceptionalism, in that many of the features spread around various species are all found highly developed in the human, but really that is an argument for all species exceptionalism. There are very few species that do not some collection of interlocked traits that make them exceptional in some way, it just happens that our exceptionalism is one that allows for triumphalism at the same time.

hereme8883• 11 months ago

I'm actually amazed at what people accomplished thousands of years ago, given their resources and stage of development. From architecture and urban planning, to tool-making, to philosophy, to math, etc. I don't see them as less exceptional at all.

scott_w8• 11 months ago

I have a number of issues with your statement.

Firstly, most humans who ever lived didn't do those things. Are they not exceptional? Are they lesser in some form? Did human exceptionalism only start when we invented computers or science? I assure you, many prior civilisations saw humans above animals (source: The Bible), yet hadn't done the things on your list.

Secondly, you listed outcomes. These are value judgements. As the article points out, humans did those things but we can't do basic things like smell water from miles away or see internal organs by just clicking. Animals don't value LLMs or mathematics, in fact many humans don't!

The challenges to human exceptionalism aren't based on outcomes (because that's subjective) but tries look at what makes humans unique in a way that can't be replicated in any form. This has to be more than "we're better at X" or "we can combine X and Y to achieve Z" because, unless trait X or Y only exist in humans, then another species could conceivably replicate it given enough time for evolution.

So problem solving wouldn't make us exceptional because we see it in other species. Language might but we do see rudimentary communication in other animals like corvids and cephalopods so perhaps humans just hyper-specialised in that. Hell, scientists have observed orca pods being unable to communicate across regions, hinting that there is a form of language.

Just being better at these traits doesn't suffice because there are plenty of things other animals are better than humans at. We don't consider that exceptional in the same way.

griffzhowl4• 11 months ago

I didn't interpret GP as trying to give necessary and sufficient conditions for human exceptionalism. I think it's just supposed to be a (perhaps) humorous and ironic example of a way in which humans are exceptional. So yes it's an extreme example because it references the whole of modern science and technology, but it also brings out the irony: the paper challenging human exceptionalism is dependent on this whole network of scientific and technological development which is as far as we know unique to humans

tovej2• 11 months ago

The human biomass and its byproducts do grow at an exceptional rate, that's true, we are exceptional. But being exceptional in one way should not be mistaken for being supreme or better, which I feel like a lot of commenters are suggesting.

This growth is clearly unsustainable, and the bubble, so to speak, will eventually pop. Other species have managed to survive for an exceptional time, e.g. the horseshoe crab, or most species of moss. There are species whose individuals might be older than human civilization, like the glass sponge. There are species that will survive in extreme conditions where humans would perish, such as tardigrades. Are we better than them?

Another point: evolution has caused living beings to reach equilibria where the whole system can thrive, where each species has a role. These systems have reached self-regulating states, where e.g. an overpopulation of predators will be cut down due to an absence of prey during the next generation.

Is human society better than that? Because humans are destroying this balance through unprecedented growth, which these systems cannot respond to. Our growth is not only unsustainable from the point of view of human survival, but unsustainable from the point of view of the earths ecological systems as a whole.

ValveFan6969• 11 months ago

"A new book challenges human exceptionalism" I wonder if there's any non-human prints available...

arkmm• 11 months ago

Looking forward to reading corroborating essays from other non-human species.

dang6• 11 months ago

"Don't be snarky."

"Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something."

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

card_zero11• 11 months ago

Let me rescue it, then. It's a valid point that other species don't have literature. It shows that they don't have ideas. If they did, it would be really obviously evident. Instead we have to look hard for traces of memetic transmission of idea-like behaviours involving sticks and leaves, and rocks and shells, and calls and signs. These memes don't go anywhere, and the animals aren't creative. If they develop, it's by accident.

roarcher2• 11 months ago

The article's premise is "some animals are better at specific things than humans, therefore humans are not exceptional", or stated differently, "humans are only exceptional if they're the best at literally everything".

It seems obvious to me that this is a fairly useless definition of "exceptional" that would not be accepted in any context other than an ideological one.

Yes, HN is better without shallow dismissals. Perhaps we should extend that idea to shallow articles as well.

miramba• 11 months ago

One man’s snarkyness is another man‘s critical and teaching comment.

bee_rider3• 11 months ago

Humanity is obviously an exceptional species. We’ve launched 100% of the spaceships. Only 4% of the mammals on Earth are not either humans, or one of our domesticated species. We’re changing the climate.

I get the noble sentiment of wanting re-contextualize things to be less human-centric. But, for better or worse, we’ve taken control of the planet. It is our responsibility to take care of it. And if we do manage to, we’ll do so because the alternative is human suffering or extinction.

mannyv• 11 months ago

Well humans have killed or enslaved 98% of the other species on the planet, so yes humans are exceptional.

theonething2• 11 months ago

And other species have killed countless humans, so in the way you're framing it, no humans are not.

self_awareness5• 11 months ago

I think the number of chickens killed last year could be higher than the number of humans killed since 0 A.D. by an animal.

bamboozled2• 11 months ago

and viruses, bacteria etc.

account428• 11 months ago

"Well you might have won 99.99999999% times but I one once so let's call it a draw."

joduplessis• 11 months ago

These sorts of (sorry to say, but) dumb articles (+ books) I don't expect to see on HN.

martindbp2• 11 months ago

Humans bad. I think it's an ideological off-shoot from environmentalism. If you recognize that humans are the cause of environmental issues then we are the problem. If we are the problem, then we should try to discredit our specialness so that we can motivate there being fewer of us (anti-natalism).

theonething2• 11 months ago

It's such a tired trope.

ragazzina2• 11 months ago

It's the opposite. "Human special" is an ideological off-shoot from religion and fear of dying. From a scientific point of view, humans are not special in any sense. We are a primate species that evolved through natural selection, just like every other organism.

plastic-enjoyer• 11 months ago

You see this stuff everyday here in the form of AI hype. The whole ideology behind the powers that drive AI is that humans are dumb and inefficient and need to be replaced by artificial intelligence as the next stage in human evolution.

fleischhauf• 11 months ago

from an intelligence perspective the human brain is ultra efficient

lan321• 11 months ago

That's kind of the negative take. The positive take is that work should be automated whenever possible. The endgame is having everyone enjoy life and only working when we want the 120-inch instead of the 90-inch TV, or enjoy working.

It's not that simple due to power imbalances with automation and the eternal pursuit of better living standards, but that's kind of the goal. The world chooching away by itself like a Factorio map and people purely consuming.

bgwalter• 11 months ago

"Humans aren't special" is the current "AI" booster hype. It allows for stealing copyrighted content, devaluing human employees and postulating rights for non-existing AGIs.

The original article is of course by a primatologist, but in the "AI" context it is useful as agitprop.

dang6• 11 months ago

"Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something."

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

cladopa• 11 months ago

"[...]unethical behavior as unethical.[...]for example, you live in a nation in which corruption is open and rampant, you might not be much agitated when you learn that your neighbors cheat on their taxes."

When you live in a country where routinely public servants steal over 50% of public money like Russia or Ukraine, Cuba, Venezuela, with oligarchs raking billions(from your money), it is not unethical to protect your money and not let them steal your work.

I had family members that protected their money from Argentinian Government years ago. Everybody did that there. They lost part of their savings(20% or so) but had they not made illegal things like not reporting their savings to the Government, the Government would have taken more than 99% of their savings by inflation.

In some places in the world, like South Africa, the Government is the one with criminal behaviour. Imagine you wanted to protect your money from Hitler after Austrian (illegal)occupation. They occupy your land by force, they kill rebels and change the law in order to confiscate asserts from nationalists or jews and use the money to invade new territories and propaganda. Not following the law is the ethical thing there.

foxglacier2• 11 months ago

I only got half way through but it didn't get to our general purpose intelligence which trumps pretty much everything else. Most of the greater capabilities other species have, humans can do better using technology which we made for our own use so it's kind of an extension of ourselves.

Even in pre-historic times, humans were herding prey to kill using earthworks, for example. We can also live in cold climates by wearing clothes and building houses and fires, as well as hot climates by not doing those things. We can build defenses against predators. We've been using technology to enhance our abilities since forever. That's exceptional. No ape poking a stick into a hole comes anywhere close to that.

I don't care that eagles can see better than humans. A camera can see better than an eagle and a plane can fly better than an eagle but we don't say that cameras or planes are anywhere close to being comparable to human life. Those abilities are easy ones. Hell even a rock can live longer than a sea sponge, and humans are obviously exceptional compared to rocks.

mettamage4• 11 months ago

We would be able to challenge human exceptionalism way more effectively if we could fully decode the languages of other species. The first thing we'd notice is:

1. language features we have and they don't understand

2. language features we both have

3. language features they have and we don't understand

Probably in that order.

Then it's just a question of gathering a couple of different species that are seemingly intelligent. Such as: corvids, octopuses, whales, etc. And see if the species can be reasoned with. If so, then you can set up schools where you can train them on human things and vice versa. Eventually you can form interspecies groups and really test the hell out of things.

Doing it that way will really challenge human exceptionalism, as well as the exceptionalism of that particular species.

I know it sounds a bit far off, but I figured that we might be able to get there with AI. I mean, we're getting better and better at giving machines tons and tons of data, and it somehow makes some sense of it.

So far, I think it's not necessarily the human species that is exceptional. It's the revolutionary periods it went through in order to become more exceptional hunters, so we could dominate and control the world in the way we want to. Things such as: discovery of fire, agriculture (+ creating defensive settlements) and antibiotics. We couldn't kill bacteria for a long time. We still have trouble with viruses and are getting into trouble with bacteria again. Could dolphins or whales have done it too, if they were land creatures?

3170702• 11 months ago

It doesn't help that the main conclusion of over 100 years of this kind of animal language research, is that -- and I quote -- "animals don't have language" [0]

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_ape_language

mettamage4• 11 months ago

The most charitable viewpoint I can give is: that can be true or that can be false. Time will tell.

If it's true, then we are exceptional but how can we truly know at this point? I mean, Michael the Gorilla told us about what poachers did [1].

If it isn't true, then it shows how in the prevailing consensus we are still too arrogant. In that case, we don't understand that well what sets us apart and what doesn't.

It will probably be a nuanced discussion either way regardless of what the truth is probably due to the definition of language. But in this particular case I'd want to characterize it: some way of communicating that is about as effective as whatever it is that humans do, when they speak out loud.

Also, when you look nowadays at some of the dog/cat videos and they press those buttons, they clearly are capable of communicating something. I remember one dog inventing a word for ambulance given the words he/she knew. Ah, found it! [2]

There's clearly a lot more research to be done here. I hope AI can accelerate it. I know AI is a tricky business, but one can hope.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DXKsPqQ0Ycc&ab_channel=kokof...

[2] https://www.youtube.com/shorts/a93PWudceKk

CMCDragonkai• 11 months ago

Is language still unique to humans given the rise of LLMs lol!

chongli• 11 months ago

This is the conclusion of linguists. Linguists’ definition of language necessarily includes a productive grammar. It’s not enough to be capable of uttering from a long list of sounds or signs. To have language we must be able to regularly construct novel and unique communications composed of strings of symbols governed by grammatical rules.

All animals that we’ve studied — including great apes we’ve attempted to teach sign language — have so far failed to demonstrate the acquisition of grammar. This means the number of unique communications they can express is exactly limited to the number of utterances they know.

account428• 11 months ago

Ok, but why do you expect us humans to be the ones to do all of this study if you don't already recognize that we are exceptional?

mettamage4• 11 months ago

Why study anything? So far I've found the broad strokes to be, because of:

1. Satisfying curiosity / because it's fun

2. To build new technology

By virtue of that, my stance on whether I think we are or aren't exceptional is irrelevant.

I don't have any hope that any of this will be researched thoroughly enough in my lifetime though.

blamestross• 11 months ago

Biological autoencoders "go brrrr" and use every side-channel available.

booleandilemma• 11 months ago

But we are exceptional. No other animal has developed technology to leave earth. No other animal would have the hope of defending our planet against a threat from space, like an asteroid. We need to stop denying our exceptionalism and take responsibility for it.

NotGMan• 11 months ago

Perhaps the author would do best to stop using all of this human exceptionalist inventions such as sevage, medicine and food production and she should go live out in the forest in a hut made from dirt.

frotaur2• 11 months ago

https://imgur.com/gallery/we-should-improve-society-meme-aQr...

gizajob• 11 months ago

Peter Singer was writing popular ethics books concerning exactly this kind of specieism (or speciesism) some 50 years ago.

Many such cases: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speciesism

adidoit• 11 months ago

As AI tools get more powerful, unfortunately, we will see a lot more articles like this because our cognitive superiority is ostensibly being challenged.

The psychological aspects of being cognitively surpassed by silicon on many dimensions are already happening.

Demis Hassabis said there's a paucity of philosophers who are helping us understand this moment. I think he's absolutely right. Hopefully, we can come out with a more human-centric viewpoint soon.

bamboozled2• 11 months ago

The truth is, all these epic machines were made by humans, I'm not sure if AI means the end of our species or whatever, but ultimately, they're our children and the product of all our efforts, so...idk what to think about that?

swah• 11 months ago

Hope those machines are creationists and remember us..

darwi• 11 months ago

“Behold, the man has become like one of us in knowing good and evil. Now, lest he reach out his hand and take also of the tree of life and eat, and live forever—”

This “One of US” reference was quite strong in the iRobot movie :)

flanked-evergl• 11 months ago

Imagine my tax money is paying for this take. Academia is a scam.

nkrisc7• 11 months ago

They’re correct that they are many measures by which humans are not exceptional. Quite a lot, actually. But there clearly is something different about humans, something exceptional. Is it language? Is it our capacity for thought? I think what it actually is that makes us different is absolutely up for debate, and even traits we thought were exclusive to humans may not be.

So I’m not sure we know exactly what it is that makes us different, but we clearly are in some way. There is no other animal that has developed anything close to the capabilities we have.

Would any other species on earth, in a billion years, ever develop the ability to travel to other celestial bodies, let alone even know what they are?

account428• 11 months ago

Even those other measures at which other animals excel are largely done better by humans once you include the use of technology.

ForHackernews3• 11 months ago

Would any other species on earth, in a billion years, ever develop the ability to travel to other celestial bodies, let alone even know what they are?

A billion years is a very very long time. Humans and chimps diverged about 7-8 million years ago. Given no human competitors and a billion years there's no reason some other great apes or raccoons or something couldn't develop a space programme.

nkrisc7• 11 months ago

Life has existed for billions of years before humans, why hasn’t it happened before us? Perhaps you’re right, and that’s equally interesting.

xelxebar2• 11 months ago

Calling something as exceptional or special entails a value judgement; it's not particularly surprising, IMHO, for the things humans care about to align around human traits. Heck, even the act of making judgements about human exceptionalism is an arguably human-specific trait.

Consider, horseshoe crabs are undeniably the best at doing all things horseshoe crab. No other animal comes close to behaving like a horseshoe crab!

IMHO, the almost tautological nature of this judgement is what makes it uninteresting at best and actively harmful at worst. It's just a stone's throw away from individual, group, and racial exceptionalism.

nkrisc7• 11 months ago

Consider, horseshoe crabs are undeniably the best at doing all things horseshoe crab. No other animal comes close to behaving like a horseshoe crab!

Yes, you could say this about any animal. It does not explain why, apparently, no other animal in the entire history of the Earth has done anything comparable to what humans have done.

Horseshoe crabs are good at horseshoe crab things, but convergent evolution has in the past created similar animals that are roughly equally good at doing horseshoe crab things.

There have been and are many animals good at doing horse-ish things. Many good at wolf-ish things. Even flight has evolved independently several times among both vertebrates and invertebrates (and while we can’t fly on our own, we regularly fly faster than any flying animal). We’re petty weak among all animals and yet the heaviest things that have been moved have been moved by humans. We’re pretty slow runners and yet we hold pretty much any speed record you can think of.

Why hasn’t there been any other animals similar to humans in our abilities? Why hasn’t spaceflight evolved several times? Why hasn’t metallurgy? Particle physics? Why can’t any other animal understand the basic chemistry of the universe as we do?

hearsathought• 11 months ago

Calling something as exceptional or special entails a value judgement;

Calling something exceptional or special is generally an objective statement based on observed facts. Now whether something exceptional deserves special treatment is a value judgment.

Consider, horseshoe crabs are undeniably the best at doing all things horseshoe crab. No other animal comes close to behaving like a horseshoe crab!

What are their exceptional traits? For example, we can say peregrine falcons or cheetahs are exceptionally fast. Or blue whales are exceptionally large. Saying horseshoe crabs are horseshoe crabs isn't saying much.

IMHO, the almost tautological nature

You conjured up a false tautological argument.

It's just a stone's throw away from individual, group, and racial exceptionalism.

But such exceptionalisms exist individually and group-wise/racially. We know that lebron james is exceptionally good at basketball. We know that tibetans do exceptionally well at high altitudes. Those are objective facts. Now whether they deserve special treatment is a value judgment.

DontchaKnowit• 11 months ago

Anything a horseshoe crab can do, I can do better

squishington• 11 months ago

Korzybski claimed that the most significant difference was the human ability of time-binding.

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Cbqr9NcFDtjvM6zC4/time-bindi...

irickt• 11 months ago

Jacob Bronowski expressed this with a more fundamental hypothesis. Humans have "a sense of the future" whereas other animals have very limited foresight.

troyvit• 11 months ago

Murder. We're the best at murder.

sam_lowry_2• 11 months ago

A quote:

Bernard Lowe: So what's the difference between my pain and yours?

Dr. Robert Ford: Between you and me? This was the very question that consumed Arnold, filled him with guilt, eventually drove him mad. The answer always seemed obvious to me. There is no threshold that makes us greater than the sum of our parts, no inflection point at which we become fully alive. We can't define consciousness because consciousness does not exist. Humans fancy that there's something special about the way we perceive the world, and yet we live in loops as tight and as closed as the hosts do, seldom questioning our choices, content, for the most part, to be told what to do next. No, my friend, you're not missing anything at all.

from https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4458814/characters/nm0942482 and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F7TR50Mnwpw

bee_rider3• 11 months ago

It is such a bummer that this show fell apart. Fell apart so hard you can’t even get the first perfect season on streaming anymore.

sam_lowry_2• 11 months ago

Streaming? What is streaming? A tracker feature that downloads sequentially?

francisofascii• 11 months ago

It's true. Bonobos and even Orcas are capable of landing on the moon, but they decided they have better things to do. /s

nhlx2• 11 months ago

What makes their pain matter less?

wolvesechoes• 11 months ago

We can end all life on this planet. Even if scary, it is quite exceptional.

mritterhoff• 11 months ago

All human life, sure. Maybe even all mammalian life. But ecosystems around hydrothermal vents won't care about nuclear winter, if that's your scenario.

lazide• 11 months ago

Says the only species able to self-flaggelate and write books about it. /s

Or as someone summed up recent American exceptionalism - Americans will come to your country, blow it up and mangle it to an incredible degree, then make 10+ blockbuster movies about how it made their soldiers sad.

I’d like to add of course - while overlaying the scenes in your country with a sepia tone.

fluidtime• 11 months ago

All life is pattern recognition at some level. Intelligence is nothing more than a recursive folding of patterns. The better the pattern recognition, the more intelligent they appear.

johnea• 11 months ago

That's all pretty impressive, for a bunch of monkeys...

Dance, Monkey, Dance:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xLNA7MRdjlw

The monkeys feel alone, all 6 billion of them...

The monkeys shave the hair off of their bodies in blatant denial of their true monkey nature...

The monkeys don't want to be monkeys, they want to be something else, but they're not...

Ernest Cline at his peak...

poulpy123• 11 months ago

If we are not special, where are the other animal books explaining their species is not special ?

We’re Not So Special: A new book challenges human exceptionalism

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