[derg]

I don't necessarily completely disagree here, but I'm always thinking of the Douglas Adams quote in Hitchhiker's Guide on this:

"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."

[Aperocky]

Dolphins have a rough start, it's so hard to build anything in the ocean other than just have it biologically.

It's just so unfair. Just imagine if our brain is the same but we are fish and swim. How will civilization ever develop? Everything from bronze age up is pretty much impossible. That and we'd have no hands.

[zanny]

It's tool use and language that differentiate us. Other species have one but not both. Learning is much more efficient when communicated rather than done in an isolated vacuum and all the knowledge in the world is useless if you lack fine motor control manipulation to take advantage of it.

[RcouF1uZ4gsC]

But this type of reasoning went out the window, as soon as humans started killing dolphins in large numbers (see tuna nets), and the dolphins had no way to defend themselves or otherwise dissuade humans from doing that.

This is one of the big lessons in history. The civilizations that use their intelligence to make tools and weapons end up screwing civilizations that "muck about, having a good time".

[Eyas]

That's uncomfortably close to Eurocentric claims of superiority that point to their colonization and exploitation of other countries in the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth century.

I don't necessarily buy it. A pacifist civilization might be "dominated" by a violent civilization, but they might still choose death over becoming violent themselves.

[jmull]

Well, species success is measured in periods of time orders of magnitude larger than recorded human history.

It’s an open question whether our aggressive strategy will be successful past anything but the very short term. (Currently it’s not looking that good.)

[fao_]

Aha, so when an interstellar empire comes around and fucks up our planet -- if not outright just sending an asteroid our way, it's justified because we are of a lower technological level?

The humans and proto-humans of the past weren't 'stupid'. And even if they were comparatively, 'stupidity' isn't a justification for committing harmful actions, degrading, or otherwise treating the recipient as lesser. This sounds like a philosophy that encourages "well I'm going to hurt you and it must be right because you can't stop me or dissuade me".

[summitsummit]

what would be the next trump card above intelligence for survival/evolution/procreation/whatever the "goal" is?