Even the aspect of tool making is only practicable for a very limited number of species - mostly Hominids. A majority of animals can not grab tools like we do. At most they'd be able to use a stick like the Caledonian crows do. I feel like animals that can use tools in a sensible matter already do so - all other animals come with their tools attached to their bodies - claws, teeth, physical prowess. — Hermeticus

A tool transcends the physical limits of an organism, allows an organism to do what their bodies can't. For example, a tiger can use material at its disposal to do more than what its claws, fangs, and strength permit, that would be tool-making.

Direct manipulation of genome is just the latest technology used in the process of adapting other species for our needs - and we are already using it (all those GMOs, you know). But I don't get your point. Why are you drawing the line at this technology and not, say, at irradiating seeds to induce more random mutations? Or the good old-fashioned selection and hybridization? Is there some red line that is only crossed with "direct manipulation of the genome"? — SophistiCat

Good point! There's no difference between breeding dogs and hybridizing an elephant with a mammoth except that mammoths have been out of circulation for the past 20-30 thousand years; it's almost like necrophilia and the offspring, half-dead & half-alive; a good storyline for a horror novel/movie. That's the problem!

What life-lessons could they possibly learn from us? — Hermeticus

Tool making? Attacking/defending/foraging/etc. can be vastly improved with tools. Granted that some animals know how to fashion tools, Caledonian crows are capable of meta-tools, but none have learned it from humans. In fact, it's the opposite; as you said,

We have very little to teach to animals but a lot to learn from them. — Hermeticus

Mother Nature is our best teacher! Most of our technology, Mother Nature got there first.

As for the role of early humans in driving the mammoths to extinction - is that a theory? I thought natural climate change was a part of it. Admit that I don't know, though. — Wayfarer

A bit of both some say. Double the threat, twice as likely to die out.

All this reminds me of dear ol' Jesus - resurrection! I hope when this mammoth is finally reanimated, they name him Jesus; it is, in a sense, the Jesus of mammoths.

Ok but my point still stands! No animal has been documented to have learned life-lessons from a human.

I'm reading Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari and he mentions a theory that language was used primarily for gossip by early humans - it served the specific purpose of letting individuals know who in the tribe were reliable, trustworthy, friendship/boyfriend material, etc. and who were not. Language, this theory implies, strengthened the social bonds; not implausible as the one and only advantage we had over other animals was to be found in our social nature and not as individuals.

Also, just a few days ago, I watched Richard Dawkins interview Steven Pinker and another interesting theory was touched upon - language like musical inclination could be nothing more than a byproduct of something more important to survival and that language proved to be useful was simply an accident. What that something is, I have no idea; perhaps something to do with the placement and anatomy of our trachea, epiglottis, esophagus, etc. (shooting in the dark here).

It bears mentioning that language isn't actually an exclusively human ability - ants use chemical language, poisonous rain forest frogs use light to signal their toxicity (they're colorful), birds sing to each other, dogs use scent, and so on.

but still, something about it seems sinister to me. Frankensteinian. — Wayfarer

More like The Island Of Dr. Moreau

The Island of Doctor Moreau is an 1896 science fiction novel by English author H. G. Wells (1866–1946). The text of the novel is the narration of Edward Prendick who is a shipwrecked man rescued by a passing boat. He is left on the island home of Doctor Moreau, a mad scientist who creates human-like hybrid beings from animals via vivisection. The novel deals with a number of philosophical themes, including pain and cruelty, moral responsibility, human identity, and human interference with nature. — Wikipedia

There's an underlying paradox in this:

1. We need to undo the damage done by humans (mammoths were allegedly hunted into oblivion by humans). Bring back the mammoths.

2. There's a good reason why the mammoths went extinct. Mother Nature knows best and she works through us as much as she does through climate, geography, other living organisms, etc. Don't bring back the mammoths.

3. Bring back the mammoths & Don't bring back the mammoths. [contradiction]

All I mean to say is, so long as we grasp the limited nature of our senses, presently 5 (sight, hearing, touch, taste, and smell), and also take into account the narrow band of the entire spectrum of sensations our sensory apparatus is tuned into, we can say nothing about ontology.

I have to say this prospect fills me with dread. I can't quite put my finger on why. I do recall about five years back, there was some discussion of re-animating an extinct hominid species, which I thought objectionable, on the grounds that this being would be brought into a world with which it had nothing in common and none of its kin, which would be a hellish experience, I would have thought. Plus it would be created without any way of being asked whether it would want to live in these circumstances.

I remember someone saying on this forum a few years back, that Craig Venter, who is one of the leaders in the field of genetic engineering, being asked if he could be accused of 'playing God'. 'We're not playing', he was said to have replied. — Wayfarer

From the Cambridge Dictionary

Speak for yourself: something you say to someone to say that the opinion that they have just expressed is not the same as your opinion

Example:
"We had a really boring trip."

"Speak for yourself! I had a wonderful time!"

Bringing long-extinct animals to life, in this case a mammoth and that too just a hybrid, is a wonderful achievement for science but, for better or worse, it's a gateway through which similar experiments can be conducted on humans themselves, not just archaic humans but even modern ones. Are we prepared for that I wonder?

Notwithstanding the slippery slope fallacy, I feel we have good reason to protest - Camel's Nose Story (Arabia)

The camel's nose is a metaphor for a situation where the permitting of a small, seemingly innocuous act will open the door for larger, clearly undesirable actions. — Wikipedia

No, that post I made is to clarify the point of this thread in general. To emphasize the argument. — Caldwell

:ok:

As for this project of bringing to life an extinct species, even if only a hybrid, it's a technology demonstration/proof of concept, giving us a taste of the future, what it can be like.

I remember someone saying on this forum a few years back, that Craig Venter, who is one of the leaders in the field of genetic engineering, being asked if he could be accused of 'playing God'. 'We're not playing', he was said to have replied. — Wayfarer

It was you who said it. Search your feelings Luke Wayfarer.

Church — CNN

Church?!! Oh, the irony!

That story about how great we are is so long engrained it has become truth. In our minds anyway. — James Riley

Well, all I can say is we are great, in some relative sense and also in being, as Yuval Noah Harari says in his book Sapiens, the planet's most prolific serial killer, but...not thaaaaat great!

Well, if you want to go that route, you'd probably want to say that these are natural phenomena as in the end, all processes are. Yes, the brain is the end point of it all, but that doesn't mean we should give much importance to phenomena which have been repeatedly shown not to be what people claim: things belonging to a different reality outside of nature. I don't think that's coherent.

At best you can say ghosts are like hallucinations. Which is fine. But I don't think these things "expand" our mental or sensible faculties, in fact, they fit into the ones we have.

Why stop at ghosts? We then need to grant literal existence to not only the Abrahamic God, but to Satan, the Flying Spaghetti monster and everything else. I think it muddles our ontology.

It would be more helpful then to develop an ontology of fictional entities and include all the characters of all the novels in the world, which are as real as ghosts. You can do that if you wish, but it would be an infinite task, just a list of all possible mental entities.

But these things don't add to the faculties we already have. — Manuel

How do you know ghosts and the like are fictional? What if you added a sense organ to the existing five and with that detected the presence of what people have been calling ghosts? What then?

As for muddling ontology, remember what can be detected with the senses has ontological import and if I can feel the presence of ghost-like entities, then these entities have ontolological significance, no?

First off, I don't treat criticism of science as adversarial i.e. pointing out the flaws of science is meant to be constructive rather than the destructive.

Secondly, as I explained earlier, science gets its street cred from how well it predicts the outcomes of phenomena, the degree of precision playing a major role. There's no arguing against a system of beliefs, here science, that can send a robotic probe to a distant planet like Mars successfully and that too many times in a row. The level of precision required to do that is, to my reckoning, mind-boggling, no?

A mechanistic view of the world subsumes precision by the way.

Well, that's the thing. Some suggestible people already (claim) to see ghosts, demons, angels, without any extra cognitive faculties. In fact, I suspect all of us did if you go far enough back in our history. — Manuel

Why are you dismissing the paranormal world, calling people who report encounters with it as "...suggestible people..."? My take on it is that, as I said, since all perceptions have, as their final destination, the brain, there may not be any need for additional/enhanced sense organs; the brain alone would suffice in detecting all things/phenomenon in the blind spot of our sensory apparatus.

Take radios and infrared cameras - they're products of the brain, no?

So I get your drift, but I'd be cautious. — Manuel

Right!

However, don't you think that just like having infrared receptors in your eyes can help us see in the dark, acquiring a novel receptor could open up the world of ghosts, poltergeists, demons, and angels to us? Just saying.

Another unwarranted assumption surrounds the words "need" and "want." Our homocentric view, our anthropomorphism, has us thinking they must need or want what we think they would want if they only knew as much as we do, and if they only knew they needed it. Hell, if they were smart they would be like us. :roll: We do it to each other all the time: "If only those people would be like us they wouldn't be the way they are." — James Riley

Another good point. Reminds me of the following example conversation that appears in the definition of the expression, "speak for yourself":

X: The movie was absolutely fantastic.
Y: Speak for yourself!

There's something terribly wrong about thinking for others - it impinges on their autonomy and also, makes yourself a benchmark for values, both signs of stupidity/hubris of the highest order.

You mentioned, in your previous post, that our ancestors most likely picked up useful hints and tips from animals. See below:

So how much more do those entities themselves have that the indigenous people learned from in the first place? — James Riley

What I find intriguing is the learning ability of humans. Our intelligence enables us to study animal behavior and then adapt their life-skills for our benefit. No other animal I know of does that, right?

I was thinking of how, no matter what the sense organ is, old/novel, the perception from it ultimately ends up in the brain and therein lies the rub - we can focus our energies on the brain itself and not the senses. My proposal though enters the territory of what science labels as woo-woo (nonsense), you know, ESP, parapsychology, paranormal, and so on.

Inform yourself better. They're actually perfectly ready to leave you behind. — baker

A bodhisattva who leaves (samsara) is not a bodhisattva.

no child left behind

I fail to see the relevance.

If we evolve aspects of our brain (or sense receptors) we could have more acute perceptions. As is the case of people who have 4 light cones instead of the traditional 3. — Manuel

:up: Interesting!

I think that goes to half of what I was saying. The other half is looking "the other direction" and investigating what "they" know that we don't know. We've lost a metric shit ton of institutional knowledge that indigenous people had of mineral, plants, animals, weather. So how much more do those entities themselves have that the indigenous people learned from in the first place? Dissecting an animal in a lab is only a part of it's story. Studying it in the wild is also merely a part, especially if we come to the study with our own inherent limitations. Becoming that animal is yet another step (hunting) but still only a part.

If the yogi on the mountain top doesn't come down and share the secret of life, it might be for the same reason animals don't spend a lot of time reaching out to us.

Anyway, we come to the table with our own limitations. We are interesting, but we're not all that and a bag of chips — James Riley

Aye! There's this misconception that knowledge is passed down from parents to children, ancestors to descendants in a perfect manner - completely and accurately - and that knowledge grows over time. However, as you kindly pointed out, much of the phronesis (practical wisdom) our ancestors had about plants, animals, nature's rhythms, so on, has been irretrievably lost. I wouldn't be wrong in saying that in some respects, a modern person knows less than a hunter-gatherer forebear. Something to think about I guess.

926
Can you tell, from that alone, whether this person is doing so willingly (free) /unwillingly (not free)? No! Therein lies the rub.
— TheMadFool
I can't always tell; but there is a difference between perception and reality. And that difference matters. E.g. the difference between freely accepting a marriage proposal, and marrying a robot that is programmed to say yes. — Samuel Lacrampe

Fair point but I was trying to point out that if you comply, your free will is meaningless, it doesn't matter whether you have it or not.

A belief system that tells you that everyone is equally qualified for the highest attainments is surely not the right one.

Buddhism has no "no child left behind" policy. — baker

One word, bodhisattva. I'm told their primary goal is the liberation of all sentient beings. As for "no child left behind" policy, never heard of it though it squares with the bodhisattva's mission.

Are you averring the case has not been made? — tim wood

Not in the format I gave, no.

Watch and be amazed! Niel deGrasse Tyson's take on animal and human intelligence.

I infer that you operate on the basis of out of sight, out of mind, and your eyes are closed. Warmth is moving north and has been for years. Gardeners note earlier planting times and longer growing seasons. Also the northern movement of the limits of the habitats of all kinds of animals and plants. And changes in rainfall. In short, greater and lesser changes in everything. An example, pond hockey through the 1960s, but not now. I'm pretty sure if you took your blinders off, you would astonish yourself at what you've overlooked. — tim wood

Thanks. I learned something today although I vaguely recall reading it somewhere. :up:

In my defense, the northward migration of plant species only evidences global warming but, climatologists have more work to do, proving that climate change is due to CO2 emissions from human activity. That's why I suggested that they need to do two things:

1. Explain the rise in earth temperatures with the greenhouse effect of (raised) CO2 levels.

2. Make a prediction of how temperatures will rise in (say) the next 10 or 20 years.

Yep, intelligence can be hard to define. I sometimes wonder if there are species, aliens perhaps, who deliberately/intentionally/purposefully gave up their intelligence and ceased attempting to climb up the IQ ladder because, this is where it gets interesting, they found out, paradoxically, it's smart to be stupid. That's why the Fermi Paradox [Silentium Universi/The Great Silence]

There is some evidence that the size of the average Sapiens brain has actually decreased since the age of foraging. surviving in that era required superb mental abilities from everyone. when agriculture and industry came along people could increasingly rely on the skills of others for survival, and new 'niches for imbeciles' were opened up. you could survive and pass your unremarkable genes to the next generation by working as a water carrier or an assembly-line worker. — Yuval Noah Harari (Sapiens)

A sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. — Arthur C. Clarke

A sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from nature. — Some Guy

I love this word! I have been using ‘accurate’, but found it far too scientific to describe this dynamic quality of balance and sufficiency in one’s perspective.

English language use demonstrates a reluctance to name the relative quality of an unaffected idea. Lagom cannot be qualified as a concept until its value/significance is determined in relation to the quality of affected experience. So we translate lagom as a relative value in idiomatic form: ‘just the right amount’ or ‘less is more’. But each of these idioms alone is insufficient to describe the relative quality that is lagom. — Possibility

You just described "lagom" in English!

Plus :point: lagom (Wiktonary). Fit the bill? Just what the doctor ordered? Perfect?

Where's the evidence for climate change? :chin:
— TheMadFool

Talk to any gardener. It's in your backyard, if you have one, and if you've paid any attention to it over years. — tim wood

I'm not sure how to parse your comment but I know some plant hobbyists, not exactly real gardeners, but I don't recall them complaining about the seasons. I'm curious, what did you have in mind?

Why should I do that? You are obviously not arguing in good faith. You are busy blindfolding yourself. — Olivier5

:monkey:

But there are dozens such models — Olivier5

Name some and do they make predictions, have these been verified?

The form of premise 1, as a conditional statement, is crucial to the validity of the conclusion, as what is used to determine the truth table. For example, if the premise was changed to a biconditional, the truth table would be different. — Metaphysician Undercover

Agreed!

Huxley having done a fair amount of experiments with psychedelics as well, perhaps his ulterior motive was simply to sell both governments and consumers on the idea to solve all their problems with drugs :D — Hermeticus

You never know what people are up to these days, just like it was in the past and will be in the future.

That is again simply not true that an error in prediction by a tenth of a degree will have "serious consequences" or "induce mass panic". You're just being silly — Olivier5

Straw man. I never mentioned the level of precision although it will matter to the quality of the prediction climatologists make and thus will also decide their credibility.

Come to think of it, I'm fairly confident that scientists should be able to create a CO2-greenhouse effect model in the lab and use it to forecast future global temperature trends. I don't know why they're so reluctant to do so. Smells fishy, don't you think?

Most certainly. Huxley was a great fan of Indian philosophy and published various articles on the Vedanta school.

Soma was a huge part of Indian culture. The earliest hymns of the Rigveda mentions it almost as often as the major deities of the time. In fact it was so significant to early Indian belief that the mixture itself was considered a deity and it's psychedelic nature likely went on to inspire much of the latter mythology.

I'm not sure if Soma really ought to be considered all bad in Brave New World either. It's a double-sided coin. Yes, it is used to control the masses. But on the other side, it's what makes that dystopian society bearable for the masses. — Hermeticus

In a way legitimizing drugs.

So scientists are not allowed to make mistakes — Olivier5

I would hope not. Their mistakes can have far-reaching effects, no? Induce mass panic for instance.

It doesn't match perfectly. — SoftEdgedWonder

I rest my case.

Does your anus perfectly match predictions made about its throughput, or doesn't it? If if it doesn't, should we believe in your anus? — Olivier5

Not funny but a good attempt. There's a thread :point: Is Climatology Science? and the condition that I stipulated - the predicted rise in temperatures based off of human-activity-related CO2 emissions should match the observed global warming - is basically a call to climatologists to make their case as scientific as possible, much like how real scientists conduct their business. People can be won over to their side with this simple step and, if they really want to clinch their argument, they should make observable forecasts regarding future temeperatures e.g. they could say, "another x billion metric tons of CO2 will enter the atmosphere from human activity in the next 5 years beginning 2021, expect the global temperature to rise by y degree celsius." We could then ready our thermometers and verify/falsify the claim. Simple.

Evidence: This year, a local supershower of rain stationary felt down in Germany, Belgium, and the Netherlands. These were predicted to occur only in about 20 years!
And look at the floods in the US this year. Or the forrest fires globally.
The polar ice is almost gone.
Average temperature has risen in a short time.
What more do I have to say? Is it just a coincidence? — SoftEdgedWonder

I'll only believe in man-induced climate change if the observed global warming (rising temperatures) perfectly matches that predicted based on human-activity-related CO2 emissions. — TheMadFool