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Comment by lamacase | Hacker News Reader

Comments in this thread seem kind of... defensive? Are people really worried that this is going to be extrapolated to "Dolphins are universally and forever smarter than humans" or what?

I'm not sure what to make of the "so what?" comments. Would this discovery only be interestinging if it validated hitchhiker's guide?

I think this is interesting regardless of whether it upends the "intellectual hierarchy" of species.

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Development speeds in the animal kingdom aren’t really an apples to apples comparisons. Deer calves run before, chimp babies climb before human babies.

If you’re comparing cars for a race, you need to check both acceleration and top speed. Just calling out one of them is not helpful.

You completely miss the point lamacase is making. He finds it strange that people get defensive about the article, just like you did. He isn't saying that dolphins are smarter than humans.

And if they prove smarter than humans, the first thing I'd think of would be: how do I communicate with them??

It's a defensive reaction to terrible overblown pop science reporting. Not that it's always the right reaction...

To be honest it indicates a personality that is based around intellect, intelligence and science™ as the main pillars of psychological stability. Quite often it is a defensive reaction to a religious upbringing as a child.

I was just talking to my girlfriend about this. I was brought up religious as a child. Going to college was my first experience around a diverse set of religious beliefs, including many non-believers. It only took a few months for me to lose my faith, which came as a shock to me, because I had felt so sure about my world view only a short time before. So I lost my confidence in feelings of confidence alongside my faith. I replaced them both with a very deliberate set of beliefs in things like science and logic.

Though I didn’t exactly loose my faith, I can relate. I am not sure about anything, really. I was exposed earlier in life to science and non-believers.

Same with me and I wish I would have been exposed to philosophy earlier in my life. Science provides us with the tools to denounce certain religious facts but it can not give us our confidence back. This also explains the rise of pseudo-intellectuals (people publicly arguing outside of their field of expertise) who are filling this gap with nonsense.

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