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Comment by jillesvangurp | Hacker News Reader

Why is this controversial? If you buy into evolution (which one would assume is the case with an evolutionary anthropologist), then most of what we do and are did not appear out of the blue and probably existed or exists in some form or another in species that are close to us; including all sorts of aspects of our social behavior. So, not knowing this you would expect to find stuff like this with species like gorilla's rather than being surprised by it.

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Exactly, give it a few millennia, and some specie probably will end up like us in their own way.

We had to have bases for our current behaviors, and it's only logical we find it in other species.

I don't understand how people can imagine animals don't have feelings, thoughts, logic or a sense of existing. There is little in us that is so unique. It's like life on other planets, or additional dimensions we can't see. Yes we can't prove it now, but it would be disproving it that would really catch me by surprise given what we know now. The universe kinda like repeating patterns and continuity.

> Exactly, give it a few millennia, and some specie probably will end up like us in their own way.

I'm all for evolution, and I think animals have feelings and emotions and are smarter than they are often considered. But "they will end up like us" is highly unlikely as we know of no other such development in last few billion years.

Sure we do. Neanderthals look to have been far more sophisticated than previously thought, for example.

Neanderthals not only developed along the same evolutionary path as us... they're full blown homo sapiens. There's a high likelihood you have Neanderthal DNA yourself. That's not an example of something else being able to develop like us independently in 5,000 years.

If all humans were wiped out today, _maybe_ over _100,000 years to 1,000,000 years_ the great apes would be able to evolve into creatures as intelligent as modern humans. But if all apes were wiped out today, it wouldn't be surprising if Earth never saw another species go to the moon. Don't forget lots of species thrived for hundred of millions of years without leaving any trace approaching even simple tool making.

> Don't forget lots of species thrived for hundred of millions of years without leaving any trace approaching even simple tool making.

Apes are hardly the only tool makers, though.

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2016/aug/10/crow-that-be...

I think we're up to eight (or is it nine?) species now, including Neanderthals, if the latest pans out.

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/2019/04/new-speci...

https://www.ancienthistorylists.com/people/7-homo-species-cl...

That's not independent of us, it still happened once in billions years.

Conveniently ignoring "in their own way".

If their own way doesn't include civilization then it's not really comparable, is it?

While I completely agree with the point that evolutionists should not expect a sharp divide between the capabilities of humans and other animals, I think it is worth noting that it took something over half of the interval, in which complex life will be possible on Earth, for complex language to emerge. Of course, if humans disappear before we have eliminated all other large animals, its re-emergence could be quicker...

I wonder if there is space for only one human-level intelligent specie per world, or if it's a matter of circumstances.

Are there worlds where there are 2 or 3 radically different civilized species sharing the land ?

If we stopped killing everything and taking all the resources for ourselves, would we be able to witness the emergence of one in the next 5000 years ?

More interestingly, would we be able to actually speed up said emergence by providing stimuli to a select number of species to drive them to self-realization ?

> Are there worlds where there are 2 or 3 radically different civilized species sharing the land?

Extremely unlikely. We can barely manage to peacefully share the land with members of our own species. Can you really imagine homo sapiens making significant economic sacrifices in favor of a different species?

> If we stopped killing everything and taking all the resources for ourselves, would we be able to witness the emergence of one in the next 5000 years?

Almost certainly no. Other species are intelligent, but none of them have our innate ability to communicate using complex language. That is a biological trait that would almost certainly take a lot longer than 5000 years to reproduce.

Some primates can use a few signs from deaf language already, and combine them to make almost a sentence. The foundation seems there already. We also have no idea how much the dolphin language can convey. Your conclusion seems very definitive for a question that I meant very hypothetical and so many missing variables.

Yes, I'm well aware of the language abilities of other animals. (I'm a retired AI researcher with a Ph.D.) Animals are quite remarkable, but there is still an enormous gulf between them and us. A human child can learn any human language and form complex sentences well before age 2. Well before age 5 they can reason abstractly about cause and effect. No other animal gets close to that ability over their entire lifetime even with intense training.

What does being a retired AI researcher with a Ph.D. have anything to do with being aware of the language abilities of other animals?

It's something I studied. NLP is a sub-discipline of AI, and animal studies are used to inform NLP research. I'm not saying that this makes me right, only that my speculations are not completely uninformed.

>Cam you really imagine homo sapiens making significant economic sacrifices in favor of a different species?

Miaow?

Good point! :-) (I think in this case we may not be the superior intellect.)

I strongly suspect that cats know sudo for humans.

I wouldn't be surprised if whales or dolphins at some point in time had fairly evolved means of communication. They still might, but it's possible that killing off the majority of their population has significantly curtailed what ever culture they previously had. Just a speculation, there is a lot about alternative forms of communication and intelligence that we don't know.

A few hundred years wouldn't evolve a species out of the ability to use language. Language isn't cultural. If you take a dozen babies from different cultures/language communities, and cut off their tongues, and if their caregivers never speak to them, they will still find a way to use a pidgin language among themselves, because human language is innate.

Language is very much cultural, the instinct to communicate and decipher others utterances is what is inate. Otherwise one could automatically understand other languages without learning them.

Dolphins and whales are already communicating currently. But it's possible that what we are seeing now is a much simpler version of what existed previously, not to mention that we don't have any clue how to decipher what we are hearing now.

> Other species are intelligent, but none of them have our innate ability to communicate using complex language.

That isn't proven. There is plenty of evidence, that "complex" is relative and humans have limited sensory organs, compared to other species. Naturally our vocalizations have had to diversify.

It's important to remember that the vast majority of all interspecies communication is non-vocal (this includes non-written). The ability to write is unique to humans, as far as I know. There are more, but they aren't related to vocalization (or communication at large).

> The ability to write is unique to humans

Yes, and this is crucial. It's what allows us to operate as Turing machines.

I was reminded of another distinguishing characteristic of humans by a recent event [1]: we tell stories.

http://news.mit.edu/2019/patrick-winston-professor-obituary-...

humans feel already threatened by their own. putting them into 'minority' groups etc.... they would be threatened by another intelligent / linguistically advanced species and dominate / destroy them. perhaps they would serve as slaves... otherwis they would not survive. Look what happend when people explored the world and found other humans :S

5000 is still the blink of an eye. Homo Sapiens as a species is something like 300,000 years old and arose from prior species that were already more advanced than any other animal living today.

Sure, and we estimate it took 200 000 years to develop spoken language. However, we had to come up with it by ourselves, without any external influence.

What happened to the “more advanced than any other living animal today” species?

Based on my very limited understanding, it seems like some members of that advanced species would have diverged and eventually become Homo sapiens. But others would have remained members of that species and continued living today, or become some other advanced species that wasn’t homo sapien. Did something cause them to go extinct? Or am I understanding it wrong?

We killed them all as they were competing with us.

Dolphins are pretty smart, I have always thought that they are merely limited in their evolutionary progression by the fact that it is difficult to generate and control fire underwater (and therefore difficult to cook food, smelt metal etc.), and also difficult to domesticate oceanic creatures for agri(aqua?)culture. See also; octopodes.

Comments like these make "fake news" make sense: two people perceiving the same things drastically differently.

It's one word: language. No other animals come close. Animals signal to each other all the time, and none of it is nearly as complex or beautiful as language. You could make an argument for oral language being essentially the same as signaling but writing really blows any other behavior of animals out of the park.

Whether or not you consider that to be "little" makes an insane amount of difference.

Of course. I'm not assuming writting, not even vocal communication. A language doesn't have to be in our form, just complex enough to drive a culture.

Because being anti patriarchy is in vogue

The article doesn't say anything about any kind any kind of sexed hierarchy but I guess you'll take any opportunity to blow that dog whistle.

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