So crows could build a jumbo jet, they're just lazy? It's pretty obvious that animals lack any type of intelligence even close to human ability. It's not even in the same ballpark.
Furthermore, the vast majority of humans have no idea how to build a jumbo jet, and throughout the vast majority of human history, there were no jets - jumbo or otherwise - does this mean that we only have higher intelligence in today's world, now that we are able to build jumbo jets? For the vast majority of human history, we only had the simplest of tools and if we compared those humans to today, by your standards, these humans do not possess higher intelligence. However, evolution has not progressed nearly as quickly as our ability to work with tools has; as such, the human brain really hasn't changed all that much in even the last 10,000 or even 100,000 years! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_of_human_intelligenc...
Finally, you have no proof that crows would be incapable of building a jumbo jet, you've simply asserted that they couldn't. To be clear, I'm not arguing that they could, merely conceding that because they haven't done so, does not mean that they are incapable of doing so.
At the end of the day, it is impossible to prove a negative, so no I can't show you off hand that a crow can't actually conceive of this or that or the other thing
What we do see in more intelligent animals such as orcas, orang-utans, elephants, parrots, crows, octopuses, even cats and dogs, etc is sophisticated planning and inventive use of their environment. We also know that early humans were likely anatomically similar to modern humans (and may well have
Are there areas where humans are smarter. Almost certainly. But is the difference as great as the outward achievements as judged by human standards would indicate. Almost certainly not. And there may even be aspects of cognition that other animals excel at that we are completely unaware.
More realistically: have they mastered fire? There are caloric efficiency benefits to eating warm/cooked food[0]. Have they mastered writing? There's compound interest in terms of civilization development sitting right there, in the ability to put thoughts into a form that outlives individuals without degrading.
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[0] - At least for humans; IANABiologist, but I'd guess this would be true for other animals too, including birds, and at the very least it would expand the range of foods they can consume.
Or perhaps crows only have two claws that also serve as feet and a beak, making it harder to fashion tools?
Perhaps living underwater, like octopuses do, makes it quite hard to master fire?
Or perhaps measuring intelligence is hard, and focusing only on engineering outcomes is a fallacy.
It's also not like most humans would be able to build even a steam engine, let alone a jumbo jet.
Remember, for most of the history of our evolutionary ancestors, we were hunter-gatherers that used extremely crude tools. Not really better than crows. Discoveries happened a whole lot slower back then, like the eons between making fire and starting agricultural towns. Given a few millennia, crows may be making their own fires to cook.
Lex Fridman discussed this topic with Françoit Chollet in his recent podcast episode "Measures of Intelligence" [1]. I highly recommend it. Lengthy but really worth it.
How about the fact they can apparently build compound tools from parts?
Your example isn't just about brains. It requires both proper bodies and arguably complex social behaviors, which are quite separate from intelligence itself.
But consider very basic advancements. Communication for instance is something humans mastered from the outset. We are able to store and pass down information beyond the instinctual for generations, something no other animal has done. Imagine if humans needed to rediscover mathematics every generation!
There are plenty of examples I could give that would provide crows with an immediate improvement in the quality of life. I think the reason they have not done these things is because they cannot, rather than because they have chosen not to.
I don't know if it does. But I surely ain't convinced by gp.
> Humans are capable of doing things that our bodies cannot. We domesticated beasts of burden in order to move heavy objects from one place to another for instance.
I would be curious as to how a crow is supposed to domesticate an ox. Or even a dog. Birds are extremely fragile.
As for communication, well, it's both a matter of intelligence and sociability. And they do seem to be able to communicate information "beyond the instinctual" (such as how to identify specific human individuals [1])
As for "can't vs won't", my point isn't that they don't want to. I don't know. I don't know what they can or cannot do. I don't know how their minds work. And I don't know what are the actual prerequisites for our species accomplishment.
And that is exactly my point: assuming anything about such radically different creatures, or the actual prerequisites for our species', solely based on our limited experience and insights, is both vain and presumptuous.
[1]: https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rspb.2011.095...
This is so ridiculous that I'm wondering if I'm missing the point. Is this sarcasm? Is this playing devil's advocate to prove some kind of point?
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> We know things about anaesthesia, blood clotting, soft tissue, [...]
Actually, most of us don't know much, if anything, about any of this. Heck, for all most of us know, it could actually be wizardry powered by small elves running in hamster wheels.
> and our physical actions are informed by an amassed body of knowledge and an ability to reason from that knowledge and apply it with a degree of sophiscation [...]
That really doesn't match most of human behaviors I can observe around me, online or in the street. Actually, it seems that implementing informed and vaguely rational decision-making is a great way to improve many things.
It often feels like we merely are pompous and arrogant monkeys who are lucky some of their ancestors built most of what's around us.
> This is so ridiculous that I'm wondering if I'm missing the point.
That's my fault. I'll try to make it clear.
- Intelligence is hard to measure.
- Our biases, as individuals and as a species, are huge.
- Our knowledge, as individuals, on other living things' perspectives, is laughable.
- Objectives and desired outcomes are relative.
- Outcomes' prerequisites are many, diverse, and often unknown.
Meaning:
-> We really don't know much,
--> Unless approaching the subject with a scientific method and an open mind, any opinion could only be founded on pre-conceived notions, gut feelings, limited personal experience, and unfounded "common sense" and "cultural knowledge.
Thus:
---> Having and expressing any personal opinion on this subject, based on anything else than scientific experience, is both pointless and presumptuous.
And now we can go into the credit we should give to science, the limits of the scientific methods, and probably many other things.
If you have someone with you, maybe they can carry you. Crows can’t carry other crows. If they wanted to fix the other crow, they’d have to do it where the crow fell. It would still get eaten by coyotes. They can’t protect the downed bird, so it will still be eaten. Ergo, why bother trying to heal the bone?
So why bother?
Humans by and large, especially in less forgiving environments with harsh winters, are helpless without the ability to manipulate their environment seeing as they are hairless apes who without modern medicine could die from an infection from a mere scratch.
Basically, it's an apples-to-oranges comparison.
How can they physically even come close to building a jet?
It seems humans physicality has a LOT to do with our intelligence. Perhaps someone with actual knowledge on this can chime in.. but it seems to me if you have a build similar to ours, you have the opportunity to actually progress and manipulate things to a level where it might a situation where as a species you continue to evolve with more intelligence over time because you are able to actually use it.
I don't know how to say that better.. but on the other hand, if we had our same brains but had the bodies where we can hardly manipulate any tools.. don't you think that makes all the difference in the world?
It's always fun to watch a clever squirrel find its way into a bird feeder, a cunning fox outsmart a rabbit, or a curious monkey recognize himself in the mirror. These are signs of sentience, sure, but all of those are far cries from what even an immature human is capable of, and this obvious evidence is what leads us to believe we are smarter than them. It's not arrogance in any sense.
A human can't do that either. Humans as a whole can do it because we have enough intelligence to implement the whole chain of technology required to be able to do things on this scale. Not just the physical scale, but also the scale of the science and engineering required to make the thing actually work.