But my iPhone fits in my pocket and is more capable than a room filling ENIAC. SQL's "ORDER BY" is more efficient than writing sorting code myself.
Everywhere we look at computation, less is more sophisticated than more.
"Humans are the smartest" makes us feel good. That is a reason to question its accuracy.
Neurons, on the other hand, are pretty much the same size in all animals. So brain size, neuron count, and neuron interconnectivity, all correlate with mental complexity.
Similarly chips of similar dimensions can vary greatly in power.
But more tellingly, circuit boards with fewer chips are often more sophisticated than bigger boards with more chips.
There is no guarantee that number of neurons is a meaningful way of estimating computational power…a ziplock full of neurons doesn’t show much intelligence.
If computation is not independent of humans, then there is no basis for a claim to objectivity. SQL and iPhones are simply all we know because we are limited to human experience. Experience which we know is at times fallible…we might be phlogiston wrong again.
What perhaps doesn’t register is at best it makes no difference if humans are smartest. It doesn’t make us smarter.
At worst, belief that we are smartest makes us dumber.