We Are Qualitatively Different from Other Species

This is one of the weakest posts I've read, including YouTube comments :-).

There is no argument presented; no research cited; nothing new. Human exceptionalism has a long history (old testament and older), and has been treated in many different places.

Douglas Adam's famously wrote that humans and dolphins each think they are the most intelligent beings on earth -- humans think they are more intelligent because the invented the wheel, cities, wars, etc. whereas dolphins just play in the water all day. Dolphins think they are more intelligent for precisely the same reasons.

If anyone wants to discuss why precisely humans are more than monkeys-with-astonishingly-complicated sticks, be my guest, but please bring more than this simplistic post.

I challenge you to name a behavior that most humans do (or did) that no other animals do.

There's usually at least one other example in the animal world. Just that we may do these things in combination and so much better that the difference becomes qualitative.

I'd say the only uniquely human thing is creating fire. https://twitter.com/mluby/status/1256768920343756801 Yes, there's that Australian bird that moves fire around, so I had to narrow it to creating rather than just using fire.

(The article is lame, so focusing just on the title…)

Humanity as a whole is qualitatively different than anything else I can think of. I think this is obvious.

But how different are humans? If you take a homo sapien in isolation and a chimpanzee in isolation (I know there's no such thing but for the sake of argument), how much difference is there really? Biologically it's not much. Even neurologically, we've basically got the same hardware with a bit more bandwidth for sensory processing, and a bit more processing power for higher order functions like planning and analysis.

The archeological record would seem to indicate that it took many tens of thousands of years for these minor fundamental differences to develop into something obviously qualitative. Whether you call these fundamental differences qualitative or quantitive to start with seems like a pretty subtle difference of perspective.

People like the author tend to think that the differences in humans vs other primates can be seen as a linear function. I'm like the author no expert on this topic but I imagine this as a exponential function. You see plenty of similar behavior in primates and humans, similar social structures, clear evidence of being capable of complex thought processes etc.

It's like the difference between transistors and a logic gate isn't big but results in much more complexity.

It's because humans have developed into something similar to the eusocial organism seen in other species like ants.

This makes the societal superorganism very effective at exploiting the planet's resources by conditioning human beings to serve it; that conditioning is also the root cause of all human suffering, which is an invitation to consider whether one wants to identify with society.

This doesn't do much of anything to support its thesis.

Is the actual content behind a paywall/subscription, or those short seven paragraphs are all there is? In the latter case, this is just a statement without any proof or reasoning behind it.

“We are qualitatively different. All we need to do is open our eyes. You look out your window at that beautiful ~~city~~ anthill that happens to be out there that cannot be explained by this gradual increase of biological complexity.”

The only constant in our study of life is underestimating the complexity of other living things.