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Comment by algopats | Hacker News Reader

elephant have been seeing their reflection when drinking water in lakes/ponds for millenia. Their brains evolved to identify with those patterns. Mirror test just proves if any species evolved enough to identify with that "pattern".

humans are just animals. nothing special. their consciousness is no different than say a crows or fox(cunning) consciousness. I would say one thing though....human brain is probably one of fluidest/flexible/organs ever created by nature. Take two humans...put one human in jail from birth (dont even teach language), and put other human in silicon-valley from birth, send him to stanford. Now, compare the "consciousness" of these two. Or even better, put the former human in jungle with monkeys from birth (dont teach him anything). I am sure there is lot of existing R&D/scientific articles on this.

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> elephant have been seeing their reflection when drinking water in lakes/ponds for millenia. Their brains evolved to identify with those patterns. Mirror test just proves if any species evolved enough to identify with that "pattern".

Yes, but many animals see their reflections in watering holes -- only a few of them understand that they're seeing their own reflection.

> humans are just animals. nothing special.

That's certainly true.

> Take two humans...put one human in jail from birth (dont even teach language), and put other human in silicon-valley from birth, send him to stanford. Now, compare the "consciousness" of these two.

This diminishes the role of inheritance, but over time research, especially twin studies, has produced increasing support for the idea that we're much more shaped by inheritance than environment.

> Yes, but many animals see their reflections in watering holes -- only a few of them understand that they're seeing their own reflection.

its the nature doing its thing. only few animals/species develop certain faculties. And humans just happen to develop "mind" faculty. I wouldn't be surprised if some other species on a different planet developed telepathy or some other advanced faculties.

> This diminishes the role of inheritance, but over time research, especially twin studies, has produced increasing support for the idea that we're much more shaped by inheritance than environment.

inheritance only gives you latent abilities ... They will not flower if there is no proper environment for them to be actualized. everything is just manifestation of the nature. we are all just different "expressions" of the ultimate (aka "god" in some religinos)

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