What Animal Intelligence Reveals About Human Stupidity (Justin Gregg)

The Michael Shermer Show # 304
All our unique gifts like language, math, and science do not make humans happier or more “successful” (evolutionarily speaking) than other species. Our intelligence allowed us to split the atom, but we’ve harnessed that knowledge to make machines of war. We are uniquely susceptible to bullshit; our bizarre obsession with lawns has contributed to the growing threat of climate change; we are sexually diverse like many species yet stand apart as homophobic; and discriminate among our own as if its natural, which it certainly is not. Is our intelligence more of a curse than a gift?
Shermer and Gregg discuss: • intelligence • stupidity • dolphins • artificial intelligence • language • rationality • moral systems • comparative thanatology • “causal inference” vs. “learned associations” • humans as “why specialists” • death awareness • why narwhals do not commit genocide • “prognostic myopia” • our “shortsighted farsightedness" as "an extinction-level threat to humanity” • consciousness and sophisticated consciousness: animals and humans • free will • determinism • pleasure vs. happiness vs. purposefulness.
Justin Gregg is a Senior Research Associate with the Dolphin Communication Project and an Adjunct Professor at St. Francis Xavier University where he lectures on animal behavior and cognition. Originally from Vermont, Justin studied the echolocation abilities of wild dolphins in Japan and The Bahamas. He currently lives in rural Nova Scotia where he writes about science and contemplates the inner lives of the crows that live near his home.
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[@Clem62]

Greetings from Vancouver Island. Michael, I know you won't see this but you are an absolute treasure. I can't begin to say how much I enjoy listening to you and great guests like this gentleman.

[@behonestwithyourself3718]

Island guy here too!! Cheers.

[@Clem62]

@@behonestwithyourself3718 cool. Victoria

[@jgarciajr82]

Most people don't have a future self because they're traumatized. This is why some don't think of the future very much nowadays.

[@qruzado]

Nietzsche would be a walrus! Look at the moustache!

[@mickeybrumfield764]

The human ego could be a driving force for intelligence that is not really required for physical self preservation. The ego is also something can that make life more enjoyable beyond just survival. We simply enjoy personal success beyond receiving a physical reward. Why does one enjoy sitting down a working on a crossword puzzle.

[@TheWorldTeacher]

Mickey, what is this “EGO” of which you speak? 🤔

[@mickeybrumfield764]

@@TheWorldTeacher Self-esteem

[@Atomisti]

How do we know that this construction of two legs, two pairs of fingers and the head with the most important senses above everything else isn't optimal? Or perhaps even obligatory? Well, we can't, but it's not totally impossible that in all possible evolutionary scenarios the only or most likely intelligent result has some or most human-like features. Oh, okay, Michael discussed this possibility right after I had written the comment.

[@richardnunziata3221]

Does an animal not have to be part of a social structure and live long enough to see death several times to understand death. Do animals see death in the prey animal differently then loss of it companion.

[@rasrobertmcclain9014]

Sitting here listening to these two young men I'm starting to believe that scientists are not that bright at all

[@puddlesjumper]

Exponential growth of our brain size promotes creating things exponentially, to think about & to create in order to use the processing power & fill the free time created. Each new thought process builds on the previous existing processes to combine & create redundant circuits, new ideas etc.

[@eximusic]

Tracking wounded animals? How about just becoming a better shot and then track healthy animals?

[@dariuszlabuzekart269]

Greetings from SFBA 😀👋

[@Stretesky]

This talk really dumbs humans and other species down and is based on a very narrow view of the speakers window or capacity. Not everyone shared this limited education.

[@justinsnelling8053]

Kelli - you label yourself as a "fine artist." This is not anything bad - nor is it anything good - it just puts you out on the fringe of human potentials. You see things in ways that very few others see them. Take intelligence (as measured by IQ tests) How does anyone with an IQ of 140 out to extreme values of 180-200 - how does that fringe intelligence understand how others in that 85-115 IQ range think? (And of course - how does someone within a standard deviation of 100 IQ understand someone with an IQ up in that rarified stratosphere? Anyone who is a fine artist has talents or even sensory abilities that put them as far out on the fringes as someone with a very high IQ is way far out on the intelligence fringe as someone with "Normal" IQ. The same could be said of a genius musician or composer, the person with a tremendous mechanical intelligence - those with a brilliant emotional intelligence. When you are our on the fringe - it is hard to understand the "mode" in any distribution of talent or ability. And many of things you cannot change - these are things that you are born with and which do not get beaten out of you by early childhood environment and experience. (The potential for severe damage in embryo and early toddler development is much larger than we believe - even poverty severely reduces the capacity for achieving human potential...) We are not all pushed out the chute the same - we are all different and kaleidoscopically diverse - but along any axis we might be able to measure we are clustered about a Mean - and we taper off rapidly out into fringes in either direction along multiple poles. Consider yourself "gifted" - not all are so lucky - or unlucky! (There is comfort in society when you look around and most others are more like you than different. The mistake though is to assume that those who are "different" are somehow "wrong." Being out on the fringe makes someone very alone because in any group of 100 people you may find one person who "gets" You - you may however find none? Even in a group of 1000 other humans - you may only find one other like you. (Someone in the middle will be happy because almost two thirds of the group will be just as middling in everything as they are. It is the way it is.) Enjoy your gifts - and understand that from any privileged perspective "Normal" does in fact appear "stupid." (Or brilliant?) It truly is relative...

[@parrmik]

How come michael hasn't done a podcast on the occupied territories.ld love to hear his perspective.Unlike the Ukraine, it seems like a no go area.

[@homewall744]

Plant trees that would have been planted anyway? How does a new tree help (they are tiny and thus not big absorbers early on)? And if the forest burns down later, did it help at all?

[@monkeymadness9947]

Actually a young yet absorbs more to enable growth than an already grown tree.

[@hellomate639]

1:02:36 That's literally the thinking that drives communist revolutions of the destructive sort that we've see in Russia and Cambodia, rather than the sensible socialism of Finland and Norway. After all, what are opponents to your ideology but now morally expendable objects? Is mass genocide the path to peace? Eugenics of the unintelligent and immoral? And you want to build an AI? My biggest fear about AI isn't that the AI we create won't be foreign from us; it will be exactly like us, just without consciousness or the empathy that comes from that awareness of consciousness. I fear that it will do exactly as we do in so many ways simply because we're incapable of seeing anything from a lens that's truly different from our own lens. And then you want to program it to dominate the world? Can you not see your own aggression in these statements? I understand the temptation; I also find myself entertaining ideas of circumventing Democratic norms because I'm angry at the mentalities of others. There's a point to "loving your enemies;" if you truly do so, it prevents you from rounding them up and exterminating them to enact some sort of global peace. And, if they were to do the same, you might even work to understand each other better. 1:03:21 So... On the topic of "people being like me," the most amazing, beautiful dream of my life was that I was looking out at my city, and to a lesser extent, the world, and I saw everyone as an infinitely precious shard of light.

[@nscitizen9171]

I'm also from rural Nova Scotia. Interesting take that the guest claims we could do away with fossil fuels and everything would be fine. There is no public infastructure in rural Nova Scotia, that would mean economic collapse for the entire province and thrust most people into poverty and suffering, literally the province would collapse and the environment would get worse as people turned on the forests and land for biofuel. This casual environmentalism is just a costly sacrafice to a counter-factual world, it's religion. What an embarrassing thing to say. He might be right about the high cost of intelligence because I'm sure his chickens wouldn't come up with such a garbage idea.

[@Aloneagainofcourse]

The big question. Does he eat chicken.

[@TheWorldTeacher]

You are urged to become VEGAN, since carnism (the destructive ideology which supports the use and consumption of animal products, especially for “food”) is arguably the foremost existential crisis.🌱

[@Austria88586]

It would be nice to show representation of minorities without demonizing heterosexual white men. Which is what we see on Netflix

[@Seekthetruth3000]

The first African American woman Justice can not define what a woman is!

[@TheWorldTeacher]

You mean she is Egyptian?

[@grosbeak6130]

These relentless musings and speculations about society and human nature are a climbing of a tree in search of a fish. And Frederick Nietzsche himself wouldn't give a darn about all this moralizing that modern and contemporary atheists and agnostics e.g. Carl Sagan and Mr. Skeptic himself here seem to prize so much.

[@tuckerbugeater]

Yet, none of them killed themselves.

[@Atheistbatman]

U could just say me no like book reading and used fewer words

[@staninjapan07]

@@Atheistbatman Or... You could just ... and used fewer words. Or... You could just say... and fewer words. Do at least try to use English properly if you are going to attempt to sound as though you are educated. Perhaps you thought that managing to use the adverb of number rather than the usual mistaken "less" adverb of degree of volume made you sound as though we should all look up to you. You can probably do a little better if you try. You might even have tried to show how that user could use fewer words to convey the same idea.

[@steveg6035]

Blah blah. Make your fucking point clearly or just refrain from wasting everyone's time

[@christopherhamilton3621]

What the heck are you on about, son?

[@Naberius359]

This guy is wearing 2 shirts.

[@christopherhamilton3621]

Strange that both his tee and the pullover have round necks, eh? Whoever does that? Must be an extraterrestrial, don’t you think? 🤪

[@puddlesjumper]

He's extremely thin so having very little body fat means he will tend to be cold at his core. Layered clothing forms adjaustable insulation. I know many skinny geeky friends who all wear layers of clothing & all complain of being cold when no one else (besides females) do.