Are We Really the Most Intelligent Species?
Intelligence is not only difficult to define, some people claim that it is a construct with no validity in nature. Albert Einstein himself claimed that all babies are born geniuses, then we overcome that potential in the following years of childhood.
- Bill Allin, Intelligence and Unhappiness: Likely, But Not Inevitably Linked
Depending on the literature you read or the media sources you use, you may find yourself assaulted a few times each week by statements claiming that humans are the most intelligent species on the planet. I say "assaulted" because they happen so frequently.
We are brainwashed into believing that we are the most intelligent species. But are we?
The sources of this information are ourselves. Our sources never give evidence because none actually exists. It’s a tautology: we are the most intelligent species because we are the only species that can say we are.
Speaking of saying, we partly determine the intelligence of other animals according to the number of human words they can understand or speak or otherwise communicate. How many words (or other method of communication) of another species of animal do you speak (or concepts can you communicate)?
For that matter, what can you do better than any other animal does as part of its regular life habits? Pick an animal, any animal, think about something it does, then consider if you could do it better. The answer inevitably is "No." We can’t do anything that any other animal does that is not part of regular human experience.
Science generally agrees that dolphins are very intelligent. But not quite as intelligent as us, most say. They can’t carry on a conversation with us. But then, we can’t carry on a conversation or any other form of extended communication with dolphins either. But we claim we are smarter.
Dolphins live in a water environment, yet breathe air as we do. We can swim under water, but only briefly. At this point, we are incapable of living in any environment that lacks air, or even lasting for more than a few minutes. [NOTE: It is technically possible for our lungs to take oxygen from water, but it’s not something you should attempt.]
We understand that ants and bees have their own forms of intelligence. But we excuse them from the intelligence competition because they are exclusively a social species--their collective intelligence is shared among all members of the hive or nest. According to science, shared intelligence is different from individual intelligence. Why? Because it’s convenient for us.
Now, about individual intelligence. Are humans intelligent as a species, or is it true that just a limited few are as intelligent as we claim our species is as a whole? Remember, it’s only the most highly educated and (likely) those with the highest IQ among us who claim our superiority.
Next time you go to a supermarket, stop for a few minutes and observe people shopping in the aisles. Or looking for a parking space in the lot. Or trying to find their car in the lot after they have finished shopping. Did any of those people have anything at all to do with the organization or the technologies they use in those situations? Some need to use their remote devices to make their car horn sound just so they can find their vehicle.
When it comes to IQ (Intelligence Quotient, the most common measure for human intelligence), does it seem right for us to claim intelligence as a species because a few of us excel at taking IQ tests, or at publishing university study papers?
Though we still hear about IQ once in a while, the concept has little recognized value these days (unless you happen to be a member of or qualify for membership in Mensa). The Stanford-Binet test of IQ was written by educated white men of the middle class, where questions that applied best to the lives and experiences of educated white men of the middle class could best answer them.
Lo and behold, when the test was administered to everyone else, including those from different cultures and with different forms of education and people whose first language was not one in which the test was created, they performed at lower levels on the scale. This served the racial prejudice of educated white middle class Europeans in the early 20th century well.
In general, the form of intelligence evaluation preferred by any one person tends to be one composed by the same language and cultural group as that person. And they stick to it as if were religious gospel or political idealism. In other words, my way is best; other ways are not as good because......my way is best.
Those who perform well on IQ tests give little credit to EQ (Emotional Quotient intelligence) or any of dozens of other forms of tests of personal knowledge, talents or skills because the test which gives them the highest scores is their favourite. That includes tests for happiness, on which highly intelligent people tend to score lower than some other groups (who often have lower IQ scores).
In conclusion, those with the highest scores on any test of intelligence will be among the group into which fall those who composed the test.
[Side note: I just asked my cat about which is the most intelligent species. She told me to get back to work cleaning her litter box and vacuuming up the fur she left on the furniture where she slept. Of course I obeyed, isn’t that what the most intelligent species would do?]
Bill Allin is the author of Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a guidebook for teachers, parents, anyone who wants kids to grow up without experiencing anti-social problems.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
Showing posts with label memory. Show all posts
Showing posts with label memory. Show all posts
Thursday, September 06, 2012
Thursday, February 08, 2007
How To Make Big Problems Seem Small
"The truth that many people never understand, until it is too late, is that the more you try to avoid suffering the more you suffer because smaller and more insignificant things begin to torture you in proportion to your fear of being hurt."
- Thomas Merton, American Trappist monk (1915–1968)
Everyone has problems they consider to be severe. They may or may not be constant stressors, but when they come along they are as severe for one person as for another.
It doesn't really matter how important or significant a problem is. If a small problem exists in isolation of others problems, it becomes the most important problem and has the same effect on one person as a critical problem has on another person.
Everyone suffers from problems. Whether the problem would be forgotten within a month or would continue (even in memory) indefinitely, the bearer of the problem sees it as severe. Future resolutions of problems seem unimportant to a person who is suffering from and worrying about today's problems.
Those who try to hide from problems close themselves off from situations that might aggravate their emotions. Emotions are the part of us where we suffer, so shielding the emotions is thought by some to prevent suffering. But by shutting themselves off from the potential consequences of problems, people also shut themselves off from the realities around them. They lose their grasp of realities of life.
They come to believe that the tiny world they live in is the same as (or should be the same as) the one others live in. They want others ourside of their tiny protected world to live by the same set of rules and understandings as they live by.
Rather than hiding from problems, we need to face them down and feel the accomplishment of conquering them. We can keep in mind that every problem we have will be solved eventually. Every one. Persistent problems such as physical disabilities we can work around so that they no longer become disabilities but instead become opportunities to better ourselves in other ways.
How can we lessen the effects of our problems? By helping others with theirs. Most of us don't have to go far from our own homes to find others with problems far more severe than our own.
First of all, finding others with problems far worse than our own makes ours seem less severe to us. Second, helping others with their problems causes us to neglect the emotional stress that our own problems cause us.
That one-two combination may be found in most or all of the people you know who never seem to suffer from their problems the way others do. They have problems, like everyone, but all they have time for is solving them, not worrying about them. They are too busy offering help to others with more important problems to worry about themselves.
Unless a problem persists because another person with emotional instability or a legal or phsysical disability themselves, most of us forget our most severe problems a few months after they cease to be stressors for us. Can you remember the problems you worried about a year ago?
Little problems seem big if we have no big problems to worry us. Big problems seem insignificant if we busy ourselves helping those with problems more severe than our own.
That leaves helping others as the solution to finding relief to our problems. That may not be intuitive, but it's true. It's one of the mysteries of human nature. It's works.
Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, striving to make our little problems that seem big into little problems that we don't worry about.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
- Thomas Merton, American Trappist monk (1915–1968)
Everyone has problems they consider to be severe. They may or may not be constant stressors, but when they come along they are as severe for one person as for another.
It doesn't really matter how important or significant a problem is. If a small problem exists in isolation of others problems, it becomes the most important problem and has the same effect on one person as a critical problem has on another person.
Everyone suffers from problems. Whether the problem would be forgotten within a month or would continue (even in memory) indefinitely, the bearer of the problem sees it as severe. Future resolutions of problems seem unimportant to a person who is suffering from and worrying about today's problems.
Those who try to hide from problems close themselves off from situations that might aggravate their emotions. Emotions are the part of us where we suffer, so shielding the emotions is thought by some to prevent suffering. But by shutting themselves off from the potential consequences of problems, people also shut themselves off from the realities around them. They lose their grasp of realities of life.
They come to believe that the tiny world they live in is the same as (or should be the same as) the one others live in. They want others ourside of their tiny protected world to live by the same set of rules and understandings as they live by.
Rather than hiding from problems, we need to face them down and feel the accomplishment of conquering them. We can keep in mind that every problem we have will be solved eventually. Every one. Persistent problems such as physical disabilities we can work around so that they no longer become disabilities but instead become opportunities to better ourselves in other ways.
How can we lessen the effects of our problems? By helping others with theirs. Most of us don't have to go far from our own homes to find others with problems far more severe than our own.
First of all, finding others with problems far worse than our own makes ours seem less severe to us. Second, helping others with their problems causes us to neglect the emotional stress that our own problems cause us.
That one-two combination may be found in most or all of the people you know who never seem to suffer from their problems the way others do. They have problems, like everyone, but all they have time for is solving them, not worrying about them. They are too busy offering help to others with more important problems to worry about themselves.
Unless a problem persists because another person with emotional instability or a legal or phsysical disability themselves, most of us forget our most severe problems a few months after they cease to be stressors for us. Can you remember the problems you worried about a year ago?
Little problems seem big if we have no big problems to worry us. Big problems seem insignificant if we busy ourselves helping those with problems more severe than our own.
That leaves helping others as the solution to finding relief to our problems. That may not be intuitive, but it's true. It's one of the mysteries of human nature. It's works.
Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, striving to make our little problems that seem big into little problems that we don't worry about.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
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