A superiority of animals over humans
The usual assumption is that humans are superior to animals on quite many
things, and when some animals can be superior in some specific skill, that is
only specific animals while so many others remain behind humans on that skill.
A specific ability in which humans seem much superior to most animals (except
maybe dolphins), of course, is language.
But, without making any careful study on animals (sorry), here is one skill on
which I guess that most animals are superior to most humans ; and the irony
is that this curse of humans precisely comes from the very ability in which
humans are supposed superior, namely language:
The ability to recognize intelligences higher than one's own
Indeed, animals are usually quite good at this skill, namely to understand how much
more intelligent than themselves humans are, precisely because they have
no language to rely on to figure this out. So, without the help of language, they
can simply observe humans and see the power of humans to do intelligent things.
As for humans, so many of them turn out to be often quite unable to discern
cases of higher intelligence of other humans, precisely because of the terrible
mistake of expecting the use of language to provide the means of measuring this.
Why it actually fails : when someone listens or reads someone else's discourse and tries
to assess the intelligence there, what he actually measures is not intelligence but only
sameness of thought. Because it is the natural illusion for anyone to see one's view and
discourse as the most clever stuff which can be said on a given topic. Any really
higher intelligence having naturally other topics of interests, or other ways of explaining stuff, will
express them in ways only such higher intelligence can be interested in and follow without
dying of boredom; by necessity it will appear in less intelligent ears as confused, unjustified,
etc.... and at least terrible in pedagogical terms.
A lot of curse of human societies comes from this fundamental mistake:
- The academic system, which people so terribly gives the role of judging the possible
superior intelligence of pupils by how they can convince possibly stupid judges of their
intelligence, by language alone;
- Especially the academic field of philosophy, where reputation is purely based on
the ability to interest the peers by the pure means of language, without any more objective
kind of truth or quality checking;
- The field of politics, where the ability
to be a leader is usually defined by the ability to make such speeches as to attract popularity
and votes.
- The way many religious apologists and philosophers despise scientific intelligence, and
claim to prove their superiority of wisdom over scientists and engineers, just by spending their
energy arguing about it, forgetting how much scientific intelligence could actually achieve more
than religions and philosophy.... How futile is that.
- Some ruling class of morons playing the role of self-proclaimed scientific
experts were trying to blame Didier Raoult for not having provided good "scientific evidence"
of the efficiency of hydroxychloroquine to cure Covid... in their eyes. They stupidly fail to realize
that intelligence and scientific quality should be measured
by actual results, not by how much someone's arguments could look good in one's own eyes.
The actual result that should be considered is the success he achieved in treating his patients
in the way he did. And if you can't reliably find this out, that is your fault not his.
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