It's always been difficult for us to measure "genius". Since we're in an age where we can't believe what we can't measure, we pretend that various intelligence-testing systems are completely accurate. Statistics and experimental results are also seen as infallible.
Genius - extroardinary mental brilliance - occurs in all segments of a population. That includes genius social butterflies and genius friendless loners. Great ideas don't need to come from some hive-mind of geniuses, but the more people who contribute to a project, the more people who have a direct stake in getting it published or implemented. Their social resources help publicize whatever it is they've discovered or invented.
The genius who goes home alone and draws flying-machines on napkins, or discusses the nature of reality with their cat, will probably never be recognized.
I never know what scientific results to believe, so I tend to believe the ones that make sense. This theory of human learning makes a lot of sense. We tend to imitate each other even in bizarre behaviors. Remember Furbies? How 'bout our need for voting booths, because our votes may be biased by seeing someone else punch a card the same way? We often don't even think when we imitate something; people can go their whole lives without doing anything original. The human body has a lot of obsolete features, like appendixes. Evolution just doesn't keep up with culture, so though we can wish that people weren't a bunch of copycats, it's hard to expect humans to override a feature of their minds that was once very useful. Expecting originality is a relatively modern innovation.
"the dictionary says heretic: a holder of unconventional beliefs. do you know anyone who is not a heretic? i don't." (Paraphrase Don Marquis, "Archy the Cockroach")
They don't notice the extra steps? But they repeated them the first time they were shown. If you need to invent excuses like this to feel that your species is better than chimps, that's a sign of a very unhealthy and insecure view of self.
I like animals. Animals are a lot like people - a lot of selfish bastards who fight for their own gain and that of their kin. Rats will do almost anything to survive, so if the tables were turned they'd probably be sticking their cells in our skulls to try and get an edge on death.
The reason we can do it to them is because we evolved thumbs and frontal lobes and enormous size before they did. Does that make it right? I think not, because I'm fond of rats. They're intelligent and feeling creatures that are our kin by virtue of being mammals, and are enough like us that we think they have cute babies.
Rats are not humans. Sticking our bits in their heads will not magically make them humans. But maybe they are people in their way, and it is wrong to torture people just to get an edge on nature. We have enough advantages as a species; we're winning.
Let's just leave well enough alone - or at least have the decency to experiment on our own species. Let people sign release forms of their own free will, trading rights to their brains for $500 and a ride to the bus stop. I bet you'd get some takers.
By the way, I've never met a monkey I liked, so you can throw those assholes under the knife if their ecosystems can spare them.
So this is a TV show... with actors. Is this really news? "The Blair Witch Project" was supposedly real, and I was silly enough to believe it until I saw them list the "written by" credit. It almost made it an interesting movie. This sounds like an amusing show; so was "The Simple Life", in my opinion, despite the slapstick amateur acting of a pair of rich girls.
You know what would be fun? A gladiatorial reality show. Not like "American Gladiator"; no, like the Roman coliseums. Offer people fantastic prizes to survive ten minutes with a hungry, angry tiger, or to murder each other with tridents and stuff. Or stage a naval battle just for the hell of it.
You could never get approval to do a show where people would actually die, I suppose, so you'd have to do it with - hey, actors! Hm, I wonder where I can get a stuntman who's good at acting mauled....
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It's always been difficult for us to measure "genius". Since we're in an age where we can't believe what we can't measure, we pretend that various intelligence-testing systems are completely accurate. Statistics and experimental results are also seen as infallible. Genius - extroardinary mental brilliance - occurs in all segments of a population. That includes genius social butterflies and genius friendless loners. Great ideas don't need to come from some hive-mind of geniuses, but the more people who contribute to a project, the more people who have a direct stake in getting it published or implemented. Their social resources help publicize whatever it is they've discovered or invented. The genius who goes home alone and draws flying-machines on napkins, or discusses the nature of reality with their cat, will probably never be recognized.
I never know what scientific results to believe, so I tend to believe the ones that make sense. This theory of human learning makes a lot of sense. We tend to imitate each other even in bizarre behaviors. Remember Furbies? How 'bout our need for voting booths, because our votes may be biased by seeing someone else punch a card the same way? We often don't even think when we imitate something; people can go their whole lives without doing anything original. The human body has a lot of obsolete features, like appendixes. Evolution just doesn't keep up with culture, so though we can wish that people weren't a bunch of copycats, it's hard to expect humans to override a feature of their minds that was once very useful. Expecting originality is a relatively modern innovation. "the dictionary says heretic: a holder of unconventional beliefs. do you know anyone who is not a heretic? i don't." (Paraphrase Don Marquis, "Archy the Cockroach")
They don't notice the extra steps? But they repeated them the first time they were shown. If you need to invent excuses like this to feel that your species is better than chimps, that's a sign of a very unhealthy and insecure view of self.
I like animals. Animals are a lot like people - a lot of selfish bastards who fight for their own gain and that of their kin. Rats will do almost anything to survive, so if the tables were turned they'd probably be sticking their cells in our skulls to try and get an edge on death. The reason we can do it to them is because we evolved thumbs and frontal lobes and enormous size before they did. Does that make it right? I think not, because I'm fond of rats. They're intelligent and feeling creatures that are our kin by virtue of being mammals, and are enough like us that we think they have cute babies. Rats are not humans. Sticking our bits in their heads will not magically make them humans. But maybe they are people in their way, and it is wrong to torture people just to get an edge on nature. We have enough advantages as a species; we're winning. Let's just leave well enough alone - or at least have the decency to experiment on our own species. Let people sign release forms of their own free will, trading rights to their brains for $500 and a ride to the bus stop. I bet you'd get some takers. By the way, I've never met a monkey I liked, so you can throw those assholes under the knife if their ecosystems can spare them.
So this is a TV show... with actors. Is this really news? "The Blair Witch Project" was supposedly real, and I was silly enough to believe it until I saw them list the "written by" credit. It almost made it an interesting movie. This sounds like an amusing show; so was "The Simple Life", in my opinion, despite the slapstick amateur acting of a pair of rich girls. You know what would be fun? A gladiatorial reality show. Not like "American Gladiator"; no, like the Roman coliseums. Offer people fantastic prizes to survive ten minutes with a hungry, angry tiger, or to murder each other with tridents and stuff. Or stage a naval battle just for the hell of it. You could never get approval to do a show where people would actually die, I suppose, so you'd have to do it with - hey, actors! Hm, I wonder where I can get a stuntman who's good at acting mauled....