What Sets Humans Apart

[hotchkiss]

The difference between animals and humans:

the abiltity to drive others crazy.

Gotta agree there!

 

[R. Richard]

I don't know about that. I mean, suppose you could see into the future and you knew you'd never need such help and then you saw someone who did. Since you knew that there was zero benefit from helping them, would you still help or would you say "tough luck"

ps- please don't try to show how you could possibly benefit in some other way from the transaction (ie making a new friend or something) as that is not the point of the question.

I believe you are making a wrong assumption here. I may decide to help someone, not because of a specific deferred reward for the specific help, but because my help could later influence others to help me.

A specific case in point was my participation in fixing up the house of an older woman who could not afford to have the work done, nor was she capable of doing the work. There was no way that any of the people who helped could receive any sort of direct deferred reward. However, the knowledge that we had participated in helping the woman gained each of us some stature in the community. I did not specifically participate in the help project to gain stature, but I was also not unaware that I would gain such stature.

 

[sweetnpetite]

Animals do.

Animals do what animals do.

Poeple think, plan, wonder, daydream, plan, plot, scheme, hope, study, interperet, judge, pray, despair, predict, procrastinate, and often go against our own better instincts.

Some of us never actually do much of anything.

Animals don't need Nike to tell them, "Just do it."

 

[sweetnpetite]

Gotta agree there!

or worded differently: the ability to provoke insanity.

 

[sweetnpetite]

I believe you are making a wrong assumption here. I may decide to help someone, not because of a specific deferred reward for the specific help, but because my help could later influence others to help me.

A specific case in point was my participation in fixing up the house of an older woman who could not afford to have the work done, nor was she capable of doing the work. There was no way that any of the people who helped could receive any sort of direct deferred reward. However, the knowledge that we had participated in helping the woman gained each of us some stature in the community. I did not specifically participate in the help project to gain stature, but I was also not unaware that I would gain such stature.

but my point is- suppose no such benefit existed. none, nada. your community wouldn't give a flying hoot. they wouldn't even know you did it. maybe on the other hand they would think worse of you. would you still do it?

 

[elsol]

I believe you are making a wrong assumption here. I may decide to help someone, not because of a specific deferred reward for the specific help, but because my help could later influence others to help me.

A specific case in point was my participation in fixing up the house of an older woman who could not afford to have the work done, nor was she capable of doing the work. There was no way that any of the people who helped could receive any sort of direct deferred reward. However, the knowledge that we had participated in helping the woman gained each of us some stature in the community. I did not specifically participate in the help project to gain stature, but I was also not unaware that I would gain such stature.

I help people when:

a) It doesn't cost me anything (or such a minor cost) that it becomes a courtesy.

i.e. driving a co-worker to the train station after our shift... I don't consider that a favor or generosity... I'm simply being courteous.

b) Where I can see a benefit to me...

In all other cases, I don't notice someone needs help.

Sincerely,
ElSol

 

[sweetnpetite]

I help people when:

a) It doesn't cost me anything (or such a minor cost) that it becomes a courtesy.

i.e. driving a co-worker to the train station after our shift... I don't consider that a favor or generosity... I'm simply being courteous.

b) Where I can see a benefit to me...

In all other cases, I don't notice someone needs help.

Sincerely,
ElSol

so for example:

you and the woman who's house needs repair are the only black people in a very prejudice town. people tollerate you because you 'know your place', however this woman refused to be treated as a second class citizen or tried to make some social change or something and became the town pariah. she is universally hated, even now that she is old and poor and her house is rundown and she has no political power or influince and never will again. You know that she needs repairs done on her house and you have the skills and the tools. You also know that if you help her, the town will turn against you too. You'll either have to deal with there disaproval in whatever harsh form it takes or relocate which is also a hardship on you. It's a small town and if you help her, there is no way that it would be kept secret. The whole town will know before the first nail is pounded. On the other hand, if you don't help her no one else will.

Would you do her the favor then?

 

[Quiet_Cool]

I believe what sets humans apart is the ability to realize our futures can be limited. Apes and monkeys don't have the ability to forsee that they will die. We know and therefore have the ability to live our lives and appreciate our gifts rather than never doing anything different.

I think Dar has the basics down here, though I can't say I agree entirely with the last line.

Human beings are the only species born with a sense of their own mortality. We're born with the awareness that one day we're going to die. Psychologically, this has more or less been proven, meaing its psychological theory, and therefore can't be definitely proven. This being said, we're placed in a position where we, as individuals, feel the need, urgency is more like it, to define ourselves, to create and distinguish our own identity. This pushes us to pursue whatever society deems as the most defining things (often possessions). Money, fame, popularity, etc...

It's an attempt to reach a goal where we no longer deal with the fear, or any other emotion to be truthful, of knowing that you'll someday die.

Q_C

 

[CharleyH]

In the search for some trait sets man apart from the rest of the animal world, scientists have now found that chimps will not do favors for one another.

http://www.world-science.net/othernews/051026_chimpfrm.htm

They'll co-operate when it's in their best interest, but when it comes to doing something out of sympathy, with no expectation of personal reward, they turn selfish.

More evidence that it's our capacity to love and care that sets man apart and has led to our domination over the rest of the animal world.

And that's why you can forget about asking a chimp to bring in your mail when you're on vacation. They might say they will, but they won't.

--Zoot

The will of passion is just as intense as the will of passionate destruction. I think humans are much animals and the only thing that sets us apart is perhaps we are the only beasts who kill for fun. In sex, as in war ... LOL, as a cat or monkey ... its about territory. Hm ...

 

[shereads]

Maybe the chimps knew they were being set up, and decided to falsify the results by altering their behavior. I do that with marketing surveys, just for spite.

Example:

Q: How interested are you in automobile racing?

A: Not interested at all.

Q: How often do you watch automobile races on television?

A: Five or more hours per day.

Can't you just hear the machinery of commerce grinding to a halt? I love to do that! I'll bet chimps do, too.


What sets humans apart might be our concern about what sets us apart, and how far apart, and whether the difference does us credit. I've noticed that human scientists dominate this field.

 

[dr_mabeuse]

I was just wondering if anyone would make the connection between chimp behavior and right-wing politics and draw any conclusions about the direction of evolution.

 

[cantdog]

Chimps don't kill thousands for mere wealth, doc. Chimps have little to do with right-wing politics.

 

[rgraham666]

No, but I do know of a case where a pair of beta chimps killed an alpha, in his sleep.

Also saw a bit of film where the males of a troop patrolled the edges of the troop's territory. When they found a female and infant from another troop too near the 'border', they chased them down, killed them, and ate pieces of them.

I'm beginning to believe intelligence is a curse rather than a boon.

 

[dr_mabeuse]

Chimps don't kill thousands for mere wealth, doc. Chimps have little to do with right-wing politics.

On the other hand, I understand that the chimp's rescue efforts after Katrina were more timely and effective than FEMA's.

 

[cantdog]

There's bound to be a little existential grumbling about the retrograde movement of evolution. Intelligence complicates the simplest things! But even among existentialists, the objections seem loudest about the humans with the least intelligence, no?

I look at it like this. Would I give up my mind? Would i toss it all as a bad job and just be as clever as, say, a raven, thereafter? And like, the answer is plain. Sure, a neocortex is a mixed blessing, but it has been the source of many of the best things in life, many of which are inconceivable to my dog, for instance. Since I have experience with it, I can say I think we have to call the direction of evolution slightly up, despite the drawbacks.

 

[thebullet]

I ask you: How does Intelligent Design account for George W Bush?

Let's get serious!

 

[cantdog]

Intelligent design doesn't account for anything. Why should it make an exception?

 

[shereads]

I ask you: How does Intelligent Design account for George W Bush?

If the exception proves the rule, GWB is the best possible argument for the validity of Intelligent Design.

Meanwhile, back to chimps: Not only do they kill others of their kind in disputes over territory, etc., there is at least one documented instance of a jealousy-related murder. In a troop of wild chimps that Jane Goodall studies, an adolescent male chimp with an abnormal attachment to its mother stole her new infant and killed it.

Opponents of the chimp death penalty successfully argued that it would make them too much like us.