Is The Uncertainty Principle Incompatible With Determinism?

Not necessarily but I think some evidence of inventions relative to ours in complexity might be expected from a species which supposedly rivals our intelligence. Maybe some sort of contraption(s) that allow them to submarine deeper waters, move quicker, be on land or other adjuncts to their biological development.

It's difficult in many ways to relate our experience to other animals but it's just as difficult to ascribe to a notion that all our conceptions of human intelligence or 'superiority' as you put it is merely anthropocentric conceit.

 

I don't know what you want to call it, but many people seem to get bent out of shape with the notion that there are other beings that rival them in intelligence. i do not know why that is....arrogance?
We do not know what dolphins are capable of. We are not one of them.....We certainly do not have some of their abilities.

 

Like what cognitive abilities?

 

radar for one thing...communications over long distances without aid....sonar...and other things....

 

Oh OK, the radar thing reminded me of bat echolocation, which I think is more a product of an evolutioary adaptation, rather than evidence of intelligence in the animal.
I presume you are suggesting the dolphins use these features in more complex ways which exhibit intelligence...

 

I think so......necessity is the mother of invention....some apes invent simple tools to make things easier.......and then moneky see, monkey do for the rest........It is in our genetics to be inventors.....I think......but does not make us smarter or better, is what i am saying.

 

Maybe all data is equally meaningless until one decides that some particular data means something to them?

Exactly. They evolve to serve purpose. We tend to see everything through the lens of human perception. We might compare all shades of purple to "hipforums purple" as if "hipforums purple" was the standard for purple but as we know, purple is an arbitrary identifier we have given to a specific qualia. Some species have eyes that can detect in the ultraviolet, or infrared EM spectrum and their color perception I'm sure is quite different as well as the capability of their eyes being quite different having evolved to suit a quite different species. Hearing abilities as well varies vastly between species, not just in the upper and lower bounds of audio frequencies that can be heard, but in the way notes are perceived, or the number of notes per octave. This alone would mean that music would sound quite different to your dog, than it does to you. It's pretty likely that what sounds like good music to us, sounds pretty bad to a dog or some other animal, or just like a bunch of noise. There's also the issue that music is processed differently by the brain than say speech ... so it's more than just the perception of sound. I wish I could say more about this, but its been a while since I read into this stuff, you may want to look into this though, I suspect that you may find it interesting. The same would apply to vision I'm sure. I've read that the estimated bandwidth of the optic nerve is ~9Mbps but this doesn't tell us a whole lot. It seems that vision is processed through many stages and the signals are compressed/reduced at each turn even further. Computer scientists have been struggling for a long time with machine vision .. adding a camera with more pixels doesn't help, it's more about how to make sense and meaning out of the data, before that it's just a bunch of bits, as meaningless as any other bits, they could mean anything or nothing at all.

 

and not everyone sees color the same way or hears music the same way in our own species......
I have known color blind people who have called some color a name...and i would say,. no that color is so and so.....we just both saw the same color differently.

 

I am well aware of different parts of the brain being responsible for processing different stimuli and sensations but hipforums purple IS the standard for purple.

As it relates to intelligence, By all definitions of how I would understand the term smarter, I'd say we are clearly smarter than monkeys or bats, but I agree that does not necessarily make us 'better' or well adapted.

 

Again, it is a matter of perspective.....are other species making wars and destroying the planet for everyone and everything else?
i would not call that very smart.

 

Can you explain this?

 

it has been shown time and again that in the absence of natural predators, ANY animal or plant will suffer overpopulation and ultimately ruin their own ecosystem.
That is the reason there are such things as deer season.

Humans are simply doing what comes naturally.

 

deer season. you know that is a bad subject for me.....and i am tired of hearing of what a favor people are doing for the deer population. bull shit! just be honest, hunters, and tell it like it is. You like to kill things.

 

bad subject for you because you are naive and see the world through the fantasy laden eyes of an 8 year old.
Have you ever seen what happens whenever there is no hunting?
overpopulation and decimation of food sources results in many of those sweet little Bambi's starving to death and let's not even mention the enormous amount of damage they do to farmland.

It is ultimately mans fault because we killed the wolves, mountain lions and other natural predators that kept Bambis population in check.
in a nutshell, nature doesn't give two shits about how you "feel" about something or your emotions.

 

nor does she care about yours.
and i don't care what she cares about, as nature is indifferent. I care about what i care about. That is all that matters to me.
yes, gentle, sweet people make the world go round, too.

 

To Mr. Writer: I meant to say it hasn't debunked e=mc^2.

 

I had to rush my last post because I had to go into work but to touch on this, if you are speaking from a philosophical position along the lines of say nihilism, then I got no contention but I think it's implied that if a researcher is to suggest that certain neurotransmitters provide chemical messages from neuron to neuron plays a significant role in a particular conscious experience with humans, that on the surface it would be quite inconsistent to suggest they don't have functions in other animal's experience. The functionality may not be parallel but it's really hard to imagine they would be meaningless to an animal or even to suspect that, if we even just consider experiments and results done on lab animals.

 

I think it's quite presumptuous to say the burden of tending to the entire planet rests on a particular species intellectual capabilities. that just may be suggesting humans have a far, far greater intelligence than I am making the case for. Doesn't the simple notion that we realize we are responsible for certain environmental problems display how intelligent we are?
To buck the trend on the enviornment issues, I think it'll rely more on many people's simple contributions and awareness of the issues, rather than intense straining of our collective intellectual abilities.

War is not smart in terms of 'civilized' behavior but pretty much all animals fight and our organization of it perhaps was an integral part of early human success when humans had to hunt large prey and defend against other predators, hominids, etc.

 

How do you define a level of abstraction, though? Isn't the part of something that makes it abstract that it defies definition? I wish you could compile a list of all the levels of abstraction.

I cannot answer that question with the expectation that you ought to agree. I am definitely aware that beauty exists. I could name things that are commonly accepted as being beautiful. I can't know whether or not the intellect plays a role in the beauty of things. That is, are things more beautiful when seen from a more refined perspective. Or can a flower actually be lovelier to a mentally handicapped person sometimes than typical people.

What am I talking about when I say beauty? Do you honestly expect an answer to that question? There are several beautiful things, but they are not beauty itself. And combined they may be the sum total of beauty itself, but how am I supposed to describe the sum total of all beautiful things to you?

Beauty is very real, however, and it transforms into our objective bodies in spacetime. Our movements flow beautifully; nothing stands in stark opposition to them. Beauty influences us and guides us along, sometimes in the most obvious of ways. We don't have a great awareness of how beautiful we ourselves are. We see other creatures as being majestic: gorillas, porcupines, lions, etc. But we lack the evolutionary advantage to be able to look back at ourselves properly and see what a godsend we are. If we did, I suspect we would be enamored with ourselves.

How defined are we by our environment? If we're so defined, then nothing is the equation but the environment in comparison to ourselves. But also, there is a point in space where it is expanding faster than the speed of light. If I'm defined by my environment, what does it say about me that space is receding away faster than the speed of light? So I do not think there can be a mathematical equation such that the equation itself would be the equivalent of reality. There is no "reality = this equation". People live in reality and are wholly influenced by reality; if reality can't be equated, neither can the people in it.

 

Many animals fight, yes......but they do not involve a nation of their own species with it.....
Well, if as you say, humans are the most intellegent animal on earth, shouldn't the responsibility of a better world...which they created as a worse world in some ways, be shouldered by them as responsibility somewhat?