I'm close to 100% that
is the only person who has ever used the term "holothetic" logic. Even if i'm wrong about this, it's even worse, because it would have to come from someone I at least haven't heard from, instead of one of the great climate scientists of our time, Dr. Paul Chandler.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Dent
Blonde, should we feel compassion towards other animals and want them to evolve in their own way, to get smarter?
what would happen when the animals got smart enough to fuck us up, I doubt they would feel compassionate towards us.
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Man, last night I ate a pound and a half of beef and pork mixed together. I'm not going to be giving up meat anytime soon. But I can't help but think that as/if civilization advances a lot and we don't kill ourselves, the way we treat animals will advance as well, and hopefully not in the way of more efficiently killing them.
But, that might just be a case of pretty extreme optimism. It's not like we have any precedent for how we're "supposed to act" as an intelligent, sentient species. Should we allow for other races to evolve and gain sentience? Think about Neanderthals; they weren't as smart or as developed as humans, but they were the closest separately-evolved species on the planet (that we know of) TO humans. The last common ancestor we had with them was
500,000 years ago. That blows my mind every time I think about it. A separate primate came out of Africa, evolved to be a Neanderthal, developed the ability to "think", wear "clothing", make tools, hunt...and evidence shows that we came around as latecomers and basically wiped them out of existence, likely a combination of battling each other for hunting areas and them dying of starvation because of this.
Mistoffelees had a pretty good write up
here a while back regarding other intelligent species evolving on Earth, and how we might react in such a situation. Are we destined to compete with every other species and destroy them in the great race for resources? I mean shit, humans can barely get along with each other. How would we react if we found another intelligent species evolving on our planet thousands, tens of thousands, or hundreds of thousands (if we're still around by then) from now? I have no clue.
Regardless, humans at this point have kind of stopped evolution in it's tracks in regard to ourselves (medicine, compassion, anti-eugenics). Could an animal species on Earth even evolve in the first place with us around?