Are Humans Special?

Written 2017¹

We instinctively believe there is something which sets humans apart from other species. One day I was thinking about why it is we think this, and it suddenly occurred to me the most obvious reason – It’s because we ARE humans! Our human brain is specifically designed so that humans stand out. Wouldn’t it be strange if you could ask a dolphin the question of which species stands out the most to them, and their answer wasn’t dolphins?

The human perspective has its idiosyncrasies, and we are not the impartial general intelligence we believe ourselves to be. We are special-purpose machines designed, by natural selection, to understand humans, empathise with humans, seek out other humans, idealise humans, and be attracted to other humans. And dolphins will feel the same way exclusively about other dolphins. Sexual preference is a good example to illustrate our partiality, because it is so clearly impossible to justify objectively – there is nothing about a human body that makes it objectively more attractive than a dolphin’s, in the same way that there is nothing about the human male body which makes it objectively more attractive than the human female human body or vice versa – an impartial observer like an alien from outer space would not be able to come to the conclusion that we are the most attractive species. So why are we so sure they would think there is anything objectively special about us at all?

It’s true there are skills that are unique to humans. Language is one of them, certainly a language as expressive as ours. But dogs have an extraordinary sense of smell which can be used to follow the tracks of someone long after they are gone, spiders can spin elaborate webs, cheetahs can run at 75 mph, and some sea turtles practically have a built in compass – It is not unique for a species to have a skill which is unique to them. And who’s to say which skill is the most impressive?

Even arguing that we are the most dominant species cannot really be made objective. By what metric? Well I guess we are probably the only species which has domesticated and been a predator of almost every other species, but equally we are not immune to infectious diseases caused by tiny parasites. We exist all over the world, but then so does grass. We’re pretty numerous – 7 billion people currently exist – but this is nothing compared to the 10 thousand trillion ants alive today. Their collective weight may even exceed ours. And we’re not even close to being the largest animal either – the size of a blue whale’s heart is 4 times the size of a whole human.

Probably our best hope is to appeal to our intelligence. Surely feats of engineering like the car are proof of our other worldly intelligence? I think this argument is quite artificial because 10,000 years ago it would not be valid and yet we had the same brains. I think it’s more evidence for the success of the scientific method of ‘building on the shoulder of giants’, made possible by our ability to communicate precisely through language. (I don’t think language by itself is the sign of or cause of our intelligence – some of the best thinking happens without language – but it is what makes progression in small steps to achieve big things possible). In that sense, the car isn’t really so different to the spider’s web – you wouldn’t attribute the amazing feat of engineering that is the spider’s web to the intelligence of the spider, and in a similar way I don’t think human’s inventions can solely be attributed to human intelligence (although a lot more can).

But also, a more fundamental problem with engineering ability as a metric is that it does not allow an impartial comparison across species. However intelligent dolphins are, without opposable thumbs they’re not going to get very far in construction. As Einstein allegedly said, “If you judge a fish by it’s ability to climb a tree, it will live it’s whole life believing that it is stupid”. I don’t think there exists a general test of intelligence because I don’t think there is a general problem to solve. All species have their own problems, and the only task which unites us all is reproduction (which we can’t claim to be the champions at because of ants, bacteria etc).

Having said this, our engineering ability does demonstrate something which can be compared more impartially across species – and that is the adaptability of our intelligence (i.e. the variety of problems that we can solve). With respect to this measure of intelligence we probably do come top, but we are not necessarily in a league of our own – for example killer whales show an impressive variety of hunting strategies in different cultures. Adaptability isn’t always that great anyway as it means skills need to be learned which takes time and that’s not really worth it if the problems you’re solving don’t change much. I certainly don’t think there is a qualitative difference in our ability to adapt compared to all other species.

In conclusion, there are formal metrics by which humans come out on top, e.g. language, abstract reasoning, adaptability, domestication of other species etc, but as we have seen there are also metrics for which we don’t. It is no surprise that the metrics for which we come out on top are metrics we value highly, but I don’t think our impartial alien observer would see any reason to see these metrics, and hence us, as special. Even if the alien had to make a bet on which species it considered most likely to survive or have descendent species in X years time, I think they might think twice about picking humans. In evolution, past success is not a guarantee of future success, as the dinosaurs who reigned for 180 million years have taught us. I am of the opinion that, unless it were the case that animals were soulless machines, there is no way to make us objectively stand out.²