[ExI] dolphins making tools and developing a technology: RE: Psi and gullibility

[artillo at comcast.net]

This post reminds me a bit of David Brin's Uplift Saga... great books, worth another read if I can find them in my collection! 

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "spike" <spike66 at att.net> 
To: "ExI chat list" <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> 
Sent: Wednesday, January 27, 2010 12:59:43 PM GMT -05:00 US/Canada Eastern 
Subject: [ExI] dolphins making tools and developing a technology: RE: Psi and gullibility 



The psi discussion here has produced an insight: if a phenomenon exists but 
we haven't the memetic infrastructure to support it, we wouldn't recognize 
it even if we saw it. We would seek alternative explanations, as I do with 
psi. 

In my misspent youth I recall being taught that humans were the only tool 
users, but that the notion was being challenged. As a fallback, the text 
book claimed that humans are definitely the only tool makers. Now we know 
plenty of nonhuman beasts do that too. 

Check this way cool dolphin behavior: 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pQ50PYMXDCQ 

Note that the guy making the mud ring does not himself get fed, but the 
others do. So this requires some rethinking of our evolutionary memeset. 

spike 




_______________________________________________ 
extropy-chat mailing list 
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org 
http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat 
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/attachments/20100127/b78b7dca/attachment.html>