[DemolitionRed]

Originally Posted by sungrass

Hawking also said Corbyn should step down as leader of the labour party in March- and now Labour have wiped the tory majority. The guy gets it wrong - the more intelligent a person becomes the more compassionate too - if we came across an alien species less intelligent than us - say humans of about 10,000 years ago would we be cruel to them?

The government might want to do tests but the people would go mad if it was done inhumanely.

That just isn't true! The more Inteligent we get the more beast like we become. Whilst we may not eat our family dog, we wipe out entire countries killing millions of innocents.

[Toy Soldier]

Originally Posted by DemolitionRed

That just isn't true! The more Inteligent we get the more beast like we become. Whilst we may not eat our family dog, we wipe out entire countries killing millions of innocents.

We aren't (biologically) getting more intelligent though, we haven't as a species increased in raw intelligence since before written records began. Our collective knowledge increases over time and the general knowledge levels of individuals have increased with across the board education and literacy, access to libraries, and of course most recently the Internet (debatably ... no but seriously, vast knowledge at our fingertips makes a huge difference).

BUT our brains haven't changed. Great scientists today aren't any more intelligent than, say, Plato, Aristotle, etc... or even the ancient cultures who were mapping the stars... they just have more of the background work already done for them and more to work with. If you hopped back in time and kidnapped a baby from Ancient Greece and plonked it in a modern education system, it would fare just as well as any child today. Likewise, if you took a child today and had it raised by cavemen it would be speaking in grunts and carrying a club.


The relevance of this, really, is that there is a broad spectrum of intelligence at any one time and it IS true that more intelligent people tend to be more compassionate when it comes to large-scale questions. The actual truth is that all non-sociopathic humans, on an individual level, are compassionate by nature... the reason that less intelligent people are less compassionate on larger scales is that they are more susceptible to dehumanizing. Put Katie Hopkins in a boat with one immigrant child in the water drowning and, I almost guarantee, her overwhelming human instinct will be to save that child even at her own risk. Tell her that 1000 children drowned 1000 miles away and she'll make a cheap political quip about cockroaches.


Of course the problem is that the great minds who can create amazing things aren't necessarily the ones then going on to USE those things. Donald Trump or Kim Jong couldn't build a nuclear weapon. They couldn't even begin to get their tiny minds around the science involved in splitting atoms. But they can sure as **** press a button.


That said... I guess you could assume the same thing about any alien life form. The intellect required to develop working faster-than-light space travel would be immense. Those alien scientists would have incredible minds and would likely be fascinated by all of human culture. BUT... those great alien scientists are probably NOT the ones actually flying the ships or calling the shots. Those are probably dumb-as-a-post alien "Trumps".



Though I guess it could be an alien Theresa May...

"Primitive humans!! I have travelled across the stars to your primitive world. I have a great ship and weapons more powerful than you can imagine! ... ... ... ... ... And I have come ... ... ... To sell them to the highest bidder we'll start at 4 tonnes of pretty Earth Gold."