Are you a lumper or a splitter?

[robvalue]

To explain my lumpiness: I consider the differences between us and other animals to be relatively insignificant compared to the similarities. The main difference is we're far better at wrecking the planet.

[Anomalocaris]

To explain my lumpiness: I consider the differences between us and other animals to be relatively insignificant compared to the similarities. The main difference is we're far better at wrecking the planet.

Insignificant to what?

They seem rather not insignificant to the objective of finding a partner for sex or procreate.

[Edwardo Piet]

The way I see it is, as mammals... we're only special insofar as we have the egos to think we are.

And as intelligent apes... we out-killed and out-fucked other species of intelligent humans, such as neanderthals.... so we're ultimately only really special because we're violent and horny. And yet, with nature in general, that's completely normal.

I can't really understand the idea that we're special just because we have technology and some shit. We are 2% difference in D.N.A. to chimps, all that happened is things snowballed. In actuality we're no different to any other animals. We just murdered and fucked all competition to death.

As far as I'm concerned, the quickest shortcut to realizing how not special we are is this: Apply the anthropic principle.

[Anomalocaris]

Again, measurement of “special” has to have an stated objective to be meaningful.  98% of our genes may be the same as those of a chimp.  But what does that really signify?  To say that makes us basically the same as something which shares 98% is a rather fast and loose value judgement devoid of clear definition of what “special” is meant to inform.   You can no more fuck a chimp to produce an fertile offspring than you can with a sea anemone.   But you may be able to reconstruct lots of missing DNA in humans with the DNA from chimps without too much loss in fidelity.   Which is it that you are trying to do seem to inform whether humans ought to be regarded as special?  No?

If you stand Gandhi next to hitler, you’d find they share far more then 98% of their genes, more like 99.99% of their genes. It is therefore informative for most purposes to say they are essentially identical?

[CapnAwesome]

You never give it a rest, do you?

You don’t like the fact that he keeps trying to credit republicunts with peoplehood?

I don't dislike mins obsession with republicans and trump, i just don't think that its very healthy. Him.

[Sal]

I think every animal is distinct from one another. Even twins.

[Angrboda]

I think focusing on the similarity helps in reconstructing the evolutionary history of adaptations, enabling us to develop explanations for them. It is these adaptations in their most extreme form that we identify as differences, so in order to understand those differences, we need to focus on the similarities.

[Edwardo Piet]

Again, measurement of “special” has to have an stated objective to be meaningful.  98% of our genes may be the same as those of a chimp.  But what does that really signify?  To say that makes us basically the same as something which shares 98% is a rather fast and loose value judgement devoid of clear definition of what “special” is meant to inform.   You can no more fuck a chimp to produce an fertile offspring than you can with a sea anemone.   But you may be able to reconstruct lots of missing DNA in humans with the DNA from chimps without too much loss in fidelity.   Which is it that you are trying to do seem to inform whether humans ought to be regarded as special?  No?

The point is we're no more "special" than any other animal. We're creatures that evolved, and evolved intelligence.

It begs the question to merely define our specialness as the way we are, as intelligent beings.

What I mean is there isn't a sound argument for saying that we're special.

The most we could do is define ourselves that way for pragmatic reasons. There may be reasons for it to be useful to consider us different, or special, to split us. That's different to saying that we're actually special.

All creatures are unique and special in their own way. Like I said, there could have been other animals that developed the technology that we do if we hadn't killed and fucked them out of existence. Let's not compare apples to oranges: yes we can't breed with Chimps but we could breed with neanderthals. And we did. And what makes us "special" compared to them could merely be the fact that we fucked and murdered them out of existence. If it were not for us, it could have perhaps been neanderthals that ended up going to the moon and inventing calculus instead of homo sapiens sapiens.

If you stand Gandhi next to hitler, you’d find they share far more then 98% of their genes, more like 99.99% of their genes. It is therefore informative for most purposes to say they are essentially identical?

That's a really bad analogy lol. And a strawman considering I'm not saying we're identical, or even essenially identical. It just makes no sense on an atheistic basis to say we're "special" for anything but pragmatic reasons. From a biological perspective we're just another species that has evolved. Nature doesn't give a fuck about the fact we sent people to the moon. We give a fuck about it. It begs the question to define ourselves as special based on our own judgements about what it means to be special lol. It's total speciesism. And special pleading.

[Mermaid]

I am a biologist and a lumper.

[Anomalocaris]

I think focusing on the similarity helps in reconstructing the evolutionary history of adaptations, enabling us to develop explanations for them.  It is these adaptations in their most extreme form that we identify as differences, so in order to understand those differences, we need to focus on the similarities.

Differences and similarities are complementary. Focusing on genetic similarities enables the reconstruction of the common ancestors of two different organisms. But focusing genetic differences enables the determination of how long ago the last common ancestor for the two organisms lived.

What is more, to understand what drove adaptation and evolution, that requires a focus on the differences, not the similarities.

So Evolutionary history can not be completely understood without either.

What to focus on depends on what the objective is.