"amiel fernandez" <chinte21@hotmail.com> writes:
> Personally, the thought that human beings are the most intelligent beings in
> the whole universe sounds so inane and frightening that I remember thinking
> "There HAS got to be something smarter than us!"
Maybe that is a common reaction, but it is a logical non sequitor.
> To think that human beings
> are the highest intelligence around seems to be the highest sort of
> arrogance and as there is a countless range of intelligent power beneath
> human beings, there would seem to be the same range above us.
This is the old "Great Chain of Being" idea, originally from Christian theology. But it is not obvious that one can use the mediocrity principle to deduce that we are in the middle in the spectrum of intelligences; we are obviously at the top here on Earth and have no information about the distribution in the rest of the universe.
Just because we currently are limited and stupid doesn't mean we always have to be - what if you extend your reasoning in the temporal domain?
Anders Sandberg Towards Ascension! asa@nada.kth.se http://www.nada.kth.se/~asa/GCS/M/S/O d++ -p+ c++++ !l u+ e++ m++ s+/+ n--- h+/* f+ g+ w++ t+ r+ !y