Rough Idea / People are about as Smart as Fish

Cardinal Convictions

1. Skills that are learned, Do Not Transfer to Other Closely Related Skills!
• You would think that if Humanimal Sentient Minds were really Malleable by Learning & Thinking, Then the dexterity gained from any learned skills would be automatically transferred, or at least give you a head start on learning any new, closely related skill, But it has been repeatedly shown that this is Not the case!

2. Improvements to Well Understood & Commonly Used Appliances are made at a Rate Comparable with Random Mutations.
• You would think that if Humanimals could genuinely Think, Then any New Invention would Be Rapidly Improved upon until it achieved It's Definitive Form in A Reasonably Short Time, But it is More Often shown that the tiniest improvements are made only after years of misuse, accidents, systematic failure & general frustration of it's use.


Principal Arguments

The One Thing that Creates The Illusion that People are Much Smarter Than Fish,
Is that People have Language, and People Make Things.

If you step back from that for a moment
And consider This Assertion:
Turtles are About As Smart as Fish.
If you easily accept this...

Now What about;
Zebras are About As Smart as Turtles.

You might think at first that Zebra's are much smarter than Turtles...
But i would counter with; How so?

What sorts of things do Zebras do that would suggest that they are substantially smarter than Turtles?

If you watch Starfish, which have no real brains to speak of...
And by that i mean, While Starfish do have an established nervous system,
It's ( or They - Connected to The Five or So Arms - ) are not connected to any Central Mass of Nervous Tissue..!
Given that;
The Behaviour of Starfish, when sped up with Trick Photography,
Appear to be just as Sophisticated as Much Larger Animals,
Such as Turtles, or disorganized coyotes, with Well Documented Brain Material.

Likewise;
Zebra's behave in about this same way.
They wander around, eat a lot, jump away when something startles them, and so on.

Starfish, as it turns out, are Predators, which are usually,
When considering Mammals, Are Usually thought to be much Smarter than Herbivores.
And when we observe Starfish; They do indeed behave in a manner consistent with Mammalian Predators. They Wander Around, Spot a prey, Anticipate how The Prey is Going to React when it's attacked; Then move in for The Kill.
They are successful enough at this to be much more successful, in gross numbers of their species, than any Mammalian Predator.

Now;
Allowing—
Without exhaustive examples of the previous assertions, That The Lowest Animals behave in a nearly identical manner as the highest Order Animals, with the biggest Brains...
How many real Qualities do People have that make us behave substantially different from Starfish, or Fish in General... Or Turtles?

All Behaviors that extend directly from our ability to manipulate tools should be excluded for the most part, although, this may not really make any difference, as there are several different kinds of animals with gripping hands, paws or beaks, which have not quite accomplished the sort of things that people have...
While there are fish that do build rather sophisticated structures, As well as many Birds and Insects, without hands.

That is;
Hands & Fingers may not be that important to the argument of intelligence.

Pushing aside the entire issue of tool using,
as it apparently is an off shoot of some other attribute or Quality, not specifically related to fingers.

People Talk.
Many other animals seem to have primitive languages, although, in most of these cases, including apes & monkeys, And including apes that have been taught sign language,
These animals fall flat when using language to express the complexity of new & fresh ideas that people are routinely credited with fabricating.

It might be mentioned here that one of the principle arguments that people are about as smart as fish; Is that people as a species are credited with inventing clever ideas...
Most people, The Vast Majority; 80% by Volume, have not done this.
The Vast Majority of people have never created a new idea,
Or learned new skills by anything other than well regulated and habituated Pavlovian Conditioning.

The Vast Majority of people are the Easy Target when arguing that people are about as smart as fish.
The Argument is directed at The Vast Majority of people ( The Damp Masses )
And while The Argument Considers that There are Exceptional People that are able to generate New Ideas and Deviate substantially from The Typical Behaviour of most Fish & Turtles...
The Argument would prefer to avoid getting bogged down with these exceptional cases,
And concentrate on The Damp Masses and Fish in General.

Once it has been well established & Conceded that Most Humanimals ( Humsters ) are about as Smart as Fish;

Then—
Just how much smarter is The Smartest Humster from The Average Humster?

i suspect that it boils down to a few very special skills.
Where these special skills come from, or whether or not all humsters possess them,
Or— If all Animals have them in various degrees, Including Bee's & Amoebae...???
Such Deep Inquiries will be put aside for a moment.

What are these Very Special Skills.

Creativity is NOT one of them!
But— Recognition of A Good Idea Is!

It is quite easy to write a very simple computer program on a hand held calculator,
To Generate dozens of Entirely New & Genuinely Original Ideas...
But it is Very Much Harder to program the device, or The Largest Super Computer to Sort These Ideas to Good, Functional, Applicable Idea from The Crazy, Dysfunctional Ones.

The World is full of people that have come up with Very Original Ideas,
And then gotten into the most egregious mischief when they tried to apply them.

There is Another Kind of Creativeness
that May be One of The Special Skills.

This Other Kind of Creativity is The Ability to Come up with A MetaTemplate for New Ideas.
Most ideas, & most Creativity stems from The Use of Well Worn Templates,
Which take the form ( i.e., ) A + B = AB ( Amoung Many Other Established Templates )
Using this technique, the dullest lopheaded albino can be taught to be reasonably witty for a short time. If you use just one or two templates over & over again,
it becomes quickly apparent that you're not really very witty after all.

The MetaTemplate consists of A Template to Make new Templates.
It would seem that this -Should Be- Quite Easy to do; Especially once you've figured out that this would be a very advantageous approach to coming up with New Ideas...
But from my experience; It's VERY Hard.
Thinking in an Entirely New Way, Is bereft of The Usual Speed Bumps that Prevent an Ordinary Humster from Using Conventional Templates.
Coming up With A MetaTemplate requires identifying What Qualities make up The Usual Templates, Then Mixing them up, Then Determining Which ones have Useful Applications, at The Next Level(s down...?
The AntiThesis of The Good MetaTemplate may be viewed by examining the disorganized stream of QuaziConsciousness that Schizophrenics are so well known for.
They are indeed thinking / generating psuedothoughts; by means of MetaTemplates that are not in common usage, But it would appear that these MetaTemplates NEVER generate Useful or Applicable Ideas.

How many Templates & MetaTemplates are there?
i suspect that there are very few; And this would argue very strongly that this apparent observation of Genuine Clever Thinking is Dependent upon a small rule book of Tricks.

My apparent inability to successfully catalog these Templates & MetaTemplates
Is related, i suspect; To the problem of Identifying Real Taboos.
Anything that is Too Close to how we necessarily operate from day to day, Is so Obvious & by that extension; Invisible... They are very hard to see & contemplate.

The Real Taboos are things that we would -Really- Never Consider doing,
And The Templates that reasonably clever humsters use to generate Original Sentences,
Are Too Invisible to Think about...???

Only Crazy People, Very Young Articulate Children & Foreigners ( Aliens )
Can really see these kinds of things.

Another Skill may be :
Seeing into The Future.

Most animals & Humsters; simply react to what is happening to them, Right now.
Seeing into The Future; Reliably, is an amazing trick.
It is often used for Evil, But It can be used for Good as Well.
People that are rarely in accidents, probably have this skill.

Whether seeing into the Future really entails seeing into The Actual Future,
Or just reliably predicting what may happen is irrelevant to this examination.

Needs work...???

If i wanted to work this up into a book,
What would the Outline look like...???
Co-Authors encouraged to apply...!