This note is a part of my Zettelkasten. What is below might not be complete or accurate. It is also likely to change often.
11th July, 2020

Why Humans are overpowered

Partially from Yuval Noah Harari's work.

On an individual level, any wild animal of comparable mass will easily kill a modern Homo sapiens one-on-one.

Its only on a collective level that humans are able to assert their strengths

  • Humans are the only large animal capable of cooperating flexibly in large numbers.
    • Ants can cooperate in large numbers but are inflexible. They are programmed to be a certain way and cannot change their organization or behaviour to respond to unexpected changes in the environment.
    • Social Mammals can cooperate in their small tribes of < 100 numbers. They cooperate solely based on intimate knowledge of the other individual.
  • Development of languages allowed us to communicate better and allowed the group to take advantage of opportunities with haste
  • This cooperation has allowed us to create groups of individuals where specialists are possible - the group will fill in for the gaps of the specialist.
    • Makes it possible to create rulers, doctors, toolmakers/blacksmiths, shamans/priests, etc
  • Our programming is not inherently very rigid. Human children are programmed afresh once they are born and out in the world.
    • This means, a human child can be taught and can learn something beyond the capabilities of any existing human if educated in that way. Standing on the shoulders of giants is real for humans.
    • We are able to gain from the inventions/insights of others in our tribe at an unprecedented rate.
  • Specialization create new opportunities for growth via inventions like:
    • physical tools (like weapons or levers or fire) which multiply energy applied
    • techniques (metallurgy, pottery, cooking) which has manifold effects
    • Brainlets

According to Yuval Noah Harari, the cooperation of large groups is because of the human capability to believe in stories, our ability to create Our collective, imagined reality (which itself is amazing if you think about it). Humans live a dual reality: one that is objective and one that is made up. He says Stories can be dangerous as well.