First of all, there have been “feral” humans that grew up surrounded by animals. As far as I know, these humans are not obviously much more intelligent than animals (in terms of their ability to solve problems).
Think of that like a modern supercomputer being used to play pong.
(well not that big of a gap, but you get the picture)
Animal brains have a relatively simple and limited range of pieces of software they can run.
Human brains are able to run a much wider range of much more complicated programs.
In other words, human intelligence shows up in that with the right training, we are able to do all sorts of complicated things. Whereas there are plenty of things most humans can do that animals can’t be trained to do.
To actually be able to do useful stuff, humans need the right training, both in the specific technical details, and more general stuff like the scientific method. (with some ability to figure those things out from large amounts of trial and error)
Train a human in a nutty cult, and their intelligence is useless. But the point is that humans can be trained to do physics. Not that every human crawls out of the womb doing calculus.
I agree that if your only examples of humans were feral humans, then you would have no reason to think humans were much smarter. And then you would be very surprised by basically any educated human.
Or another way to put this, for a slightly different definition of the word “intelligence” is that humans can be much more intelligent than animals with the right environment.
Think of that like a modern supercomputer being used to play pong.
(well not that big of a gap, but you get the picture)
Animal brains have a relatively simple and limited range of pieces of software they can run.
Human brains are able to run a much wider range of much more complicated programs.
In other words, human intelligence shows up in that with the right training, we are able to do all sorts of complicated things. Whereas there are plenty of things most humans can do that animals can’t be trained to do.
To actually be able to do useful stuff, humans need the right training, both in the specific technical details, and more general stuff like the scientific method. (with some ability to figure those things out from large amounts of trial and error)
Train a human in a nutty cult, and their intelligence is useless. But the point is that humans can be trained to do physics. Not that every human crawls out of the womb doing calculus.
I agree that if your only examples of humans were feral humans, then you would have no reason to think humans were much smarter. And then you would be very surprised by basically any educated human.
Or another way to put this, for a slightly different definition of the word “intelligence” is that humans can be much more intelligent than animals with the right environment.