I think the divide could be “is potentially immortal and can make copies of themselves”.
A weaker version of this (“potentially immortal and can make loyal servants”) is a stereotypical vampire, if you excuse the fictional evidence, and they seem pretty powerful, and their only weakness is that you can destroy their bodies—which would be much more difficult if they could make copies that share the same goals and can update each other’s memory.
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The human superpower over animals is “can remember lots of things and cooperate with its own kind on a large scale, including learning/teaching across generations”. Most other things are downstream of this.
Ants are also quite good at cooperation, and in absence of humans would be very impressive. If they had bigger brains, I could imagine them win.
I think the divide could be “is potentially immortal and can make copies of themselves”.
A weaker version of this (“potentially immortal and can make loyal servants”) is a stereotypical vampire, if you excuse the fictional evidence, and they seem pretty powerful, and their only weakness is that you can destroy their bodies—which would be much more difficult if they could make copies that share the same goals and can update each other’s memory.
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The human superpower over animals is “can remember lots of things and cooperate with its own kind on a large scale, including learning/teaching across generations”. Most other things are downstream of this.
Ants are also quite good at cooperation, and in absence of humans would be very impressive. If they had bigger brains, I could imagine them win.