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    Intelligence

    I don't like the idea that simply because the ancients and asgard had more advanced tech, that they were more advanced mentally then we are. Well from watching the show I know they are a little more mentally advanced, but I think there given too much credit. If we were to timetravel back and bring someone from 5,000 yrs. ago (while I do know that 3 million years is a lot greater distance, I was just using that as a reference point) to present day, they would have no harder time figuring out how to work or tech then we do.
    Knowing how to work tech is much different from discovering it. Once it's discovered understanding that discovery is much easier

    #2
    Just because they are evolved mentally more than us has nothing to do with figuring out technology.

    If you teach a person from 5000 years ago how to use a computer, that doesn't mean he's as mentally advanced as us because there is a lot more to a computer than just using it. You have to know to build it, then you have to know how to make the parts, then you need to know to make the machines that make the parts, then you need to understand the science behind everything to make the machines in the first place.

    Just because the Asgard gave us technology and we've been able to use it on ships, doesn't make us as mentally advanced as the science behind that technology has been dumbed down considerably because humans aren't able to understand it.

    McKay invented a new type of math, but it's only new to humans because his mind was more evolved when he created it and he couldn't figure it out when he was normal. The science was beyond us, how to even approach it was unknown and how to even understand it is still a mystery.


    Asgard couldn't even come up with self destructing the O'Neill because such methods and tactics are beyond them, because they've evolved beyond that way of thinking. The Nox tried to teach us that "our way is not the only one" so it's not just down to science, it's down to how both races think, act, respond. Humans on otherworlds don't necessarily have the same chance of intelligience for us. If you adopt a child from another world, what are the odds of that child being the new Einstein, or Hawking. Chances are very low because they've not evolved socially, culturally and mentally to understand a lot of things we'd consider simple.

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      #3
      Oh no, believe me; using stuff is EASY. Understanding, that's hard.

      I mean, most of us still can't wrap our heads around Relativity or Quantum Mechanics, but those with a higher brain capacity and who can process more info could...probably.

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        #4
        When you consider the "intelligence" of the older races, make sure you figure in their mistakes. They made some huge ones.

        Two examples from both the Asgard and the Ancients:

        Asgard: 1) Interfering with the natural progression of their evolution eventually led to their extinction. 2) They thought they could handle the Replicators but would up loosing them on more than one galaxy.

        Ancients/Lanteans: 1) Created human life on a planet that was inhabited by an extremely aggressive creature that blended with the humans it fed upon and created the Wraith, which wiped the Lanteans from Pegasus and decimated the Pegasus population. 2) When on the verge of destruction because of the second plague, they left their extremely advanced technology lying around for anyone to stumble upon and use as they see fit (the Goa'uld empire was based on Ancient technology, Dakara was just left lying around with the potential to destroy all life in the galaxy).

        Luckily the Asgard learned from the Ancients' second mistake.

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          #5
          Understanding it and using things are totally different but I doubt someone from our evolutionary past would be able to use a computer yet alone speak in sentences since their brains were so much smaller. The only exception would be the neranderthal, but they all died along time ago.

          But this proves that our brains would need to get bigger to actually create new tech. Now in Mckay's thing he needed large amounts of food to do that, now naturally that much food would never be availble so in order to make up for that the brain would naturally become bigger to be more efficiant, like how we have evolved, we don't use very much of our brains but it's efficiant.

          Now with all that I see the Ancients as totally un-real in our evolutionary process, they would have to be a totally different species. Now the Asgard would be more along our path. IMO

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            #6
            Meh; we've made our share of mistakes too, and in terms of scale our big mistakes are to us what the Ancients' mistakes are to them. Obviously being confined to one planet means our mistakes won't be as big as theirs, but just wait until we get out there.

            Oh, we'll SO screw things up.

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              #7
              Originally posted by PG15 View Post
              Meh; we've made our share of mistakes too, and in terms of scale our big mistakes are to us what the Ancients' mistakes are to them. Obviously being confined to one planet means our mistakes won't be as big as theirs, but just wait until we get out there.

              Oh, we'll SO screw things up.
              Exactly. We've made mistakes on a proportionate scale and for the longest time, the people of Earth were considered by the more "advanced" races to be primitives or, as the Nox put it, "very young".

              Are they really more intelligent or are they just like us but on a grander scale?

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                #8
                Originally posted by Jeffala View Post
                Exactly. We've made mistakes on a proportionate scale and for the longest time, the people of Earth were considered by the more "advanced" races to be primitives or, as the Nox put it, "very young".

                Are they really more intelligent or are they just like us but on a grander scale?
                They have been around longer and most likely made the same mistakes we have made but they learned, and offer us their recommendations on what to do. It is experiance and that is knowledge.

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                  #9
                  Also from an evolutionary standpoint, intelligence is a very complex biological function that is dependent on many genes. it would take a lot longer for intelligence to evolve and especially in a primitive society like ours that has almost none positive selection pressure whatsoever, especially for intelligence.
                  so yes if you take a human from 5000 years ago he would probably have the same average level of intellectual capacity as us, but if you compare for example his immune system to ours you'll see how we accumulated some beneficial genetic traits from those extra 5000 years of adaptation.
                  we are not on par with societies like the Asgard who employ genetic manipulation, or the Wraith who embrace the survival of the fittest.
                  same goes for the ancients, a race that has been around for millions of years would develop numerous harmful genetic mutations over time.
                  there is absolutely no way they could have survived as a race for that long without some genetic screening / manipulation.

                  Evolution aside, we are not even advanced enough (technologically) to exploit our full intellectual capacity as it is. at the moment we don't have sufficient understanding of how intelligence works, we develop our intelligence by exercise and stimulation only (reading books, solving problems, etc).
                  but our brains are capable of much more, people have managed to train their minds to preform some unbelievable stuff. like memorizing the entire yellow pages or preforming outstanding calculations that would normally require a computer. I remember a while back there was a guy who broke the world record by calculating like the 12th root of a 200 digit number in just over a minute, all in his head. he was a student of artificial intelligence and says he trained his mind based on an artificial intelligence system.
                  our science and tech are not up to the level where we can effectively train our brains yet.

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