"The End of the Space Age"

[DontSayBanana]

There are other materials out there. There's one asteroid which is believed to be pretty much solid gold.

Believed, sure, but you'd have to survey it before investing the resources for a mining operation, and depending on the status of orbit, you may find you've got a narrow opportunity to get in and get out.  Mining asteroids wouldn't be as simple as "hey, we think Material X is on this asteroid- send some diggers."

Not to mention logistics of getting the materials back to Earth.  I'd bet on a "tugboat" kind of vessel, controlled explosions to break off chunks of the asteroid and send them toward Earth, where they get decelerated in or near Earth orbit; a space elevator would be a tremendous help there for sending chunks for terrestrial refining without burning off precious metals during entry into the atmosphere.

[Josquius]

There are other materials out there. There's one asteroid which is believed to be pretty much solid gold.

Believed, sure, but you'd have to survey it before investing the resources for a mining operation, and depending on the status of orbit, you may find you've got a narrow opportunity to get in and get out.  Mining asteroids wouldn't be as simple as "hey, we think Material X is on this asteroid- send some diggers."

Who said it would be? Of course they'd survey first.

[jimmy olsen]

Regarding size and climate, elephants are probably the second smartest animal on the planet, very close to human level, capable of some abstract thought and possibly even capable of moral reasoning.  They are also the largest terrestrial mammal and live in hot climates.  I'm not saying this isn't kind of counterintuitive, given the waste heat generated by a busy brain, but there they are.  (Suggestively, elephants are also one of the few non-primates situated to manipulate their environment in a more-or-less-finely-tuned manner.  If humans had never evolved, or stopped existing right now, I think it'd be really interesting to see what happened with elephants in ten million years.)

But as for sociality, that's definitely necessary.  I occasionally wonder if the major stumbling block to intelligence is the development of very high-investment reproductive strategies such as employed by primates, elephants, and cetaceans to a high degree, and just about all mammals to some degree.

Dolphins are smarter than Elephants.

[The Brain]

Which percentage of humanity is dumber than the smartest animals? Rough guesstimate.

[Tonitrus]

Regarding size and climate, elephants are probably the second smartest animal on the planet, very close to human level, capable of some abstract thought and possibly even capable of moral reasoning.  They are also the largest terrestrial mammal and live in hot climates.  I'm not saying this isn't kind of counterintuitive, given the waste heat generated by a busy brain, but there they are.  (Suggestively, elephants are also one of the few non-primates situated to manipulate their environment in a more-or-less-finely-tuned manner.  If humans had never evolved, or stopped existing right now, I think it'd be really interesting to see what happened with elephants in ten million years.)

But as for sociality, that's definitely necessary.  I occasionally wonder if the major stumbling block to intelligence is the development of very high-investment reproductive strategies such as employed by primates, elephants, and cetaceans to a high degree, and just about all mammals to some degree.

Dolphins are smarter than Elephants.

Elephants are more serious.  Dolphins are like the potheads of the mammalian species.

[jimmy olsen]

Regarding size and climate, elephants are probably the second smartest animal on the planet, very close to human level, capable of some abstract thought and possibly even capable of moral reasoning.  They are also the largest terrestrial mammal and live in hot climates.  I'm not saying this isn't kind of counterintuitive, given the waste heat generated by a busy brain, but there they are.  (Suggestively, elephants are also one of the few non-primates situated to manipulate their environment in a more-or-less-finely-tuned manner.  If humans had never evolved, or stopped existing right now, I think it'd be really interesting to see what happened with elephants in ten million years.)

But as for sociality, that's definitely necessary.  I occasionally wonder if the major stumbling block to intelligence is the development of very high-investment reproductive strategies such as employed by primates, elephants, and cetaceans to a high degree, and just about all mammals to some degree.

Dolphins are smarter than Elephants.

Elephants are more serious.  Dolphins are like the potheads of the mammalian species.

Orcas are as smart as Elephants, are they not serious?

[Razgovory]

How exactly do you compare the intelligence of a whale to an elephant?

[Tonitrus]

Regarding size and climate, elephants are probably the second smartest animal on the planet, very close to human level, capable of some abstract thought and possibly even capable of moral reasoning.  They are also the largest terrestrial mammal and live in hot climates.  I'm not saying this isn't kind of counterintuitive, given the waste heat generated by a busy brain, but there they are.  (Suggestively, elephants are also one of the few non-primates situated to manipulate their environment in a more-or-less-finely-tuned manner.  If humans had never evolved, or stopped existing right now, I think it'd be really interesting to see what happened with elephants in ten million years.)

But as for sociality, that's definitely necessary.  I occasionally wonder if the major stumbling block to intelligence is the development of very high-investment reproductive strategies such as employed by primates, elephants, and cetaceans to a high degree, and just about all mammals to some degree.

Dolphins are smarter than Elephants.

Elephants are more serious.  Dolphins are like the potheads of the mammalian species.

Orcas are as smart as Elephants, are they not serious?

How many African villages get stamped out by a rampaging Orca?

[CountDeMoney]

Orcas are as smart as Elephants, are they not serious?

How many African villages get stamped out by a rampaging Orca?

Point.

[CountDeMoney]

Gotta admit though;  that'd be one motherfucker of an orca.

[mongers]

Which percentage of humanity is dumber than the smartest animals? Rough guesstimate.

Generally or as evidenced here ? 

[Eddie Teach]

How exactly do you compare the intelligence of a whale to an elephant?

All those krill questions on the IQ tests are biased against Dumbo.

[CountDeMoney]

All those krill questions on the IQ tests are biased against Dumbo.

OK, that was a stupid fucking gag.  You get the shovel for that one.

[dps]

How exactly do you compare the intelligence of a whale to an elephant?

Figure how much smarter than Timmay each of them is, and compare the 2 figures.

[Neil]

I guess it depends on what you mean by major.  Extrapolating from the example of the moon, Earth would have had 22,000 impacts sufficient to develop a 20km crater.  Assuming the LHB was 4.2-3.9Gya, that's once about every 14,000 years.  And there were much larger impacts as well.  (According to this NASA chick Cohen, anyway.)

It's the much large impacts we're interested in here, as the proto-life would have been somewhat hardy.

I do think there are requirements, but don't think you're right on all of them.

Regarding size and climate, elephants are probably the second smartest animal on the planet, very close to human level, capable of some abstract thought and possibly even capable of moral reasoning.  They are also the largest terrestrial mammal and live in hot climates.  I'm not saying this isn't kind of counterintuitive, given the waste heat generated by a busy brain, but there they are.  (Suggestively, elephants are also one of the few non-primates situated to manipulate their environment in a more-or-less-finely-tuned manner.  If humans had never evolved, or stopped existing right now, I think it'd be really interesting to see what happened with elephants in ten million years.)

But as for sociality, that's definitely necessary.  I occasionally wonder if the major stumbling block to intelligence is the development of very high-investment reproductive strategies such as employed by primates, elephants, and cetaceans to a high degree, and just about all mammals to some degree.

The issue with size is food requirements and energy usage, especially for herbivores.  Obviously it doesn't hurt having a very large skull and brain, but at the same time the elephant has an extremely elaborate cooling system for their heads to help overcome the heat.  They still need to add significant complexity to their brains in order to increase their intelligence, and they're going to have a lot of trouble with that without reducing their size.  And as the temperature increases, those problems are going to be exacerbated.