| | Ed, I agree that humans are naturally smarter than just about everything else on the planet. Our brains work automatically. Even without epistemological morality and insight - the choice to think - most people get along fairly well in most times and places. What happens inside someone else's mind is not obvious by inspection. Yes, well all stop for red lights regardless of how we perceive them, so we can assume that everyone else sees red pretty much like you do -- except people with Daltonism (colorblindness), of course, who nonetheless otherwise learn to navigate the world. I believe that many other differences exist, but we have not measured them. Realize that we call colorblindness "Daltonism" because of the 18th century scientist who had it and described it. Did no one else for a million years?
In point of fact, it is an "empirical axiiom" (seen often; no exceptions so far) that no people (langugage group) develops words for brown and purple until after they have differentiated blue from green. You might think that the majesty of mountains and the wonder of rainbows might be easy for anyone who can tell the trees from the sky. However, you need to undestand how recent language is. And how powerful.
Also, I am sure that you will agree that the primary purpose of language is thinking: communicating with others comes after that. But we learn language by communication with others, by listening before we can speak.
Steve, I do not believe that you are either modest or obtuse.
"... if it would be faster to take Second Avenue even though it is adds more distance.
That doesn't measure up to the value provided by insights of Einstein or Rand, but it is about something that has never happened before - about you imagining ... That is the essence of what we all do - by nature of being human."
I agree that many of us do - and you certainly do. Even though you have been a working psychologist, you only worked with other people from your cultural milieu who spoke to you about their feelings and thoughts. But, again, as you know,professionally, one thing that I had to learn while in therapy or counseling was to differentiate "I feel" from :"I think." (Really. And I consider myself an Objectivist.) "I feel that my wife is being unfair." is incorrect. I might feel hurt, angry, puzzled, amorous, or sleepy, but we do not "feel that... " rather, we "think that...." Yet, well confuse the two processes every day in our common speech and no one questions it.
My point is that my perception of you through this admittedly filtered medium is that your own mind is not like "everyone else's." You have insights. You wonder. You question. You test. You learn. Most people do not.
My evidence for that is the stable toolset from homo habilis through Neantherthal. (Granted that Neanderthals buried their dead with flowers. Makes you stop andt think....) You wrote: "The cave man could look at a club and imagine a spear. His ancestors could look at spears and imagine arrows." (You meant "descendents" not "ancestors" but I got that from context.) Not just any cave man could do that. For easily 100,000 years, maybe 250,000 or more, the hand axe was stable across time and place.
In his book, The Coming Singularity, Ray Kurzweil recognizes that the more technology we have, the more take-off points there are for improving, expanding and leaping forward to the making of a totally new thing. (Hence, the growth of technology, historically, it is exponential, not linear). ... Look at all of the things we now have to look at! Nearly everything that comes before your senses, or enters your mind is fair game for playing "What if" with.
Yes, for you and for me, and for Ray Kurzweil. I work with a woman who often speaks isolated words. Last night, I asked a supervisor a question and he answered a different question entirely, but his verbal tone was "It is not a problem" so I took that for the answer. He thinks he communicated - and after a fashion he did. You over-estimate the mental acuity of the large mass of humanity. Progress comes from exceptional people. The more of us that exist, the better off everyone else is. They can copy. They can repeat. They can learn how to do.
With six billion people on Earth, we have millions of artists and scientists. Sixty million such people are one percent of the tribe.
Ayn Rand's theory of Objectivist Epistemology was flawed n many aspects, but largely remains an excellent and outstanding description of how to think effectively, efficiently,and creatively. Other modalities exist, also, but ITOE is valuable and important on its own. That said, Ayn Rand only described what she thought was the best way to think. She did not describe how "most people" think ... and (I believe) not even how she herself actually thought until as an adult, she thought about thinking.
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