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Paul Grobstein's picture

"competitive advantage"

Submitted by Paul Grobstein on Fri, 03/02/2007 - 4:37pm.

he problem with "competitive advantage" as a grounds for asserting superiority of any organism (human or otherwise) over another is that it can only really be done after the fact.  One can speculate about the possible advantages of one organism over another but one can't know what the actual competitive relationship was unless and until one or the other becomes extinct.  Humans may well be "unique" in the extent of our ability to try new things out .... but that characteristic also has some downsides and it remains to be seen how successful it makes us relative to other organisms.   Do we really want to be superior in these terms?  Humans couldn't survive if we in fact proved superior to all other organisms (ie they all went extinct), and it would be a pretty dull world in any case. 

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