> would you feel common ground with a predatory fish? Or a plant? An insect colony?
Humans famously show compassion for all of these. I don't think alligators co-evolved with Steve Irwin.
Humans even show compassion for rocks and non-living things. We show compassion for the literal ground. We anthropomorphize it. Is this anthropomorphization not an attempt to understand and have compassion.
Regardless, you just asked how OP feels. I don't know how they do, but I can say how I do. "Yes"
> Yes.
> Humans famously show compassion for all of these.
But alligators rarely show compassion for humans, barracudas are not known for saving drowning babies and plants frequently show no compassion to anything.
IOW, Alien life might resemble alligator mindsets more than human ones. We don't know.
On the other hand, even predatory mammals are documented on occasion to render aid to humans (i.e. dolphins rescuing humans from drowning, or intervening in shark attacks), and in domestic settings can be convinced to raise young from other species (domestic cats/dogs will raise most baby animals if introduced correctly). It's not as cut and dried as a hard species boundary on compassion.
Compassion seems just a natural evolutionary direction as it is far more energy efficient for creatures to form coalitions.
Coalitions within the species (family unit, clan, pack, etc), sure. Coalitions with external parties? That's rare outside of concurrent intertwined evolution (symbiotic relationships, parasitic relationships, etc).
> That's rare outside of concurrent intertwined evolution (symbiotic relationships, parasitic relationships, etc).
Everything evolves together. We're all on the same planet and working in the same ecosystem. Cross species collaborations isn't too uncommon and we even see it happen in some regions but not others.
The point is if you collaborate with your own you're very likely to collaborate with others. The smarter the animal the more common this is
I'm not; I'm only pointing out that the conclusions I see ITT expressing the notion that a more intelligent species would necessarily be more compassionate is more unlikely than the converse, because from our one and only sample of life, we don't see it often.
IOW, I am replying "We don't know that" to the assertion "They will be compassionate.".
We have a sample size of zero.
But again, you cannot build a ship with an individual. Physics gets in your way.
> It's not as cut and dried as a hard species boundary on compassion.
My final sentence is
> We don't know.
So I think we're in agreement on this :-)