[HN Gopher] Crows possess higher intelligence long thought a pri...
___________________________________________________________________
Crows possess higher intelligence long thought a primarily human
attribute
Author : felixbraun
Score : 166 points
Date : 2020-09-24 20:37 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.statnews.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.statnews.com)
| NDizzle wrote:
| I've always thought this was confirmed with the video of one
| snowboarding down a roof.
|
| https://youtu.be/1WupH8oyrAo
| codezero wrote:
| This is fantastic and reminds me of when I learned that crows
| look like this in eastern europe and other places, not all
| black like in the US :)
| _Microft wrote:
| Something that is also super interesting is how cats or dogs
| react to e.g. cat-face filters when they see themselves and
| their human (with a transformed face) mirrored on a smartphone
| screen. You might want to search videos of that. I like the one
| where the cat turns around and gives their human ... a _paw to
| the jaw_ :D
| crooked-v wrote:
| Here's one such compilation:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jto2peSOLac
| ceejayoz wrote:
| In a similar vein: a cat discovering it has ears in a
| mirror.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=akE2Sgg8hI8
| rewq4321 wrote:
| Amazing. It carries its "sled" back up to the top, stands on
| it, and pecks it get it started.
|
| Whenever I see stuff like this, I can only think about this[0]
| (normal operation in US and AU at least), and how absurd it is
| that we treat animals like this, knowing how intelligent they
| are.
|
| [0] https://i.imgur.com/ucJNZoX.png
| NDizzle wrote:
| Yeah I guess "sledding" is more accurate than "snowboarding".
| rewq4321 wrote:
| Various levels of TL;DR:
|
| Article:
|
| > Now the birds can add one more feather to their brainiac
| claims: Research unveiled on Thursday in Science finds that crows
| know what they know and can ponder the content of their own
| minds, a manifestation of higher intelligence and analytical
| thought long believed the sole province of humans and a few other
| higher mammals.
|
| Science mag:
|
| > Humans have tended to believe that we are the only species to
| possess certain traits, behaviors, or abilities, especially with
| regard to cognition. Occasionally, we extend such traits to
| primates or other mammals--species with which we share
| fundamental brain similarities. Over time, more and more of these
| supposed pillars of human exceptionalism have fallen. Nieder et
| al. now argue that the relationship between consciousness and a
| standard cerebral cortex is another fallen pillar (see the
| Perspective by Herculano-Houzel). Specifically, carrion crows
| show a neuronal response in the palliative end brain during the
| performance of a task that correlates with their perception of a
| stimulus. Such activity might be a broad marker for
| consciousness.
|
| Abstract of the paper:
|
| > Subjective experiences that can be consciously accessed and
| reported are associated with the cerebral cortex. Whether sensory
| consciousness can also arise from differently organized brains
| that lack a layered cerebral cortex, such as the bird brain,
| remains unknown. We show that single-neuron responses in the
| pallial endbrain of crows performing a visual detection task
| correlate with the birds' perception about stimulus presence or
| absence and argue that this is an empirical marker of avian
| consciousness. Neuronal activity follows a temporal two-stage
| process in which the first activity component mainly reflects
| physical stimulus intensity, whereas the later component predicts
| the crows' perceptual reports. These results suggest that the
| neural foundations that allow sensory consciousness arose either
| before the emergence of mammals or independently in at least the
| avian lineage and do not necessarily require a cerebral cortex.
| ReptileMan wrote:
| And a group of them is called a murder...
| biggc wrote:
| > a clueless hedgehog across a highway before it becomes roadkill
|
| Before watching the linked video I thought this was describing
| crows deliberately placing hedgehogs in harm'ss way so that they
| could eat the resulting roadkill
| filoleg wrote:
| Thanks for your comment, because I thought the same thing, but
| couldn't be bothered to watch the video. The article author
| definitely could've done a better job of wording that sentence
| in a less ambiguous way.
| padjo wrote:
| I would urge caution in interpreting motive from animal
| behaviour. To my eye that crow could just as easily be
| attacking the hedgehog as helping it.
| nicoburns wrote:
| This is a sensible caution, but we should also be careful not
| to do the opposite and assume an animal is incapable of
| sophisticated motives and intelligent planning.
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| But if we take time to consider that animals may posses
| intelligence and rich inner lives, then we may also have to
| consider that our treatment of them is monsterous. Can't
| have that.
| codezero wrote:
| We can make up for it by uplifting their species with our
| technology.
|
| I sincerely believe we should be doing this - it's a core
| premise of one of my favorite novels: Sundiver:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sundiver
| cassalian wrote:
| > crows know what they know and can ponder the content of their
| own minds, a manifestation of higher intelligence and analytical
| thought long believed the sole province of humans and a few other
| higher mammals.
|
| I've always found the common thought that only humans and a
| select few of other animals are the only ones that posses higher
| intelligence to be incredibly arrogant of our species. Why
| wouldn't they have higher intelligence? As far as I can tell,
| it's because there's no simple test that could be applied to
| confirm or deny whether higher intelligence exists within an
| animal, so we then jump to the conclusion "Because I can't prove
| that they do have higher intelligence, then they must not have
| higher intelligence" - logic doesn't work that way! Glad to see
| some people are willing to dig a little deeper and take the time
| to show that crows do have this capability.
| novok wrote:
| Humans were effective in their intelligence and rule the world
| with it, no other animal has shown anything approaching
| something like that. You judge them by their results.
| meroes wrote:
| effective -> selfish seems equally scientific
| spideymans wrote:
| Would our physical abilities not play a role in our ability
| to "rule" the world? We're relatively large animals, blessed
| with arms, finger, thumbs and a remarkable degree of physical
| dexterity. These physical abilities collectively enable us to
| physically manipulate the world.
|
| Or in other words, if dolphins had arms and thumbs (or
| generally any physical attributes that allows them to
| manipulate their environment as humans do), would it crazy to
| suggest that they could dominate the seas, as humans dominate
| land?
| liability wrote:
| Besides lacking thumbs, dolphins would also have a pretty
| hard time harnessing fire as a tool. This probably
| truncates their tech tree severely.
| outworlder wrote:
| > Besides lacking thumbs, dolphins would also have a
| pretty hard time harnessing fire as a tool.
|
| I keep reading about this, and I don't see it as a major
| problem.
|
| Sure, it might take a while for them to even grasp the
| concept of fire. Much like it took us a while to grasp
| relativity.
|
| However, once they _know_ it to be possible, it 's an
| engineering problem. They can build their forges above
| water. Holding breath to operate them (until they can do
| it remotely) is inconvenient but they are pretty good at
| it.
|
| There's also a fair bit of construction they could do
| without even resorting to that. Humans can weld
| underwater. They could too.
| NobodyNada wrote:
| > Holding breath to operate them (until they can do it
| remotely) is inconvenient but they are pretty good at it.
|
| Nitpick: Dolphins breathe air.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| Humans can weld underwater - with equipment that they
| built on dry land, using materials that they created on
| dry land. Could they have created the materials
| underwater? It would have been hard, even knowing how.
| bdamm wrote:
| True, but perhaps they could harness technology we never
| thought of as valuable. Perhaps they could build
| structures around sea vents, or use sticks and weeds to
| build pens in which to farm fish. Many possibilities
| exist. They could even be doing agriculture right now and
| we wouldn't even know it.
| worldsayshi wrote:
| I like your ideas but without dexterous extremities it at
| least a very versatile mouth it seems you'd be very
| limited in your capacity to control or shape your
| environment.
| spideymans wrote:
| It would truncate the human tech tree. It's anybody's
| guess what a Dolphin-based tech tree would look like,
| given their environmental constraints.
| p1necone wrote:
| I'm endlessly grateful that Raccoons aren't more
| intelligent.
| outworlder wrote:
| Yet. Coexisting near humans, it's likely that the
| environment will incentivize smarter raccoons.
| cgriswald wrote:
| I think it's the opposite. Any idiot raccoon can raid a
| trash can and get lots of calories. And unlike rats we
| are generally not out there looking to kill them.
| guerrilla wrote:
| That's not a measure of our intelligence, only our ambition
| and aggression. The two may not even be correlated.
| hinkley wrote:
| Possibly inversely correlated.
|
| Tribes that expressed humanity to creatures outside of homo
| sapiens were frequently wiped out by tribes that couldn't
| even manage to express humanity to other tribes of homo
| sapiens.
|
| The victors sit on a throne of skulls, wondering why they
| are so lonely.
|
| Aggression is a gene that selects for itself. But if it's
| too successful, then the next time some external selective
| pressure comes from outside, that 'loneliness' may become
| an existential threat, wiping out the local gene pool
| entirely. Just like a virus.
| missedthecue wrote:
| So crows could build a jumbo jet, they're just lazy? It's
| pretty obvious that animals lack any type of intelligence
| even close to human ability. It's not even in the same
| ballpark.
| vharuck wrote:
| What would you consider the bare minimum act to be judged
| at human-level intelligence?
|
| Remember, for most of the history of our evolutionary
| ancestors, we were hunter-gatherers that used extremely
| crude tools. Not really better than crows. Discoveries
| happened a whole lot slower back then, like the eons
| between making fire and starting agricultural towns.
| Given a few millennia, crows may be making their own
| fires to cook.
| guerrilla wrote:
| See, there's your arrogance again. They may have no
| interest in doing so or anything leading up to it and
| desire is not a measure of intelligence.
| missedthecue wrote:
| OK, so how about the fact that they haven't figured out
| how to heal broken bones? Is that my arrogance again, or
| is it that they would just prefer to flop on the ground
| until nightfall and then be eaten alive by coyotes?
| withinboredom wrote:
| Can you heal a shattered leg all by yourself with no one
| around? I guarantee you'll lay on the ground until
| nightfall and probably be eaten by coyotes (since you're
| a human, they /might/ leave you alone).
|
| If you have someone with you, maybe they can carry you.
| Crows can't carry other crows. If they wanted to fix the
| other crow, they'd have to do it where the crow fell. It
| would still get eaten by coyotes. They can't protect the
| downed bird, so it will still be eaten. Ergo, why bother
| trying to heal the bone?
| guerrilla wrote:
| Humanity couldn't for 99.61% of its existence either and
| apes in general couldn't for nearly 100% of their
| existence. If we were to rely on your criterion, then all
| humans before a few thousand years ago would be deemed
| unintelligent, whereas we know they are essentially
| identical to us.
| ElFitz wrote:
| And how are crows supposed to defend wounded fellows from
| coyotes? Or carry them to safety?
|
| How about the fact they can apparently build compound
| tools from parts?
|
| Your example isn't just about brains. It requires both
| proper bodies and arguably complex social behaviors,
| which are quite separate from intelligence itself.
| missedthecue wrote:
| I don't think this rebuttal holds much water. Humans are
| capable of doing things that our bodies cannot. We
| domesticated beasts of burden in order to move heavy
| objects from one place to another for instance.
|
| But consider very basic advancements. Communication for
| instance is something humans mastered from the outset. We
| are able to store and pass down information beyond the
| instinctual for generations, something no other animal
| has done. Imagine if humans needed to rediscover
| mathematics every generation!
|
| There are plenty of examples I could give that would
| provide crows with an immediate improvement in the
| quality of life. I think the reason they have not done
| these things is because they cannot, rather than because
| they have chosen not to.
| glenstein wrote:
| I agree with missedthecue that this response is kind of
| ridiculous. We know things about anaesthesia, blood
| clotting, soft tissue, and our physical actions are
| informed by an amassed body of knowledge and an ability
| to reason from that knowledge and apply it with a degree
| of sophiscation that crows don't apply, even within the
| domains of things that are easy for them physically to
| do.
|
| This is so ridiculous that I'm wondering if I'm missing
| the point. Is this sarcasm? Is this playing devil's
| advocate to prove some kind of point?
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| Occam's razor suggests that "not capable" is a better
| explanation than "not interested in", when considering
| things that are clearly an immediate and strong benefit
| to a life form.
| guerrilla wrote:
| Then you must be fundamentally and essentially "not
| capable" of masonry since that's a much simpler
| explanation than your lack of motivation and opportunity.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| I absolutely am capable of masonry, I just don't do it
| much because I'm also capable of getting (by using money)
| someone else who's capable _and_ willing to do it for me.
| Same applies to just about any other thing anyone
| outsources in their lives, but the end result is the same
| - the advanced work gets done. Other animals don 't
| demonstrate any of that.
| sdwa wrote:
| Crows absolutely could build a jumbo jet, they just have
| no need to because they can already fly.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| Would they build a submarine then? Or a rocket capable of
| reaching orbit?
|
| More realistically: have they mastered fire? There are
| caloric efficiency benefits to eating warm/cooked
| food[0]. Have they mastered writing? There's _compound
| interest_ in terms of civilization development sitting
| right there, in the ability to put thoughts into a form
| that outlives individuals without degrading.
|
| --
|
| [0] - At least for humans; IANABiologist, but I'd guess
| this would be true for other animals too, including
| birds, and at the very least it would expand the range of
| foods they can consume.
| withinboredom wrote:
| It took us 1000s of years to do that. One might ask, why
| did we master fire in the first place? Maybe to cook? To
| stay warm and go north? Do crows need to cook or can they
| just eat what humans cook? Do they need to stay warm?
| chance_state wrote:
| Of course they could, but they can already fly. See?
| Intelligence.
| tomtomistaken wrote:
| Well, humans just started to build jumbo jets in very
| very recent history. That's not a very fair benchmark.
| titzer wrote:
| Maybe they are smart enough to realize that jumbo jets
| would ruin the planet? /s
| mrlala wrote:
| >So crows could build a jumbo jet, they're just lazy?
|
| How can they _physically_ even come close to building a
| jet?
|
| It seems humans physicality has a LOT to do with our
| intelligence. Perhaps someone with actual knowledge on
| this can chime in.. but it seems to me if you have a
| build similar to ours, you have the opportunity to
| actually progress and manipulate things to a level where
| it might a situation where as a species you continue to
| evolve with more intelligence over time because you are
| able to actually use it.
|
| I don't know how to say that better.. but on the other
| hand, if we had our same brains but had the bodies where
| we can hardly manipulate any tools.. don't you think that
| makes all the difference in the world?
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| How could a human physically come close to building a
| microchip? We're much, much, much too large for that to
| be possible.
| missedthecue wrote:
| The specifics of jumbo jet manufacture really has nothing
| to do with my point. The point of my comment is that
| there is a very evident and very clear discrepancy
| between human intelligence and animal intelligence.
|
| It's always fun to watch a clever squirrel find its way
| into a bird feeder, a cunning fox outsmart a rabbit, or a
| curious monkey recognize himself in the mirror. These are
| signs of sentience, sure, but all of those are far cries
| from what even an immature human is capable of, and this
| obvious evidence is what leads us to believe we are
| smarter than them. It's not arrogance in any sense.
| snazz wrote:
| Building _anything_ significant requires a relatively
| high level of dexterity, does it not? Even if crows could
| figure out how to build and operate tools that would
| allow them to build significant physical structures and
| objects, their bodies are not well-suited to doing so.
| liability wrote:
| They can build nests. Nest building seems to often get
| overlooked in discussions about tool use, perhaps because
| shelter isn't traditionally considered a sort of tool?
| But it seems tool-like to me. Maybe nest building doesn't
| impress us because bugs do it too?
| notahacker wrote:
| Birds might lack the physique to use human tools, but
| they have plenty of dexterity when it comes to building
| nests. They just seem to have relatively little interest
| in using that dexterity to build things which are _not_
| nests
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| It's not about _building_ anything, really. The
| cornerstones are figuring out a reliable method to store
| knowledge over generations, and then figuring out
| mathematics more advanced than counting your food and
| potential mates. Having that, you have both an abstract
| framework for developing better understanding of the
| world (which is a necessity for better control over it,
| i.e. technology), and a way to implement it as work that
| spans generations.
| jstanley wrote:
| > How can they physically even come close to building a
| jet?
|
| A human can't do that either. Humans as a whole can do it
| because we have enough intelligence to implement the
| whole chain of technology required to be able to do
| things on this scale. Not just the physical scale, but
| also the scale of the science and engineering required to
| make the thing actually work.
| ElFitz wrote:
| Perhaps intelligent animals are just too well adapted to
| their world and don't feel the needs we do.
|
| Or perhaps crows only have two claws that also serve as
| feet and a beak, making it harder to fashion tools?
|
| Perhaps living underwater, like octopuses do, makes it
| quite hard to master fire?
|
| Or perhaps measuring intelligence is hard, and focusing
| only on engineering outcomes is a fallacy.
|
| It's also not like most humans would be able to build
| even a steam engine, let alone a jumbo jet.
| cassalian wrote:
| What motivation does a crow have to build a jumbo jet?
|
| Furthermore, the vast majority of humans have no idea how
| to build a jumbo jet, and throughout the vast majority of
| human history, there were no jets - jumbo or otherwise -
| does this mean that we only have higher intelligence in
| today's world, now that we are able to build jumbo jets?
| For the vast majority of human history, we only had the
| simplest of tools and if we compared those humans to
| today, by your standards, these humans do not possess
| higher intelligence. However, evolution has not
| progressed nearly as quickly as our ability to work with
| tools has; as such, the human brain really hasn't changed
| all that much in even the last 10,000 or even 100,000
| years! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_of_human_i
| ntelligenc...
|
| Finally, you have no proof that crows would be incapable
| of building a jumbo jet, you've simply asserted that they
| couldn't. To be clear, I'm not arguing that they could,
| merely conceding that because they haven't done so, does
| not mean that they are incapable of doing so.
| missedthecue wrote:
| Crows have only been around in one form or another for 30
| million years give or take, so if they haven't done
| anything more interesting than adapt to their environment
| and use basic tools since, I don't think it is
| unreasonable to assume that the reason is because they
| are incapable of it, not because they have chosen not to.
|
| At the end of the day, it is impossible to prove a
| negative, so no I can't show you off hand that a crow
| can't actually conceive of this or that or the other
| thing
| nicoburns wrote:
| I think the point is that we assume that because other
| animals don't have this kind of engineering ability, we
| assume that they don't have capabilities like self-
| awareness or higher-level thought. But we can't see into
| their minds, so we don't actually have direct evidence of
| that.
|
| What we do see in more intelligent animals such as orcas,
| orang-utans, elephants, parrots, crows, octopuses, even
| cats and dogs, etc is sophisticated planning and
| inventive use of their environment. We also know that
| early humans were likely anatomically similar to modern
| humans (and may well have
|
| Are there areas where humans are smarter. Almost
| certainly. But is the difference as great as the outward
| achievements as judged by human standards would indicate.
| Almost certainly not. And there may even be aspects of
| cognition that other animals excel at that we are
| completely unaware.
| aeternum wrote:
| Language seems incredibly important, it may actually be
| the basis for our ability to build abstract concepts, not
| to mention share knowledge.
| read_if_gay_ wrote:
| Intelligence is one of the strongest predictors for success
| even among humans.
| guerrilla wrote:
| You're begging the question. You've defined what humans
| do as success. It's not even clear that what we do isn't
| complete failure (see climate change, nuclear war, etc.)
| Let's see if our actions keep us alive for some 160
| million years.
| jbotz wrote:
| We didn't come to rule the world with our intelligence... we
| came to rule it with fire.
|
| Fire, control over it and the ability to make it, is the one
| thing humans have that no other animal has. We may (or not)
| be more intelligent, have a more complex capacity for
| language, etc., but those are differences of degree. Only
| fire is truly a difference of kind. We are _the_ animal that
| makes fire.
|
| Fire is literally what made us what we are... it is probable
| that increased availability of food calories from cooking was
| what allowed us to grow our big and calorically expensive
| brains. So fire comes before our vaunted intelligence. And
| then fire made us the most powerful creatures on earth, and
| enabled what we call civilization and technology and
| progress, each new stage in our development enabled by ever
| greater dissipation of energy gradients... mostly through
| fire. Although we did also harness other energy sources
| throughout history, such as wind and running water, and
| lately, nuclear fission, always fire was primary, the real
| driver of our dominion over the planet, even today.
|
| And as it looks, fire will be our end as well, as we use it
| to release the fossil energy nature stored up over millions
| of years in mere decades and turn our lovely earth into an
| inferno.
| cercatrova wrote:
| I really do wonder how humans would've adapted had we been
| aquatic animals. Energy usage via fire is not possible, and
| it seems other energy usage under water is much harder than
| simply creating fire, so we could still have the same level
| of intelligence as now, yet be so far behind
| technologically than we are now.
| groby_b wrote:
| Except for Australian Hawks, who use wildfire to flush out
| smaller animals.
| minitoar wrote:
| Do the hawks create or aid the spread of fire? One could
| say Redwood trees are similar for having evolved to take
| advantage of the fire.
| throwaway889900 wrote:
| I wonder if the Black Kite will ever come to rule the world
| one day then.
| danjac wrote:
| Maybe the longer term results are different. If the Fermi
| Paradox is a thing, perhaps our brand of intelligence - the
| combination of brains and dexterity and environment that let
| us quickly advance from sophisticated tool building to a
| global industrial economy - is an evolutionary dead end and
| species that have gone down this path destroy their ecosystem
| and themselves along with it inside a few thousand years.
|
| Whereas other intelligent species that lack the environment
| or manual dexterity to even light a fire will keep on going
| long after we're extinct.
| Shared404 wrote:
| This reminds me of the discussion a while ago about how
| efficiency and robustness are at odds.
|
| It's the same thing, but on a much grander scale.
| BjoernKW wrote:
| The opposite could also be true:
|
| Our brand of intelligence - the combination of brains and
| dexterity and environment that let us quickly advance from
| sophisticated tool building to a global industrial economy
| - is precisely the rare Goldilocks combination of features
| that allows a civilisation to spread throughout the
| universe.
|
| Because that combination is incredibly rare we might very
| well be the first to be poised to attempt to do so.
|
| This is the strong anthropic principle at play, which of
| course could be taken with a grain of salt. Still, this
| scenario nicely answers the question "Where is everyone?",
| too.
| marricks wrote:
| We definitely have a unique ability to change our world but
| whether that's an effective "ruling of the world" and "smart"
| is really debatable. While that may sound be glib "judging
| them by their results" is really a ridiculous notion. The
| "results" would be purely framed in human terms "who can
| solve puzzles" who can "think like we do".
|
| A cat doesn't need to think like us to live in their cat
| world, a worm doesn't need to solve a puzzle to live and
| thrive. Yet they both have thrived for a long time and
| existed in a way let them persist with their environment in
| an equilibrium.
|
| It seems pretty reasonable to frame intelligence as thriving
| within your environment and persisting, and humans have only
| been around a short time and driven our planet to literal
| environmental collapse. I'd contend it's equally reasonable
| to describe humans as some of the least intelligent species.
| aeternum wrote:
| I'm not sure this is a fair characterization. Almost all
| predator animals overhunt if given the chance. The
| equilibrium is typically due to the predator's inability to
| catch the remaining prey rather than some intelligent
| realization by the predator that they ought to stop hunting
| so much to preserve the ecosystem.
| nicoburns wrote:
| Tell that to Orcas. They rule the seas.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| Used to. Then humans invented boats and spears.
| nicoburns wrote:
| They largely still do. The Oceans are _huge_ , both in
| terms of surface area and then in terms of depth.
| derg wrote:
| I don't necessarily completely disagree here, but I'm always
| thinking of the Douglas Adams quote in Hitchhiker's Guide on
| this:
|
| "For instance, on the planet Earth, man had always assumed
| that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had
| achieved so much--the wheel, New York, wars and so on--whilst
| all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water
| having a good time. But conversely, the dolphins had always
| believed that they were far more intelligent than man--for
| precisely the same reasons."
| RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote:
| But this type of reasoning went out the window, as soon as
| humans started killing dolphins in large numbers (see tuna
| nets), and the dolphins had no way to defend themselves or
| otherwise dissuade humans from doing that.
|
| This is one of the big lessons in history. The
| civilizations that use their intelligence to make tools and
| weapons end up screwing civilizations that "muck about,
| having a good time".
| fao_ wrote:
| Aha, so when an interstellar empire comes around and
| fucks up our planet -- if not outright just sending an
| asteroid our way, it's justified because we are of a
| lower technological level?
|
| The humans and proto-humans of the past weren't 'stupid'.
| And even if they were comparatively, 'stupidity' isn't a
| justification for committing harmful actions, degrading,
| or otherwise treating the recipient as lesser. This
| sounds like a philosophy that encourages "well I'm going
| to hurt you and it must be right because you can't stop
| me or dissuade me".
| pdonis wrote:
| _> even if they were comparatively, 'stupidity' isn't a
| justification for committing harmful actions, degrading,
| or otherwise treating the recipient as lesser_
|
| I don't think the GP was saying it is. I think he was
| trying to look at it from the dolphins' point of view: he
| was proposing that the fact that they _didn 't_ use any
| of their intelligence (assuming they have it) to
| construct ways to defend themselves from other
| intelligent species, like humans, was a mistake on their
| part.
| worldsayshi wrote:
| Why are you assuming that previous poster aimed to
| justify that behaviour? I don't see that that was
| implied.
| filoleg wrote:
| > it's justified because we are of a lower technological
| level?
|
| No, it isn't. Just like killing dolphins isn't justified.
| But it probably means that the interstellar empire in
| question is very likely to be more intelligent and/or
| advanced than us.
| summitsummit wrote:
| what would be the next trump card above intelligence for
| survival/evolution/procreation/whatever the "goal" is?
| aeternum wrote:
| I think the ability to 'reprogram' oneself. We are
| currently more or less stuck with the genetic code we
| receive at birth. A species which is able to modify their
| code at will would be incredibly adaptable and would
| likely surpass us very quickly.
| eternalban wrote:
| Self knowledge and self control.
| armatav wrote:
| Omnipotence. Or something approaching it.
| Eyas wrote:
| That's uncomfortably close to Eurocentric claims of
| superiority that point to their colonization and
| exploitation of other countries in the eighteenth,
| nineteenth, and twentieth century.
|
| I don't necessarily buy it. A pacifist civilization might
| be "dominated" by a violent civilization, but they might
| still choose death over becoming violent themselves.
| teucris wrote:
| I agree with your post but it's worth noting it does not
| apply to dolphins. Dolphins are not pacifists[0].
|
| [0] http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20160204-cute-and-
| cuddly-dolp...
| worldsayshi wrote:
| I do not read that the previous poster meant that the
| superior one was morally superior. Only superior in terms
| of violent power.
|
| You're not buying it but they're not selling it?
| notahacker wrote:
| The nets aren't a plot to subjugate the dolphins though;
| for the most part humans would rather not have dolphin
| bycatch. They're just something that dolphins haven't
| collectively figured out how to avoid.
| jychang wrote:
| That's like saying humans aren't intelligent because they
| can't avoid car accidents in the rain.
|
| Even if you were super intelligent, i bet you'd get
| fucked up in a net if you had low visibility in the
| water, you were traveling at high speed, and you didn't
| have opposable thumbs to untangle yourself.
| ummonk wrote:
| Eh, I'd argue beavers come close, especially when compared
| with paleolithic humans.
| outworlder wrote:
| > Humans were effective in their intelligence
|
| Well, another thing humans have going for them is _hands_
| DavidSJ wrote:
| On the other hand, the best of our inventions and discoveries
| seem to have been just barely within our grasp, and it took
| modern Homo sapiens 200 thousand years to reach this level of
| domination of the planet.
|
| A slightly less intelligent species (or perhaps one lacking
| just the right body type), such as our own ancestors or
| perhaps our extinct close relatives, might have taken 10
| million years instead of 200 thousand, or just never have
| done it at all.
| TheSpiceIsLife wrote:
| On the other hand, there are more kangaroos in Australia than
| people...
|
| Or if that doesn't tickle you, how about: _cockroaches!_
| ta1234567890 wrote:
| Because then it's easier to justify ensalaving or killing them.
| Mostly we just don't even want to know.
| 1123581321 wrote:
| Well, that reasoning is your wording alone.
|
| The reason scientists do not optimistically assert animals must
| have human-analogous intelligence is because of the difficulty
| required to design a test that will reveal traces of it.
| saagarjha wrote:
| Perhaps it's humans that lack the higher intelligence that
| would allow them to understand that other species may also be
| intelligent.
| vmception wrote:
| There is very consistent supporting information to explore
| that thought further.
|
| We rely too heavily on structured vocal responses to
| determine intelligence. On top of that we rely on observing
| erroneous unnecessary behavior to consider something might be
| thinking. This could be a real limitation of us as a species.
| hinkley wrote:
| I don't think it's intelligence, but humility.
|
| We are (hopefully) transitioning through an era where being a
| conqueror is less successful than collaboration. But there
| are way too many of us who are less than seven generations
| separated from conquerors. Conquerors bank on exclusiveness,
| not inclusiveness.
|
| We're still trying to convince each other that all the humans
| deserve to be in the Humanity Club. If we can't hack that,
| then who is going to want to talk about cetaceans and
| chimpanzees and corvids?
| maxbond wrote:
| I believe it's something like the adage, "it's difficult to
| make someone understand something their paycheck depends on
| their not understanding."
|
| Think about people who will tell you lobsters can't feel pain
| while they're rattling in a pot. The idea we are the only
| intelligent species, and that everything around us exists
| only to be exploited for our benefit, is quite convenient.
|
| Edited to add: I think this is also related to the way tech
| companies view their users. They aren't humans with needs to
| be fulfilled, they're a resource to be extracted. More a coal
| mine than a customer. (Not to lob a grenade into the
| discussion, I just found it relevant.)
| osrec wrote:
| I think it might be quite the opposite. Our highly developed
| minds/egos sometimes cloud our ability to see reality as it
| is, and often make us believe that we are more/less special
| or gifted than others.
| davidgerard wrote:
| Historically, humans have frequently tried to claim other
| groups of humans aren't really intelligent, so ...
| JackFr wrote:
| Consider the Turing Test, not as a goal for AI, but rather the
| working definition of intelligence. Put another way, game knows
| game.
| sharkweek wrote:
| My crow story, which I think I've mentioned on here before.
|
| We have young children, and thus the back of our car is always a
| little disgusting with things like goldfish crackers littered all
| over the floor and in-between the cracks of their car seats. We
| got in the habit of throwing the crumbs out onto the driveway
| when we got home. It didn't take long for us to notice anytime we
| pulled in, the crows would be lined up on the power lines waiting
| for their free meal.
|
| But it gets better. One of my kids loves watching the birds, so
| we go out there and do so a lot. Sometimes we throw them some
| crackers etc. for free entertainment.
|
| We were outside one day and someone walked by pretty close to us.
| They didn't pose any (recognizable) threat, but apparently the
| crows thought we were in some sort of danger because several
| swooped down and attacked the person walking by. They were
| totally fine after the crow mauling, but I did read that crows do
| view people as friend and foe, depending on what they might be
| trying to protect.
| TrainedMonkey wrote:
| It is possible that there was an attribute of that person that
| crows recognized as dangerous:
| https://www.discovermagazine.com/planet-earth/grudge-holding...
| mywittyname wrote:
| This makes me wonder if this kind of stalking is the reason
| behind the association of ravens with war? Many cultures have
| mythologies of ravens protecting warriors in battle. Maybe they
| literally followed armies in the past, scavenging food, and
| attacking the foes of the army.
|
| I understand that they eat carrion, hence their association
| with the dead. But that wouldn't explain the stories like this:
|
| > According to legend, prior to one battle a gigantic Gallic
| warrior challenged any Roman to single combat, and Valerius,
| who asked for and gained the consul's permission, accepted. As
| they approached each other, a raven settled on Valerius' helmet
| and it distracted the enemy's attention by flying at his face,
| allowing Valerius to kill the enemy Gaul.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcus_Valerius_Corvus#Early_c...
| sosuke wrote:
| Easy food off corpses is my thought. Humans are very soft and
| tender if they aren't swinging at you.
|
| I've seen several media instances of crows eating the dead.
| bryan0 wrote:
| I highly recommend this PBS special largely dealing with the
| intelligence of crows: https://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/a-murder-
| of-crows-introducti...
|
| They might have had some other specials too, but in one they show
| them completing complicated multi-step challenges using tools to
| get food.
| arooaroo wrote:
| I've mentioned this previously but it's on topic and still amazes
| me, so I'll just copy & paste:
|
| I know someone who works at one of the London airports and is
| responsible for keeping the runway operational. One of the jobs
| is keeping the birds well clear, and if necessary, sadly, may
| resort to shooting. The crows know the score though. This
| acquiantance says the crows know to disappear if they see the
| bird clearers. What's "clever" is that they only take flight if
| it's one of the shooters. They recognise the veichle(s) despite
| them being all the same fleet. So if someone else is driving
| round to check something else, the birds completely ignore. If
| it's the "bird guy" then off they go with little encouragement.
| vilifiedtwin wrote:
| Imagine if bird clearer's only love are crows. That would be
| ironic and sad...
| rmtech wrote:
| I feel that the title oversells this a bit.
|
| This research demonstrates that crows know whether they saw
| something or not. It doesn't demonstrate that they are on a par
| with humans when it comes to introspection.
| kube-system wrote:
| It's a pretty big feature, relatively speaking, to have a brain
| that can implement if(){} else{}, rather than simply if(){}
| Damorian wrote:
| One particularly early, groggy morning I was walking into work
| and there were a few crows pecking around the grass by the
| sidewalk. Lost in my thoughts I hear a raspy old man say, "good
| morning". I look around and don't see anyone, then I look at one
| of the crows and it looks me right in the eye and repeats, "good
| morning". I doubted my sanity for a few days before confiding in
| my wife what happened and was surprised and very much relieved
| when I learned crows could talk. I didn't read the article or
| have anything to add, I just wanted to share this.
| neckardt wrote:
| Researchers Find Crows Smart Enough Not To Let On How Smart They
| Really Are: https://www.theonion.com/researchers-find-crows-
| smart-enough...
| brianush1 wrote:
| I believe it.
| vilifiedtwin wrote:
| Crows understand that complex language and technological
| development lead to destruction, so they stay away from it and
| cringe at humans...
| pdonis wrote:
| The headline of the article, as is often the case, overstates
| what the actual research shows. Here is the actual claim made in
| the abstract of the paper:
|
| "We show that single-neuron responses in the pallial endbrain of
| crows performing a visual detection task correlate with the
| birds' perception about stimulus presence or absence and argue
| that this is an empirical marker of avian consciousness."
|
| In other words: when crows who are trained to look for something
| show behavioral evidence that they see what they are looking for,
| the researchers can correlate that with neuron firings in their
| brains. Which, compared to the overblown claim of "higher
| intelligence", equates to "whoop de freaking do".
| mindfulplay wrote:
| This is fascinating - similar to octopuses. But I am not sure if
| its arrogant of our species to assess intelligence in this way
| (absolutely no disrespect to these great scientists BTW) : surely
| there must be a better way; and perhaps our notion of
| "intelligence" / "consciousness" is primitive and our current
| assessment is backwards?
|
| Also, if we were to make contact with an alien civilization,
| hopefully we have something better than "let's see how they open
| this tightly closed jar underwater?" or "flash them a few
| red/green cards and see what happens".
| redisman wrote:
| I wonder could you breed crows like you do dogs or livestock by
| selecting for the largest brain in each generation? At least
| physiological changes seem to be pretty profound but maybe the
| brain is harder to coax to grow.
| tombert wrote:
| I have been repeatedly impressed at how clever crows, ravens, and
| certain parrots are whenever we figure out how to test them. I've
| seen videos of Cockatoos figuring out multi-step puzzles, and
| IIRC, ravens have been able to figure out puzzles with 5+ steps.
|
| I'm not even sure if _I_ can solve a puzzle with 5+ steps :)
| wombatmobile wrote:
| The capability attributed to crows is that they think about
| (analyse) their own thinking.
|
| The article arrives at that conclusion using two methods: 1.
| Behavioural analysis. 2. Reverse engineering neural circuitry.
|
| Is "thinking about thinking" rare, or remarkable? Is it the
| defining trait that elevates humans above all other animals? The
| article tells us that the trait isn't unique to humans, because
| crows have it too.
| Smoosh wrote:
| I'm a total layman in this field, so these are just unsupported
| thoughts.
|
| It seems to me that a brain going meta - thinking about
| thinking - could be what leads to a sense of self and thus
| consciousness.
|
| So, do these results imply those things about corvids? This has
| implications for AI, I believe.
| jonplackett wrote:
| You can tell how much smarter crows are just by going to feed the
| ducks.
|
| The crows watch YOU and your arm, predict where you'll throw and
| move there in advance, often catching things in mid-air. It's not
| just reaction speed, they're watching really carefully and making
| guesses. The ducks are next on the spectrum, they spot it first
| (after it lands) and geese are the dumbest, the feed can hit them
| right in the head, and even once they realise what's happening
| some other duck will usually get there and eat it before they do.
| lehi wrote:
| Dragonflies execute predictive flight patterns to catch prey
| mid-flight with 95% accuracy, so that ability alone may not be
| a good proxy for intelligence:
| https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn26684-dragonflies-ant...
| afpx wrote:
| If Humans somehow make themselves extinct, I bet on crows being
| the species to take over.
| cialowicz wrote:
| If we, through some miraculous circumstance, avoid making
| ourselves extinct, then maybe there's a small chance the crows
| won't overthrow us and take over.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| I'll place my bet on cephalopods. Wonder how the two
| civilizations would interact after discovering each other.
|
| And if we don't go extinct, perhaps one day we'll uplift both
| species.
| SonOfLilit wrote:
| Hopefully someone in the field will read this and be able to
| answer my question:
|
| I've spent a lot of time googling research about animal
| intelligence, and I now know a bunch of things intelligent
| animals can do, but I have no idea where their limits are, what
| they _can 't_ do. Everything published uses such... nonflexible
| tasks.
|
| If we're trying to measure general intelligence, why isn't
| anybody trying to teach corvids, octopi, macaques or dolphins a
| task that requires building towers of abstraction in their own
| mind, and then gives them harder and harder "levels"? I know at
| least octopi can use computer screens, and I know they enjoy hard
| puzzles that reward them with food, so it should be easy to teach
| them some computer puzzle game?
|
| Say, we could build a four key keyboard that they can use, then
| teach them Sokoban, starting with extremely simple levels (walk
| up once to get a snack; walk up twice to get a snack; walk left
| twice; walk up twice, then down twice; walk up, then back down
| and right to get beneath the second crate, then up again...) and
| progressing towards actual Sokoban levels humans find
| interesting...
|
| If they possess general intelligence this system could tell us a
| lot more about its limits than a series of experiments that each
| requires building a physical apparatus and spending a bunch of
| time perfecting it and then teaching it to the animals from zero?
|
| Did I miss the answer when googling?
|
| Is it that it's common knowledge among researchers that no animal
| possesses anywhere near enough intelligence to learn Sokoban (or
| 2048, or any non-real-time puzzle game with simple discrete
| controls, but I'm pretty sure Sokoban is a near optimal choice)
| so nobody even tries, nor bothers publishing it (or it's written
| in the basic textbooks that I didn't bother looking through)?
|
| Do researchers in the field lack access to a technologist that
| could help them build something like Sokoban For Crows?
|
| Or is it something else that I don't know I don't know?
| codezero wrote:
| I used to work at a university and helped build some code for a
| few neuroscience experiments to the question of lacking
| technologists - absolutely yes. They basically work with
| whoever the computer person is in the team/lab, and rarely
| budget for that as a specific part of their research because
| how do you even do that? These people are hyper specialized in
| their field.
|
| This isn't 100% true everywhere, but for the average researcher
| I think it is true in almost all fields of research.
|
| With my Linux knowledge I was able to turn our solar physics
| lab into a machine that could pump out way more data than it
| would have being built by a guy who mainly knew FORTRAN and
| VMS. (Paul if you are reading this, I'm exaggerating, you have
| a PhD and worked at the SuperComputing center and are a genius,
| but I hope you retired)
|
| Even looking back, I could have done a whole lot more if I knew
| anything about AWS back then, which I didn't, so I used my
| budget on bare metal all the time, which was a huge waste of
| time and resources.
|
| I also think there are other issues, because a lot of this
| research has to have a specific structure, you only get grants
| for what you propose, and they usually won't give you a ton of
| money for a wild new idea that's not based on some prior
| specific precedent.
|
| The entire way we advance human knowledge is kind of fucked up
| but I don't have a better proposal :)
| sosuke wrote:
| Sounds like you've come up with a cool personal project.
| SonOfLilit wrote:
| I'd like to build it. But having an animal intelligence
| researcher consulting would be very helpful...
| codezero wrote:
| If you look up the researchers working on the stuff you
| think you might be able to help with - just email them.
| They may even have some budget to help you out. I've found
| most scientists to be super open to talking w/ interested
| parties, and often willing to let you help for free :)
|
| Some are busy divas, or busy in general, or also teaching
| and busy, so it doesn't always work, but there are a lot of
| folks out there doing research, so just keep shooting!
| j_crick wrote:
| Perhaps you might be interested in this project, orthogonal to
| your question: https://www.hungerforwords.com/
| SonOfLilit wrote:
| But there's no grammar at all, at least in the video I
| watched once :-(
| [deleted]
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