[HN Gopher] A Cephalopod Has Passed a Cognitive Test Designed fo...
___________________________________________________________________
A Cephalopod Has Passed a Cognitive Test Designed for Human
Children
Author : daegloe
Score : 171 points
Date : 2021-03-03 12:52 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.sciencealert.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.sciencealert.com)
| 40four wrote:
| I agree with the main thesis of the article, stated in the first
| paragraph. That idea of _"how important it is for us humans to
| not underestimate animal intelligence"_.
|
| I think folks in modern times are less & less prone to thinking
| animals are 'dumb'. But 1 or 2 generations ago this was not the
| case. I think humans for a long time have regarded animal
| intelligence in an inferior light.
|
| Cephalopods have proven to to be incredibly intelligent, and
| emotional. I think you could easily argue many of them are
| smarter than human children, maybe even a lot of adults :)
|
| I highly recommend an episode of 'Nature' I saw recently on PBS
| about octopi. It's called "Octopus: Making Contact". It's the
| story of a professor who decided to install a tank and keep an
| octopus in his home, and the relationship he & his daughter
| developed with it. Absolutely stunning!
|
| https://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/octopus-making-contact-previ...
|
| https://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/baby-cephalopods-first-momen...
| 317070 wrote:
| > There is a considerable overlap between the intelligence of
| the smartest bears and the dumbest tourists.
|
| Park Ranger at Yosemite National Park (on designing secure
| garbage cans)
|
| https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2006/08/security_is_a...
| lostlogin wrote:
| I was talking to a kitchen hand in New Zealand in an area
| with Kea. He described the escalating battle to keep kea out
| the rubbish bins. It started with a rock on the lid which
| they solved fast, and then various other hinderances to keep
| them out.
|
| The kea sit and watch and learn over s day or 3 and then they
| are back in, causing chaos.
|
| The kitchen staff were trying to solve each puzzle with time
| pressure, a job to do and bad weather. The kea looked to find
| it funny whole the poor worker was frustrated.
| steve_adams_86 wrote:
| I believe I underestimated animal intelligence, and as an
| extension of that, animal consciousness. I have no proof that
| animals are intelligent or sentient or whatever. I do however
| have no reason to assume otherwise. As a result I've stopped
| eating meat almost entirely, and I suspect I'll eliminate it
| entirely eventually. I still eat fish and shellfish.
|
| I struggle to understand how I disregarded animal minds for
| decades, but I suspect it can be reduced to arrogance,
| convenience, and gluttony. It has been a difficult revelation
| in some ways. Cooking meat has almost been a part of my way of
| life; it's something I took pride in and always did to the best
| of my ability. Now I don't really have much interest in food at
| all.
| eadmund wrote:
| > I struggle to understand how I disregarded animal minds for
| decades, but I suspect it can be reduced to arrogance,
| convenience, and gluttony.
|
| I don't think that cephalopods are arrogant when they eat
| other creatures, although I suppose they may be gluttonous.
| Why hold yourself to a higher standard than you hold the
| animals you refrain from eating?
| StanislavPetrov wrote:
| >Why hold yourself to a higher standard than you hold the
| animals you refrain from eating?
|
| For some, morality isn't fungible or based on the morality
| or others (animal or human). If someone is a thief and
| willing to rob you, does that mean its okay for you to
| steal from them? It seems reasonable to me to hold a
| personal code of ethics and standards that isn't dependent
| (or at all related) to the ethics and standards of others
| (if any).
| michael1999 wrote:
| That's why I like eating tuna! They're out hunting and
| killing, and then have one very bad day. Live by the sword
| ...
| Jeff_Brown wrote:
| It's a very hard realization to have. I applaud you. I was
| vegan for a couple years, until I devleped tooth problems for
| the first time in my life, which spooked me and I quit. Now I
| just try to moderate my meat intake, consume the less-in-
| demand parts like tongue (nobody raises a cow for its
| tongue), and buy from sources that impose less, albeit
| clearly still substantial, suffering.
|
| But that said, there's _so much_ great vegetarian food to be
| eaten!
| michael1999 wrote:
| With apologies to Sinclair: it is difficult to get a man to
| understand something, when his dinner plate depends on his
| not understanding it.
|
| Cooking is a source of pleasure and society. My cultural
| Christian inheritance (and yours?) is quite committed to the
| separateness of people and animals. Many people deny even the
| wholeness of the human species. Where is the mystery in your
| beliefs? It is only an inheritance you now reject.
|
| You can come back to meat later, or not, in your own time.
| Sort of like when you go far enough left, you get your guns
| back. There is nothing shameful in a cat.
| loopz wrote:
| Most of it is learned behaviour. There is nothing natural
| about it for children, but conditioning and culture largely
| makes us who we are as humans.
|
| So I don't see the need to look down on yourself for
| realizing something new. It wouldn't be new if it was totally
| familiar. However, the knowledge itself is thousands of years
| old, and also evolving.
| liuxiansheng wrote:
| The realization that animals in factory farms have a capacity
| to suffer, and are undoubtedly subjected to this suffering
| for the majority of their lives, has made me cut my meat
| consumption from every meal to occasionally on the weekends.
| Would love to cut it out completely but have not mustered the
| willpower to do so.
|
| I think personally owning a pet dog and realizing they aren't
| biological machines simply responding to stimuli has helped
| me with that realization.
| RamRodification wrote:
| What if the suffering could somehow be guaranteed not to
| occur? Since that seems to be your only (main?) reason to
| give up meat, would you go back to eating it if the
| suffering didn't happen?
|
| I think the parent comment to yours is more about avoiding
| meat because of compassion to the intellect/consciousness.
| Rather than avoiding meat in order to eliminate any
| suffering that may occur during "production" of it.
|
| I'm curious because I'm pretty good at convincing myself
| that the meat I buy comes from animals that haven't
| suffered. And if it can actually be guaranteed (moose
| killed by hunter) I'm all-in on meat. But if I somehow
| "woke up" and realized that I didn't want to eat other
| living things because of compassion (or whatever) to their
| minds? I'm not sure that I could go back from that.
| wcarss wrote:
| Why care about the suffering, but not about the
| extinguishing of a life? If the moment to moment
| experience of a thing has value, but the thing's actual
| existence does not, why should (humane) murder not be
| legal? I do implore you to wake up -- you are deluding
| yourself for the sake of the pleasure.
|
| Death is a form of suffering. Whether the creature you
| kill knows it lives only to die for you, whether it can
| see and understand some aspect of its cage or not, you
| took it before its time. It is all the same wrong in the
| end.
|
| Now, eating an animal that died of natural or
| uncontrollable causes, or using for-real excess milk or
| eggs? Sure, fine. But those are not at all sustainable
| activities at a population level. We have to do things to
| animals that cause real harm to ever get enough of those
| products to sell them, even if we treat the animals way
| better overall. (And it's still better to push for better
| treatment than to do and feel nothing!)
|
| My own mental backflip: I do still eat meat, because I'm
| a selfish and horrible person. I accept my complicity in
| the evil. But I also know my own choices will not
| meaningfully change demand patterns, so I allow myself
| the pleasure of the flavours I grew up eating, and try
| not to dwell on it too much. Even the Buddha was said to
| eat meat if it was what was served -- but of course,
| would request not to be served it!
|
| Regardless, I know full veganism is the only actually
| ethically justifiable choice, and I believe and hope it
| will one day be the only realistic or acceptable choice
| for all of us. I will advocate for it (I hope) strongly
| whenever I can. No being deserves any part of what we do
| to them for food, and most people have pretty awful
| reasons to continue to eat meat; often literally at the
| level of, "animals can't suffer!", or, "humans are a
| higher being!", which is a mind-blowingly horrific thing
| to understand people will assert even after being given
| the evidence. I find the dismissive attitude appalling
| and try to get friends to at least see it in its real
| light.
|
| Personally, once I catch wind that the tide toward
| veganism is beginning to turn, or that we somehow
| achieved affordable ethically lab-grown cheap muscle+fat
| tissue meats, I'll gladly turn that page. Or, once the
| horror again resurges strongly enough to overcome the
| value of shepherd's pie, thanksgiving ham, or a
| hamburger.
|
| It's not much of an intellectual position, but it's all
| I've got. I ask that you at least be honest with
| yourself: the beings you eat have suffered for your
| pleasure.
| liuxiansheng wrote:
| I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with
| killing animals for sustenance. Animals die and get eaten
| without needing any help form humans.
|
| My main objection is to the manner of which animals have
| to be raised and harvested in the most efficient manner
| to satisfy the ever increasing demand for meat in the
| world while still being bottom of the barrel in price.
| Has there been any evidence this can be sustained without
| wholesale suffering?
|
| If you can ensure all the meat you purchase comes from
| the opposite of such conditions then all the more power
| to you. The meat I do eat I also try to purchase from
| better farm conditions, but I don't think that's always
| possible.
| graindcafe wrote:
| I think I'm somehow in the same situation, trying to
| avoid industrial farming in benefit of local, small
| farming. I can know for sure (for some of them) that the
| animal was well treated from the beginning of its life to
| the very end.
|
| I am asking myself if it is better for the animal to live
| a decent life even if it is to be killed and ate at the
| end or not to live at all.
| macintux wrote:
| Every time I read about octopi I'm stunned at their
| intelligence and ability to connect with humans.
|
| If our civilization lasts long enough, someday we'll all be
| reviled for eating animals, especially octopi and pigs.
| RamRodification wrote:
| How come you include pigs but leave out cows?
| Ruthalas wrote:
| The parent commenter has probably, like me, heard that pigs
| are remarkably intelligent. I haven't heard the same of
| cows.
|
| That may very well be a skewed understanding, but it's
| likely why they choose that grouping.
| OrbitRock wrote:
| Personally, I don't see cows as very different from dogs.
|
| They're just as social and emotional as dogs are.
|
| Intelligence wise, dogs are probably a bit smarter. But
| how much, I don't know, they don't seem that radically
| different.
| Ruthalas wrote:
| I suspect you have more experience than I, and I know my
| imagining is poorly founded!
|
| I think pigs have just received enough good PR recently
| that they come to mind as another particularly
| intelligent animal.
| RamRodification wrote:
| Maybe the size also helps? Closer to a dog or a cat, cows
| are not.
| koalahedron wrote:
| Taken further, you might argue that there might be
| condemnation eventually of the whole concept of pets and work
| animals too. I'm not sure I "condemn" these ideas, but I
| don't have a pet because I think animals should be wild. I
| make my own ethical comprimises, though, don't get me wrong.
|
| Harry Harrison wrote a book I read many years ago called West
| of Eden, where the dinosaur extinction event didn't occur. An
| advanced species of lizard used modified lifeforms for their
| tech. I have it on my list to read again. It does make you
| think people might be more symbiotic towards the world rather
| than what we have now.
| throwanem wrote:
| > I think folks in modern times are less & less prone to
| thinking animals are 'dumb'. But 1 or 2 generations ago this
| was not the case.
|
| The naturalist Jean-Henri Fabre, in the 19th century, made an
| extensive study of solitary, spider-hunting wasps. Much of what
| he discovered, with regard to the surprising complexity of
| their hunting and nesting behavior, became well known in his
| day - he was one of the first writers I discovered when I
| started delving into the literature to feed my own burgeoning
| interest in the aculeates, and one of the reasons his work is
| so easy to come by is that it was popular, and thus well
| preserved.
|
| It was very much new to me, though; to whatever extent it had
| entered common knowledge a century and a half ago, it has since
| exited again. If anything, I think that in recent generations
| we have become _less_ likely to recognize complex behavior and
| intelligence in nonhuman animals, not more so; that may be
| changing, but if so, I think it must have begun quite recently.
| dunefox wrote:
| > I think humans for a long time have regarded animal
| intelligence in an inferior light.
|
| Well, it is objectively inferior. That doesn't mean that it's
| not intelligence.
| 40four wrote:
| Haha, ok in general you're right. Maybe a poor choice of
| words. But also, in general, I believe we have vastly
| _underestimated_ the intelligence of most other animals. Even
| ones that are demonstrably not that smart.
| lurquer wrote:
| > I think folks in modern times are less & less prone to
| thinking animals are 'dumb'. But 1 or 2 generations ago this
| was not the case. I think humans for a long time have regarded
| animal intelligence in an inferior light.
|
| Great post. Respectfully, though, I disagree with the excerpt
| above.
|
| I find that urbanization has led to a disconnect between people
| and animals. In times past, a person would have regular contact
| with a host of domesticated animals (cattle, horses, mules,
| donkeys, sheep, goat, chickens, pigs, etc.) as well as the wild
| animals that are a part of everyday life in rural settings
| (rodents, possums, armadillos, foxes, coyotes, snakes, deer,
| birds, etc.)
|
| Without question, people in the past had a far greater
| appreciation of the 'intelligence' and behavior of animals than
| modern city-dwellers.
|
| One need look no further than the numerous metaphors that have
| been passed down from these non-urban times: stubborn as a
| mule, wise as serpents, cunning like a fox, horse-sense, wise
| as an owl, etc...
|
| In short, I'd suggest that the more modern (or, perhaps,
| urbanized is a better word) the LESS appreciation one finds for
| animal intelligence.
| RikNieu wrote:
| I have family who still live a pretty rural life, close to
| nature. They care very little about animals compared to my
| urban friends and family. They view animals as little more
| than "moving things" or simply food.
| lurquer wrote:
| You may be mixing apples and oranges...
|
| The degree of 'compassion' one has toward an animal is not
| directly correlated to one's opinions as to its
| intelligence.
|
| My uncle raised pigs. A frequent topic of conversation was
| how smart they are. Without question, they're smarter than
| dogs. (I had a pet pig growing up.)
|
| Yet, we ate then.
|
| An even more brutal example: slavery. It was obvious and
| undeniable that human slaves were intelligent; yet, that
| didn't mean that compassion towards them was common.
| ldng wrote:
| > One need look no further than the numerous metaphors that
| have been passed down from these non-urban times: stubborn as
| a mule, wise as serpents, cunning like a fox, horse-sense,
| wise as an owl, etc...
|
| Are you sure that comes from nature observation ?
|
| Satire used to criticize the powerful of the world picturing
| them as animals. So these associations might not come from
| where you think they do. La Fontaine's fables are a good
| example of that. He was not the only one to do that.
| lurquer wrote:
| I have firsthand knowledge of the sayings in regard to
| mules, horses, and foxes. They are very accurate.
|
| Never thought snakes were that 'wise' though. Don't know
| about owls.
| hermitcrab wrote:
| If anyone is interested in cephalopod intelligence I heartily
| recommend the book: "Other Minds: The Octopus and the Evolution
| of Intelligent Life" by Peter Godfrey-Smith.
| yboris wrote:
| Related: I highly recommend the documentary _My Octopus
| Teacher_
|
| https://www.netflix.com/title/81045007
| hermitcrab wrote:
| Yes, that is excellent as well. And quite moving.
| mindfulplay wrote:
| I second this recommendation. I think someone in HN recommended
| this, very fascinating. My respect and interest for octopuses
| and surprisingly cuttlefish went way high up after reading this
| book. Kudos to whoever recommended it!
|
| It feels like we are wasting our time looking for aliens
| searching for them in the skies (especially the unscientific
| work around oumuamua).
|
| They are living right beside us in the form of cephalopods. We
| haven't deployed enough science on these amazing creatures yet
| (without of course distributing them like putting them in
| cages), probably because it's not a sexy field as compared to
| say astronomy or other cool things...
| koalahedron wrote:
| Thanks all, for these references! My wife is into cephalopod
| intelligence. I'll forward this to her and ask if she has any
| other recommendations.
|
| I do know there are a couple of websites for cephalopod
| enthusiasts:
|
| https://zapatopi.net/cephnews/ https://tonmo.com/
| choxi wrote:
| One of the most interesting concepts in the book was "efference
| copies." The idea is that your mind needs to distinguish
| between stimulus that you caused by voluntary action (moving
| your arm) versus stimulus that the environment causes (your arm
| being moved by something else), so you send these "echos" of
| your voluntary actions back to your brain and this is possibly
| where your sense of self comes from.
| mindfulplay wrote:
| That. And the idea that the cuttlefish are perhaps showing
| their internal state via their changing color patterns and
| not as a sinajng device. And of course their fairly short
| lives.
| glsdfgkjsklfj wrote:
| *a biased cognitive test
| hour_glass wrote:
| Uh oh the humans are on to us
| d--b wrote:
| Let's just complain about how click-baity the title is. It
| works every time.
| 8fGTBjZxBcHq wrote:
| The article doesn't mention this but that test is not very well
| regarded currently. It's basically a test of food security and
| trust in adults rather than any particular behavioral benchmark.
| mzs wrote:
| There's more to the paper, though only six cuttlefish:
|
| >The other part of the experiment was to test how good the six
| cuttlefish were at learning. They were shown two different
| visual cues, a grey square and a white one. When they
| approached one, the other would be removed from the tank; if
| they made the "correct" choice, they would be rewarded with a
| snack.
|
| >Once they had learnt to associate a square with a reward, the
| researchers switched the cues, so that the other square now
| became the reward cue. Interestingly, the cuttlefish that
| learnt to adapt to this change the quickest were also the
| cuttlefish that were able to wait longer for the shrimp reward.
|
| https://rs.figshare.com/articles/dataset/Data_set_raw_traini...
| mr-wendel wrote:
| I think it's even worse than that. I _hate_ this test because
| both now and as a kid I 'd take the single marshmallow and just
| be done. I don't want two, even if you hand them to me back-to-
| back... let alone 15 minutes later.
|
| I don't care if its my favorite treat either. I believed quite
| strongly that a little vs a lot doesn't matter: the best parts
| are in the anticipation, the initial bite, and enjoying the
| lingering aftertaste. Having more more bites to eat is a
| gimmick with nothing but downsides (however now I get how
| things like addiction can drastically alter that equation so
| the "more" is practically everything).
|
| So show me a version of this test that doesn't have the
| assumption "all kids are greedy for food and the most
| successful ones will optimize for that" at its core.
| tiagod wrote:
| The cuttlefish test was very different though. Instead of
| more food, it's about better food.
| mindfulplay wrote:
| I agree but this new adapted test for cuttlefish is actually
| pretty smart. They actually zone in on delayed gratification.
| carapace wrote:
| There are implications of certain recent discoveries. Not to be
| mysterious, I'm talking about Levin's lab.[1] All cells "think"
| using the same bio-molecular machinery as neurons. Neurons are
| just denser and faster.
|
| -> Intelligence is ambient.
|
| All cells think, and all collections of cells (from biofilms and
| stomatolites on up) think. In computer terms all cells use
| compatible protocols and processors and the living world is a
| kind of biological internet ("Wood-Wide Web").
|
| -> All life shares one mind.
|
| Whatever mind is, if you believe it "runs on" the physical
| substrate of cellular internet, then our minds are not separate
| from the minds of other living things. This would explain a lot.
|
| When I bring this up people often object that this is
| anthropomorphism, but don't see it that way. Since all living
| tissue is intelligent, I see humans as the anthropomorphism of
| that ambient intelligence of the biosphere.
|
| -> The biosphere is the result of "intelligent design": it's own.
|
| From early on, the evolution of life would have become (more
| deeply) self-referential through mental feedback, meaning that
| the advent of intelligence itself becomes a factor in the further
| evolution of life. Things like the great switch-over from
| anaerobic to aerobic metabolism and the concomitant massive
| increase in atmospheric oxygen may well have been deliberate
| choice on the part of the global mind. In any event, the
| reductive mechanistic view of "dumb" life is faulty. Earth is
| Solaris.
|
| Now this changes nothing about evolution. It's still a chemical
| tautology with no purpose, and adaptive pressure doesn't stop
| just because cells can think. ("Science does not remove the
| terror of the gods.") The Earth as a single being still has to
| navigate the "slings and arrows of outrageous fortune". Gaia is
| mortal. Part of the reason living systems seem so wildly
| inefficient (an illusion) is that they are so inconceivably
| resilient. (Efficiency vs. inefficiency is meaningless in
| evolution: there is no purpose so there can be no measurement of
| efficiency.)
|
| [1] "What Bodies Think About: Bioelectric Computation Outside the
| Nervous System" (youtube.com)
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18736698
| motohagiography wrote:
| As someone who trained my dog to sit and wait for me outside a
| shop while I got coffee, which was a similar delayed
| gratification and I didn't even use treats, I think science might
| be underestimating just how stupid human children are.
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| https://www.vox.com/2015/4/7/8360143/dogs-intelligence-scien...
|
| On the whole, psychologist and dog researcher Stanley Coren
| estimates, the average dog's intelligence is roughly as
| sophisticated as a 2.5-year-old baby's.
| luplex wrote:
| As a human researcher, I don't think that's a fair
| comparison. A 2.5-year-old human can talk in simple
| sentences. The experiments in that article don't really
| measure intelligence. Babies are just much more curious.
|
| I think dogs are still surprisingly smart.
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| By that argument no animal, dolphin, porpoise, dog,
| gorilla, elephant can be as intelligent as a 2.5 year old
| baby because none of them have evolved a tongue and vocal
| apparatus capable of making the correct sounds.
| rbanffy wrote:
| I know a dog that sings along when his humans sing. It's
| obviously not a human voice, but the little thing is
| trying his best and totally nails the pitch and rhythm.
| sokoloff wrote:
| Our dog will howl along with some of the emergency
| vehicle sirens. Remarkably similar to the particular
| siren that is sounding outside. (We live on a 4 lane
| parkway an easy walking distance from a major hospital,
| so we get different sirens from many different
| jurisdictions. She'll sing (edit: said sign before) along
| or in back-and-forth with about 1/3 of the distinct
| sirens.)
| please-reread wrote:
| She also can sign? That's amazing!
| sokoloff wrote:
| The comment history of this username _really_ checks out!
|
| I take zero offense and thank you for the correction, but
| it's somewhat amusing to think that someone presumably
| has two accounts and switches between them to make
| comments when a post is inadequately proofed.
| pvaldes wrote:
| dogs sign walls and trees all the time
| spijdar wrote:
| > because none of them have evolved a tongue and vocal
| apparatus capable of making the correct sounds.
|
| And the neurological development to process and produce
| speech. I'm no cognitive scientist but I think verbal
| speech and reasoning is a huge amount of what we call
| "intelligence" in humans and goes beyond simple
| communication of immediate facts or commands. I suspect
| babies do have similar problem solving abilities compared
| to those animals, but I think it's disingenuous to throw
| out speech just because a dog hasn't evolved vocal
| chords. They're also missing the brain to use them, with
| whatever that means for reasoning.
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| >And the neurological development to process and produce
| speech.
|
| I put gorilla in there specifically for this reason -
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koko_(gorilla)
|
| Gorillas can't produce speech but they can process
| language at about the level of a 2-3 year old human.
| Which is roughly the level of intelligence that dogs were
| being described as having in the article I linked
| earlier.
|
| >I'm no cognitive scientist but I think verbal speech and
| reasoning is a huge amount of what we call "intelligence"
| in humans and goes beyond simple communication of
| immediate facts or commands.
|
| well I'm no cognitive scientist and I think differently
| than you do!
|
| >but I think it's disingenuous to throw out speech just
| because a dog hasn't evolved vocal chords.
|
| and I think it's disingenuous for out cephalopod
| overlords to claim I lack the ability to reason about
| potential threats because I don't shoot ink out of my
| fingers when in danger.
|
| I mean I don't actually know or care that dogs might be
| as smart as a three year old or that any of the other
| animals I named might be; I just accept the findings of
| experts in the manner as being more likely to be correct
| than what I might think is the case. Still I am supposing
| none of the named animals are as smart as I am so I am
| certainly not threatened by the concept.
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| Dogs can also talk in simple (<4 word) sentences:
| https://yewtu.be/watch?v=AHiu-EDJUx0
| f154hfds wrote:
| I have a 2.5 year old.
|
| A few weeks ago she (on her own) decided to dry her wet
| painting by taping it to the heat vent. We have never used
| tape in any way similar to that, and certainly have never
| used the heat vent to dry anything (it being a long-term
| safety hazard, and potentially bad for the ventilation
| system).
|
| She routinely falls on her face because of getting herself
| into ridiculous precarious situations (in disturbingly
| similar ways).
|
| The problem is intelligence just isn't 1D no matter how much
| we wish it was. Delayed gratification, problem solving and
| communication ability are not necessarily highly correlated
| enough for a single metric to make sense of the three.
| lostlogin wrote:
| > She routinely falls on her face because of getting
| herself into ridiculous precarious situations
|
| The clumsiness might be a different thing. Changes in
| height, weight, strength and sight and probably a load of
| other things come into this. If you change something about
| an adult it takes them a while to adapt.
|
| The example that comes to mind is a pregnant woman
| squeezing though some gap. To any observer the attempt was
| obviously not going to go smoothly.
| jancsika wrote:
| To properly test, you'd need to:
|
| 1. Draw a triangle on your forehead
|
| 2. Make a shitty clone of yourself with a circle drawn on the
| clone's forehead, who comes out of the shop immediately after
| you walk in
|
| Then see if your dog decides to follow the shitty clone, or
| whether it waits a couple minutes for the regular version of
| you.
|
| Edit: also, repeat with many more dogs, many more dog owners,
| and many more shitty clones.
| unstatusthequo wrote:
| This made me laugh as a potential Rick & Morty episode
| koalahedron wrote:
| I've never heard of Rick and Morty, but take my advice,
| don't try to shop your screenplay to VCs. They took a dim
| view of my "Adult Stewie" concept last year (think "Young
| Sheldon" backwards). Try Hollywood.
|
| Anyway, I think a fun cartoon would be the Flintstones with
| ceph, for example their screen could be a smaller ceph
| whose chromataphores are pixels.
|
| [edit]
|
| Old drawing, back of a napkin (apologies to MIT AI Memo
| 554):
|
| https://github.com/koalahedron/ideas-for-
| models/blob/main/RE...
| motohagiography wrote:
| Was literally thinking the Rick & Morty tie-in would be
| that Morty gets a pet cuttlefish who not only speaks, but
| insists that even though he is stuck in this aquarium, he
| says it is preferable to the pathetic existential prison of
| their inferior human minds, and he uses his mesmerizing
| persuasive power to turn the rest of the house into a
| hippie comumune of drifters who do whatever he wants, and
| ultimately directs them to attack celebrities. The
| cuttlefish's name is Charlie.
|
| Recurring villain, probably gets his own show.
| sparkywolf wrote:
| The 'dog' is Jerry. We all know it.
| LatteLazy wrote:
| I mean, the dog gets nothing for sitting and waiting. He
| stopped getting treats once training was over. So is he smarter
| than the kid that wonders off or comes inside demanding cake
| and acting cute?
| hypertele-Xii wrote:
| > I think science might be underestimating just how stupid
| human children are.
|
| Human children are stupid by design (well, evolution).
| Language, culture, and technology are overtaking genetics as
| the more effective information transfer mechanism. As we shed
| our instincts to make room for learning, human children will be
| born more and more stupid over time. It's a trade-off: At the
| same time, human adults will have greater capacity for smarts.
| It is the increasing stupidity at birth which enables us to
| learn so much into adulthood.
|
| Animals without developed language haven't been able to afford
| this progress. They are smarter than human children from birth,
| but are unable to learn as much. So while your dog outperforms
| a human child at waiting outside the store, it will never have
| the capacity for art, mathematics, nor engineering, no matter
| how hard you train it. Humans on the other hand, can be trained
| quite a bit.
| everdrive wrote:
| It's been verified:
|
| https://vaviper.blogspot.com/2019/06/from-onion-study-reveal...
| Grustaf wrote:
| That's not delayed gratification, it's just obeying orders. In
| the marshmallow test it's crucial that the subject makes their
| choice freely.
| goodcanadian wrote:
| From the article:
|
| _Some primates can delay gratification, along with dogs,
| albeit inconsistently. Corvids, too, have passed the
| marshmallow test._
|
| Having had a couple of human children, I would definitely not
| claim that they are anything but extremely clever, but then so
| are many primates, dogs, and corvids.
| emilecantin wrote:
| Yes. Children are literally little humans. They have enormous
| brainpower, they just lack the experience they need to use it
| properly.
| rbanffy wrote:
| That and their brains are insanely malleable. As someone
| who contemplated learning Irish as an adult, I have to say
| that their brains can do things ours simply can't.
|
| And I learned Hungarian (and Portuguese) as a kid.
| OrbitRock wrote:
| Adults can actually learn language much more quickly then
| children in my opinion.
|
| The only issue is that there's a critical window in there
| that shapes your accent.
| numpad0 wrote:
| I think we're all too ignorant about potentially
| including/integrating other animals into the society, Doctor
| Dolittle style. Wouldn't it be just fantastic?
| ruffrey wrote:
| Perhaps. Small children are also exceptionally accident prone.
|
| On the other hand, human children are incredibly curious and
| experiment with everything. It may not be stupidity that keeps
| them from following directions.
| TrispusAttucks wrote:
| Indeed!
|
| There is much to be learned by occasionally breaking the
| rules.
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| I mean the signature characteristic of the most famous Cephalopod
| in fiction is that it waits dreaming in its house in R'lyeh.
| Evidently not coming out until the food on offer is better,
| either.
| amarant wrote:
| You sure? I seem to recall some kind of mass hysteria happening
| fairly recently, made it was the first signs of his coming
| HenryBemis wrote:
| > "They break camouflage when they forage, so they are exposed to
| every predator in the ocean that wants to eat them. We speculate
| that delayed gratification may have evolved as a byproduct of
| this, so the cuttlefish can optimise foraging by waiting to
| choose better quality food."
|
| It's a bit of natural selection. I don't know if cephalopods have
| a 'patience' gene. If yes, then --> natural selection. The ones
| who didn't have this gene got eaten many generations ago. The
| ones who do (and their genetically blessed offsprings), are alive
| to 'tell the tale'.
|
| This is a bit biased if you ask me. They examined only the ones
| thay they found. The ones they found are the ones that are alive.
| The ones that are alive are the ones that are patient.
|
| To disqualify my above 'theory' the scientists must capture eggs
| of 100 (?) eggs, raise them, treat them all the same, and then
| release them in a controlled 'wild' environment and see how fast
| they get eaten/how many survive for how long.
|
| Then they compare results with their observations in the wild.
|
| I am not a marine biologists, so I probably wasted 30secs of your
| life (apologies).
| markhahn wrote:
| It is a test, and it is used on humans. It isn't a qualification
| for human-ness, any more than "breathing" is.
|
| Theory of Mind is much more a test of human-ness - a stage
| person-ness really. And yes, quite a few animals qualify.
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| Says more about how hard it is to design tests, than it does
| about this particular test. Lots of reasons for delayed
| gratification. Not all of them mean "as smart as humans".
| yboris wrote:
| That's not the conclusion: no one is claiming "as smart as
| humans". Intelligence is multidimensional, and along some
| dimensions animals outperform us by a long shot.
|
| Some birds remember thousands of locations of their stashed
| food. Some animals have a detailed internal map of many square
| miles of land on which they live. Pick just about anything a
| typical 3 year old can do, and we can find an animal to
| outperform them in that respect.
|
| _Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are?_
|
| https://www.amazon.com/Are-Smart-Enough-Know-Animals/dp/0393...
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| Sure they were; that's what the title implies. Else, why the
| comparison?
|
| And I'm curious if those studies of animal intelligence,
| actually tried a human. Could I remember thousands of place I
| put stuff? I think I do. I have a whole house full of stuff,
| and can find most of it quickly. I remember where I kept my
| socks in an apartment I lived in 30 years ago.
|
| So yeah no, animals maybe aren't ahead of us in cognitive
| function.
| EliRivers wrote:
| Animals certianly aren't ahead of us in human cognitive
| function, but that feels like a loaded competition. Humans
| do have a hard time imagining intelligence as anything
| other than what we have.
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| Not me. I can easily imagine animals having better senses
| and better integration of those senses.
|
| But I have to doubt, when somebody claims (as in the
| title above) that some animal is cognitively more
| advanced that a human child. That's linkbait and best,
| and plain wrong at bottom.
| [deleted]
| treetoppin wrote:
| Glad to see someone else referenced this book. For anyone who
| wants to learn more about just how difficult it is to peer
| into the minds of other creatures, I highly recommend this
| book. Also, it's filled with delightful anecdotes of animal
| behavior that you would only experience if you spent hundreds
| of hours observing an individual.
| Jeff_Brown wrote:
| > That seems like cuttlefish can exert self control, all right,
| but what's not clear is why. In species such as parrots,
| primates, and corvids, delayed gratification has been linked to
| factors such as tool use (because it requires planning ahead),
| food caching (for obvious reasons) and social competence (because
| prosocial behaviour - such as making sure everyone has food -
| benefits social species). > > Cuttlefish, as far as we know,
| don't use tools or cache food, nor are they especially social ...
|
| This feels like an evolutionary attribution error, if that's a
| thing. Self control is different from a thumb; there aren't
| necessarily any genes that code for it.
|
| My first guess would be that, in order for a creature to be as
| smart as a cuttlefish, it needs to have a mental model of
| spacetime and of itself. Self-control is just one of the many
| results of such intelligence.
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