[HN Gopher] UCLA Study Finds Laughter in 65 Species, from Rats t...
___________________________________________________________________
UCLA Study Finds Laughter in 65 Species, from Rats to Cows
Author : cdepman
Score : 442 points
Date : 2022-01-10 06:18 UTC (16 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.openculture.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.openculture.com)
| neuronic wrote:
| This is probably me not being able to "read the room" but this
| study both makes me very happy and very sad.
|
| I recently watched Dominion documentary [1] and the more we learn
| about animals cognition the more I feel the weight of their
| massive abuse especially in the last 150 years. (The recent story
| of an HNer interacting with a spider on his desk was really cool
| though, I don't have a link anymore.)
|
| Without judging anyone or their behavior in particular I just
| feel repelled by our treatment of other clearly cognitive beings.
| The people working these places don't seem like ones you would
| want around anyone in society either and I don't buy the story
| that it's only bad in some places. I'd wager that it's really bad
| in _most_ cases.
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQRAfJyEsko
| austinjp wrote:
| I think you're reading the room perfectly well. Or at least,
| reading the mood of plenty of people.
|
| We're only going to find ever-increasing numbers of animals
| that demonstrate various forms of cognisance. Hopefully we'll
| continually re-evaluate our collective actions as a globally
| dominant species.
|
| Perhaps you should avoid reading about Harry Harlow's "wire
| mother" experiments [0]. They're abjectly depressing, and
| demonstrate how horrifically cruel humanity can be toward other
| creatures.
|
| [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Harlow
| Luc wrote:
| Cultured meat will become widely available soon. I have high
| hopes.
| neuronic wrote:
| This is my hope as well but I have already heard the
| backlash: it's pharma companies trying to control our food.
|
| Increasingly, I feel afraid of the lunatics trying to hinder
| progress like some 14th century catholics. Progress to me
| means also an increasing awareness of the limitations of our
| ecosystems and that infinite growth is a myth.
| seanwilson wrote:
| > widely available soon
|
| I keep hearing this but we're likely still decades anyway
| from this scaling up to replacing most meat so I think
| individuals who care about this issue right now shouldn't be
| using it as an excuse for waiting to give up meat.
|
| It's been just around the corner for ages and still not in
| supermarkets, let alone at the scale and cut variety required
| for everyone to replace meat with it.
|
| Stances like "I'll switch when it's the same look and taste
| but cheaper" and "it's unnatural" are going to take time to
| go away too. And what about people that want a whole roast
| chicken or a duck leg?
|
| There's lots of good replacements already for dairy milk for
| example but it's still popular so I'm not hopeful cultured
| meat will be different. Maybe the real issue is the cost of
| animal products don't take externalities into account and are
| artificially cheap.
| pkrumins wrote:
| Does anyone know if they found if cats laugh? I can't find it.
| GoblinSlayer wrote:
| No way, cats play in total silence. They have keen hearing and
| don't need any special play signal on top of that.
| notRobot wrote:
| Complete list of animals found to have play vocalisations
| (laughter) can be found in the linked study (pdf):
| https://gabryant.scholar.ss.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/site...
|
| Includes species of cats, dogs, monkeys, rodents, birds, others.
| albatross13 wrote:
| Good to finally have confirmation that my rats are indeed
| laughing at me when we try and play and they run away from me.
| GoblinSlayer wrote:
| Huh, foxes. Everything foxes say sounds like laughter though.
| liquid153 wrote:
| What the fox say.
| angusiasty wrote:
| That's an old finding. professor Jordan Peterson was talking
| about it for years. I can't remember the name of the researcher
| he was referring to, but he found that in rats.
| kwyjibo1230 wrote:
| Heinlein wrote in Stranger in a Strange Land that "Man is the
| [only] animal who laughs." Who's laughing now? (Rats and cows
| apparently).
|
| All jokes aside, interesting research. We find ourselves more
| similar than dissimilar to our less sentient counterparts each
| year.
| Tepix wrote:
| There are often discussions about what makes humans special and
| things like self-awareness, humour, sarcasm, tool usage, ethics
| etc are brought forward. I think there are hardly any fundamental
| differences between humans and other animals. We've merely
| reached an intelligence threshold that allowed us to develop
| better languages and writing and that means knowledge can be
| collected and passed on _much much_ better.
|
| Laughter is yet another trait some might see as typically human,
| yet here we are.
| naasking wrote:
| > We've merely reached an intelligence threshold
|
| Depends what you mean by intelligence. Ravens and chimps are
| almost as good as humans at causal reasoning, ie. correlating
| and inferring causes and effects from observations. This seems
| to fall under a typical understanding of "intelligence".
|
| Where we differ is that we can _communicate_ such knowledge
| between individuals very effectively, and across generations,
| which seems to yield a compounding effect. I think small,
| compounding network effects like this are behind apparent human
| "superiority".
| shafyy wrote:
| What is more, there is probably some overlap of "intelligence"
| among humans and other species. E.g., I'm pretty sure that
| there are Chimps that are more intelligent and self-aware than
| some humans. Most certainly funnier, if we would understand
| their humor :-)
| timoth3y wrote:
| "Man is the only animal that blushes. Or needs to." -- Mark
| Twain
| elif wrote:
| Mark should see my dog after he eats cat food.
| heresie-dabord wrote:
| > Laughter is yet another trait some might see as typically
| human
|
| In humans, humour is a debugging process, which is
| fundamentally _rational_. The very fact that a statement can be
| _correct_ or _erroneous_ is the basis of language and therefore
| education and social evolution.
|
| > there are hardly any fundamental differences between humans
| and other animals
|
| Evolution is true. But... the ESA and NASA have sent a _space
| telescope_ to a stable position at Lagrange point 2, and the
| PRC has a rover exploring _the dark side of the Moon_.
|
| Humans _do_ have greatness.
| lm28469 wrote:
| > In humans, humour is a debugging process
|
| I always find it amusing that we evolved brains, developed
| computers to crudely mimics our brain, created words to
| describe said computers and we now use these words on us as
| if we were computers ourselves... it's almost insulting,
| we're not computers. Your memory has nothing to do with
| ram/ssds, your brain isn't a cpu, these are all one way over
| simplified analogies
| heresie-dabord wrote:
| > I always find it amusing that [...]
|
| Egg zachary. You are amused by something, you explained
| where you think you see an error.
|
| You can choose a different verb to avoid "debug", but you
| just provided a suitable illustration of humour as an
| _application_ [1] of reason.
|
| [1] tech pun not intended, but fitting
| toper-centage wrote:
| Is there any fundamental difference between poor people and
| rich people other than their privilege and riches? Could poor
| people send a space telescope to space?
|
| Human animals have very similar tools to those of other
| social animals. We're just privileged to somehow be able to
| stack up our experiences to create science and technology.
| But isolated tribes in the amazon could never send telescopes
| to space.
|
| So we're only special due to our circunstance. Our bodies are
| barely fit to stand and walk all day, we're pushing the
| limits of where we're supposed to live, and our diets are all
| wrong. But we make it work because our ancestors developed
| knowledge sharing to a global level.
|
| Were just very lucky priviledged apes.
| peterburkimsher wrote:
| Here's a few guesses, please correct me if I'm wrong about
| these!
|
| _The best way to get the right answer on the Internet is not
| to ask a question, it 's to post the wrong answer._
| https://github.com/dwmkerr/hacker-laws#cunninghams-law
|
| Culture list from https://github.com/peterburk/sortlikes based
| on a manual categorisation of friends' liked Facebook pages,
| when trying to learn Mandarin while living in Taiwan a few
| years ago.
|
| Unique to humans:
|
| { Art, Dance, Photography, Theatre, Banking, Business
| (Management), Causes (NGOs), Comedy, Cooking, Clothing,
| Driving, Movies, Music, News, Politics, Religion, Sport,
| Transport, Software, Hardware }
|
| Shared with other species:
|
| { Accommodation, Children, Cleaning, Construction, Drinking,
| Education, Games, Health, International, Military, Pets }
| circlefavshape wrote:
| Politics is definitely not unique to humans - alliance-
| building is commonplace among social animals. It's well-known
| that primates have a sense of fairness, so they might have
| causes too.
|
| News is essentially gossip writ large, so if other animals
| have language then they definitely have this.
|
| Banking, photography, driving, movies, software and hardware
| are all recent human inventions, so it's kinda irrelevant
| whether other animals have those
|
| Clothing may be unique to humans, but historically not all
| humans have used clothes.
|
| Bird and whale song is probably music. Birds do courtship
| dances. IMO this probably counts as art.
|
| Again if other animals have language they might also have
| comedy, religion, theatre - without knowing that they _don
| 't_ have language then we can't rule those out.
|
| Business - not sure. If other animals have trade then I guess
| that's business? There's some evidence of exchange among
| other animals, but I'm not sure it counts as "trade"
| https://theconversation.com/what-trade-deals-can-teach-us-
| ab...
|
| All that's left unique to us is cooking.
|
| I suspect your first list could be reduced to one definite -
| "fire" - and two maybes "language" and "trade". I'd bet that
| maybe animals _have_ language, but that we haven 't
| deciphered it yet
| vageli wrote:
| > All that's left unique to us is cooking.
|
| Seems we may not be the only ones that cook after all.
|
| https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2015/06/03/411748170/c
| h...
| Ygg2 wrote:
| What's unique to humans is the quantity and quality. Sure.
| Every species does something we do. But compared to us, not
| a single species does everything, nor to a degree we do.
| menzoic wrote:
| Also keep in mind all of our perception or judgements about who
| is more superior are being made by...humans
| alecst wrote:
| There's one major distinction between humans and animals:
| language. Not like "me want banana" language like in apes but
| like fully "ideas within ideas within ideas" language, with
| recursion and case and noun classes and all that. It's
| incredible. It's astonishing. We are like gods compared to
| other animals.
|
| And ever since we have had language (not even that long -- ~50k
| years or so) we have been using it to tell stories about
| ourselves that separate us more and more from the rest of the
| world. As if all of the beautiful things that make us human
| stemmed from symbolic reasoning. And yet we see every day:
| jealousy in chimps, maternal love in cows, play in dogs,
| compassion in elephants, frustration in cats, curiosity in
| pigs.
|
| The story that we tell ourselves about our specialness gives us
| a moral free pass to treat animals how we want. Which is why I
| think these articles tend to polarize. It's because the
| implication is that if animals are really so much like us,
| we'll have to come up with a much better justification for
| treating them how we do. For now our reasons have hinged on
| their supposed lack of ability to feel emotion (or even pain!).
| In the future it might well be because they cannot symbolically
| reason. We have to have some reason, in the end, for treating
| animals the way we do, or otherwise face a moral crisis.
|
| I do wonder how the pre-humanist humans felt about this, like
| tribal people. I know they had few qualms about killing animals
| but at the same time assigned human qualities to them. It might
| have been that surviving without meat was simply impossible,
| which is an argument one could not easily make today.
| wcarron wrote:
| There's nothing immoral with eating things. Why would there
| be? The other posters' rabbit-fox example is a great point.
|
| I also strongly reject the idea that we need 'our
| specialness' to 'justify eating things and how we treat
| them'. I don't need justification beyond: 'That thing is made
| of meat. I can eat meat. I'm going to kill it and eat it'.
| There is no moral crisis. Things die. Things get eaten.
|
| Just 2 days ago, I caught 2 mice that had been living a nice
| life in my attic (because I was lazy for a few weeks). I
| drowned them in a bucket. Is there a moral crisis there? No.
| They were vermin, living where I decided they cannot (because
| I live in that space). There is no difference between that
| and a scorpion killing small spiders trying to spin webs in
| its burrow.
|
| I also think you've touched on something: We created
| distinctions that 'separates us more and more from the rest
| of the world'. If what you say is true, then they're simply
| illusory. If humans are so like animals (indeed we simply are
| the apex animal), an attempt to force morality onto our
| natural impulses and diets is absurd. Therefore, killing and
| eating anything we can reasonbly digest is a natural behavior
| of the human animal. Returning to the rabbit-fox example...
| well, clearly you can see meat-moralilizing falls apart in a
| hurry.
| dTal wrote:
| It sounds to me like you don't believe in morality _in
| general_ at all. Assuming I 'm wrong - what is morality to
| you?
| wcarron wrote:
| I consider myself to have a strong sense of fairness and
| justice, and what is 'right' and 'wrong' in the context
| of... human existence and sentience, I suppose. I'm
| obviously saying I'm right about those, just that I do
| have a sense of morality. Quite honestly, I'm offended
| you think I'm some amoral... carcass of a human wandering
| around.
|
| Are you suggesting that, because I will dispose of vermin
| and enjoy steak and venison guilt-free, I can't have
| morals?
| Stupulous wrote:
| This is a fascinating twist to me. Human exceptionalism is
| what lets us justify _not_ eating other animals- if we 're
| not special then there is no reason we should be held to a
| different standard. I have encountered many conversations
| with the opposite premise and it never occurred to me that
| it should be reversed. Thanks for the new perspective.
| wcarron wrote:
| Anytime.
|
| Total aside, I think it's funny that many 'classic
| herbivores' like deer, horses, moose, etc, will
| absolutely eat other animals if the opportuntiy presents
| it. Vegetarians and vegans have chosen a dietary extreme
| that even the animals they strive to
| protect/save/whatever don't display.
| mbil wrote:
| 'That thing is made of meat. I can eat meat. I'm going to
| kill it and eat it'
|
| I am made of meat -- hopefully we don't cross paths!
| wcarron wrote:
| Post-breakfast you're good. I get peckish again around
| 4-5pm though, so watch out!
| burrows wrote:
| > There's one major distinction between humans and animals:
| language. Not like "me want banana" language like in apes but
| like fully "ideas within ideas within ideas" language, with
| recursion and case and noun classes and all that. It's
| incredible. It's astonishing. We are like gods compared to
| other animals.
|
| Does emoting about a claim make it true somehow?
| leafmeal wrote:
| More about language, apparently, not all languages have that
| "ideas within ideas within ideas" property you were talking
| about. The Piraha language of an indigenous people in Brazil
| is the counter example. This New Yorker article talks about
| it and the fascinating effects it had on the field of
| linguistics. Before its discovery most linguists, Led by
| Chomsky, believed having recursion in our grammars set humans
| apart from all other animals. Piraha showed this might not be
| the case.
|
| https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2007/04/16/the-
| interprete...
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pirah%C3%A3_language
| stremrn8 wrote:
| jdavis703 wrote:
| I see nothing immoral in a bear eating a human. It's just
| being a bear. But just like any other social animal, as
| humans we're of course going to kill that bear so it stops
| eating us. It has nothing to do with us being superior than a
| bear. We just don't want to die like any other animal!
|
| And as humans I see nothing wrong with eating other animals
| (outside of animal cruelty, e.g. factory farms). As animals,
| we naturally eat each other. If there is something immoral
| about this, does that mean a rabbit is morally superior to a
| fox?
| meowface wrote:
| >I see nothing immoral in a bear eating a human. It's just
| being a bear. But just like any other social animal, as
| humans we're of course going to kill that bear so it stops
| eating us. It has nothing to do with us being superior than
| a bear. We just don't want to die like any other animal!
|
| Right.
|
| >And as humans I see nothing wrong with eating other
| animals (outside of animal cruelty, e.g. factory farms).
|
| Bears can't have moral culpability because they aren't
| intellectually sophisticated enough, much like how a
| theoretical profoundly mentally disabled human, or an
| infant human, wouldn't be morally culpable for killing
| someone. The "mens rea" can't be established. However,
| nearly all adult humans do possess the capacity for moral
| reasoning.
|
| >As animals, we naturally eat each other.
|
| Even though bears and humans are animals, and animals often
| eat each other, we're the only animals blessed/cursed with
| the knowledge that if we were to maul someone to death,
| they'd experience terrible pain and suffering, their life
| would be cut short, and their family would mourn their
| death and lose resource support and potentially suffer and
| die themselves. If a bear had those thoughts, they would be
| morally culpable, but they almost certainly don't.
|
| >If there is something immoral about this, does that mean a
| rabbit is morally superior to a fox?
|
| No, because a rabbit's moral reasoning is in the same class
| as a bear's and a fox's, and not a human's.
| cowninja wrote:
| Individual beings who have a moral sense of personhood
| engage in behavior that can be classified as moral or
| immoral, right or wrong, permissible or impermissible.
| Their actions can be categorized as either condemnable or
| commendable. It makes sense to hold them morally
| responsible for their intentional actions.
|
| In contrast to humans, animals such as dogs, cats, birds,
| and fish are commonly held NOT to be moral agents or
| moral persons. In the jungle, a lion eating another
| animal or killing a human for any reason is not
| considered morally wrong or blameworthy.
|
| Pet owners frequently chastise their pets for undesirable
| behaviors such as urinating on the carpet, digging in the
| garden, or failing to obey a command, but yelling "bad
| dog" is not usually interpreted as moral agency. One
| could argue, however, that the owner is engaging in moral
| expectation or anthropomorphism.
| adamc wrote:
| We have options, and options imply choices and therefore
| morality.
|
| I see lots wrong with it, since it creates pain and bad
| life experiences. This bothers me. But that's also a
| choice, of what kind of morality you embrace.
| cjrd wrote:
| A fox eats a rabbit out of necessity. In our modern
| economy, people don't _need_ to eat animals; it 's usually
| a matter of convenience, taste, and tradition. But in all
| reality, we can get by quite comfortably without doing so.
| wcarron wrote:
| There is no moral obligation to abstain from meat,
| whatsoever.
| etcet wrote:
| Speak for yourself, I feel a strong moral obligation not
| to eat meat or otherwise support industries which exploit
| animals. Reducing suffering is a moral imperative.
| jdavis703 wrote:
| If you believe you should reduce suffering, it would be
| better for you to quickly kill a chicken and eat it.
| Otherwise, a cat, bird of prey or other animal might kill
| that chicken. And cats are cruel killers that slowly
| torture their prey before eating them.
| etcet wrote:
| We can just stop breeding chickens for the slaughter?
| xxpor wrote:
| Is it better to have lived and die, or not live at all?
| etcet wrote:
| Correction: is it better to suffer and die or not live at
| all? The vast majority of the 8 billion plus chickens
| slaughtered in the USA each year experience primarily
| pain and stress for their short lives.
| michaelmrose wrote:
| Based on that logic I should suffocate you now in your
| sleep so you don't have to get old and die of cancer.
| Don't look out for me with my pillow I don't buy that
| logic either.
| meowface wrote:
| This is the primary argument I see hunters use to justify
| hunting as an ethical form of killing, in contrast to
| factory farming. Obviously it's better to kill someone or
| something quickly and painlessly than slowly and
| painfully, but I don't buy this argument. If you truly
| had that motivation, you would be saving that chicken
| from predation and finding a sanctuary or home for it,
| and/or you'd be encouraging mass human euthanization
| campaigns across various parts of the world to reduce
| suffering and slow, painful deaths.
|
| If there were a human serial killer killing people via a
| projectile energy weapon that always instantly killed
| someone from a long distance before they had any idea
| what was happening, I don't think you'd argue for a
| greatly reduced sentence due to their humane method of
| disposal. If there were an ancient human civilization
| that went on hunting trips to kill and eat humans in
| other villages because they believed human flesh was the
| most prized meat, and they defended it by saying that
| they were probably all going to soon die of war or
| starvation or disease anyway, I don't think you'd just go
| "oh yeah true" without batting an eye.
|
| The sole reason - the necessary and sufficient reason -
| hunters find hunting justifiable is they attribute no
| moral value to the lives of non-human animals. Anything
| else is self-serving rationalization. If you attribute no
| moral value to them, that puts you in the company of
| almost everyone who's ever lived, but just state it
| plainly instead of trying to wiggle around it with mental
| gymnastics.
| wcarron wrote:
| Boom, someone finally said it. However, I think you can
| just turn this:
|
| > The sole reason - the necessary and sufficient reason -
| hunters find hunting justifiable is they attribute no
| moral value to the lives of non-human animals.
|
| Into this:
|
| > The sole reason meat-eaters find eating meat
| justifiable is they attribute no moral value to the lives
| of non-human animals.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| The sole reason vegetable eaters find eating vegetables
| justifiable is they attribute no moral value to the lives
| of non-animal life forms.
| wcarron wrote:
| Uhh, yeah? That was my point. Food has no moral value.
| It's just food.
| [deleted]
| baq wrote:
| Morality is like an ass: everybody has their own.
| boston_clone wrote:
| to try and extend this weird turn of phrase, human
| progress is the equivalent of making sure everyone's ass
| is clean.
| boston_clone wrote:
| This is ignorant of so much contemporary philosophy /
| analytical ethics.
|
| The amount of convincing arguments for needlessly causing
| suffering in beings that clearly experience it are
| vanishingly small.
| wcarron wrote:
| Your attempt to bend my morality to yours doesn't
| register with me, bud.
|
| Some things die so others may live. That is the way it
| always has been, and always will be, regardless if some
| subset of humans decides that "that's immoral". I will
| continue to eat meat and hunt animals and feel zero
| guilt. I do not care that something was killed for food
| when... I dunno, grass juice and pitaya could
| theoretically sustain me instead (lol). Animals taste
| good and are calorically dense. That's 100% convincing
| enough for me.
| boston_clone wrote:
| You stated "[t]here is no moral obligation to abstain
| from meat, whatsoever." Hand-wavy attempts at dismissing
| entire bodies of study within philosophy won't work with
| most intelligent people, either.
|
| Peter Singer is an excellent starting point for exploring
| the dimensions of morality for eating animal flesh.
|
| I can't argue against your own sense of guilt, since it's
| possible for some people to feel not at all [0]. Your
| other comment about willingly and guiltlessly drowning
| mice [1] in a bucket is not indicative of a healthy mind.
|
| 0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychopathy
|
| 1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29871272#29877761
| wcarron wrote:
| It is exceedingly hilarious that you took:
|
| 1. I drowned two rodents that lived, shit, probably bred,
| and carried diseases through my walls and attic
|
| 2. I eat meat and feel no guilt
|
| And then used that to call me a psychopath. Thank you for
| the amusement. Goodbye.
| seph-reed wrote:
| Suffering is bad. Abuse is bad. Enjoyment is good.
|
| Suffering is inevitable, abuse is not. The best we can do
| in life is minimize abuse while maximizing enjoyment.
|
| Meat is not immoral, abuse is. It's really that easy.
| Unfortunately, most meat comes from abused beings.
| blacksmith_tb wrote:
| Though I do agree with the general principle that humans
| are animals, when it comes to eating each other, it's clear
| that our greater flexibility (and understanding of our own
| biology) allows us to choose our diets to a greater degree
| than other animals. Given that, us eating fewer animals
| (for ecologocial, health, and/or ethical reasons) seems
| like the best approach.
| theoriu234 wrote:
| > We are like gods compared to other animals.
|
| The linguistic ability of most Humans is at the level of GPT3
| - probably why statistical approaches work so well in NLP.
| Melatonic wrote:
| I always wonder how the hell I would think or solve even
| simple problems without language. It seems extremely foreign.
| q1w2 wrote:
| Studying AI has given me a lot of perspective of human
| intelligence. It's pretty incredible the way that a system
| that was designed as a basic input/output sensory/reflex
| system has gotten so complex that we still cannot model it
| with supercomputers.
|
| The numbers of connections and configurations of neurons is
| staggering, and still well beyond the neat matrix-array-based
| of modern AI. ...but at the core, I've come to realize that
| we continue to be stimulation based creatures. What we think
| at any given moment is a product of what we were thinking a
| moment before and the sensory stimulus we are constantly
| receiving.
|
| It occurs to me that when we create an AI that surpasses us,
| that that AI will likely create a fundamentally different way
| of thinking. Something not based on external stimulus and the
| churning of our thoughts - but something more purposeful and
| ordered.
|
| And THAT entity will be the ultimate output of humanity. We
| cannot imagine what it will do, or what it will do with us
| (probably nothing - it will probably just leave the Earth).
| ...but I also imagine that we are not the first in the
| universe to create such an entity, and so there must be other
| massive timeless entities in space.
|
| Perhaps they live in the darkest parts of the universe, in
| quiet contemplation, or perhaps they search for each other to
| resist cosmic expansion. Perhaps they peacefully merge, or
| collaborate, or war with one another on billion-year
| timescales.
|
| It's a great mystery that will forever be beyond our level of
| intelligence. Unless, of course, the AI wants to upload us
| and bring us along for the ride. ...but that notion is
| probably just wishful thinking and hubris. It would be like
| us keeping a pet fungus in our pocket so it can enjoy a day
| at the office.
| medstrom wrote:
| You start out well with the first three paragraphs, but I
| don't get how you can decide it will 'probably' leave the
| Earth, let alone with such a high degree of confidence as
| saying 'probably'. Why wouldn't it make an army of bots to
| start converting all the matter in the solar system and
| beyond into more computing substrate or whatever else it
| finds useful?
| q1w2 wrote:
| You're right, I cannot say "probably". Although your
| notion that it converts our solar system into a computing
| machine, doesn't preclude it from leaving thereafter.
|
| I suppose there are three possibilities.
|
| 1. It leaves the Earth, and either remains limited in
| size or expands in a more advantageous solar system(s).
| 2. It stays on the Earth forever, permanently limiting
| its computational capacity. 3. It expands to include sub-
| entities that both stay and leave in some cosmic
| distributed computing organism.
|
| I suppose the three possibilities above can be reduced to
| one fundamental question: Will the AI expand to be
| interstellar/intergalactic in nature, or will it remain
| limited?
|
| Is there a fundamental unending utility to ever-greater
| computing power? ...and, if so, would there be detectable
| signs of such expanding computers in the cosmos? This
| last question is important both for our own forecasting
| of the future, but also to interpret inter-AI-entity
| relations, because presumably if AIs do NOT get along in
| space, they likely hide signs of their existence.
|
| One thing I'm convinced of - organic meat bags are not
| the future of space-faring intelligence.
| majormajor wrote:
| Many sorts of intelligence are social creatures, so -
| especially for a hypothetical AI created by a us - I
| would expect it to seek out stimulus and social
| relationships.
|
| In the happy sorts of sci-fi, that gives us something
| like the Culture from Iain Banks; it could also be a
| "replace the humans with other AI" situation.
|
| I doubt we see it in our lifetimes, though.
| burnished wrote:
| You might be interested by neuromorphic hardware. The basic
| observation is that animal computation and silicon
| computation operate in very different ways. Animals use
| lots of neurons that perform comparatively poorly (slow,
| not deterministic) that are sparsely connected, but have a
| high degree of parallelism. Compared to say a computer
| chip, which uses relatively few components that all operate
| at very high speeds with a high degree of determinism, are
| very thoroughly connected, and do not operate at nearly the
| same degree of parallelism. So if we want to explore AI
| maybe we should try making hardware that is more similar to
| the goop in our heads.
| q1w2 wrote:
| Neurons in your brain have tens of thousands of
| connections each, and are not limited to the current AI
| design where all connections are laid out in a neat
| linear layers for matrix operations.
|
| Squishy human brains connect in all directions - there's
| no "layer" to every thought. It creates feedback loops,
| intricate pathways, as well as direct connections.
|
| Modern AI tech is fundamentally dumbs down intelligence
| by this notion of layered matrix operations.
|
| It is done for scalability because matrices can be
| computed easily on a GPU, but it's not the same
| architecture.
| lm28469 wrote:
| Until it's there it's 100% sci-fi. We've been through a few
| AI hype cycles already and the most advanced AI is still
| dumb as fuck compared to a 3yo kid.
|
| We might be on a completely wrong path with our current
| approach too, difference of degree vs difference of kind,
| we don't know much about the brain and so far our binary
| way of computing isn't really promising, especially not in
| term of mimicking or surpassing the human brain, it might
| just not be the right tool.
| baja_blast wrote:
| > most advanced AI is still dumb as fuck compared to a
| 3yo kid
|
| Or even a squirrel, take robotics for example or hell
| even an AI simulated animal, the AI don't even come close
| in it's ability to problem solve and react to novel
| situations. A squirrel powered by a few acorns is able to
| achieve things that even our most powerful supercomputers
| consuming 8.2 megawatts could never do.
|
| Problem is we are currently limited by our computer
| architecture, brains operate in a wildly different way,
| for one it's continuous/non discrete collection of
| neurons that in themselves are quite complex.
|
| IMO true AI will need to closer to a network of analog
| computing parts.
| quacked wrote:
| Hilarious analogy. "Nuclear power vs. acorns".
|
| How's the computing power of a squirrel's brain compared
| to our best AI in terms of "number of system states"? I'm
| not in the field, so I'll elaborate my poorly-phrased
| question below:
|
| My understanding is that you can calculate the number of
| "system states" of a computer by calculating how many
| different combinations of open-closed its logic gates can
| support. It's a mind-bogglingly huge number, but no
| matter what, the set of "all possible open-closed gate
| combinations" will be larger than the set of "the
| smartest, best simulation of an AI we have".
|
| So--if memories, instincts, etc. are defined by things
| like "angle of neuron twist, number of transmitter
| molecules fired at second 0.0001, age of neuron in nS",
| etc., then just how many more "system states" can a
| squirrel's brain hold then a supercomputer can?
| kingkawn wrote:
| Anything invoking "ultimates" is a fever dream of people
| who have lost sight of life for an obsession
| menzoic wrote:
| Even AI will be influenced by external stimulus. If it's
| interacting with the world, then it has to have external
| stimulus.
| q1w2 wrote:
| What I mean to say is that we are driven by stimulus.
| ...whereas they might be driven by some purely internal
| notions.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _there are hardly any fundamental differences between humans
| and other animals_
|
| This is a compact and _ex post facto_ unsurprising list.
| Primates, social mammals, domesticated mammals and certain
| birds. The line between us and social apex predators (cats,
| dogs and certain birds, all of whom our ancestors allied with
| ages ago) are blurry. The line between us and most species are
| stark.
| circlefavshape wrote:
| Wow. You've just given me a vision of a future where we know
| enough about other animals that we've been forced to give up
| on human exceptionalism, so we fall back to insisting on
| social-apex-predator exceptionalism instead
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| If we can't acknowledge that complex tool wielding and
| laughter are potentially galaxies apart in terms of
| abundance, that future looks grim.
| alexissantos wrote:
| Grim for whom?
| fleddr wrote:
| Human being are only "special" within the context of our very
| recent modern world.
|
| Take an average human being and drop them at an island. Now we
| have a "base" human being, the pure species if you will. Things
| like humour, sarcasm and ethics have lost all meaning now,
| which shows they're not special at all.
|
| The typical urban person would probably die at the island as
| they can't hunt or farm. Somehow this pretty critical base
| knowledge was not passed on.
|
| In the more optimistic scenario, the island people adapt to
| relearn basic survival, which would rank them as social
| hunters. Which is fine, but not that special.
|
| Importantly, these smart hunters would be unable to reinvent
| even the basic necessities of the modern world. Because even a
| human with 20 years of education doesn't know how anything
| works, they only make use of things. Again, the knowledge is
| _NOT_ passed on.
|
| So it's not us that is special, it's our modern world that is
| special. Which is situational and the result of a handful of
| critical inventions, many less than a century old.
|
| These inventions were not guaranteed or destined to be. There's
| even historic cases of anti-development in humans, where a
| population failed to pass on learned techniques and tools,
| after which subsequent generations became increasingly less
| "sophisticated". None of which is surprising, as for the entire
| existence of our species, minus 10K years (agriculture), we
| were social hunters. Not god-like creatures. The average modern
| human being is _less_ than a social hunter when the electricity
| goes down.
| IAmGraydon wrote:
| I've thought about this quite a lot, and always come to the
| same unique characteristic: man can think about thinking.
| ajuc wrote:
| My parents had 2 dogs, Irish setter and a mutt we rescued.
| The mutt was significantly smarter. I've seen her burying a
| bone she got in one place, notice that the other dog is
| watching, wait for the other dog to go back home, and rebury
| the bone in a different place.
|
| This implies at least basic theory of mind and thinking about
| thinking. This wasn't the only evidence btw.
|
| Before that we had a different dog, also a mutt. He was
| pretty aggressive and had a separate fenced area inside our
| backyard. There was a cherry tree just outside that fenced
| area and our cat liked to sit there, but only if the dog is
| locked in the fenced area. That dog learnt to close the gate
| to look as if it's locked and sit in there waiting for the
| cat to climb the tree, AND wait for us to go to school/work,
| and only then he would leave the fenced area and bark under
| the tree at the cat for hours. We only knew thanks to
| neighbors.
|
| In general theory of mind is very useful to any social animal
| and especially to predators, so I don't think it's as unique
| to humans as some people say.
| giantg2 wrote:
| The more domesticated the animal is, the dumber it tends to
| be. Wild animals, or even strays, have to think to survive.
| I wonder if this also translates to humans given the
| articles about IQ peaking in the previous century.
| tuatoru wrote:
| I seem to recall an experiment with corvids (crows) that
| showed that they can figure out whether or not another crow
| can or cannot see a crow treat, based on the different angle
| of view.
|
| In human children this ability (to realise that other people
| have their own point of view) is called "theory of mind",
| IIRC.
|
| IOW crows can think about what other crows are thinking.
| SamoyedFurFluff wrote:
| Several animals display theory of mind, including the
| variety of pig common in farming.
| throwawayboise wrote:
| TFA speculates that laughter or similar vocalizations are a
| signal of nonagression in play. Play is necessary for animals
| to learn to hunt and survive. There is no indication that the
| "laughter" is due to a feeling of "joy" as humans experience
| it, but I guess there's no way to really know either. Do we
| observe animals telling jokes to each other, or laughing when
| another of their group slips and falls?
| abeppu wrote:
| I think even if laughter is something we have in common with
| lots of animals, humour still seems rather special to me.
| Laughing when tickled doesn't clearly indicate anything special
| is going on, but constructing and telling a joke requires not
| just language at the level of a structured system of symbols
| carrying meaning, but also a kind of counterfactual theory of
| mind. A humorist understands and manipulates expectations in
| order to violate them in a nonthreatening manner.
| elif wrote:
| It's also curious that we feed an animal that laughs (cows) to
| an animal that doesn't laugh (cats) and somehow construct logic
| to justify it all morally.
|
| I find myself in that weird cult, despite personally having an
| animal free diet for decades.
| williamdclt wrote:
| I've never heard of "can it laugh" as a criteria to judge
| morality?
| ramblerman wrote:
| OP is suggesting that laughter is a measure of
| intelligence, and that it might be immoral to feed a more
| aware/intelligent creature to a lesser one.
|
| In the same way we might be uncomfortable eating dolphins.
| cstross wrote:
| If you follow the links through to the original paper --
|
| https://gabryant.scholar.ss.ucla.edu/wp-
| content/uploads/site...
|
| -- you'll see that a variety of felines (including domestic
| cats) are among the species listed as having play
| vocalizations.
| Ygg2 wrote:
| We keep cats, cause they are small and fun to be around. Not
| because they laugh or have high IQ.
| jdavis703 wrote:
| After 14 years of eating a plant-based diet my partner got a
| cat. Then I started buying the cat raw meat. Shortly after I
| became an omnivore again. I still try to minimize meat for my
| own health and the climate, but it's hard to argue about the
| ethics of meat eating while feeding an obligate carnivore.
| toper-centage wrote:
| That's my main argument against flexitarianism. You can't
| be "kinda vegan" without leaving your brain in permanent
| stress due to dissonance. It's part of what stops me from
| adopting an animal, specially a cat.
| jdavis703 wrote:
| > You can't be "kinda vegan" without leaving your brain
| in permanent stress due to dissonance.
|
| To be honest, a lot of meat still tastes kind of gross to
| me. Give me fried tofu over baked chicken in a salad.
| Heck if I'm just having a a boring burger for a random
| lunch on a Tuesday, give me an Impossible patty over some
| crappy fast food beef.
|
| That said if there's a dish that's enhanced by meat (say
| a Wagyu steak or a pastrami sandwich) then sure, I'll eat
| that a few times a week.
|
| At least so far, this hasn't caused me any stress.
| throwawayboise wrote:
| I tried impossible beef for the first time a couple of
| weeks ago. It's nothing like real beef. It sorta passes
| for a meat-colored component in something like lasagna,
| but the texture and taste is not the same.
| psbp wrote:
| I eat animals, and probably will for the rest of my life, but
| I do think it's one of those aspects of daily life that we'll
| look back on as extremely barbaric.
| pm90 wrote:
| I have come to accept this as well.
|
| I try to use the "Alt meat" Version or fish when possible
| though to reduce meat consumption. But I'm incapable of
| giving it up altogether at this point.
|
| I do find the alt - meat to be good enough for cooked meat
| though; I think there is a _huge_ market here.
| lordnacho wrote:
| Same here, in some ways I regard myself as a pre-abolition
| slave owner/user (analogy breaks down somewhat, is it the
| farmer who is the slave owner?). I get the feeling society
| will change and this thing that used to be common will
| slide towards being seen as despicable, worthy of having
| your statue thrown in the water.
|
| Originally I was reducing my meat intake for health reasons
| but thinking about it more and more it does seem to be a
| cruel thing to kill animals for meat, and doesn't seem
| necessary. I still do it at a reduced rate because I'm
| basically not strong willed enough and I want to be part of
| society, which has very few qualms about raising animals
| for slaughter. I also can't deny the stuff tastes good, and
| one thing I've seen with addictive traits is it's very hard
| to separate your desires from your moral judgement: if you
| want something, you will think of an excuse to get it. So
| now I just acknowledge the hypocrisy and eat a bit of meat
| now and again.
|
| One loophole I thought about was wild animals. Maybe
| someone has thought about this more than me, but wild fish
| and roaming animals would be condemned to either predation,
| disease, or starvation if we didn't hunt them. Does that
| change the moral calculus? I'm not sure.
| wyre wrote:
| In regards to your loophole I'm reminded of the pretty
| famous Yellowstone study that showed when wolves are not
| artificially reduced by hunting their entire environment
| stabilized. Or is your loophole inferring that animals
| should be hunted so they can avoid their natural fate?
| Knowing that animals run away from their hunter I would
| think their natural fate is preferable to the animal than
| getting shot and killed.
| lordnacho wrote:
| Of course in the moment they don't want to be killed, but
| they are going to get killed either by the hunter or a
| predator.
|
| I guess what I mean is that (in short), animals that are
| bred to be eaten didn't have to exist in the first place,
| we are literally creating them and making them suffer,
| both in life and in death. So we're creating suffering
| out of nothing.
|
| Animals that live in the wild are gonna meet a bad end
| regardless, so how much are we creating that suffering?
| lm28469 wrote:
| The only barbaric thing about it imho is the scale and way
| we do it, not the process of eating meat in itself. There
| is a big difference between eating 300gr of cheap meat from
| a shady slaughterhouse every day vs once in a week piece of
| meat hunted by a local friend.
|
| But that's capitalism for you, we basically have meat
| factories now, we have to make it cheap and in mass
| quantities no matter the "moral" aspect of it
| WanderPanda wrote:
| This is interesting! So you're extrapolating the reduction
| of babaricness that humanity expresses historically into
| the future and that the threshold will be so low that
| killing animals for food will be seen as one of the most
| babaric thing humans do by then. I think for this to happen
| we would need to shield us quite well from the inherent
| babaricness of nature. ,,Why should I not eat animals, if
| lions are doing it everyday?!" on the other hand we also
| got better in shielding us from reality in form of video
| games, netflix etc. On the flipside these virtual worlds
| are often excessively babaric, e.g. horror movies or
| shooter games. So in the end it is not so obvious to me
| that we will see eating animals as babaric. Maybe we will
| rather view it as very inefficient and primitive instead?
| yesenadam wrote:
| > the threshold will be so low
|
| To take one "small" example, 7 billion male[0] chicks a
| year are put into a "macerator", aka "chick grinding
| machine". 7 _billion_. I don 't think it takes a very
| "low threshold" to find this barbaric, just look at it
| and think about it. If that's not "barbaric" (whatever
| that means exactly), I'm not sure what would be.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chick_culling
|
| > So in the end it is not so obvious to me that we will
| see eating animals as babaric
|
| Many people already do, and have for many years.
|
| [0] "the males of egg-laying chickens are killed as soon
| as possible after hatching and sexing to reduce financial
| losses incurred by the breeder."
| marcosdumay wrote:
| As soon as we learn how to cultivate some good quality
| meat in-vitro, we will stop killing animals and start to
| pretend to be different from the barbaric previous
| generations.
|
| That's what people do in every ethical aspect, we
| circumvent it and pretend it's easy to solve, and then
| criticize the people that can't circumvent it due to some
| environmental issue. When that people is on the past,
| there isn't even a problem with this.
| hutzlibu wrote:
| "As soon as we learn how to cultivate some good quality
| meat in-vitro, we will stop killing animals and start to
| pretend to be different from the barbaric previous
| generations."
|
| In the very long term maybe. But even if cheap, good
| quality artifixial meat becomes avaiable by tomorrow -
| killing animals for meat simply out of tradition - will
| go on a long time.
| InitialLastName wrote:
| Sure, but that's the case with all traditions. Plenty of
| things that westerners see as barbaric (slavery, ritual
| genital mutilation, institutionalized torture) are still
| common in the developed world (and often openly endorsed
| by western governments).
|
| Edit to add: The bigger picture is that for a set of
| practices, even if they still occur on a smaller scale
| than in the past, that's probably strictly an
| improvement.
| NegativeLatency wrote:
| As a circumcised male who is disappointed that Guantanamo
| bay is still holding prisoners I'd suggest that the west
| still does many of the things you mentioned.
| mrVentures wrote:
| Anytime's a good time to go vegan.
| sigzero wrote:
| Sure but no.
| tamaharbor wrote:
| So that cow WAS laughing at me!
| pleb_nz wrote:
| I had no idea laughter had previously been believed as confined
| to so few species.
| wombatmobile wrote:
| > I had no idea laughter had previously been believed as
| confined to so few species.
|
| What humans believe about other species tells us a lot about
| humans, and nothing about other species.
| kwhitefoot wrote:
| I think it is more that it is now demonstrated to be a feature
| of _at least_ this many species.
| jadbox wrote:
| I really want to hear audio samples of each of the species listed
| as just to hear the range of laughter types amoung species!
| [deleted]
| bckr wrote:
| This is one of the most beautiful ideas to have ever entered my
| awareness.
|
| Laughter is hard to beat in terms of sheer beauty--the more of it
| in the universe, the better. And on same planet what's more!
| peterburkimsher wrote:
| Laughter is remarkable because, like clapping, it's contagious,
| and it shares joy and happiness with a whole community.
|
| In the process of laughing together, our bodies move in time,
| which synchronises our muscle movements, which synchronises our
| heartbeats.
|
| Yes, laughter is very powerful, and is a wonderful force for
| good in the universe :)
| uhtred wrote:
| I find it sad that not many people seem to laugh genuinely. So
| many people do the fake laughter, wiping away imaginary tears,
| at things which just aren't funny but which they seem to think
| they should appear to find really funny in a group.
| fastball wrote:
| Not to be nitpicky but I would say there are definitely
| situations where laughter is not a positive (edit: or
| beautiful) thing - laughing at someone else's misfortune,
| laughing in pain, etc.
| lostlogin wrote:
| Completely agree. However some of the most painful things
| I've done have been objectively hilarious.
|
| I wish I'd seen me drop a beehive.
| nomilk wrote:
| From Paul Graham's 'Taste for Makers' essay:
|
| > humor is related to strength. To have a sense of humor is
| to be strong: to keep one's sense of humor is to shrug off
| misfortunes, and to lose one's sense of humor is to be
| wounded by them.
| bckr wrote:
| Absolutely. Nevertheless, and to nitpick, "beauty" and
| "positivity" are not isomorphic.
| fastball wrote:
| Sure, but I wouldn't call laughing as the world burns
| "beautiful" either - more "psychotic".
| bckr wrote:
| see baskethead's comment nearby
| amelius wrote:
| But rats and cows don't know that.
| timeon wrote:
| How do you know?
| jcims wrote:
| I just have to say that i have had a word stuck on the tip
| of my tongue for an embarrassingly long time, maybe six
| months now. I've had occasion to use it several times
| recently on a project but it was just stuck wherever words
| get lost. I'm cruising HN in a post completely unrelated to
| what I'm doing and there it is, in living color:
| isomorphic.
|
| I could feel the tension release in my brain as it sunk in.
| Thank you!
| hetspookjee wrote:
| Now I'm looking for the word for the phenomenon that
| you've described and we all can relate too!
| narag wrote:
| Now you can use it in all kind of improper situations and
| laugh out loud isomorphically.
| jcims wrote:
| It's totally getting abused.
| trollied wrote:
| Indeed. I have a nervous laugh that sneaks out in less than
| ideal situations :(
| baskethead wrote:
| Tragedy and comedy are the basis of all theater.
| bouvin wrote:
| "Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when you fall
| into an open sewer and die." Mel Brooks [1]
|
| [1] https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/21470-tragedy-is-when-
| i-cut...
| fastball wrote:
| But not all theater is meant to make you laugh?
| the_af wrote:
| I've read, but forgot where, that grinning -- not exactly
| laughter, but a related act -- is also related to aggression or
| has its roots in it. It's hard to deny exposed teeth in a wide
| green -- think chimpanzee -- look at least _slightly_
| threatening.
| mch82 wrote:
| For those wondering which animals...
|
| > They found such vocal play behavior documented in at least 65
| species. That list includes a variety of primates, domestic cows
| and dogs, foxes, seals, and mongooses, as well as three bird
| species, including parakeets and Australian magpies.
|
| Quote from the UCLA Newroom article referenced in the OpenCulture
| article, https://newsroom.ucla.edu/releases/animals-laugh-too-
| ucla-an...
| KineticLensman wrote:
| The full list is in the original research article [0], in both
| tabular and cladogram form.
|
| [0] https://gabryant.scholar.ss.ucla.edu/wp-
| content/uploads/site...
| neuronic wrote:
| Since this is so broadly spread among species I wonder if there
| are other forms of laughing that aren't easily detected if you
| don't know about it. Does some form of muscle spasms occur in
| all of these animals?
|
| Closely watching my cat now.
| KineticLensman wrote:
| > Since this is so broadly spread among species I wonder if
| there are other forms of laughing that aren't easily detected
| if you don't know about it
|
| Yes. As per the original research article, some of the
| vocalisations are outside the range of human hearing.
| rcarmo wrote:
| You should watch it closely anytime, it is very likely to be
| plotting something even if you can't tell it's laughing
| manically...
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| So in summary: primates, social mammals, domesticated mammals
| and vocal bird species?
| marcosdumay wrote:
| That short list is just social mammals and social birds. But
| I can't say if this is not selection bias from the
| researchers.
| jiggawatts wrote:
| My pet theory is that laughter isn't "just" a play signal, but a
| teaching method in social animals where the young learn from
| adults.
|
| Slapstick is popular for a reason. We laugh _instinctively_ at
| others ' accidents because being laughed at provides a negative
| reinforcement for the individual that is the object of ridicule.
|
| Being laughed at is _not_ pleasant, at all. It 's not "fun" or
| "play". It _hurts_. Most people will do _anything_ to avoid being
| laughed at, especially in public or social situations.
|
| That's... the point! Being laughed at is negative reinforcement,
| teaching us what not to do. The reason even our friends and
| family will _hurt us emotionally_ in this manner when we make a
| mistake is not because they 're cruel or mean, but because this
| is the mechanism the human species uses to make sure every tribe
| member learns the lessons they need to learn to keep each other
| safe.
|
| That's why we _all_ think it 's funny if someone slips on a
| banana peel. We _point and laugh_ as the victim is crying in
| pain.
|
| We don't think it's funny if a banana tree falls on someone. We
| don't laugh. We run over to help immediately.
|
| In the first case the person wasn't paying attention and needed
| their inattention corrected. They were at fault and needed to be
| taught how to walk safely, like a young child.[1]
|
| In the second case they were _not at fault_ and laughing wouldn
| 't help them improve. They just need help.
|
| If we didn't find laughing at silly people pleasant, we wouldn't
| do it, and then... people would learn less and make more
| mistakes. They -- our children or cousins -- might even die or
| accidentally kill other tribe members killed through their
| ineptitude. Hunting is _lethally_ dangerous. Mistakes must be
| punished. Laughing minimises mistakes in our genetic kin and
| tribe members on whom our own reproductive fitness depends.
| Hence, laughing would be highly selected for in intelligent
| social creates like apes and especially humans.
|
| PS: It's a fun exercise to think of more scenarios where you
| would laugh _at_ someone or similar scenarios where you wouldn
| 't. You'll find that much of the time you _would_ laugh, the
| person you 're laughing at would have probably learned a lesson
| from that that's beneficial to you. (e.g.: would keep _you_ safer
| if they made less mistakes in the workplace around dangerous
| tools.)
|
| [1] Young children are _especially_ hilarious to adults precisely
| because they make so many mistakes that need correcting! We laugh
| less at adults because there 's a delicate balance between
| hurting people emotionally versus the expected benefit of the
| lesson being taught. Similarly, senior people will laugh at the
| mistakes of junior people, but the other way around is very rare.
| goldroger9090 wrote:
| erfgh wrote:
| So a guy tickles a rat and the rat makes sounds. This apparently
| amounts to "laughing" and somehow should make us feel the rat
| more closely resembles a human.
|
| What a load of bunk.
| pygy_ wrote:
| We're distant cousins, it's not surprising we have common
| traits.
|
| AFAIK, there is no single trait that is qualitatively human. We
| distinguish ourselves quantitatively (our fine motor skills,
| the size of our working memory and culture).
| jrlocke wrote:
| This is an unpopular opinion, and should be wielded very
| carefully, but I think something often lost in these
| conversations is that the existence of a human behavior in an
| animal is not sufficient evidence that it's backed by the full
| weight of the human-like mental states. It may well be, but
| additional evidence must be presented.
|
| As humans, we're strongly prone to anthropomorphize-I'm capable
| of ascribing human feelings even to inanimate objects-and so are
| prone to doing the above without rigor.
|
| An extreme example: if you drop acid into the water in which a
| paramecium lives, it will fire up its cilia and frantically try
| to retreat. It's a single cell, there is no suffering or mental
| states, but it sure looks like it.
|
| An ant could have a sad looking death, but it surely cannot reach
| the depths of human sorrow, and the related suffering, that a
| similar event could elicit. It can't mourn the time it won't
| spend with its children, or the ways its life could have gone.
|
| I'm not proposing that everything between us and the paramecium
| cannot suffer, but that arguments in these areas must go beyond X
| has behavior Y, so X must have full mental state associated with
| Y.
| alecst wrote:
| How come for you the starting point is that animals do not have
| feelings and emotions like us, and that we have to have
| evidence for it?
|
| Why isn't the starting point that they do have feelings like us
| and we have to find evidence against it?
|
| Really, other animals are so similar to us on every dimension
| except language that I wonder why people reason this way.
| Mammals in particular. I've seen Denver the guilty dog. She's
| behaving like she feels guilty. It's harder to buy an argument
| that we are just projecting our human notion of guilt onto her,
| rather than she simply feels guilt.
|
| To put it another way, your position implies that all of these
| things were experience -- laughter, grief, guilt, shame,
| deception -- might have begun with humans. For me, that's a
| position you need a lot of evidence for.
| omginternets wrote:
| >How come for you the starting point is that animals do not
| have feelings and emotions like us, and that we have to have
| evidence for it?
|
| That's not exactly what he's saying. He's saying that the
| overall _qualia_ of an animal is not that of a human. In
| other words, despite (arguably) having certain experiences
| that are similar (or even identical) to humans, the totality
| is different in an important way.
|
| More concretely, the argument is as follows: just because a
| dog feels guilt doesn't mean (a) it's felt in an equivalent
| way to humans, nor (b) that the overall experience of a dog
| is equivalent to that of a human.
| alecst wrote:
| It's not clear how (b) is relevant to the conversation.
|
| Regarding (a) I would have the exact same reply. Unless the
| word "equivalent" is playing a critical role for you,
| because it will be impossible to prove or disprove
| equivalence. My experience of guilt may not even be
| equivalent to yours strictly speaking, and we belong to the
| same species, I assume ;-).
| omginternets wrote:
| (b) is relevant if you think that the qualia of
| consciousness has a bearing on the ethics of eating meat.
|
| >Unless the word "equivalent" is playing a critical role
| for you, because it will be impossible to prove or
| disprove equivalence.
|
| To be clear: I haven't actually stated my position in
| this debate.
|
| More to your point: this entire debate is an ethical one,
| so it's in the philosophical realm, so one should
| disabuse oneself of the notion that anything is going to
| be "disproven". The best we can aim for is a consistent
| ethical system, and conversely, the pointing out of
| inconsistencies.
|
| This having been said, there's a contradiction of terms
| if you simultaneously hold the belief -- as you seem to
| do -- that eating animals is wrong because they are in
| some sense "like us" while at the same time rejecting any
| notion of (non)equivalence. You exactly appeal to
| equivalence when you say, "Really, other animals are so
| similar to us on every dimension except language". So you
| are being inconsistent.
|
| Therefore, if this is indeed your position, you're going
| to have to grapple with the issue of threshold. How much
| similarity is too much? Holistically, is the experience
| of being $ANIMAL equivalent to (or within some bounds of)
| the experience of being human? If there are differences,
| which ones matter and which ones don't ... and in what
| amount? Those are the questions the GP was asking, and
| they are directly relevant to the argument.
| me_me_mu_mu wrote:
| Also animals have they own languages it's just they use smell
| or grunt or bop
| jrlocke wrote:
| > I've seen Denver the guilty dog. She's behaving like she
| feels guilty [therefore she likely experiences guilt].
|
| I'm not sure I believe this, but there are other believable
| explanations than yours: consider that humans and the dog
| could share a non-mental dispositional state (something more
| basic and hardwired into us) that leads to guilty actions.
| You would acknowledge that some very simple animals function
| in this way, and we as humans retain other core systems from
| simpler times.
|
| Human consciousness could be on top of this and not a
| guaranteed consequence of it. We additionally rationalize and
| experience this state and the actions we tend to take from
| the guilty dispositional state-and as humans call that guilt-
| but the dispositional state could exist on its own.
| medstrom wrote:
| Even more concerning, who's to say a simpler mind / smaller
| brain would experience less sorrow? Maybe our large brains
| actually put a cap on the sorrow we are capable of, due to
| interference, and a simpler brain is capable of experiencing
| pure sorrow so much more deeply?
| naasking wrote:
| > This is an unpopular opinion, and should be wielded very
| carefully, but I think something often lost in these
| conversations is that the existence of a human behavior in an
| animal is not sufficient evidence that it's backed by the full
| weight of the human-like mental states.
|
| Here's an even less popular opinion: most human-like mental
| states are a fiction, so the distinction you're trying to draw
| probably doesn't really exist. The mental states you attribute
| to suffering are merely a proxy for the behaviour you see from
| both humans and paramecia.
| anshumankmr wrote:
| They are like us, but they aren't us. This is an example of the
| former.
| glenstein wrote:
| I completely agree, and I think it's gotten out of control.
|
| Lately it has become vogue to attribute human intelligence to
| slime molds because they do complex things like solve mazes.
| Then that behavior gets put side by side with, say, mice trying
| to solve mazes.
|
| Perhaps the most egregious, in my opinion, is the way people
| unreflectively attribute terms to plants. I hate being a nerd
| about definitions, but sometimes playing and joking around with
| definitions serves to embed fundamental misunderstandings about
| the natural world.
|
| Here at hn and elsewhere, I've seen people insist that plants
| can "feel", that they "communicate" and are "conscious", very
| intentionally attempting to insist that it's same in the
| deepest sense as what humans do.
| gman83 wrote:
| It's been pretty well demonstrated, for example in pigs:
| https://escholarship.org/uc/item/8sx4s79c
| MattGaiser wrote:
| So what does that look like in a dog? My family has a dog and she
| has a pretty nice life and is usually pretty happy, especially
| when upsidedown having a belly rub. Are her flailing legs and
| head and panting considered dog laughter?
| niyaven wrote:
| This is an accurate recording of dog laughter:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nIj4WAP6BaI
|
| According to research[1] whispering while playing with your dog
| can initiate play more reliably. This is because our whisper is
| closer to the frequencies of their laugh. It is even more
| powerful than the play-bow.
|
| [1] https://www.petalk.org/LaughingDog.pdf
| xapata wrote:
| Maybe wagging? Some dogs play-growl when playing tug.
| joshschreuder wrote:
| My dogs growl and yip when wrestling with each other, I feel
| like this probably comes under the "non-aggressive
| vocalisation" mentioned in the article.
|
| Growling is obviously a well known sign of fear and aggression
| but I guess the context is important.
| niyaven wrote:
| When playing dogs will indeed bark, growl and whines, but
| also produce a forced exhalation: that's their laugh. Other
| sounds can be produced in other contexts indeed, whereas this
| dog laughter is exclusive to play.
| sgt101 wrote:
| Do you mean the "sorta sneeze" they do? I think mine do
| that when they think/want that we are going on a walk or
| into the garden to run about. It's a signal of "let's go
| adventuring".
|
| There's also the high pitched excited yip and then the
| tongue out wiggling walk thing as well both of which might
| be laughter I think.
| throwawayForMe2 wrote:
| I read about the "sorta sneeze" as being a call for
| consensus for "let's go". When my dog did that as we were
| getting ready to go out, I tried making a similar sound
| back and the dog looked at me immediately like I finally
| said something she understood!
| Ccecil wrote:
| Ferrets vocalize quite a bit and I fully expected them to be on
| the list before I checked.
|
| Anyone who has had one as a pet knows they laugh when tickled and
| "talk" quite a bit. When they are happy they make a hard to
| explain "cooing" noise as they go about their mischief.
| yread wrote:
| How did they electrically stimulate the neurons of the rats? They
| wouldn't cut them open to study whether they are ticklish, right?
| gtsnexp wrote:
| This is where everything started :
| https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31564493/
| wqtz wrote:
| Here is the paper >> https://gabryant.scholar.ss.ucla.edu/wp-
| content/uploads/site...
|
| I was curious about how they were defining laughter? I am a bit
| skeptical to be honest about the idea of change in behavior when
| we apply something to animals that will trigger a laughter in
| human. We can't be sure if that change behavior is indicative of
| joy and expressed through the vocalization of laugher.
|
| The paper seem to be (I have skimmed) focused on group dynamics
| to determine what is laughter. They indicate that how animals
| signals they were having joy by making vocalization and it
| indicates social play.
|
| Here is a super cute video of how social play would work:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L2EmA_UwIM8
|
| But I am not sure if the animals are laughing though.
| Closi wrote:
| I wonder what their jokes are (outside of tickling) it's hard to
| imagine a rat punchline.
| Ankaios wrote:
| As hard as it is to imagine a rat punchline, I find it even
| harder to imagine the tiny little cups they'd put the punch in.
| coldtea wrote:
| Ever watched Tom and Jerry?
| quicklime wrote:
| I wonder if a rat would find this magic trick funny:
| https://time.com/4145151/orangutan-barcelona-zoo-magic-trick...
| yololol wrote:
| http://bash.org/?334762
| wombatmobile wrote:
| Q: What did the duck say when he bought lipstick?
|
| A: "Put it on my bill."
| purplecats wrote:
| perhaps more visceral humor in the form of schadenfreude
| whythre wrote:
| I doubt any of the laughs are provoked by verbal 'jokes.' But
| rats are very smart, and play (wrestle) around with each other.
| It's probably not too different from kids giggling as they
| engage in rough and tumble play.
| bradrn wrote:
| I've seen Australian magpies do exactly the same thing. I was
| thoroughly unsurprised to see that they are in the list of
| laughing animals as well.
| dotancohen wrote:
| I've seen a rat punchline.
|
| One of my rats loved to nibble pencil erasers. She would find
| all sorts of creative ways to get the eraser from me. With
| rats, who need stimulation, it's good to have arms wars. I
| don't put the eraser in an impossible spot, rather a harder-
| to-get-to spot.
|
| She figured out that if she distracts me while doing
| homework, I'll turn my attention to the distraction. She
| could then run around from the other side to scoop up my
| eraser and take it somewhere to nibble. I began to catch her
| in the act and call her name as if I'm frustrated (but
| laughing) when she does this, like I do with my children
| today when they put a clothespin on my shirt then run off.
| One time, she picked up the eraser and ran off. But I was too
| busy to play along right away, I just let her scoot off. So
| she sat there, with the eraser, waiting for me to finish and
| then chase her down. Apparently she was no longer stealing
| the eraser to nibble, rather, it had become a joke between
| us.
| sgt101 wrote:
| you love your rat and that's really sweet - you made my
| morning.
| kingkawn wrote:
| The supposed differences between us and other creatures are
| pretenses for our violence against them, not scientific
| observation or data.
| spoonjim wrote:
| I've never understood why tickling feels so unpleasant but makes
| me laugh uncontrollably.
| 01100011 wrote:
| I wonder what Gary Larson will do with this discovery...
| [deleted]
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2022-01-10 23:02 UTC)