[HN Gopher] Sequential Memory Is a Unique Human Trait
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Sequential Memory Is a Unique Human Trait
Author : gardenfelder
Score : 25 points
Date : 2023-09-07 14:50 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (neurosciencenews.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (neurosciencenews.com)
| behnamoh wrote:
| It's unique to humans until it isn't (LLMs).
| chrisco255 wrote:
| LLMs are a human technology.
| [deleted]
| golemotron wrote:
| Gotta love the never ending hunt for things that are uniquely
| human.
|
| For a while, we thought it was language and then discovered that
| it wasn't. Same for tool use.
|
| Maybe the search for uniquely human things is the uniquely human
| thing?
|
| We can get over that too if we consider that we may not be that
| special.
| Wolfbeta wrote:
| > We can get over that too if we consider that we may not be
| that special.
|
| Speak for yourself. I trust my mother knows what she's talking
| about.
| bad_alloc wrote:
| How about humans being unique in forming machine-building
| societieswith cultures containing some technology?
| golemotron wrote:
| We should just wonder why these distinctions are so important
| to us.
| chrisco255 wrote:
| Well we're the only species that even wonders why we're
| unique or debates if we are unique or not.
| yyyk wrote:
| The occasional research going off is hardly a sign of
| obsession, and if anything the limited funding suggests
| lack of importance.
| gizmo686 wrote:
| > For a while, we thought it was language and then discovered
| that it wasn't.
|
| When did this happen? I only studied linguistics at the
| undergrad level, but as of about 5 years ago, animal language
| has not made it there other than some examples of 'here are
| some non-human communication systems, and this is of they
| differ from language'.
|
| It is not plausible to say that linguists are simply too
| egotistical to consider the possibility. Scientists in general
| love animal models. Plenty of linguists would jump at the
| chance to conduct experiments that are way too unethical to do
| with human subjects.
|
| There is some promising research into whale songs which might
| turn out to be analgous. However, as far as I have been able to
| find, our understanding there is still largely speculative.
| syndicatedjelly wrote:
| It's possible that there are worldviews other than your own
| that are true
| Gys wrote:
| So far humans have behaved like any other species, we use all
| our qualities for our own 'survival'. So no, we are not that
| special ;)
| RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote:
| Humans use of language is way beyond any other known life form.
| Same for tool use. Saying they are the same as humans is like
| saying a tsunami and a ripple on a lake from a pebble are both
| waves.
| FridayNightTV wrote:
| > Gotta love the never ending hunt for things that are uniquely
| human.
|
| To be fair, I've never seen any other member of the animal
| kingdom drunkenly light their own farts.
|
| I suggest such actions (a combination of drug use, mastery of
| fire, intellect (however limited) and social bonding) define
| our humanity.
| svnt wrote:
| > To be fair, I've never seen any other member of the animal
| kingdom drunkenly light their own farts
|
| Maybe you just missed it, or scared them off.
|
| > drug use and fire: https://youtu.be/qgtXTv0jGxg
| https://youtu.be/kU95P7kilLU
|
| > limited intellect https://youtu.be/DJsn1QivbKM
| https://youtu.be/Gui3IswQ0DI
|
| > social bonding https://youtu.be/i497TV5Q6TY
| https://youtu.be/MI75eogv6Wo
| yyyk wrote:
| It's too easy to accuse every such article of arrogance - after
| all, something is obviously different, especially given that
| crows and apes didn't take over the planet long before humans
| existed. It's fair enough to look for it.
| golemotron wrote:
| Have we really taken over the planet or is it just that it
| looks like that from our perspective?
|
| https://www.science.org/content/article/how-many-ants-
| live-e...
|
| (answer: 20 quadrillion)
| incongruity wrote:
| The impact humanity has had on the planet is undeniable.
| Further, we really are the apex predator globally and we
| have caused the extinction of numerous species. By most
| measures it's absolutely true that we have taken over the
| planet, imho.
| gizmo686 wrote:
| If you go by impact alone, humans are still not the most
| influential organism.
|
| Cyanobacteria literally poisoned the atmosphere and
| triggered a global ice age. [0]
|
| [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Oxidation_Event
| incongruity wrote:
| Give us a few years? Sadly...
| philipov wrote:
| But that was billions of years ago! Cyanobacteria just
| peaked early. Give us a few more years, and I'm sure
| we'll catch up splendidly.
| yyyk wrote:
| That's a very old hat. What has Cyanobacteria done
| _lately_ , as in the last billion years? Reminiscing
| about the glory days? We are the future (of screwing
| things up).
| labster wrote:
| Kids these days don't appreciate the classics.
| dbmikus wrote:
| Crows can solve puzzles that require a sequential series of
| steps. Would that imply they have sequential memory? I saw
| someone in the article comments mentioning this as well.
| cma wrote:
| Not sure about crows, but there is this with songbirds:
|
| https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1207207109
| verytrivial wrote:
| I had a bad experience very recently with hash (in the non-CS
| sense.) There was a harm done, for a couple of hours, to my
| understanding of time, of recalling "when" each memory I was
| using was formed. I could not tell AT ALL if it was from
| literally 10 seconds ago, or weeks/months ago. It was
| incapacitating, but upon reflection, really showed as is often
| the case with medical science and pathology, there was a faculty
| at play here that was only apparent when removed. I could not
| function without the ability to sequence events, including the
| provenence of each damn propositions I was trying to use to
| explain my current existence. Bad times. But with some distance
| quite interesting.
| nerdponx wrote:
| [delayed]
| gardenfelder wrote:
| The paper
|
| https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...
| comboy wrote:
| And the title is "A test of memory for stimulus sequences in
| great apes" which is way more fitting for a study based on a
| few bonobos.
| bedobi wrote:
| what? chimps destroy humans at remembering sequences of numbers
| kanzenryu2 wrote:
| I remember reading somewhere this was for juvenile chimps only,
| and they lost the ability as they matured.
| syndicatedjelly wrote:
| No
| Tostino wrote:
| Well I've been thoroughly convinced by this argument.
| SolarNet wrote:
| You should be though. Without evidence, raw skepticism is a
| valid argument. My prior beliefs were not updated by either
| statement.
|
| Though I agree the polite/generous version of this is
| asking for source rather than just posting "No".
| syndicatedjelly wrote:
| GP should provide evidence then
| bee_rider wrote:
| Why not google "chimp short term memory?"
|
| It is a pretty well known phenomenon, it makes sense that
| someone might not bother linking it.
| Tostino wrote:
| No.
|
| Great argument, right?
| jasonhong wrote:
| Here's a BBC video showing how good chimpanzees are with short-
| term memory. Short version, the chimp beats all humans at the
| memory test.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zsXP8qeFF6A
| svnt wrote:
| In that video the chimp beats one human who thought he was
| smart but appears particularly bad at that test.
|
| They are different tests, though. You don't need sequential
| memory to win that test, you just need near photographic
| recall and the general knowledge of numerical order.
| mycologos wrote:
| The paper [1] makes a kind of subtle distinction that these
| aren't sequences, because the information is all presented at
| once:
|
| > We do not focus on how animals represent single stimuli, or
| many stimuli that are presented simultaneously. For these
| reasons, test paradigms that involve simultaneously presented
| arrays of stimuli are beyond the scope of this study [39, 40],
| as responding to simultaneous input does not require the
| recognition of temporal stimulus sequences, even if subjects
| perform behavior sequences in response to complex input [41].
| This also applies to the well-known studies where chimpanzees
| learned to point to the location of up to nine numerals that
| were presented simultaneously (see [42, 43] for studies on
| chimpanzees, and [44-46] for further discussion about these
| results).
|
| Indeed, the videos of chimps casually acing those tests shows
| that all the numbers are given at once, and only disappear when
| the 1 is touched -- the test is getting the positions of 2
| through 9 in the right order without being able to see them.
| The authors of the paper seem to argue that this is different
| from memorizing information that is presented sequentially.
|
| That said, this does feel like an incorrect finding for other
| reasons. For example, some gulls seem to rely heavily on scents
| to navigate, learning a route of thousands of kilometers by a
| sequence of scent landmarks [2]. This information is presented
| to them in sequence and seems like a counterexample to my
| layman's eye.
|
| [1]
| https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...
|
| [2] https://www.icarus.mpg.de/30188/seagulls-navigation
| svnt wrote:
| > The authors of the paper seem to argue that this is
| distinct for memorizing information that is initially
| presented sequentially.
|
| It is: think about how you would naively work an n-back of
| randomly ordered symbols. Most people can't do more than a
| few n-back.
|
| However if I have photographic recall I can count forwards or
| backwards trivially. These are very different mental
| processes.
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