[HN Gopher] Humans 1, Chimps 0: Correcting the Record
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Humans 1, Chimps 0: Correcting the Record
Author : amadeuspagel
Score : 106 points
Date : 2024-07-24 23:22 UTC (23 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.jasoncollins.blog)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.jasoncollins.blog)
| jojobas wrote:
| Can't express how relieved I am that I am tentatively not
| inferior to a chimpanzee.
| myrmidon wrote:
| Would it really have been so bad to be inferior at such a
| specific task?
|
| Great apes are hard for humans to match in e.g. upper body
| strength, so we are not strictly superior anyway...
|
| I strongly believe that human intellectual superiority will
| come to an end within a lifetime, will be quite interesting to
| see how our species deals with it (to be clear: talking about
| AI there, not apes :P).
| 7thaccount wrote:
| You mean how AI will deal with it. We might not have much say
| against something significantly smarter than us.
| KineticLensman wrote:
| In one-on-one hand-to-hand combat, an adult male chimp can
| savagely defeat a baseline human.
| a-french-anon wrote:
| It might be more because of what the baseline (both physical
| and mental) has become, though.
| bluGill wrote:
| But humans would not get involved in one on one hand to hand
| combat with a chimp. We would avoid combat, or use tools
| (likely a gun)
| KineticLensman wrote:
| Having volunteered at an ape rescue centre, I've heard some
| horrific stories about what happens when a chimp fights a
| person. Example scenarios include people who keep chimps as
| pets and zoo keepers who don't close a door correctly.
| Example injuries to the humans include fingers and other
| parts being bitten off, or being blinded. A worst case
| scenario for a zoo involves a group of chimps getting out
| and then getting frightened, and fighting.
|
| Of course a gun will solve this problem, hence my comment
| about 'baseline'. Perhaps I should have said 'unaugmented'.
| jojobas wrote:
| They are pretty horrible to each other at times too. More
| or less illustrates the somewhat Hobbesian idea of
| continual reduction of violence since probably the last
| common ancestor to today.
| keybored wrote:
| Right-wingers compare human nature to chimps; left-
| wingers to bonobos.
|
| What does that tell us about humans? Nothing.
| dhosek wrote:
| What I find fascinating is the bifurcation of R-rated
| behaviors between chimps (violence) and bonobos (sex). I
| read somewhere about a similar bifurcation in species of
| dolphins or porpoises where there were was one species
| which would exhibit high levels of violence and another
| which was all about the sexy fun time, but that was 30
| years ago or so I read it and I have little hope of ever
| recovering that information (assuming it's even true,
| which is not guaranteed for popular science reporting).
| dhosek wrote:
| Monkey bite your face off.
| lupire wrote:
| Part of that is most humans' ingrained resistance against
| being murderously vicious. It's easy to gouge eyes out,
| but it's hard for most people to actually do it.
| HarHarVeryFunny wrote:
| A chimp pulled someone's foot off in one incident - they
| are brutally strong.
| tetris11 wrote:
| Yes but in one-on-one hand-to-hand tango, I think there'd be
| an even match
| jojobas wrote:
| Well I mean at least intellectually.
| FrustratedMonky wrote:
| Thank You. It is easy to miss these follow up studies.
| zarzavat wrote:
| This isn't surprising to anyone who has seen videos of "flash
| anzan". The numbers flash up on the screen and you have to add
| them up:
|
| https://youtu.be/7ktpme4xcoQ
|
| https://youtu.be/_vGMsVirYKs
| bitslayer wrote:
| "with even very moderate practice, humans can match Ayumu's
| performance."
|
| The article is misnamed, the actual score is 1 to 1.
| light_hue_1 wrote:
| It's not. Because the chimp got an immense amount of practice.
| Humans would beat it at this rate.
| bluGill wrote:
| No, it is clear that cheating was involved in getting the
| Chimps to a score of 1, and thus I refuse to give them that
| score. (the Chimps didn't cheat, but there was still cheating)
| NeoTar wrote:
| From the article:
|
| > Cook and Wilson (2010b) subsequently trained two university
| students to a level superior to the chimpanzee.
|
| Sounds like humans do in fact win.
| echoangle wrote:
| You think human performance would plateau after moderate
| practice? Because otherwise, humans would surely win with the
| same practice as the chimp.
| dommus wrote:
| The chimp got extensive training because he did not attend
| school.
|
| The humans had more than 20 years of training, going through
| mandatory education and then college.
|
| It is not a competition between species. It's a competition
| between quality training on the one hand and on the other, the
| notion that some species are somehow born with skills.
| GTP wrote:
| No, here the point is training _on that specific task_. E. g.
| the literature classes you took during your education will be
| irrelevant for such a task.
| lmpdev wrote:
| Despite the correction, I still expect to see (perhaps only
| slight or niche) skills _with their corresponding mental
| attributes_ which great apes and extinct hominids possess(ed)
| which outweigh our own
|
| An example which springs to mind is the _utterly absurd_ physical
| traits and likely corresponding hand-eye coordination Homo naledi
| possessed in order to perform their burial rituals
|
| It took world-class climbers risking their lives to even reach
| the burial chamber, let alone do it repeatedly without modern
| climbing gear or even light
|
| Despite their size and build being advantageous, I do not see how
| their mental attributes wouldn't be more conducive to related
| skills than even trained (but tool-less) Homo sapiens
|
| Source: https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/news/2023/june/claims-
| homo-na...
| QuesnayJr wrote:
| Even the evidence about homo naledi possibly needs correction.
| Here's a recent preprint that argues that the evidence that
| homo naledi buried their dead is not there:
| https://paleoanthropology.org/ojs/index.php/paleo/libraryFil...
| HarHarVeryFunny wrote:
| One thing that seems certain though is that Homo Naledi was
| there way deep in the cave, which is saying a lot in of
| itself.
| griffzhowl wrote:
| See also this paper by one of the foremost researchers in the
| field and colleagues for how Berger and his team haven't been
| rigorous with their methodology with Homo naledi
|
| "No scientific evidence that Homo naledi buried their dead and
| produced rock art"
| https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00472...
| jerf wrote:
| One possible resolution: _homo sapiens_ really is physically
| weak. We route a _lot_ of energy into our brains. Our strongest
| body builders, probably augmented with chemicals, still don 't
| reach what a normal gorilla does. A _homo_ non- _sapiens_ who
| isn 't routing quite as much energy to their brain and is
| another 50% stronger than _homo sapiens_ climbers may not find
| the climb so challenging. (I would expect climbing strength to
| non-linearly improve climbing skill; once you rise to "I can
| just barely lift myself" you'll get rapid climbing improvements
| as you incrementally improve past that, a sudden takeoff in the
| strength versus climbing skill chart.)
|
| Humans have a lot of advantages; obviously our high-quality
| brains, fantastic eye sight, wonderful hands, etc. but I would
| argue that the fact we are physically weak, in the literal
| "strength" sense of that, even when we do exercise and
| strengthen to our very limits, is perhaps our biggest
| disadvantage compared to the rest of the animal kingdom.
|
| (So, it isn't just a science fiction trope that there's a lot
| of things stronger than us. However, if the Klingons and the
| Vulcans and pretty much every other alien species in Star Trek
| can outwrestle a human, one does sometimes wonder how they can
| do that but also still have human, or slightly better than
| human, intelligence. Perhaps arguably the Vulcans should be a
| little weaker yet.)
| luma wrote:
| Define "physically weak". Chimpanzees are certainly better
| climbers, but we can run for hours on end, far longer and
| further than any other land animal. Not all physical strength
| is just lifting heavy things.
| jerf wrote:
| Physically weak, as in, what people expect when people say
| physically weak. We do not have good strength. We do, or at
| least can, as you say, have best-in-class _endurance_ , but
| that's endurance, not strength.
| autokad wrote:
| I get your point, but I also still think you are wrong.
| there is no one measure for 'strength'.
|
| humans can throw a punch much harder than a chimp even
| though a chimp's arm is stronger. humans can kick harder,
| etc, even though a chimp would usually tear a person up
| in a 'fight'.
|
| humans can throw a ball faster and harder than any other
| primate, likewise we can swing a stick harder and with
| more precision.
|
| some people will play down human skills saying, 'thats
| because they are trained and specialized, the average
| human cant do that'.
|
| THATS LITERALLY OUR SPECIAL ABILITY. Humans are adaptable
| both physically and mentally to do virtually any task.
| adaptability means we aren't inherently good at any one
| of those tasks without training and practice. Its a
| feature, not a bug.
| pixl97 wrote:
| I mean a chimp the same size as you would rip your arms off
| and beat you to a pink mist with them and barely break a
| sweat. Endurance is typically not counted as a strength
| Stat, but on its own metric.
| Retric wrote:
| The difference isn't quite that extreme. Pound per pound
| "chimpanzee muscle exceeds human muscle in maximum
| dynamic force and power output by ~1.35 times" they are
| strong largely because they are extremely muscular not
| simply stronger on a pound per pound basis.
|
| However, there's inherent strength vs endurance tradeoffs
| involved. Space taken up by mitochondria is in direct
| competition with the cellular machinery that turns ATP
| into motion. Similarly, increased capillary density can
| supply more nutrients and oxygen, but again displaces
| more directly useful muscle tissue.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| I think there is more to it than just the muscle pull
| force. My understanding is that the chimpanzee muscle
| skeleton system is configured for much greater leverage
| for many motions and this is a much larger Factor.
| Retric wrote:
| Leverage is another trade-off. Humans are well adapted to
| throwing a baseball sized rock, spear, or javelin much
| farther than a gorilla can, but a gorilla can throw a
| 200kg stone farther.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| Maybe that's the same as what I'm saying but it strikes
| me differently. As I understand it, the trade-off is
| between range and diversity of motions versus strength in
| one specific set of circumstances.
|
| The further your muscle Anchor Point is from the pivot,
| the greater the mechanical lever. For example, the human
| bicep anchors only inch or two from our elbow pivot. You
| could anchor twice as far and double the resulting Force,
| and in fact many animals do exactly that.
|
| It's hard for me to imagine the comparative kinematics in
| your example, but I would think throwing a baseball and a
| heavier Rock would go through essentially the same
| motion. Attempt might be far better at an overhand throw
| than a human, but a temp might be simply incapable of
| performing an underhanded or side pitch
| Retric wrote:
| > range and diversity of motion versus strength
|
| Not what I'm talking about.
|
| > You could anchor twice as far and double the resulting
| force > throwing a baseball and a heavier Rock would go
| through the same range of motion
|
| I think you're missing a key detail here. Muscles can
| only contract at a finite percentage of their total
| length per given unit of time even with near zero load.
| This is mostly irrelevant when lifting something, but
| means very fast motions want the anchor point near the
| point of rotation. People are really quite extraordinary
| in how far the can throw light objects but it's a real
| tradeoff.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| I see, thanks for clarifying
| JohnMakin wrote:
| Homo did not need to evolve to be strong when the prevailing
| theory is that we used our long distance running ability to
| chase and kill by exhausting large prey - strength is
| irrelevant to that kind of predator. It makes sense evolution
| did not select for this trait with homo, because there's been
| no selective pressure for it and the species has been
| extremely successful without it.
| jerf wrote:
| This isn't an attack on humans. It's only to be expected
| that given all the other stat maxing we've done we need a
| dump stat somewhere, to borrow gaming terminology. Our list
| of attributes that is either simply the best, or very
| competitive, is quite absurdly long.
| keybored wrote:
| You say that humans are weak in terms of physical
| attributes[1] and then ignore the substance of the
| argument when someone replies and points out that humans
| are the _best_ animal at long-distance running. Which is
| not a fitness attribute that anyone serious disregards...
| any _human_ that is, to be fair.
|
| [1] But you have the "literal strenght" narrow fallback
| though.
| dghlsakjg wrote:
| Persistence hunting as a major driver of human evolution,
| or a common mode of hunting, is a theory that has caught
| the popular imagination, but has precious little actual
| evidence behind it, sadly. Most of the pop culture articles
| cite a list of facts, that are not true (Humans are
| uniquely efficient, humans are some of the only animals
| that sweat to cool themselves, only humans can travel long
| distances at a moderate pace). While persistence hunting is
| possible, modern experiments have shown that it has an
| incredibly low success rate, especially considering the
| level of effort necessary.
|
| https://afan.ottenheimer.com/articles/myth_of_persistent_hu
| n...
|
| https://undark.org/2019/10/03/persistent-myth-persistence-
| hu...
| JohnMakin wrote:
| "debunked" is a rather strong word to use here since it's
| a theory that's inherently untestable - the reality being
| that humans likely used a variety of hunting methods, and
| since that's one that could have been used, it's likely
| it was used.
| dghlsakjg wrote:
| I never said debunked(?)
|
| It is untestable, sure, but some of the main arguments in
| the proposed theory are based on untruths, and none of
| the evidence that we would expect to have found to
| support it being widespread has been found yet. We have
| found plenty of evidence pointing to humans using other
| hunting strategies, so it seems odd that there is no
| evidence pointing to persistence hunting and that the
| strategy that we evolved so many traits for would have
| died out in all but one or two remaining primitive
| cultures.
|
| Simply put, a group of humans gambling 10s of thousands
| of calories each in order to possibly capture a single
| large animal miles away from the rest of the tribe is an
| absolutely horrendous survival strategy.
| svieira wrote:
| Funnily enough, when you put people _into_ primitive
| situations it is one of the techniques that they adopt
| when they can 't make better things work:
|
| > Lacking guns and even bows, they could hunt only by
| digging traps or pursuing prey across the mountains until
| the animals collapsed from exhaustion. Dmitry built up
| astonishing endurance, and could hunt barefoot in winter,
| sometimes returning to the hut after several days, having
| slept in the open in 40 degrees of frost, a young elk
| across his shoulders.
|
| https://theweek.com/articles/468207/russian-family-that-
| live...
|
| and
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lykov_family
| dghlsakjg wrote:
| Again, I'm not saying that humans can't persistence hunt.
|
| I'm saying that there is not a lot of evidence of it
| being widespread, or that it was a driver of human
| anatomy in evolution.
|
| The theory is based on a handful of papers, some with
| major bad assumptions, and a few anecdotes. The arguments
| against it being widespread or common are just as strong
| or stronger than the arguments for.
|
| My objection is just that the Outdoor magazine and Joe
| Rogan set like to cite it as if it is more or less
| settled.
| abfan1127 wrote:
| In the book, Sapiens, they talk about how, while important,
| homo sapiens ability to socially coordinate allowed the
| species to hunt, protect from/attack neighboring homo
| species (i.e. Neanderthals). Our brains gave us the ability
| to coordinate large groups (social groups, hunting groups)
| without the restriction of instinct giving our group
| members to pivot as necessary.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > One possible resolution: homo sapiens really is physically
| weak. We route a _lot_ of energy into our brains.
|
| Humans are weak, but that's not because we're using the
| energy elsewhere. We have comparable muscle mass to
| chimpanzees. We don't have comparable strength; our anatomy
| is what makes us weak, not a diversion of energy to other
| purposes.
| Detrytus wrote:
| It's about fast-twitch vs slow-twitch kinds of muscle
| fibers: the former are good for strength, the latter for
| endurance. We evolved to be distance runners, so our muscle
| composition changed, decreasing our strength.
| pixl97 wrote:
| Chimps use something like 25% less calories than a human,
| so yes strength and energy usage are not strongly coupled.
| What makes humans weaker is less fast twitch muscle, and
| this gives us finer motor control.
| lupire wrote:
| Nitpick: body builders are not the best
| weightlifters/strongmen. Body builders focus on aesthetic
| sculpting and cutting fat, not maximizing strength.
| Dalewyn wrote:
| >perhaps our biggest disadvantage compared to the rest of the
| animal kingdom.
|
| I agree our physical inferiority is a big disadvantage, but I
| would say _the biggest_ one is by far how much time is
| required to raise children.
|
| Homo sapiens generally need anywhere from _10 to 30 years_ to
| reach proper adulthood, depending on social norms of the
| people concerned.
|
| Contrast most animals who are done raising their young in
| _months_ if not _weeks_ , sometimes even _days_.
| unaindz wrote:
| Chimps destroy us at the number memory test. Maybe it's just
| with that specific test but it suggests they have a larger
| working memory and probably faster visual/pattern processing
| than us.
| lupire wrote:
| Is their evidence for that claim?
| franciscop wrote:
| On favour of humans, people have usually seen the numbers
| thousands to millions of times in their lifetimes, while chimps
| would have seen them few dozens of times at best. So "training
| the same time" for humans and chimps is def misleading, would
| love to see this with an abstract or uncommon characters like
| Japanese (for a Western audience).
| autokad wrote:
| that would not matter much at all. I can learn a foreign
| language numbers in a matter of minutes.
| murukesh_s wrote:
| That is because you have basic understanding of numbers.
| Tribes may not have that.
| franciscop wrote:
| Me too, but I still find 4,6,8 a lot easier to read than Si
| ,Liu ,Ba
| anon24526742 wrote:
| Si ,Liu ,Ba is "four, six, eight" in English. These are
| the _names_ of the numbers, not the numbers themselves. In
| Japanese they write the numbers the same as in English (
| "4, 6, 8")
| jvandreae wrote:
| Compare also:
|
| Yi / 1 (one stroke vs three)
|
| Shi / 10 (two strokes vs four)
|
| Mo / 10,000 (three strokes vs seven)
| murukesh_s wrote:
| >two university students to a level superior to the chimpanzee
|
| yea, and university students? would have been fair comparison
| if they tried to train members from some tribe who haven't been
| exposed to schooling,.
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| wait, were these students from an Ivy or Not?
| aatd86 wrote:
| Lies! Utter lies! Chimp supremacy. Caesar superior. What a
| wonderful dayyy!!!
| lupire wrote:
| Back in the day, there were lots of websites where you could play
| the game.
|
| You can improve your performance at this game by playing in
| extremely high contrast, so you can use the retinal afterimage to
| give you more time to study the numbers. Similar to how that
| "LSD" video requires you reconstruct persistence of visionsl
| while watching a too-slow animation of light painting.
|
| Such a weird case, since any human could directly objectively
| test the claim on their own.
|
| https://www.novelgames.com/en/ayumu/
| hiddencost wrote:
| Love to see memes with retraction notices.
| breck wrote:
| The period of "closed science", which really took on steam after
| the extensions of copyright in 1976 and 1998, will be look backed
| upon as rampant with dishonesty and corruption.
|
| If you are in academia and you are not publishing your stuff to
| the public domain, including your git repo, please take some time
| to think about this and do what you need to do to pivot.
| trimethylpurine wrote:
| To make any unbiased claim, we'd need results from chimps who've
| captured live humans. Short of that, I'm fairly certain it was
| always Humans 1, Chimps 0.
| Joel_Mckay wrote:
| I wonder if chimps understand where they are headed after the
| tests. i.e. the nice room were they play games for treats, or the
| other room where they get injected with various concoctions for
| unfathomable reasons.
|
| I think humans tend to naively apply our own constructs to
| describe what we think defines intelligence, but this habit does
| not necessarily generalize onto other species. As an aside, for
| similar reasons I'd wager generalized AI will be a surprise event
| rather than an incremental discovery.
|
| Recent studies described Goldfish that can remember certain types
| of problems beyond a year later. Far beyond what anyone assumed
| possible for such a simple creature.
|
| Some people are unique, as I met one lady that could remember 93
| non-sequential digits. While she was not successful academically,
| it would be unwise to play card games with that person for money.
| =)
|
| Primates belong in their own habitats, and should be left alone
| unless people have a well defined _necessary_reason_ to exploit
| them as subjects.
|
| Have a great day, =3
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