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Can we know what animals are thinking?

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Re: Can we know what animals are thinking?

#191

Post by red75prime »

p1esk wrote: post #189
red75prime wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Deep neural networks aren't aware of changes in their own performance, because their cannot remember or compare their own current performance to the one in the past. Thus humans at least cannot be pure DNN ML algorithm. RNNs have error propagation thru time, but connections' weight changes aren't represented as neuron activations and therefore aren't accessible to the neural network itself. That is RNNs aren't aware…

Deep neural networks aren't aware of changes in their own performance, because their cannot remember or compare their own current performance to the one in the past. What are you talking about? Awareness of the changes is the point of such techniques as momentum or early stopping.

The part of a system which monitors these changes (well, it mostly monitors single number, performance on a test set) isn't represented in the network itself.

You can train dialogue NLP system as much as you wish, but you'll never get answers to a question "Have you learned this training set already?" which correlate with whether performance on the test set have plateaued.

I wouldn't call it awareness. We are certainly aware that one part of the system monitors another part, the system itself isn't.

Re: Can we know what animals are thinking?

#192

Post by cryodesign »

ddingus wrote: post #182

As I was growing up around animals, I had an insight derived from my interactions with a particularly adept cat. She had an affinity with people and made an effort to communicate. Vocalizations confused me. There isn't enough information in them to encode all of her demonstrated use cases. Maybe I could not hear everything. Wondered about that for a while. One day, it sort of hit me: Cats, at least, are missing a lay…

RE: I feel work to better communicate is worth it. When I make investments in animals, they get close, like people do. I can feel the bond, and that little spark that is "them", it's a'll just simpler, smaller, and quite often much faster.

I like the way you put this and I had similar experiences.

If we'd just take some time to get to know those type animals we regard as food, maybe we wouldn't put them in the 'They're just dumb animals' box.

Re: Can we know what animals are thinking?

#193

Post by p1esk »

red75prime wrote: post #191
p1esk wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Deep neural networks aren't aware of changes in their own performance, because their cannot remember or compare their own current performance to the one in the past. What are you talking about? Awareness of the changes is the point of such techniques as momentum or early stopping.

The part of a system which monitors these changes (well, it mostly monitors single number, performance on a test set) isn't represented in the network itself. You can train dialogue NLP system as much as you wish, but you'll never get answers to a question "Have you learned this training set already?" which correlate with whether performance on the test set have plateaued. I wouldn't call it awareness. We are certain…

I'm still not following you. What does the question "have you learned this training set already?" even mean? You measure a training set accuracy, and you compare it against the corresponding test set accuracy. It's trivial to add the code that monitors this correlation to your model. Then you can even have the model make adjustments to the learning process based on what it observes (e.g. deploy more regularization to reduce overfitting, etc).

So, again, what are you talking about?

Re: Can we know what animals are thinking?

#194

Post by red75prime »

p1esk wrote: post #193
red75prime wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The part of a system which monitors these changes (well, it mostly monitors single number, performance on a test set) isn't represented in the network itself. You can train dialogue NLP system as much as you wish, but you'll never get answers to a question "Have you learned this training set already?" which correlate with whether performance on the test set have plateaued. I wouldn't call it awareness. We are certain…

I'm still not following you. What does the question "have you learned this training set already?" even mean? You measure a training set accuracy, and you compare it against the corresponding test set accuracy. It's trivial to add the code that monitors this correlation to your model. Then you can even have the model make adjustments to the learning process based on what it observes (e.g. deploy more regularization to…

I was trying to show that humans can't be purely relying on certain kinds of ML algorithms because those algorithms can't provide properties which we observe in our thought processes.

> It's trivial to add the code that monitors this correlation to your model.

Yes, but while it's not there we can't say that the model is aware of the process of its own learning. The question serves as an experimental test of system's awareness of the process of its own learning.

All in all, I tried to make poorly defined terms like "awareness" and "the way humans think" a little bit more technical.

Re: Can we know what animals are thinking?

#195

Post by cryodesign »

pier25 wrote: post #177
cryodesign wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for that link. I'll have a look. But why can't we act on multiple fronts? We can do many things to reduce our carbon foot print, and choosing not to eat meat or reducing it is one of those things. Our meat consumption is a big problem environmentally - see https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/meat-and-environm... Also, the way we farm animals now a days is completely different to when your grand parents…

BTW the problem is not really meat production (as far as emissions go) but beef production. http://imgur.com/a/Rwm5R > But why can't we act on multiple fronts? Yes, as long as we don't forget where the big problem really lies and we also act there. I've met quite a number of vegetarians that believe that not eating meat is the solution to all problems. Of course they fly to Thailand for their yoga retreat, buy food a…

If you multiply that glass of water times a million - it will have an impact. Every Little Helps so they say here.

Also, what is the point of having a moral high ground? It doesn't accomplish anything. Even if some people's motivation for not eating meat is to feel morally superior, it shouldn't be a deciding factor for others to not eat meat.

For me personally it's about values[1]. I remember watching Star Trek as a kid and I think Riker said something along the lines that humanity doesn't enslave animals anymore[3]. We need a vision for the future and not oppressing and exploiting other beings for our own culinary pleasures is a good value to have I think.

We don't have to wait until the 24th century either. The future is already here, it's easier now than ever to choose not to kill animals, there are so many other delicious recipes[2] out there - if one would invest the time to research this.

And in terms of having kids - I think it was Hans Rosling who said that birth rates seem to fall in the developed countries. Also, imagine we would show a toddler how his sausages etc are made - from beginning to end. How do you think small kids would react if they knew what actually happens to peppa pig and friends? Why don't we show our kids the process of producing meat?

------------

[1] Best quote on this is from Dr Alex Hershaft. Holocaust survivor and FARM founder. He drew many similarities between what the Nazis did and what we do to farm animals. His story: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7dZv43A0g0

His quote:

"[...]It's about us. It's about who we are, how we treat the least defensible, the most oppressed, the weakest in our society. What does it say about us?"

[2] http://annajones.co.uk/books

[3] EDIT: found that Riker quote from TNG: https://youtu.be/sS7NRtEJBcA?t=31s

Re: Can we know what animals are thinking?

#196

Post by peepopeep »

pmoriarty wrote: post #76
cryodesign wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it will be. People of the future will look at this time the same way we look back to when it was accepted to have human slaves. Medicine (and millions of other people) has already proven that we don't need meat to survive. We have plenty of alternatives now. But we are addicted to meat - because it gives us pleasure. But then you have to ask yourself, is it OK for sentient beings to horribly suffer for us[1],…

"..you have to ask yourself, is it OK for sentient beings to horribly suffer for us, so we can experience some pleasure that could be easily achieved by consuming alternative foods and shifting our perception" One can readily see that the answer to this question is "yes" even when the suffering is that of humans, much less animals. Many people readily consume products that are created in sweatshops, that are the prod…

I fall into this category of people. How should I feel about myself?

Re: Can we know what animals are thinking?

#197

Post by peepopeep »

monktastic1 wrote: post #46

For some reason I am reminded of this section from Sam Harris's Waking Up : See if you can stop thinking for the next sixty seconds. You can notice your breath, or listen to the birds, but do not let your attention be carried away by thought, any thought, even for an instant. Put down this book, and give it a try. Some of you will be so distracted by thought as to imagine that you succeeded. In fact, beginning medita…

Are you saying there are people who meditate and can free their mind of any thought? I tried this "exercise" and could not "not think" for the life of me.

Re: Can we know what animals are thinking?

#198

Post by StavrosK »

CuriouslyC wrote: post #153
_dps wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, this is closely connected to the question of qualia, and the concept of a "philosophical zombie" [0]. On the one hand, naive human intuition seems to suggest that the "movie playing in your head" would not emerge from any number of transistors and wires connected to each other. On the other hand, it's not clear how you can argue that what goes on in our own heads is physically any different. So that leads you ei…

Why does consciousness have to emerge? Why can't it be intrinsic?

Intrinsic to what? Individual molecules don't have consciousness, a group of them forming a brain does. It has to emerge at some point.

Re: Can we know what animals are thinking?

#199

Post by BartSaM »

zpghjll wrote: post #183
BartSaM wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I partly agree I do not suppose all of sudden 50% of society will turn in to food like this. This is a solution to all the people that have a problem with the evil food industry. There is enough for everyone. What I am saying, there are more than two options. Also, if more people would eat such a products and prices would rise a bit, I bet a lot of people would start using their unused farm land for such a purp…

What I meant to say is that it's infeasible to grow all meat free-range from an environmental perspective. Factory farmed meat has a smaller impact on the environment.

And my answer to this is the same as above.

Re: Can we know what animals are thinking?

#200

Post by sethammons »

roceasta wrote: post #135
AsyncAwait wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The desire and the ability to explain things, and not thinking per se, is (I guess) what distinguishes humans from animals. But how do you know that animals have no desire or ability to explain things to each other, at least amongst their own species? We may not be able to read it, but it doesn't mean it doesn't exist, we already know that a parent can 'teach' its offspring that something is dangerous, for example…

I don't. It's a guess. But I do think our ability to explain things comes not just from our genes but from our culture, and culture is something animals haven't yet developed.

If you watch some programs on orcas, many scientists describe different pods as having distinct cultures, where culture is a set of intellectual achievements collected and passed down generationally. This comes in the form of different vocalizations and hunting techniques.
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