Giant tortoises show surprising cognitive powers • Hacker News Board

Re: Giant tortoises show surprising cognitive powers

#51

Post by codyb » Sat, Nov 30, 2019, 7:59 PM UTC

username90 wrote: post #36

ianai wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dogsledding? Horse riding? People routinely being carried by their horse to help after being incapacitated. Dogs herding all sorts of livestock. I read recently of tool use outside of the apes. I’ve seen blue jays bury and hide things and later recollect. The list goes on and with better examples. Service dogs definitely add value to society.

Animals works well as tools, but they don't work independently. In all of the situations you described there are humans present to direct the work and life of the animal, something you don't need with humans. I'm not sure why we can't get them to work independently, I guess they lack the attention span or the ability to associate the work with the rewards.

I suppose the one sort of exception to this would be barn cats who sort of self domesticated themselves and became valued members of households by keeping rodents at bay.

Cats also seem pretty intelligent to me.

Re: Giant tortoises show surprising cognitive powers

#52

Post by hyperpallium » Sat, Nov 30, 2019, 7:59 PM UTC

mark_l_watson wrote: post #6

When I worked in Central Illinois recently, the home my wife and I rented bordered a field where young cows were raised. The small cows seemed to play some sort of game, running around each other like run after the leader. We thought they were playing. Later my wife found stuff on the web about cows being given beach balls to play with and with each other. Uncomfortable truth for people who selfishly help environment…

> some pressure for life to develop different types of intelligence based on their biology and environment.

I always wonder what was the pressure for humans to develop recursive language, and the cultural explosion about 70,000 years ago.

And in the millions of years before that, the pressure to rapidly dwvelop larger brains. Other animals didn't seem to do that (though, we probanly haven't tracked the development of other animals brain-sizes over such time spans as assiduously as our own).

Re: Giant tortoises show surprising cognitive powers

#53

Post by nradov » Sat, Nov 30, 2019, 8:04 PM UTC

z_open wrote: post #42

username90 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Later my wife found stuff on the web about cows being given beach balls to play with and with each other. Uncomfortable truth for people who selfishly help environmentally destroy our planet with their meat addictions? I see it like this: Every time I pay for beef I create demand for more cows, thus I help fund little calves playing in the fields. Their lives might be a little shorter than usual, but I don't see wh…

You also pay for calves being torn from their mothers while the mother weeps for days. You pay for the calf to be slaughtered in the cheapest legal way, and often not even that. You pay for the times the cow doesn't die immediately, but sits in agony haven't done nothing to deserve this. By the way, the agriculture industry loves that you believe those farms on the side of the road are where your meat comes from. Ins…

Do you get upset when a pack of wolves murders an elk? The elk seems to be suffering quite a bit of torment, and the killing process sometimes takes quite a while.

Re: Giant tortoises show surprising cognitive powers

#54

Post by nick_mt » Sat, Nov 30, 2019, 8:10 PM UTC

mark_l_watson wrote: post #6

When I worked in Central Illinois recently, the home my wife and I rented bordered a field where young cows were raised. The small cows seemed to play some sort of game, running around each other like run after the leader. We thought they were playing. Later my wife found stuff on the web about cows being given beach balls to play with and with each other. Uncomfortable truth for people who selfishly help environment…

My grandmother (she died 5 years ago and I still miss her, she died at the venerable age 99) used to train calves to peform and win medals in festivals when she was a young girl. According to her they are one of the most intelligent mammals. Yet when they aged and fatten she participated in the butchery and preparation of the meat and everyone in tbe family still eat beef. I forgot was was my point, I apologize and miss my grandmom.

Re: Giant tortoises show surprising cognitive powers

#55

Post by jbay808 » Sat, Nov 30, 2019, 8:19 PM UTC

username90 wrote: post #17

edgyquant wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Define: dumb.

We have been able to teach them to do trivial tricks on demand, but we can't teach them to be productive members of society. We haven't even been able to teach a single other species to do factory work, which is the simplest work imaginable for humans.

Definitely. That's why there's no such thing as a working animal.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Working_animal

Re: Giant tortoises show surprising cognitive powers

#56

Post by z_open » Sat, Nov 30, 2019, 8:34 PM UTC

nradov wrote: post #53

z_open wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You also pay for calves being torn from their mothers while the mother weeps for days. You pay for the calf to be slaughtered in the cheapest legal way, and often not even that. You pay for the times the cow doesn't die immediately, but sits in agony haven't done nothing to deserve this. By the way, the agriculture industry loves that you believe those farms on the side of the road are where your meat comes from. Ins…

Do you get upset when a pack of wolves murders an elk? The elk seems to be suffering quite a bit of torment, and the killing process sometimes takes quite a while.

The wolf has little choice. You do but choose pain for others for hedonistic reasons. The agriculture industry is outrageously more cruel than a pack of wolves killing an elk. My expectation is for people to choose the path of least suffering to the extent they have the ability.

And to answer your question, I do get upset when I watch a pack of wolves kill an elk. Just because it happens doesn't mean I don't recognize and empathize with things in pain.

Re: Giant tortoises show surprising cognitive powers

#57

Post by larnmar » Sat, Nov 30, 2019, 8:57 PM UTC

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #14

sojmq wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Intelligence is a sliding scale and, until someone proves us wrong, we are the most intelligent life form on this planet. Emotional... well that's something else.

I'm more intelligent than someone with Downs Syndrome, but that doesn't mean their life is less valuable does it? Let me guess: they get a pass because they are human. That's what it comes down to really: things that are like me deserve rights and respect and things that aren't don't. That all humans happen to fit into the "like me" category is a relatively recent concept.

> I'm more intelligent than someone with Downs Syndrome, but that doesn't mean their life is less valuable does it?

Doesn’t it? It’s something we don’t say, because it’s horrendously impolite, and I wouldn’t say it myself outside the context of this conversation, but yes, the life of an intelligent person is worth less than that of a person with Down’s syndrome.

Don’t take my word for it though, look at revealed preferences. How many parents abort their unborn Down’s Syndrome babies?

Re: Giant tortoises show surprising cognitive powers

#58

Post by Noos » Sat, Nov 30, 2019, 8:57 PM UTC

username90 wrote: post #21

mark_l_watson wrote: post #6

When I worked in Central Illinois recently, the home my wife and I rented bordered a field where young cows were raised. The small cows seemed to play some sort of game, running around each other like run after the leader. We thought they were playing. Later my wife found stuff on the web about cows being given beach balls to play with and with each other. Uncomfortable truth for people who selfishly help environment…

> Later my wife found stuff on the web about cows being given beach balls to play with and with each other. Uncomfortable truth for people who selfishly help environmentally destroy our planet with their meat addictions? I see it like this: Every time I pay for beef I create demand for more cows, thus I help fund little calves playing in the fields. Their lives might be a little shorter than usual, but I don't see wh…

Yeah, the main poster doesn't get that the end result of veganism is the relegation of food species to very expensive, very impractical pets that many people won't see outside of youtube or in protected areas.

Re: Giant tortoises show surprising cognitive powers

#59

Post by dang » Sat, Nov 30, 2019, 8:59 PM UTC

lostmsu wrote: post #13

truckerbill wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's a subconscious act of self-preservation. Truly accepting the sentience of animals would be conferring upon them a much more expansive (and expensive) set of rights, which in turn would make the our society seem all the more immoral through how we treat other species. Too much cognitive dissonance.

They are sentient, alright. But quite dumb. So we grow and eat them.

Please keep this sort of flamebait off this site.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: Giant tortoises show surprising cognitive powers

#60

Post by hombre_fatal » Sat, Nov 30, 2019, 9:12 PM UTC

Noos wrote: post #58

username90 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Later my wife found stuff on the web about cows being given beach balls to play with and with each other. Uncomfortable truth for people who selfishly help environmentally destroy our planet with their meat addictions? I see it like this: Every time I pay for beef I create demand for more cows, thus I help fund little calves playing in the fields. Their lives might be a little shorter than usual, but I don't see wh…

Yeah, the main poster doesn't get that the end result of veganism is the relegation of food species to very expensive, very impractical pets that many people won't see outside of youtube or in protected areas.

Well, they probably do understand that but reject that on the same grounds they reject raising humans just to harvest their organs when they're 10 years old no matter how great of a life they had up until they were lead into the operating room. And organs actually save lives.

It seems obviously unethical to me to raise a sentient organism (human or cow or cat) just to kill it prematurely for what's purely a luxury good for most people. Giving it a beach ball to play with seems completely ethically inconsequential.

I wonder how many people who assert how great of a life this must be, only to be killed at someone else's pleasure, would accept this life for themselves or their children or even their pets. And they certainly buy their meat from the supermarket where their meat never got to play with a beach ball, anyways. It's closer to ethics-at-a-distance fantasy and utopian thought experiments instead of anything grounded in the horrors of reality.