Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Acorn Woodpeckers Have Multi-Day Wars, and Birds Come from All Around to Watch

atlasobscura.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 86 posts

Re: Acorn Woodpeckers Have Multi-Day Wars, and Birds Come from All Around to Watch

#11

Post by marcosdumay »

HenryKissinger wrote: post #8
dalbasal wrote: post #6

I find these animal behavioural studies fascinating. There is always the risk of personification clouding our understanding, when we observe similarities to human behaviour. But another angle is de-personification of our own behaviour. That seems insightful in all sorts of way. Certain behaviours, like "war," almost certainly predate cognitive modernity... modern human consciousness. Gwynne Dyer, a historian of war,…

Are you saying that humans are partially automatons pre-programmed to behave in certain specific ways in certain situations? What are the implications of a theory like that for free will?

Hum...

I can't tell if you are sarcastic. The internet really sucks this way.

But if not, well, have you really never noticed? And yeah, theories of free will better support only partial freedom, otherwise they have no chance.

Re: Acorn Woodpeckers Have Multi-Day Wars, and Birds Come from All Around to Watch

#12

Post by nitrogen »

vczf wrote: post #10
HenryKissinger wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you saying that humans are partially automatons pre-programmed to behave in certain specific ways in certain situations? What are the implications of a theory like that for free will?

Not GP, but my understanding is that free will is weak, not strong. You can suppress a desire to eat a donut (requires willpower) but can't prevent the thought/desire from arising on its own when presented with the stimulus. Similarly, we can suppress the desire to go to war after a provocation. However, we can't choose to not feel furious, at least for an instant. Thoughts and feeling tend to arise on their own, and…

Free will is itself still just an electrochemical process running in a physical brain. It's subjectively real, but the inputs that drive that subjective feeling are still either deterministic or random.

Re: Acorn Woodpeckers Have Multi-Day Wars, and Birds Come from All Around to Watch

#13

Post by dalbasal »

HenryKissinger wrote: post #8
dalbasal wrote: post #6

I find these animal behavioural studies fascinating. There is always the risk of personification clouding our understanding, when we observe similarities to human behaviour. But another angle is de-personification of our own behaviour. That seems insightful in all sorts of way. Certain behaviours, like "war," almost certainly predate cognitive modernity... modern human consciousness. Gwynne Dyer, a historian of war,…

Are you saying that humans are partially automatons pre-programmed to behave in certain specific ways in certain situations? What are the implications of a theory like that for free will?

That's some feisty old philosophical language....

To put it in more poetic terms (Leonard Cohen's), I think free will is overrated. We very often act because because we are compelled to act, or not to act.

Back to the original topic or bird warfare... What I mean is that whatever compels (or maybe convinces) woodpeckers to warfare may be similar to what compels or convinces humans to do the same thing. If not birds, chimps.

The debate about free will are poetic in nature, imo. It's a matter of what we call things and how feel about them. Less so about what things are.

Re: Acorn Woodpeckers Have Multi-Day Wars, and Birds Come from All Around to Watch

#15

Post by dalbasal »

nitrogen wrote: post #12
vczf wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not GP, but my understanding is that free will is weak, not strong. You can suppress a desire to eat a donut (requires willpower) but can't prevent the thought/desire from arising on its own when presented with the stimulus. Similarly, we can suppress the desire to go to war after a provocation. However, we can't choose to not feel furious, at least for an instant. Thoughts and feeling tend to arise on their own, and…

Free will is itself still just an electrochemical process running in a physical brain. It's subjectively real, but the inputs that drive that subjective feeling are still either deterministic or random.

"either deterministic or random" is a possibly dangerous dichotomy.

Some things are neither determined nor random, in the "arbitrary" sense of the term. A child that grows up in a musical household is more likely to become a musician. That's neither random nor determined.

In populations, or over repeated instances, these can resolve to near deterministic results. At the individual level, they are more random seeming.

Re: Acorn Woodpeckers Have Multi-Day Wars, and Birds Come from All Around to Watch

#16

Post by air7 »

HenryKissinger wrote: post #8
dalbasal wrote: post #6

I find these animal behavioural studies fascinating. There is always the risk of personification clouding our understanding, when we observe similarities to human behaviour. But another angle is de-personification of our own behaviour. That seems insightful in all sorts of way. Certain behaviours, like "war," almost certainly predate cognitive modernity... modern human consciousness. Gwynne Dyer, a historian of war,…

Are you saying that humans are partially automatons pre-programmed to behave in certain specific ways in certain situations? What are the implications of a theory like that for free will?

I always feel like the gloomy conclusion that we humans have no free will is always just two logical jumps away and we just prefer not to take them.

Re: Acorn Woodpeckers Have Multi-Day Wars, and Birds Come from All Around to Watch

#17

Post by qwertygnu »

I enjoy being reminded that we don't know everything. This isn't like dark matter/gravitational waves/relativity level stuff but it shows me that there are still many many layers of things happening that no one notices. It just takes careful observation.

Re: Acorn Woodpeckers Have Multi-Day Wars, and Birds Come from All Around to Watch

#19

Post by ycombinete »

mikorym wrote: post #5

From what I can tell, this is intraspecies competition. In Southern Africa, we have a situation whereby not all woodpecker species can peck the holes from start to end. The ones who start the holes look similar to the ones in the article, but they are black, white and yellow with red flecks [1]. Then there is a smaller orange, white and black one that either steals the former's nest or uses an old hole, after which i…

I’ve always love seeing both of those birds in my garden. The barbet, with his squat sturdy frame and bright colours, especially.

I’ve never read about their interaction though, and neither of links that you’ve provided appear to explicitly connect the two species. All I know, and can find, is that they both like to nest in holes in trees. Do you have any info to backup this story?

Also neither of those birds are woodpeckers.

Re: Acorn Woodpeckers Have Multi-Day Wars, and Birds Come from All Around to Watch

#20

Post by celim307 »

HenryKissinger wrote: post #8
dalbasal wrote: post #6

I find these animal behavioural studies fascinating. There is always the risk of personification clouding our understanding, when we observe similarities to human behaviour. But another angle is de-personification of our own behaviour. That seems insightful in all sorts of way. Certain behaviours, like "war," almost certainly predate cognitive modernity... modern human consciousness. Gwynne Dyer, a historian of war,…

Are you saying that humans are partially automatons pre-programmed to behave in certain specific ways in certain situations? What are the implications of a theory like that for free will?

We are just the biological process whose end result is the singularity. We are the stepping stone for the final consciousness
Post reply on HN