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

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

#21

Post by laumars »

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…

What makes you decide you want to surprise the desire to eat the donut? Is that free will or was that impulse also determined from other stimulus such as body shaming, underlying health problems or financial hardship preventing one from impulse buying?

I do think if you unravel how every decision is made and the origins behind those opinions then you ultimately end up with every reaction being a result of either biology or circumstance.

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

#22

Post by _0ffh »

dalbasal wrote: post #15
nitrogen wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 seemin…

Don't know about the danger in there, but what else would you want to add to the mix besides determinism and randomness? I don't know of anything else that could possibly have any influence, unless you want to go supernatural.

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

#23

Post by vczf »

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.

Why not reduce it further? Everything is matter or energy, and the entire universe can be reduced to quantum/chemical/kinetic processes.

I don't disagree with you, but I find more subjective meaning in the difference between normal cognition and metacognition, compared to viewing the system up close.

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

#25

Post by clairity »

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,…

while you make an interesting point at the end, that framing seems to be jumping the gun (something you rightfully warned against in relation to deterministic vs random, downthread).

political conflict is much more complex and has many more gradations than just peace or war. on the "elephant queen" documentary, the narrator noted that the bulls rarely ever fight, but rather, upon meeting have a quick "discussion" whereby the lower status bull defers to the higher status bull and then they share some food to cement the relationship (not unlike a lot of human interactions). war is rare because it's so costly, no matter the pre- or post-hoc justification.

just yesterday, i watch 3 hawks in the skies over my LA neighborhood (where hawks are rarely seen in the middle of the day). it seemed like 2 of them were chasing an interloper away, but it could just as well have been them hanging out for awhile on the prevailing winds and then deciding to go somewhere else after a bit. it's hard to know what's going on with a few minutes of observation. it was quite interesting to watch nevertheless!

also, the issue with personification (which we tend to be overly concerned about) is not that we see our own behaviors in other animals, but that we become certain about the cause and effect for those other animals.

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

#26

Post by 082349872349872 »

lallysingh wrote: post #24

I think one motivation for the onlookers is to learn tactics for future fights.

> "... when a bird’s death creates a vacancy in prime territory, the battle to fill it breaks out within minutes, and faraway onlookers can arrive in less than an hour."

makes it seem to me that they wish to be the close onlookers. but

> "Acorn woodpeckers are known to recognize relationships outside their own groups"

agrees with the idea that they're learning, if not actual tactics, at least what the potential oppositional coalitions may be, and likely gauging their strengths.

I wonder if they're sophisticated enough to manage the Stanleys' deferred approach to ensuring one is a member of the winning coalition?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Bosworth_Field

> "Lord Thomas Stanley and Sir William Stanley also brought a force to the battlefield, but held back while they decided which side it would be most advantageous to support."

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

#27

Post by jasperry »

air7 wrote: post #16
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?

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.

All meaningful choices are driven by motives. What makes life interesting is that, pressured by unpredictable stimuli from the outside world, we can understand ourselves better and find new ways to move toward our goals. The control we have over our destiny comes from our ability to adapt and grow that way, not from the fact that our brain can somehow flip random coins.

The answer to this possibly ill-posed question about "free will" doesn't need to make us gloomy; it doesn't need to have any bearing on how we feel about our life.

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

#29

Post by vczf »

laumars wrote: post #21
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…

What makes you decide you want to surprise the desire to eat the donut? Is that free will or was that impulse also determined from other stimulus such as body shaming, underlying health problems or financial hardship preventing one from impulse buying? I do think if you unravel how every decision is made and the origins behind those opinions then you ultimately end up with every reaction being a result of either biol…

Emotions, typically.

Most decisions are made with emotional compute, influenced by biology, past experience, and present psychological state.

At the same time, being mindful and observing those emotions (predicted pleasure from the flavor, predicted guilt...) does interrupt that emotional processing and allow a "decision" to be reached in a completely different way.

Free will may only exist subjectively, but mindfulness does free the self from the emotional decision-making of the monkey brain.

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

#30

Post by naringas »

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,…

i'd go as far as saying that most (even all?) rationalization is post-fact.

If you can reason a plan and then follow it is because of past experience, you've done similar things before.

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