Crows possess higher intelligence long thought a primarily human attribute • Hacker News Board

Re: Crows possess higher intelligence long thought a primarily human attribute

#351

Post by benlivengood » Fri, Sep 25, 2020, 7:10 PM UTC

jbotz wrote: post #76

novok wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Humans were effective in their intelligence and rule the world with it, no other animal has shown anything approaching something like that. You judge them by their results.

We didn't come to rule the world with our intelligence... we came to rule it with fire. Fire, control over it and the ability to make it, is the one thing humans have that no other animal has. We may (or not) be more intelligent, have a more complex capacity for language, etc., but those are differences of degree. Only fire is truly a difference of kind. We are the animal that makes fire. Fire is literally what made…

The alternative for intelligent species without fire is to evolve fancier biochemistry; it's hard to know where this might evolve but several species have independently produced harsh acids, venoms, and even combustion (bombardier beetle). When it comes down to it you can grow your tools or you can make them out of the environment, and arguably being able to grow effective tools is superior (which likely means it's more complex and why it didn't evolve before fire use).

My bet would be on the cephalopods; they've already got ink and venom and intelligence and prehensile limbs with chromatophores that could potentially evolve into tiny manipulable chemical factories. They would probably also need to evolve the longevity and social and communication abilities to pass knowledge on in a society.

Re: Crows possess higher intelligence long thought a primarily human attribute

#352

Post by Symmetry » Fri, Sep 25, 2020, 7:24 PM UTC

stainforth wrote: post #341

Symmetry wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's really sort of weird that a mammal ended up becoming Earth's first technological species. Birds all have the good neuron scaling that in mammals mostly only primates have. They have high energy intensity lifestyles where the extra energy cost of a big brain isn't a insuperable obstacle as with our pursuit hunter ancestors but not most other mammal lifestyles. Also they've got unidirectional rather than tidal lun…

Can you expand more on the significance of the lung style?

So, in tidal breathing air goes into and out of lungs from the same opening. So there tends to be some air at the bottom of the lungs that sticks around and the whole thing could be more efficient. In a bird air enters the lung at one end and leaves from the other so there isn't any stale air that stick around.

Re: Crows possess higher intelligence long thought a primarily human attribute

#353

Post by juancn » Fri, Sep 25, 2020, 7:26 PM UTC

I'm still baffled about the concept of consciousness still being used in the sciences.

It's such an ill defined concept that makes me think that one of three possibilities exist:

- consciousness is the wrong concept

- anything that has some degree of self-reference is conscious.

- there is no consciousness, just computation.

I'm erring on the side of it being just plain wrong or uninteresting.

I don't believe that there's anything supernatural about it, it must be a result of computation, but for some reason we ascribe a special status to it.

Re: Crows possess higher intelligence long thought a primarily human attribute

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Post by amai » Fri, Sep 25, 2020, 8:06 PM UTC

Crows pass the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirror_test . This alone is quite impressive.

Re: Crows possess higher intelligence long thought a primarily human attribute

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Post by kyuudou » Fri, Sep 25, 2020, 9:06 PM UTC

arooaroo wrote: post #27

I’ve mentioned this previously but it’s on topic and still amazes me, so I’ll just copy & paste: I know someone who works at one of the London airports and is responsible for keeping the runway operational. One of the jobs is keeping the birds well clear, and if necessary, sadly, may resort to shooting. The crows know the score though. This acquiantance says the crows know to disappear if they see the bird clearers.…

At one airport in the US, I learned about how this is accomplished with what sounds like a shotgun. Apparently this is a propane cannon[1] and there are a wide variety of such "scarecrow" devices.

I would guess crows prefer hunter-gatherers over horticulture/agriculture societies of humans! A weird twist.

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bird_scarer#Propane_cannons

Re: Crows possess higher intelligence long thought a primarily human attribute

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Post by kyuudou » Fri, Sep 25, 2020, 9:13 PM UTC

renjimen wrote: post #265

puranjay wrote: post #261

We keep discovering that more and more animals are far more intelligent than we thought. It makes me question the very idea of eating meat.

Douglas Hofstadter writes about intelligence being the reason behind his (almost) vegetarianism. If I recall correctly, he doesn't have any qualms about swatting a mosquito because on the sliding scale of intelligence they're somewhere near the bottom, being about as sophisticated as some software he could write himself. He doesn't think twice about deleting software, so why hold reservations about killing an insect?…

Perhaps in the future there will be death penalty arguments for bad AI? Or insanity arguments "judge I had some faulty RAM which caused the malfunction of the policing robots - if proper maintenance had been done this tragedy could've been avoided"

Re: Crows possess higher intelligence long thought a primarily human attribute

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Post by rcv » Fri, Sep 25, 2020, 9:16 PM UTC

bagels wrote: post #220

jungans wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll just leave this here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ISE6R_-b3A

A less vulgar bird: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AfsnHVaScjg

This one is my absolute favorite: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ickzGMtREFk

It's the most perfectly creepy thing you could teach a raven.

Re: Crows possess higher intelligence long thought a primarily human attribute

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Post by kyuudou » Fri, Sep 25, 2020, 9:20 PM UTC

teucris wrote: post #125

Eyas wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's uncomfortably close to Eurocentric claims of superiority that point to their colonization and exploitation of other countries in the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth century. I don't necessarily buy it. A pacifist civilization might be "dominated" by a violent civilization, but they might still choose death over becoming violent themselves.

I agree with your post but it’s worth noting it does not apply to dolphins. Dolphins are not pacifists[0]. [0] http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20160204-cute-and-cuddly-dolp...

They can be pretty brutal to sharks and themselves. Also on a more bizarre note they can get rather rape-y esp. on hallucinogens: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=prmx0lYBTko

Re: Crows possess higher intelligence long thought a primarily human attribute

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Post by yourapostasy » Fri, Sep 25, 2020, 9:23 PM UTC

yetihehe wrote: post #282

wombatmobile wrote: post #15

The capability attributed to crows is that they think about (analyse) their own thinking. The article arrives at that conclusion using two methods: 1. Behavioural analysis. 2. Reverse engineering neural circuitry. Is "thinking about thinking" rare, or remarkable? Is it the defining trait that elevates humans above all other animals? The article tells us that the trait isn't unique to humans, because crows have it too…

> Is "thinking about thinking" rare, or remarkable? Is it the defining trait that elevates humans above all other animals? Sadly, I've seen people who do not have such capabilities. They seem normal until you think why they act like they do. Then you realise that you could replace their thinking processes with some simple if-then, sometimes wired very strangely and counter-intuitive.

Peter Watts Blindsight has some interesting commentary upon this in the form of a science-fiction story and some extensive notes [1]. It arguably is feasible to manifest sufficient behaviors to "pass", but the behaviors are not deeply introspected like you noticed. We suspect our subconscious already does a ton of heavy lifting without that introspection, so some of the theses Watts popularizes from the book's bibliography are interesting in that light.

[1] https://www.rifters.com/real/Blindsight.htm#Notes

Re: Crows possess higher intelligence long thought a primarily human attribute

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Post by YeGoblynQueenne » Fri, Sep 25, 2020, 9:39 PM UTC

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #103

nicoburns wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a sensible caution, but we should also be careful not to do the opposite and assume an animal is incapable of sophisticated motives and intelligent planning.

But if we take time to consider that animals may posses intelligence and rich inner lives, then we may also have to consider that our treatment of them is monsterous. Can't have that.

I don't think it's monstrous to eat an intelligant animal. Pigs are very intelligent and sensitive animals. And yet, I eat pigs without remorse because being born on a planet where animals eat each other is not something I chose, therefore I do not feel guilty about it.

Also, it's still mosquito season in Greece where I'm currently located and I've been feasted upon often enough myself to know that refusing to feed on another animal is a peculiarly human exceptionalism. In fact, I believe its sole purpose is to place humans apart from (indeed, above, morally speaking) every other form of life on this planet.