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Crows have been shown to understand the concept of zero

quantamagazine.org

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Re: Crows have been shown to understand the concept of zero

#21

Post by samatman »

NoOneNew wrote: post #12
samatman wrote: post #2

> Crows recently demonstrated an understanding of the concept of zero. No they didn't. All human cultures I'm aware of have, at least, the concepts of none, one, two, three, and many. They all understand that none is exactly one less than one, and most of them (but not all!) understand that there's no natural limit to the counting numbers, and have a way of expressing some amount of those numbers. But zero is a human…

I watched a thing about how Koko the guerrilla didnt really understand sign language. They showed extended, unedited clips of koko fumbling and just brute forcing a whole series of signs until she got a treat. A lot of her "understanding", along with other apes undergoing the same treatment, were all heavy interpretations of the "researchers". She never actually learned a real version of sign language either. It was…

I would be a little kinder to the researchers than that: crows and other animals understanding the concept of none is interesting and plausibly true.

My quibble is conflating this with zero, which is a much more powerful and advanced concept. Greeks, Romans, early medieval Europeans, none of them had the concept of zero, and they suffered for it.

And what you've said about Koko the gorilla is true as far as I understand it. It was a media stunt, more Clever Hans than Mister Ed. It would be pretty cool if it wasn't, but I'd have to see some replication and I don't expect to.

Re: Crows have been shown to understand the concept of zero

#22

Post by ducktective »

krylon wrote: post #20

The more I learn about animal intelligence, the more I suspect we grossly underestimate it. I recently saw a video of a seagull that entered a grocery store through the automatic door, picked up a (non-transparent) bag of potato chips (or something similar), walked out again, opened the bag and ate the chips. Think about it for a moment, the bird has to understand (to a degree) how an automatic door works, and that t…

I think this is parent's seagull: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VMMVKymf9yA

There is another one fancying cold sandwiches: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JZZ822Za-nE

Re: Crows have been shown to understand the concept of zero

#23

Post by taeric »

musingsole wrote: post #15
NoOneNew wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I watched a thing about how Koko the guerrilla didnt really understand sign language. They showed extended, unedited clips of koko fumbling and just brute forcing a whole series of signs until she got a treat. A lot of her "understanding", along with other apes undergoing the same treatment, were all heavy interpretations of the "researchers". She never actually learned a real version of sign language either. It was…

> They showed extended, unedited clips of koko fumbling and just brute forcing a whole series of signs until she got a treat. ...what do you think human children are doing for the first ~4 years of their life? Also, different learning methods are used by the subject depending on their mood -- most importantly frustration -- and other context. Brute force learning tends to be the last stage before they're so frustrate…

I think you are grossly underestimating how well kids can pick up sign language. Two year olds can easily pick up some basic sign use.

Re: Crows have been shown to understand the concept of zero

#24

Post by crazygringo »

elliekelly wrote: post #3

Unrelated to animals, this really surprised me: > Moreover, he added, “When you look at the history of mathematics, it turns out that [zero] is an extreme latecomer in our culture as well.” Historical research finds that human societies didn’t begin to use zero as a number in their mathematical calculations until around the seventh century.

There are huge differences between zero as the concept of "none" (I had five cows and someone took them all away, how many do I have?), zero as a more formal integer value (e.g. solution to 2 + 7 - 4 + x = 5), zero as unit placeholder (e.g. 101 dalmations), and zero as a real number (on the continuum from positive to negative rationals and irrationals).

When people make claims about "zero" they're essentially meaningless unless they specify which meaning of zero they're talking about.

Re: Crows have been shown to understand the concept of zero

#25

Post by TriNetra »

elliekelly wrote: post #3

Unrelated to animals, this really surprised me: > Moreover, he added, “When you look at the history of mathematics, it turns out that [zero] is an extreme latecomer in our culture as well.” Historical research finds that human societies didn’t begin to use zero as a number in their mathematical calculations until around the seventh century.

I think most such research don't delve upon ancient India wherein use of zero with a proper modern like numerals have been extensively observed at least since thousands of years [0].

> Hindu units of time are described in Hindu texts ranging from microseconds to trillions of years, including cycles of cosmic time that repeat general events in Hindu cosmology.

0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindu_units_of_time

Re: Crows have been shown to understand the concept of zero

#26

Post by agumonkey »

krylon wrote: post #20

The more I learn about animal intelligence, the more I suspect we grossly underestimate it. I recently saw a video of a seagull that entered a grocery store through the automatic door, picked up a (non-transparent) bag of potato chips (or something similar), walked out again, opened the bag and ate the chips. Think about it for a moment, the bird has to understand (to a degree) how an automatic door works, and that t…

crows do team work to figure out machines

monkeys can team up to resolve non trivial coordinated tasks

(vaguely related: gorillas still have the zero lag face recognition)

beside not speaking, often when I look at animals, it feels that they got wiser than us.. they could do more smart things but they just coast.

Re: Crows have been shown to understand the concept of zero

#27

Post by musingsole »

taeric wrote: post #23
musingsole wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They showed extended, unedited clips of koko fumbling and just brute forcing a whole series of signs until she got a treat. ...what do you think human children are doing for the first ~4 years of their life? Also, different learning methods are used by the subject depending on their mood -- most importantly frustration -- and other context. Brute force learning tends to be the last stage before they're so frustrate…

I think you are grossly underestimating how well kids can pick up sign language. Two year olds can easily pick up some basic sign use.

Ok...2 instead of 4.

I think you are grossly missing the point.

Re: Crows have been shown to understand the concept of zero

#28

Post by agumonkey »

crazygringo wrote: post #24
elliekelly wrote: post #3

Unrelated to animals, this really surprised me: > Moreover, he added, “When you look at the history of mathematics, it turns out that [zero] is an extreme latecomer in our culture as well.” Historical research finds that human societies didn’t begin to use zero as a number in their mathematical calculations until around the seventh century.

There are huge differences between zero as the concept of "none" (I had five cows and someone took them all away, how many do I have?), zero as a more formal integer value (e.g. solution to 2 + 7 - 4 + x = 5), zero as unit placeholder (e.g. 101 dalmations), and zero as a real number (on the continuum from positive to negative rationals and irrationals). When people make claims about "zero" they're essentially meaning…

I really wonder how zero came to be, was it a need to homogenize the algebraic tools (we have nice operations and want to reify the 'nothing' dead end into something that can be kept chugging along) or something else /

Re: Crows have been shown to understand the concept of zero

#29

Post by kwhitefoot »

gonehome wrote: post #5

There was a funny related example of the African Gray parrot Alex surprising the trainers by silently counting in his head. They were training a younger parrot and trying to get the younger parrot to count to two by tapping twice. Alex overheard the training and got impatient with the other bird. He yelled out “two” and then after two more taps “four” and then “six”. The trainers were just expecting “two” each time.…

Even more affecting to me was Alex asking what colour he was: https://www.thevintagenews.com/2016/11/27/alex-the-parrot-is...

Re: Crows have been shown to understand the concept of zero

#30

Post by josefx »

krylon wrote: post #20

The more I learn about animal intelligence, the more I suspect we grossly underestimate it. I recently saw a video of a seagull that entered a grocery store through the automatic door, picked up a (non-transparent) bag of potato chips (or something similar), walked out again, opened the bag and ate the chips. Think about it for a moment, the bird has to understand (to a degree) how an automatic door works, and that t…

> The more I learn about animal intelligence, the more I suspect we grossly underestimate it.

It goes both ways, in the past we had Clever Hans[1]. People believed Hans could perform simple math, when his cleverness was actually watching his owners expression for small changes. So any observed intelligence ends up under suspicion of them acting on information gained from a much simpler side channel.

[1]https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clever_Hans

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