Crows have been shown to understand the concept of zero • Hacker News Board

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

#31

Post by dragontamer » Tue, Aug 10, 2021, 5:29 PM UTC

agumonkey wrote: post #28

crazygringo wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 /

The ancient Greeks understood division and reciprocals from the perspective of inverting multiplication.

I have to imagine that the multiplicative identity (1) and additive identity (0) were also known at that time. They really figured out everything else there is to integer-based math.

They failed at irrational numbers (like sqrt(2)). But their mastery of integers was outstanding. Perhaps 0 wasn't used on the number-representation yet, but the concept had to have been known.

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

#32

Post by popctrl » Tue, Aug 10, 2021, 5:30 PM UTC

The idea that zero was "invented" at a certain time by recent humans and not in use until then has always seemed absolutely absurd to me. I will admit I haven't read deeply into it, but there's just no way people didn't have a concept for "none of a thing" until a couple millennia ago.

One of the justifications used for this reasoning is "You don't go to the market and buy 0 fish". But all that tells us is: There's no reason to record buying 0 fish or owning 0 acres of land. Another justification given is the difficulty children experience with 0 - but we don't teach children to start counting with 0, so it makes sense that they would get tripped up there.

I guess the argument sometimes seems to be that we didn't have a symbol for 0, and that this was somehow more confusing to adopt than other symbols? But if that's the case, then isn't claiming any culture "invented" zero the same as claiming a culture "invented" any concept they came up with a word for?

I'd love to hear all the reasons I am wrong and stupid.

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

#33

Post by taeric » Tue, Aug 10, 2021, 5:31 PM UTC

musingsole wrote: post #27

taeric wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Apologies, I went fast on my post. My point was to tighten your numbers to strengthen your point.

As it is, I feel lied to when folks say that it takes kids 4 or more years to get language.

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

#34

Post by martincmartin » Tue, Aug 10, 2021, 5:33 PM UTC

popctrl wrote: post #32

The idea that zero was "invented" at a certain time by recent humans and not in use until then has always seemed absolutely absurd to me. I will admit I haven't read deeply into it, but there's just no way people didn't have a concept for "none of a thing" until a couple millennia ago. One of the justifications used for this reasoning is "You don't go to the market and buy 0 fish". But all that tells us is: There's n…

Having a concept of "none of a thing" is one thing. Abstracting that to a number is a different thing.

Even today, when you ask someone "how many kids to you have," and they don't have any, they say "I don't have any," not "zero." In other words, they respond with a phrase, often one with a negation (not), instead of a number.

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

#35

Post by cscurmudgeon » Tue, Aug 10, 2021, 5:35 PM UTC

josefx wrote: post #30

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://simpl…

Yep, given the huge replication crisis for human cognitive science and pyschology, I am not sure how reliable these studies are.

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

#36

Post by OscarCunningham » Tue, Aug 10, 2021, 5:41 PM UTC

popctrl wrote: post #32

The idea that zero was "invented" at a certain time by recent humans and not in use until then has always seemed absolutely absurd to me. I will admit I haven't read deeply into it, but there's just no way people didn't have a concept for "none of a thing" until a couple millennia ago. One of the justifications used for this reasoning is "You don't go to the market and buy 0 fish". But all that tells us is: There's n…

I think the thing which came surprisingly late in history wasn't having a concept of 'none' but rather of allowing it to be considered a number with the same status as 1, 2, 3 and the rest.

Indeed some of the ancient Greeks were of the opinion that 1 was not a number (since numbers were for counting a plurality of things).

It's quite the realisation that you can use the usual rules of arithmetic for 1 and 0, and not have anything go wrong. (Except of course division does go wrong!)

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

#37

Post by caddemon » Tue, Aug 10, 2021, 5:42 PM UTC

wolverine876 wrote: post #16

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…

Why do you believe these sources, and your off-the-cuff analysis, and not the original research? Think of it from other readers perspectives: On one hand is the author of the article and the researchers, on the other is a commenter on HN. I'm not saying the parent comment is wrong, but we need some evidence.

Koko appeared much, much more in the media and pop sci publications than the actual scientific literature. There are also a number of researchers who questioned Koko in the literature, including people that tried to replicate with their own animals. There is really no way to make an argument from authority here, because Koko is a controversial topic among the "authorities".

The OP is right that Koko stumbled around a lot, even after the signs had supposedly been "mastered". This article presents one of the more bizarre results of that: https://slate.com/technology/2018/06/koko-the-ape-obituaries...

We probably are underrating animal intelligence, and whether Koko understood language is largely dependent on what one considers to qualify as "language" - there definitely were some impressive displays of intelligence at times. But through an unbiased lens I think it's also pretty clear the researchers were constantly making the most charitable possible interpretation of Koko's signs.

As far as the GP comment, it is well documented that zero as a mathematical concept was developed surprisingly late, while the concept of "nothing" existed prior to any formal notion of integers at all. The Quanta article is conflating "nothing" with "zero", although perhaps the original research makes the distinction more clear.

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

#38

Post by caddemon » Tue, Aug 10, 2021, 5:45 PM UTC

taeric wrote: post #33

musingsole wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok...2 instead of 4. I think you are grossly missing the point.

Apologies, I went fast on my post. My point was to tighten your numbers to strengthen your point. As it is, I feel lied to when folks say that it takes kids 4 or more years to get language.

How does that strengthen his point? Koko stumbled around frequently, well after the learning period was advertised as done. Kids stumble around less than was claimed, as you mention.

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

#39

Post by Gravey » Tue, Aug 10, 2021, 5:45 PM UTC

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 once watched several seagulls peck at a closed clamshell container containing pizza crusts for over half an hour. Clearly there is an upper bound to their intelligence.

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

#40

Post by gugagore » Tue, Aug 10, 2021, 5:49 PM UTC

popctrl wrote: post #32

The idea that zero was "invented" at a certain time by recent humans and not in use until then has always seemed absolutely absurd to me. I will admit I haven't read deeply into it, but there's just no way people didn't have a concept for "none of a thing" until a couple millennia ago. One of the justifications used for this reasoning is "You don't go to the market and buy 0 fish". But all that tells us is: There's n…

I more or less had understood that what was meant by "zero was invented" is zero as used in a positional number system. In other words, the digit zero, not the quantity zero.