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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

#61

Post by throwaway192874 »

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 /

There's a whole book on this history of zero you may enjoy called "Zero: The Biography of a Dangerous Idea" that goes into the whole story of how it came to be including problems and resistance along the way

(mods I promise I'm not here to shill this book but people keep wondering about the history and that's a great resource that I like XD)

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

#62

Post by inglor_cz »

lngnmn2 wrote: post #8

Is there a website where this kind of bullshit does not reach the front page? Animals cannot, in principle, use abstract concepts because it requires language and brain centers which never been evolved in these branches of evolution. Also counting is an association (pairing) with instances of an abstract concept of a number which requires a language and a culture. Okay, may be some visual cues, but not zero. Please c…

"Animals cannot, in principle, use abstract concepts because it requires language and brain centers which never been evolved in these branches of evolution."

[citation needed]

Also, bird brains are very different from ours and knowledge of brain centers in mammals cannot be easily transferred to birds.

In another universe, a bird with your attitude could claim that flight requires feathers and thus non-birds cannot in principle fly, because they never evolved feathers.

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

#63

Post by DiggyJohnson »

martincmartin wrote: post #34
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.

What if they're thinking "zero" but just don't have the word for it. I.e. what if this is just a linguistic deficit?

Please err on the side of me understanding your question well.

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

#64

Post by [deleted] »

bsza wrote: post #59
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.…

There was this horse named Clever Hans whose trick was that you could give him a math problem and he would tap out the answer with his hoof. Of course, his powers were fake, but the way he actually did it is brilliant. When the number of taps approached the correct answer, his trainer became excited. Hans picked up on this and stopped right when the trainer's excitement reached its peak. The trainer had no idea this…

[deleted]

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

#65

Post by MaxfordAndSons »

numpad0 wrote: post #51
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 never fully understood why some cultures assume humans must be fundamentally different - it’s not a universal notion. Some hypothesizes and argues that our ancestors extinguished every other species that showed intelligence by eating them, which I think is a bit too wild of a theory. But maybe the fact that it’s often small birds that shows intelligence is also interesting. They’re among hardest to hunt.

A relevant quote by the anthropologist Marshall Sahlins that always sticks with me regarding the humanity of animals, (paraphrased):

> The attitude that animals are basically humans seems much healthier than the converse.

From his book https://www.prickly-paradigm.com/titles/the-western-illusion...

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

#66

Post by fsckboy »

numpad0 wrote: post #51
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 never fully understood why some cultures assume humans must be fundamentally different - it’s not a universal notion. Some hypothesizes and argues that our ancestors extinguished every other species that showed intelligence by eating them, which I think is a bit too wild of a theory. But maybe the fact that it’s often small birds that shows intelligence is also interesting. They’re among hardest to hunt.

> some cultures assume humans must be fundamentally different - it’s not a universal notion.

Are you referring to hunter gatherers doing a mystical bear or eagle dance? Reincarnation as an ant? in those cases, it is belief in a non-corporeal spirit-being that underpins the other belief. Do you believe in non-corporeal spirit-beings, and if you do, aren't you more mystified by people who don't believe in them; or vice versa?

Otherwise, I'm skeptical and would love citations?

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

#67

Post by perfmode »

Razengan wrote: post #13

Is it even possible to actually “count” without using some form of language in your head?

> This is an odd claim —- based on the neural network experiment (which showed that gradient descent applied to object detection problems naturally results in the development of “counting” signals),

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

#68

Post by zestyping »

agumonkey wrote: post #26
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.

I have been training the crows in my neighbourhood to solve puzzles. They visit me every day now.

One goal I'm really excited about is to see if they can solve a puzzle that requires two crows to work together, because I've only seen videos of individual crows solving puzzles online. Can you tell me more about the teamwork that you're referring to? Are there videos or papers I can look at? I'm super curious!

Thanks!

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

#69

Post by forgotmypw17 »

open-source-ux wrote: post #53
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. " An example of something that might surprise many people: animals can use medicine. Here is a fascinating podcast that discuss the subject with researchers and experts. Podcast description: > Listener Andrew Chen got in touch to ask whether animals use any kind of medicine themselves. After all, our own drugs largely come f…

There is mention of this in the book ,,Wild Animals I Have Known,, (1898)

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

#70

Post by xwdv »

kwhitefoot wrote: post #29
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...

He said no such thing he was asking what color a parrot in the mirror was.
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