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Animal magic: why intelligence isn’t just for humans

theguardian.com

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Re: Animal magic: why intelligence isn’t just for humans

#51

Post by kmarc »

justinclift wrote: post #30
polishdude20 wrote: post #15

I was surprised by the intelligence of a little spider I encountered the other day. As I was looking for my keys to enter the house, this little jumping spider was on the front door. As I approached the door he moved almost with anticipation. As I turned the keys, he got closer to the door edge. As I opened the door, he swung himself around the door and into the house ahead of me! At that point I decided if got this…

Heh Heh Heh. If you're into Science Fiction, then Adrian Tchaikovsky's "Children of Time" might be your kind of thing: https://www.amazon.com/dp/0316452505 It's really, really good. :)

It is, however in his story the spiders gained intelligence from a "virus" that helped them accumulate and carry over experience across generations.

BUT! The book and Tchaikovsky is still brilliant; he did a great job "thinking outside the box" by creating a thought experiment of "how would human-like skills, like reading, develop over time in non-human-like creatures, like spiders" - I'm pointing to the balls of spiderweb as "books".

Tchaikovsky himself used to study zoology and had a focus in insects. Coincidentally he just turned 50 yesterday. Happy birthday to him!

Re: Animal magic: why intelligence isn’t just for humans

#53

Post by MushyQuadrant »

hetspookjee wrote: post #49
kinghtown wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like most people are like one or two a-ha insights away from veganism. Intelligence and awareness definitely has a spectrum across the animal kingdom but I’m not so sure about sentience itself. Do fish feel pain? Do insects experience fear? It is very difficult to to empathize with a spider or imagine that a scorpion could feel contentment, but as we we climb up the kingdom to vertebrates and especially mammal…

There are vegan hunters around, too. People that hate the bio Industry yet still feel it’s allright to eat meat. Given that an animal has lived a good and free life and the death is swift.

No there aren't. I have no doubt the people you describe exist, but "vegan hunter" is a complete oxymoron unless you're talking about "hunting" berries. Even descriptivist dictionaries don't include any definition of vegan which allows for eating meat.

Re: Animal magic: why intelligence isn’t just for humans

#54

Post by mpoteat »

anyonecancode wrote: post #13
woojoo666 wrote: post #6

Seems quite relevant to the recent discussion about current AI sentience [1] [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31716639

Had the same thought. I think one other major difference between biological brains and computers, beyond the fact of having a body vs not, is that biology is analog and not digital. A signal going from cell to cell in a brain or up a spinal cord isn't just "on" or "off", but in any number of infinite states. No matter how many bits you manage to pack into a digital "brain," that's a fundamental difference. Now I can'…

Neural networks operate on floating point values. Are you saying that e.g. 64 bits of resolution isn't enough to accurately model a neuron? The idea of significant figures in physics puts a limit on what is useful in practice.

I could be wrong, but I feel that digital vs analog is a pretty meaningless distinction in this case, as past a certain level of resolution in practice this is noise.

This doesn't even get into the fact that we know the universe is quantum in nature and that systems have a finite amount of possible states. The universe does not have a "infinite" state resolution in the way you are talking about, merely a large one.

Re: Animal magic: why intelligence isn’t just for humans

#55

Post by novok »

kinghtown wrote: post #24
cpsns wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I find myself shocked by how little regard people have for the intelligence of other animals. If people readily accepted the intelligence of many mammals, much less other animals, they would have to confront some very serious cognitive dissonance and moral dilemmas. That said, I've found many dog folks are super dismissive of the idea of cats being smart and I'm not sure why that is. Perhaps part of the problem is…

I feel like most people are like one or two a-ha insights away from veganism. Intelligence and awareness definitely has a spectrum across the animal kingdom but I’m not so sure about sentience itself. Do fish feel pain? Do insects experience fear? It is very difficult to to empathize with a spider or imagine that a scorpion could feel contentment, but as we we climb up the kingdom to vertebrates and especially mammal…

Vegan's take their moral stance / religion and then try to push it as a health thing with biased reasoning, which can lead to general negative human health consequences as it percolates through via policy.

Predators exist, and humans whether we like it or not are scavenger omnivorous predators. There aren't vegan bears or indigenous vegan human tribes for a reason.

Re: Animal magic: why intelligence isn’t just for humans

#57

Post by Guest19023892 »

polishdude20 wrote: post #15

I was surprised by the intelligence of a little spider I encountered the other day. As I was looking for my keys to enter the house, this little jumping spider was on the front door. As I approached the door he moved almost with anticipation. As I turned the keys, he got closer to the door edge. As I opened the door, he swung himself around the door and into the house ahead of me! At that point I decided if got this…

I once saw a spider with long legs in a web by my bathroom sink. I flicked a bit of water at him and a drop of water stuck to his body and covered it. He quickly climbed down the web to the counter (only 6 inches or so) and crouched down to briefly touch his body to the dry countertop. That removed the drop of water from his body, and then he climbed back up.

Aside from that, I sometimes like to toss foreign objects in spider webs. For example, I'll toss a piece of a leaf into a web. The spider will quickly come over, work some magic for a few seconds, and then the leaf is suddenly untangled and floats away. It's really interesting to see how quickly they're able to remove unwanted objects from their webs to keep them clean.

Re: Animal magic: why intelligence isn’t just for humans

#58

Post by kinghtown »

novok wrote: post #55
kinghtown wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like most people are like one or two a-ha insights away from veganism. Intelligence and awareness definitely has a spectrum across the animal kingdom but I’m not so sure about sentience itself. Do fish feel pain? Do insects experience fear? It is very difficult to to empathize with a spider or imagine that a scorpion could feel contentment, but as we we climb up the kingdom to vertebrates and especially mammal…

Vegan's take their moral stance / religion and then try to push it as a health thing with biased reasoning, which can lead to general negative human health consequences as it percolates through via policy. Predators exist, and humans whether we like it or not are scavenger omnivorous predators. There aren't vegan bears or indigenous vegan human tribes for a reason.

I have a 145 kg bench press with 17 inch biceps. How about you?

Re: Animal magic: why intelligence isn’t just for humans

#59

Post by paganel »

shakes_mcjunkie wrote: post #2

I had a conversation recently with a friend about the classic cats vs. dogs, which species is more intelligent. It was surprising to me how dismissive he was about cat intelligence and adamant that they were nowhere near dogs' intelligence, mostly based on the ability to train dogs. I've clicker trained my cats to sit and also to follow my finger. Searching around the net and YouTube you can find cats learning all ki…

Not sure about your friend but we have a cat (he's almost 4-year old now) and a border collie (almost 2-year old). We've professionally trained our BC, he is a very smart and especially loving animal, but the cat is "smarter", so to speak. It is the cat that initiates and, I dare say, invents the games they sometime play with each other.

Re: Animal magic: why intelligence isn’t just for humans

#60

Post by kinghtown »

ianai wrote: post #32
kinghtown wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like most people are like one or two a-ha insights away from veganism. Intelligence and awareness definitely has a spectrum across the animal kingdom but I’m not so sure about sentience itself. Do fish feel pain? Do insects experience fear? It is very difficult to to empathize with a spider or imagine that a scorpion could feel contentment, but as we we climb up the kingdom to vertebrates and especially mammal…

Vegan here, too. It’s totally duh-level obvious that nonhumans are plenty smart to feel emotions that we shouldn’t inflict. I don’t have such optimism towards people. Look at how poorly we treat each other. If we actually had some strong empathetic tendencies as a species we wouldn’t kill each other. There are many species which don’t. Instead I’ve got a coworker who’s gladly told me about killing his cows calves in…

The future is vegan. While most people are still refusing it I can see the cultural attitudes changing. Your coworker is a dink for sure but most other people are just going with the flow or are misinformed. For every smirking edgelord there are loads of people who just aren’t ready to change because of nostalgia and weakness rather than malice.
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