Crows are capable of recursion, scientists claim • Hacker News Board

Re: Crows are capable of recursion, scientists claim

#51

Post by zaidhaan » Sun, Nov 06, 2022, 5:03 PM UTC

> Adapting the protocol used in the 2020 paper, the team trained two crows to peck pairs of brackets in a center-embedded recursive sequence.

> Two of the three monkeys in the experiment generated recursive sequences more often than nonrecursive sequences ...

I'm no academic but aren't those extremely small sample sizes to make any reasonable deductions from? This looks to be even addressed in one of the papers cited...

> While a sample size of two is not enough to infer that any crow in the population may generate center-embedded recursive sequences, we present a "proof of existence" showing that this cognitive capacity is, in principle, within the reach of carrion crows.[0]

[0] https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.abq3356

Re: Crows are capable of recursion, scientists claim

#52

Post by jamal-kumar » Sun, Nov 06, 2022, 5:08 PM UTC

I suppose the next step is seeing if you can train bees to get the concept. May seem farfetched but I was recently reading how they can be taught to understand basic arithmetic and the concept of zero. [1]

[1] https://www.quantamagazine.org/what-scarlett-howard-learns-f...

Re: Crows are capable of recursion, scientists claim

#53

Post by tanseydavid » Sun, Nov 06, 2022, 5:09 PM UTC

HideousKojima wrote: post #49

youguyssuck wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This actually proves that crows are smarter than JavaScript developers

Reminds me of the "game journalist vs. pigeon" video: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=vfIn9OqhZWo

I struggled with the exact same move in Cuphead training. I had the exact same reaction as the game journalist.

Re: Crows are capable of recursion, scientists claim

#54

Post by Wistar » Sun, Nov 06, 2022, 5:11 PM UTC

voidz wrote: post #37

carapace wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Crows are companions-to-hunters (wolves and humans mostly.) They interpret your behavior through that "lens". If you set out food and then watch them that means (in crow) that you are a hunter, and a lousy one, and you're trying to hunt them . Toss out some food and "forget" it and they'll think you're such a successful hunter that you don't even need to every scrap. Someone worth knowing. In the old days, crows woul…

I love this. Can you earn their trust, as in, become pals with them? Or is this more of a human desire. It's probably mostly food based priorities to them.

I have tried, and over a fairly long period of coaxing with popcorn, and they remain extremely wary. Only once, out of a group of 15-20 crows, did I earn the trust of a single crow enough that he, or she, would come within 10 feet of me to pickup kernels I had strewn on the ground. The rest stayed far away.

Re: Crows are capable of recursion, scientists claim

#55

Post by lioeters » Sun, Nov 06, 2022, 5:14 PM UTC

hairofadog wrote: post #22

geewee wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How did you manage to get started? The crows close to me are so skittish that if I try to throw a peanut at them they just fly off and never come back. I've only managed to not have that happen once.

Hmm, if you’re literally throwing it at them, yeah, they don’t like that. You just kinda have to throw it where they can see it, then walk away, and they’ll come running over to scoop them up. Do that for a week or two and they’ll start looking for you. Also, cashews are their favorite (based on watching them pick the cashews out of trail mix and then come back for the other stuff later). They don’t let me get close…

> point at someone and have the crows attack

I imagine this would be a conceptual leap for their intelligence, to understand the meaning of "pointing" and to make a connection to the target, what's being pointed at. But then again, I suppose hunting dogs have achieved it - they know what to attack - so it might be possible for smart crows too.

Now that I think about it, there are cultures where people train hawks for practical hunting purposes. So taming crows may not be too far-fetched, though it might take a few generations..

Re: Crows are capable of recursion, scientists claim

#56

Post by uranium » Sun, Nov 06, 2022, 5:15 PM UTC

Why is this evidence of recursion rather that evidence of recognition of symmetry? The sequences they show are all simple symmetrical ones, e.g. {()}.

Re: Crows are capable of recursion, scientists claim

#57

Post by tasuki » Sun, Nov 06, 2022, 5:21 PM UTC

So are cauliflower and broccoli?

Re: Crows are capable of recursion, scientists claim

#58

Post by zaidhaan » Sun, Nov 06, 2022, 5:24 PM UTC

zaidhaan wrote: post #51

> Adapting the protocol used in the 2020 paper, the team trained two crows to peck pairs of brackets in a center-embedded recursive sequence. > Two of the three monkeys in the experiment generated recursive sequences more often than nonrecursive sequences ... I'm no academic but aren't those extremely small sample sizes to make any reasonable deductions from? This looks to be even addressed in one of the papers cited…

Not sure why I got downvoted. If my assumption is wrong then I'd be really curious to hear from someone that knows better.

Re: Crows are capable of recursion, scientists claim

#59

Post by b3morales » Sun, Nov 06, 2022, 5:32 PM UTC

JimBlackwood wrote: post #14

Kind of ironic, but the picture used seems to be of a raven - not a crow. Feathers on the beak are quite far out, the shape of the head isn’t as “streamlined” and the top beak is more curved and longer. Or am I mistaken here?

I believe the extended overhanging curved tip is just the sign of a captive crow that is, sadly, not taking good care of its beak. Raven beaks are generally much broader.

Re: Crows are capable of recursion, scientists claim

#60

Post by rojobuffalo » Sun, Nov 06, 2022, 5:47 PM UTC

> ...the crows still had to figure out the center-embedded order where open and closed brackets were paired from the outside in...if the birds only learned that open brackets were at the beginning of the sequence and closed ones were at the end, you would expect an equal proportion of ( { ) } mismatched and correct responses. But...the crows chose more of the latter than the former, even with the more complex sequences of three pairs of brackets.

I'm no expert but it seems like the birds are identifying visual symmetry. Maybe they are remembering the mid-point of nested symmetrical symbols, and that's still interesting, but is that "understanding recursion"? Recursion is the idea of repeating an algorithm or a function calling itself. Visual symmetry is a little simpler than that.

If a crow peels an onion layer by layer that doesn't mean it understands recursion. It's doing something recursive. Understanding recursion, in my mind, involves being able to describe a recursive function or make a prediction based on understanding the function.