Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

If parrots can talk, why can’t monkeys?

english.elpais.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

201–210 of 221 posts

Re: If parrots can talk, why can’t monkeys?

#201

Post by pks016 »

pcrh wrote: post #20

It's interesting to compare this "sound-talk" that parrots can easily accomplish with the obviously greater intelligence of apes, who can't reproduce human sounds, with the debate over whether chatGPT is intelligent or not. Note that Koko was obviously a greater communicator than any parrot ever was. Is mimicking human behaviour a necessary, or even sufficient, criteria for demonstrating cognition and intelligence?

Speech and language are two different things.

> Is mimicking human behaviour a necessary, or even sufficient, criteria for demonstrating cognition and intelligence?

Depends on how you define them. We love to anthropomorphize everything. If an animal shows language comprehension, that's bigger than speech.

Re: If parrots can talk, why can’t monkeys?

#202

Post by baja_blast »

pcrh wrote: post #20

It's interesting to compare this "sound-talk" that parrots can easily accomplish with the obviously greater intelligence of apes, who can't reproduce human sounds, with the debate over whether chatGPT is intelligent or not. Note that Koko was obviously a greater communicator than any parrot ever was. Is mimicking human behaviour a necessary, or even sufficient, criteria for demonstrating cognition and intelligence?

> obviously greater intelligence of apes

Apes are not more intelligent than parrots, despite not having hands like apes parrots use tools with the same sophistication as chimps, and Crows surpass all great apes except humans in tool use and complexity. Parrots have been able to solve complex puzzles of equal or greater complexity to what a Chimp could solve. And when it comes to social behavior parrots/corvids are far more sophisticated and complex.

Honestly if I had to bet which animal would outsmart which in a real world game of wits I would bet on the parrot or crow over a chimp every time. I apes have hands which are perfect for tool use and making, but crows make more complex tools using their beak.

Re: If parrots can talk, why can’t monkeys?

#203

Post by pks016 »

cactusplant7374 wrote: post #17
capableweb wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Guess it depends on what you mean exactly with "talk". They can articulate phrases, isn't that enough?

It's not language. It's basically mimicking humans. Noam Chomsky on Nim Chimpsky and the Emergence of Language: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a39vcatTCVU Chomsky has a few other interviews where he addresses this.

You are correct. It is speech not language.

Re: If parrots can talk, why can’t monkeys?

#204

Post by baja_blast »

examplary_cable wrote: post #117

Parrots can't use sign language, but some great apes can(koko)[0]! Even thought monkeys don't have the vocal complexity to generate all the vowels(a,e,i,o,u) I think "great ape language" communication is more complex and nuanced than a fricking parrot repeating some phonemes after some form of stimulation. Fascinating. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koko_(gorilla)

It's difficult to use sign language without hands/arms.

Re: If parrots can talk, why can’t monkeys?

#205

Post by pcrh »

nopinsight wrote: post #109
pcrh wrote: post #20

It's interesting to compare this "sound-talk" that parrots can easily accomplish with the obviously greater intelligence of apes, who can't reproduce human sounds, with the debate over whether chatGPT is intelligent or not. Note that Koko was obviously a greater communicator than any parrot ever was. Is mimicking human behaviour a necessary, or even sufficient, criteria for demonstrating cognition and intelligence?

It depends on which behavior is mimicked. The vast majority of people would say that no unintelligent, or parrot-level-intelligent, entity can explain a joke like this: https://www.freethink.com/robots-ai/gpt-4-jokes I also personally asked GPT-4 to solve an easy CodeForces problem dated March 2023 and its solution worked perfectly the first time. (I haven’t yet tested it on a harder Codeforces problem.) Although the…

Thanks, the explanation of jokes was very interesting, although both GPTs made the wrong interpretation of the goat/toga party joke. The joke is that the speaker thought it was a "goat party", not a "toga party" (rather than that they dressed as a goat in a toga party).

Similarly for the intelligence joke; the joke there is that the speaker can only get an unintelligent girl, rather than that he seeks an unintelligent girl.

I was more impressed by the glove and ball interpretation, to be honest.

Re: If parrots can talk, why can’t monkeys?

#206

Post by thaumasiotes »

robertlagrant wrote: post #177
deafpolygon wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And some people, like myself, have no monologue or internal dialogue. What then? I have no consciousness or intelligence?

> And some people, like myself, have no monologue or internal dialogue. What then? I have no consciousness or intelligence? I don't have this either, but I would still say I think in language. It might be concepts that link together in hierarchies or graphs, but those concepts are described in words.

The concepts are described in words, but you're not describing your thoughts to yourself. You have your own thoughts directly. The words are a side effect, to be called upon when you want to talk to someone else.

Saying that you think in words is saying that the computer from GalaxyQuest thinks in words because every time it does something, it reports what it has just done over the loudspeakers. You're confusing the effect with the cause.

Re: If parrots can talk, why can’t monkeys?

#207

Post by robertlagrant »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #206
robertlagrant wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And some people, like myself, have no monologue or internal dialogue. What then? I have no consciousness or intelligence? I don't have this either, but I would still say I think in language. It might be concepts that link together in hierarchies or graphs, but those concepts are described in words.

The concepts are described in words, but you're not describing your thoughts to yourself. You have your own thoughts directly. The words are a side effect, to be called upon when you want to talk to someone else. Saying that you think in words is saying that the computer from GalaxyQuest thinks in words because every time it does something, it reports what it has just done over the loudspeakers. You're confusing the…

> Saying that you think in words is saying that the computer from GalaxyQuest thinks in words because every time it does something, it reports what it has just done over the loudspeakers. You're confusing the effect with the cause.

This seems a bit silly. I'm not saying that speaking words is what constitutes thought. I'm saying concepts generally need names before we can reason about them.

Re: If parrots can talk, why can’t monkeys?

#208

Post by dasickis »

gregoriol wrote: post #156
pxc wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We've been building tech to translate dog barks to something meaningful for us to understand. Can most dog owners not already understand or differentiate their dogs' barks? I can tell from the quality and context of my dog's barks, whether he - wants something (food, water, attention) - is angry - is scared - wants to play - is excited - is voicing a territorial dispute and I think most dog people can also be confi…

While maybe not very useful, it would be fun to have a real translation of dogs (and other animals). I have a lot of questions that I'd like them to answer.

That's exactly right so you can expand the vocabulary of animals especially dogs with training similar to how they train dogs to press buttons. This research is much more extensive with captive dolphins and now we're seeing the same with domesticated animals.

Re: If parrots can talk, why can’t monkeys?

#209

Post by dasickis »

LoganDark wrote: post #198
pxc wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if pets in households with those talking buttons ever use them to communicate with each other, or if they never choose to because it's so much less efficient than natural conspecific communication for most of the things they would want to 'talk' about. One use case I could see is storytelling, specifically to share events that one of the animals was not present for. In my house, my dogs usually seem to 'comm…

> I wonder if pets in households with those talking buttons ever use them to communicate with each other, or if they never choose to because it's so much less efficient than natural conspecific communication for most of the things they would want to 'talk' about. I haven't yet seen an example of it. I think pets learn to use the buttons to make requests or answer them, but they never do that with each other because t…

Correct. Dogs will vocalize and use touch with one another but the buttons are exclusively (at least from what I've observed) used for communicating with people. Though dogs & cats have specific vocalizations for speaking with people. Though we're now seeing vocalizations in new species that we didn't expect such as plants[1] & turtles[2].

1. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/scientists-record-... 2. https://www.npr.org/2022/10/31/1132951238/what-sound-does-a-...

Re: If parrots can talk, why can’t monkeys?

#210

Post by thaumasiotes »

robertlagrant wrote: post #207
thaumasiotes wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The concepts are described in words, but you're not describing your thoughts to yourself. You have your own thoughts directly. The words are a side effect, to be called upon when you want to talk to someone else. Saying that you think in words is saying that the computer from GalaxyQuest thinks in words because every time it does something, it reports what it has just done over the loudspeakers. You're confusing the…

> Saying that you think in words is saying that the computer from GalaxyQuest thinks in words because every time it does something, it reports what it has just done over the loudspeakers. You're confusing the effect with the cause. This seems a bit silly. I'm not saying that speaking words is what constitutes thought. I'm saying concepts generally need names before we can reason about them.

You're saying that mental instances of words are what constitutes thought. That is incorrect. Mental words are an output of a mental process downstream of thought.

> I'm saying concepts generally need names before we can reason about them.

This is also false. People adapt to patterns constantly; they rarely bother to name those patterns.

Post reply on HN