Parrots love playing tablet games. That's helping researchers understand them • Hacker News Board

Re: Parrots love playing tablet games. That's helping researchers understand them

#111

Post by yard2010 » Thu, Mar 21, 2024, 8:48 AM UTC

Loughla wrote: post #25

numbers wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, so impressive that the parrots knows how to minimize the video and browse for other stuff.

I don't know if that is sarcastic, but it is legitimately impressive to me. That parrot looks almost exactly like a 4 year old using youtube. It's sort of astonishing to think about. From both the fact that the parrot can figure it out, and that the function and use of youtube is so intuitive to users that a parrot can learn it.

In reality though they're not that smart, they're just like a speaking GPT machine ;)

Re: Parrots love playing tablet games. That's helping researchers understand them

#112

Post by esaym » Thu, Mar 21, 2024, 9:10 AM UTC

spaceman_2020 wrote: post #92

KennyBlanken wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And they had preferred friends! It's truly awesome because their owners could help improve their quality of life with just a cheap tablet and the service fee.

Their owners could improve their quality of life by simply not keeping them Parrots are too smart and too social to be kept in captivity

[flagged]

Re: Parrots love playing tablet games. That's helping researchers understand them

#113

Post by leokennis » Thu, Mar 21, 2024, 9:11 AM UTC

amatecha wrote: post #5

Made me think of this video where a parrot is watching YouTube videos it likes, changing to different ones, and seeming angry when ads (or the owner lol) interrupt its video-watching https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cZSNhJcKFf4

Buy this parrot YouTube Premium! I don't know the exact species of parrot this is, but if it has a lifespan of 25 years, a 1 minute ad is like a 4 minute ad for them. Just imagine sitting through that!

Re: Parrots love playing tablet games. That's helping researchers understand them

#114

Post by vanderZwan » Thu, Mar 21, 2024, 9:29 AM UTC

12907835202 wrote: post #106

xattt wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Was this the form of intellectual superiority that Homo sapiens flaunted when they were among “dumber” apes?

Hasn't the idea that homo sapiens were more intelligent been debunked in favour of the idea that they were more social and that's what gave them superiority

I don't know, but I suspect you mean compared to other hominids, while GP had non-hominids like chimpanzees and gorillas in mind, so I just wanted to make sure that that potential confusion is cleared up first.

Re: Parrots love playing tablet games. That's helping researchers understand them

#115

Post by wishfish » Thu, Mar 21, 2024, 9:30 AM UTC

miriam_catira wrote: post #75

ethbr1 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To parrot the above, if you've never seen a goose in Florida get pissed off at a parked car bumper, you haven't lived. They're hilariously persistent in their anger.

There was a corporate office park I encountered once that had a pond, and they had swans in it. The swans entertained themselves by chasing office workers to and from the carpark every morning. ... in my experience, if waterfowl come at you hissing, just look bigger and hiss back - as long as it's smaller than a swan.

I once worked at a similar office park. A pair of geese chased secretaries and CEOs alike. Very egalitarian. No one was spared. All ran to their cars in fear.

But there was one day when they met their match. Another pair of geese appeared like magic. Just wandering around like they owned the place. The original pair were not happy. They hissed and waved their wings in anger. The new pair did the same. Uncowed. The original pair decided to charge the interlopers and chase them off. Lowered their necks. Went full speed at them. Then slammed into the glass doors because they were attacking their own reflections.

They spent the rest of the day, greatly humbled, swimming around the office park pond. Gave everyone a break for a couple of days before resuming the usual CEO & secretary hunt.

Re: Parrots love playing tablet games. That's helping researchers understand them

#116

Post by concordDance » Thu, Mar 21, 2024, 9:36 AM UTC

yungporko wrote: post #95

Voultapher wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We can't prove or disprove that enslaving and exploiting animals is a bad thing. As a society we currently answer that with .. take a look at your supermarket. What if we are wrong?

of course we're wrong, we can easily prove that enslaving and exploiting them is a bad thing. we know animals are capable of suffering and we know animals do suffer in the conditions we create for them, it's as simple as that.

To "prove" is to derive from a set of consistent axioms. There is no set of universally agreed axioms for badness and in fact the vast majority of people do not even have a consistent set of moral beliefs. Simply changing how you phrase a question can get very different answers (e.g. "conscription" vs "murder slavery" vs "making people defend the country that defends them").

Re: Parrots love playing tablet games. That's helping researchers understand them

#117

Post by sph » Thu, Mar 21, 2024, 9:52 AM UTC

amatecha wrote: post #5

Made me think of this video where a parrot is watching YouTube videos it likes, changing to different ones, and seeming angry when ads (or the owner lol) interrupt its video-watching https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cZSNhJcKFf4

I envision a world where we discover that some of our pets enjoy tech like us, but we try our hardest not to brainwash them with ads for humans.

In this world, some of us humans try to fail Turing tests on purpose to get access to ad-free tech designed for pets. Yes, Google, I am a parrot, why?

Re: Parrots love playing tablet games. That's helping researchers understand them

#118

Post by nicklecompte » Thu, Mar 21, 2024, 10:00 AM UTC

jbotz wrote: post #94

nicklecompte wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Orcas are smart enough to give each other distinct names and seem to understand the concept of verbs/nouns when identifying human words[1]. They could very well be smarter than us, but they'd never dominate the planet technologically: their flippers have no evolutionary path to developing fingers and thumbs. [1] Some people point out that we've never learned orca language but they've learned ours. This is true, but i…

Also, all the aquatic animals have one rather serious obstacle to developing an advanced/technological society: no way to make/use fire. Personally I think the only thing that really categorically distinguishes humans from other smart animals is that, the use of fire. Yeah, our language abilities are impressive too, but they may have fully developed after we already started using fire, telling stories around the camp…

Obviously you're not wrong about fire being a major blocking point for sea creatures[1] - hard to make metals without fire. But possibly mermaids could "cook" their food via fermentation, e.g. putting food in a sealed swim bladder, then burying it in the sand. This could fulfill the same brain calorie requirements.

[1] Of course, maybe in Andromeda some sea-hackers are reading Hacker Sea-News and arguing land-based animals could never develop civilization because something-something.

Re: Parrots love playing tablet games. That's helping researchers understand them

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Post by isolli » Thu, Mar 21, 2024, 10:03 AM UTC

Lalabadie wrote: post #20

> Last year, the team showed a group of parrots how to video call one another, finding that the birds both overwhelmingly enjoyed the activity and could make the calls themselves, when given the option. My heart! There's a separate article dedicated to it: https://news.northeastern.edu/2023/04/21/parrots-talking-vid...

It reminded me of a documentary I saw long ago on ape communication (between themselves as well as with humans), and I found that Wikipedia has a rich article on the topic:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_ape_language

Re: Parrots love playing tablet games. That's helping researchers understand them

#120

Post by BlackFly » Thu, Mar 21, 2024, 10:05 AM UTC

yard2010 wrote: post #110

Voultapher wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why does it matter that they are capable of suffering? This is a serious question. When it comes to morality invariably when you dig down deep enough, all of it is based on human made assumptions. That doesn't invalidate discussions about morality, we just have to be aware that it is built on a subjective foundation. And for the record, I personally suggest a vegan lifestyle, because I believe exploiting animals is m…

Because what stands in the center of it is empathy, which is not a human only thing

Cruelty, antipathy and apathy are also not uniquely human. Yes, you will see some animals behaving empathically in some situations, but people that walk over to pet bears and get mauled don't really earn much sympathy from people who know wild animals. Any given animal species will not share our norms. As an extreme example, the guinea worm should be extinguished from this earth. I believe no one can empathize with that species, but in any case I will support those people who seek to make it extinct. Between that extreme and equal membership in society are many models of co-existence and we will naturally disagree amongst ourselves of what norms we should have regarding that co-existence. There are no universal norms for our co-existence.