This isn't surprising. Birds are incredibly intelligent, and crows/ravens are up there. Magpies too. We have grackles here in Houston; those fuckers are clever as well!
Crows are even smarter than we thought
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Re: Crows are even smarter than we thought
#102> This kind of feat, according to animal behavior researchers, requires the ability to form “mental templates.” Essentially, a mental template is an image in the mind of what a particular object looks like, even when that object is not present. As someone with aphantasia, can I get points for recreating something I've seen _without_ having an "image in the mind"?
As another, I thought "mental template" is the perfect term, since it's neither image nor visual. I assume (since you mention points), you can recreate a geometric drawing (say, a floor plan, or a bicycle*)? What would you call that if not drawing from a mental template? * It seems, at least with bicycles, some people who do this "visually" are terrible at it: https://www.wired.com/2016/04/can-draw-bikes-memory-defin…
I actually quite like the term “mental template” but then they immediately equated it to an image.
The best way I can describe my aphantasia is that I think about objects three dimensionally. There’s nothing visual about it, but I can think about the relation of “points” (really surfaces) in terms of the whole.
Re: Crows are even smarter than we thought
#103Earlier quoted context omitted.
IMO all life is intelligent in some way or form. Evolution itself is even intelligent in that it’s a learning system that adapts and solves problems.
It’s an interesting idea. Reminds me a little of some parts of Christopher Langans CTMU theory in that everything serves to simply further develop intelligence in the universe.
While I'm unskilled with CTMU theory, what you mentioned could be considered a consequence of the first law of thermodynamics, right? Intelligence might decrease entropy locally, but they always increase entropy globally to do so. Ie we accelerate the natural process of increasing entropy.
Re: Crows are even smarter than we thought
#104Have posted this before, but it really left an impression about crows, and the bond between their mates: Years ago I was putting out the garbage in the back alley behind our building where I lived on the 8th floor. A crow attacked me out of the blue. Distracted by the attack, the back door slammed shut behind me. Since my key was only good for the front door, I had to walk around the building. That damn crow followed…
We should establish that the crow would only 'attack' any human living in this flat (and neglect any other human walking by this back alley).
I’m surprised no one has attempted to train crows for use in asymmetrical warfare. At least before the advent of cheap drones.
Re: Crows are even smarter than we thought
#105Earlier quoted context omitted.
Found Gary Larson's alt account. You should turn it into a short movie using AI. I have thought something similar but more along the lines that in the universe above us, we are 3 days into a science experiment and either a) they don't know we exist or b) the look in with their microscope and see patterns for cities or c) they have a statistical measure of how many have developed ecosystems and set off a nuclear weapo…
Lots of ideas here for SciFi movies. I also like the idea of everything being a simulation (like in Matrix) but managed/set up by an alien civilization and just experimenting or having fun with us, or us actually just being their avatars… and we are them!!! Alright, time to go to bed.
That would be one way that heaven, hell, and all the other religious ideas could be true. Hell is just the next experiment over.
Re: Crows are even smarter than we thought
#106I think I've come to an inevitable conclusion that there appears to be at least two "sources" of intelligence, genetic, and (I guess for lack of a better word), "learned". Learned could mean all kinds of things, the capacity measurement of IQ, the effort by parents to fill that capacity, social normative steering, whatever.
But genetic really means "instinct" in the way that a day old deer can stand, run, graze (I live in an area with lots of deer, so I get a first-hand chance to observe them).
Suppose a sci-fi story, where humans encounter a fantastically advanced alien species. Over the course of the story events occur where individuals in the alien species see not learn anything at all, while later generations seem imbued with those same learnings. What humans are encountering might be instead incredibly advance, and highly encoded instinct.
Is that not intelligence?
I'm reminded of the schools of buddhism, where a differentiation is that you are able to achieve enlightenment in one-lifetime or in many.
The main distinction between life and non-life appear to be the ability to experience the universe. A blade of grass is alive no different than a human, but entirely different from a rock. Experience seems to be some kind of basis for intelligence, without which it cannot exist, thus perhaps, all experiential beings are intelligent in some way.
Every living thing has survived everything its ancestors' environment threw at them and made it to "now".
Re: Crows are even smarter than we thought
#107I have watched crows wait at stoplights in order to cross the road, even when flying over it would have taken a few seconds. It’s funny how the sign of intelligence in this case was laziness.
Re: Crows are even smarter than we thought
#108Earlier quoted context omitted.
We should establish that the crow would only 'attack' any human living in this flat (and neglect any other human walking by this back alley).
I’m surprised no one has attempted to train crows for use in asymmetrical warfare. At least before the advent of cheap drones.
Pigeons were used in WW1 and WW2 for communication. Paddy the pigeon [0] flew 230 miles across the English channel to relay the success of the D-Day invasion.
Re: Crows are even smarter than we thought
#109Earlier quoted context omitted.
As another someone with aphantasia, I remember what something looks like, so I draw what I remember. That memory is not an image, it's knowledge of what something looks like. For simple things, that's enough. For complicated things, I sketch out what I remember of the overall appearance, look at it and gauge how far off it is and what is off, and add in details to gradually reduce the difference. I'm not a very good…
> is not an image, it's knowledge of what something looks like Is this similar to calling an .svg "not an image" if it's viewed in a text editor rather than on a canvas?
That's an amazing description, I don't have aphantasia, but that made me understand what it could be like.
Re: Crows are even smarter than we thought
#110Earlier quoted context omitted.
They probably have rich social lives. I wonder how fine-grained their communication signals are.
Probably very good. They've been known to communicate highly specific dangers to other crows and supposedly understand recursion: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/crows-perform-yet... I haven't read it yet but there's also a sci-fi book about intelligent society of crows (Children of Time series): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Children_of_Memory_(novel)
"It's the same story the crow told me, it's the only one he knows . . . "