When I was little I had a small bb gun and would shoot cans in the backyard. A couple times i shot a crow and it would bounce off their strong chest and they would fly off seemingly unfazed. One time by pure chance I hit a crow in the neck and it died instantly, crashing down into my neighbor's yard. It was very shocking because I had not killed anything like that before. Immediately crows started circling my parents house, making an incredible amount of noise. I was so scared, I jumped over the fence to retrieve the dead crow. At this point crows started to dive bomb me and I thought for sure the whole neighborhood must know what is going on. I buried the crow in the backyard and the crows continued to be in high places around the house making noises until evening. The coordination and the intentional effort they made to disrupt and stop me was something I have never forgotten.
This had a big effect on me, I thought of it's family, and how they were trying to protect it. Needless to say I have not shot another bird since.
Crows are even smarter than we thought
111–120 of 304 posts
Re: Crows are even smarter than we thought
#112We're not the only intelligent life on earth. We cant even define intelligence or measure it meaningfully. If we accept that human children are smart, then we must accept that species at equivalent levels of cognition are as well. Elephants, crows, dolphins, octopi, chimps, orang utan are all clearly very smart, and more intelligent than a human child. Besides being biologically irrelevant, the separation between hum…
I like the sentiment, but human children who are 2 completely dominate all known animal intelligence. They can speak in sentences and use tools in complex ways. There may be studies that show a raven might use a stick to help it find food. Well, a two year old will carry a stool halfway across the house to reach the scissors that will open a bag of veggie straws :) At 3 they can recognize letters _easily_ and start l…
The real separation (and is something that comes long after 2 years of age in humans) is the ability to observe one's thoughts. I totally get that dolphins and elephants and many "big brain" mammals can have social structures, long memories, and the ability to pass down behaviors directly (e.g. "here's how you hunt fish effectively" may not be in dolphin genes, but they do a damn good job of it, or also the "fads" of orcas like the "salmon hat" or, more recently, attacking sailboats).
The absolutely blistering pace a child can learn at, though, is indeed quite a sight to behold.
Re: Crows are even smarter than we thought
#113Earlier 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…
Interestingly, your description of remembering what something looks like matches my experience exactly, but in my dreams I see vividly. Aphantasic except in my dreams?
Are you ever able to control your dreams? And if you are do you lose “video” on them but still retain perception on what is happening? That’s how I and other aphantasics I know experience it
Re: Crows are even smarter than we thought
#114We consider this smart and intelligent, but many people don't want to admit that LLMs are intelligent?
I think its because animals are many interconnected systems or models which are made to create "intelligent" behavior, like one for speak one for movement and alike. LLMs are trained purely off text, so they are more similar to a very simple animal that only has one type of inputs and outputs like a worm that only knows where its body is and then where it wants to be. LLMs are also only trained for a short period of time, and thats when something interesting is going on and its able to learn and change. We then take a snapshot of it and give it different inputs to get some result instead of to teach it something. I would say that a crow brain that has been frozen and can only get a certain amount of inputs and then only produce a certain amount of outputs is not intelligent.
Re: Crows are even smarter than we thought
#115Earlier quoted context omitted.
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. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paddy_(pigeon)
And “almost” as guide systems for bombs! https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Pigeon
Re: Crows are even smarter than we thought
#116We're not the only intelligent life on earth. We cant even define intelligence or measure it meaningfully. If we accept that human children are smart, then we must accept that species at equivalent levels of cognition are as well. Elephants, crows, dolphins, octopi, chimps, orang utan are all clearly very smart, and more intelligent than a human child. Besides being biologically irrelevant, the separation between hum…
Ted Chiang has an excellent short story on this subject, regarding the construction of the Arecibo radio telescope as told from the perspective of a parrot: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Silence_(short_story... It's very short. Worth a quick read and a long thought.
Here is my long thought:
People have been trying to talk to animals for thousands (tens of thousands?) of years, and no "animal myths" were discovered. Some researchers have dedicated their live trying to understand the animals (story mentions one of them), but still got nothing useful. I think it's fair to assume there is nothing to find there at all.
And alien life is not special in that regard - if we are able to successfully contact aliens, and then many thousands of people spend a century or two interchanging the messages with them, and all this would yield same artifacts that most Earth's 5-year-old kids can produce... then people would lose interest in aliens as well, and stop building things like Arecibo.
Re: Crows are even smarter than we thought
#117We're not the only intelligent life on earth. We cant even define intelligence or measure it meaningfully. If we accept that human children are smart, then we must accept that species at equivalent levels of cognition are as well. Elephants, crows, dolphins, octopi, chimps, orang utan are all clearly very smart, and more intelligent than a human child. Besides being biologically irrelevant, the separation between hum…
I like the sentiment, but human children who are 2 completely dominate all known animal intelligence. They can speak in sentences and use tools in complex ways. There may be studies that show a raven might use a stick to help it find food. Well, a two year old will carry a stool halfway across the house to reach the scissors that will open a bag of veggie straws :) At 3 they can recognize letters _easily_ and start l…
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Re: Crows are even smarter than we thought
#118Earlier quoted context omitted.
I like the sentiment, but human children who are 2 completely dominate all known animal intelligence. They can speak in sentences and use tools in complex ways. There may be studies that show a raven might use a stick to help it find food. Well, a two year old will carry a stool halfway across the house to reach the scissors that will open a bag of veggie straws :) At 3 they can recognize letters _easily_ and start l…
The real separation (and is something that comes long after 2 years of age in humans) is the ability to observe one's thoughts. I totally get that dolphins and elephants and many "big brain" mammals can have social structures, long memories, and the ability to pass down behaviors directly (e.g. "here's how you hunt fish effectively" may not be in dolphin genes, but they do a damn good job of it, or also the "fads" of…
In the time it took me to learn a new programming language, my kid learned how to be a whole entire human being. Including free thought and autocorrect mode. I don’t know what makes us special in the animal kingdom, but watching that happen certainly feels special. Do whales feel the same way about their young?
Re: Crows are even smarter than we thought
#119Earlier quoted context omitted.
Which age of human child do you mean? I could argue even bugs are "more intelligent" than 1 week old baby - at least they can eat and run away from danger. If we re-define "intelligence" as "smarter than a human baby", then this word covers most animals (and probably some plants too) and becomes useless. When doing species comparison, I think it only makes sense to compare adults to each other, and perhaps even "aver…
My point is that we don't frame animal intelligence as something comparable with humans or somewhat close. I'm not trying to create a leaderboard of intelligence. I think we should consider other species as capable of intelligence, and treat it with the same dignity we give to children.
Every species, including worms and ants? Because they are surely smarter than 1-week old human baby, they can eat and move.
We don't treat children well because of their intelligence - otherwise, no one would care about newborns. We care about them because they are of the same species as us.
As for "dignity", I am not 100% sure what you mean, but in humans it comes directly with being able to function as a member of the society. For example, someone who cannot navigate city (be it because they are young or because of their developmental difficulties) will not be free to wander wherever they want.
Re: Crows are even smarter than we thought
#120We're not the only intelligent life on earth. We cant even define intelligence or measure it meaningfully. If we accept that human children are smart, then we must accept that species at equivalent levels of cognition are as well. Elephants, crows, dolphins, octopi, chimps, orang utan are all clearly very smart, and more intelligent than a human child. Besides being biologically irrelevant, the separation between hum…
Scientists need evidence, rather than just assume intelligence because 'it is obvious', or that other species think the way we do. So just because we see a crow using tools, we should not assume that they learn from their parents and experiment and play and refine just like a human. Because it turns out they don't, and we have learned new things about them, and because of these differences, ourselves. So I don't think it that these silly scientists are surprised animals are intelligent. Why waste your life researching animal intelligence if you think your efforts will be pointless? Who in this century actually believes that all animals are unintelligent? The only arguments are to what degree and which species, and maybe quibbling about what that word actually means. But I don't think anyone has demonstrated equivalent to human child levels of cognition yet, with any species. We can teach a child words and grammar and communicate complex and abstract and even imaginary thoughts, and that is just the very beginning. A human child is so incredibly smart it can develop into a human adult. Other species are very different, and claiming equivalence is comparing apples to oranges. We see intelligence in such alien organisms as an octopus or a hive of bees, and the more we learn, in many ways we are understanding that we actually are alone and special. It seems more and more likely that if we are ever going to interact with another species as peers, the first is going to be a species of our own creation, and not dolphins or cockatoos.