Crows are even smarter than we thought

Post by nightowl_games » Sat, Aug 31, 2024, 5:47 PM UTC

nikolay wrote: post #48

There are tons of crows around my house. I feed them, I know them, they know me, but they are so hard to become friends with. They know I'm not a threat, but they are still so afraid of me. This to me is the opposite of intelligence. Otheriwse, they are probably the best parents among the birds. They little ones have such characters and the entire extended family takes care of them.

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Aug 31, 2024, 5:55 PM UTC

cyberax wrote: post #262

I have crows nesting in a tree just outside my house. Crows are monogamous, so I see the same pair flying together all the time. Several months ago, they started to look a bit frazzled, they have chicks growing up. So I started giving them bits of food (meats and thawed mice). They are now bringing me pieces of colored glass :) They also caw if I wave at them. They are also keeping pigeons and seaguls away.

Post by BeFlatXIII » Sat, Aug 31, 2024, 6:24 PM UTC

azemetre wrote: post #87

meowface wrote: post #64

Earlier 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)

Post by mulmen » Sat, Aug 31, 2024, 6:25 PM UTC

egypturnash wrote: post #91

mewpmewp2 wrote: post #18

We consider this smart and intelligent, but many people don't want to admit that LLMs are intelligent?

There’s no CEOs excitedly talking about how crows will take over all the work that they’re currently paying humans to do, and how it is absolutely imperative that we allow them to ignore the fact that “shoveling all the data they can find into a for-profit turbo-autocomplete made up of trained crows” may be within the letter of fair use laws, but sure feels well outside the spirit of them.

Post by card_zero » Sat, Aug 31, 2024, 6:42 PM UTC

hnfong wrote: post #246

card_zero wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Funny, to me it seems people talk about this one a lot. And the same answer applies. Yes, we have free will and responsibility (because we can respond). Also yes, we do what we do because of physical mechanisms which means you could say we're "fated" (leaving aside the irrelevant complication of chance and probability). However, the law is only concerned with people doing (codified) wrong. It lets people off for bein…

I'm not sure I get your point -- it looks like you're starting from the conclusion that people do have free will, which of course does not create problems I mentioned. What I was trying to say is that if one believes determinism is incompatible with the concept of free will, then they cannot think the law is fair because nothing has free will. And I'm hypothesizing that people who think that way might be a bit queasy…