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Bird brains (2023)

dhanishsemar.com

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Re: Bird brains (2023)

#121

Post by Zambyte »

jayers wrote: post #13
small_model wrote: post #10

Given parrots can talk, there must be a neuron count that activates language (assuming anatomy allows it), similar to LLM parameter count.

That seems like an unfounded inference. Plenty of animals have more neurons than humans but lesser cognitive and language abilities. Language has lot to do with structure of the brain in addition to neuron count.

Language also has a lot to do with what we do. We do more complex things than animals, so we say more complex things than animals. The biggest difference in the evolution of human language versus the evolution of elephant language might just be that we have thumbs.

Re: Bird brains (2023)

#122

Post by mgfist »

data-ottawa wrote: post #105
ticulatedspline wrote: post #103

Makes me think of our current quest with creating AGI, that the metrics for measuring animal brains don't necessarily correlate nicely with "intelligence" or capability. I imagine an alternate world filled only with intelligent robots that are trying to create "biological-agi" from scratch and are supremely frustrated at the results, throwing neuron count and density at the problem without understanding the fundament…

It’s always amazed me how much capability baby animals have right when they’re born, when they have near zero experience with their muscles and balance and senses. Or even just the instinct of a cat to chase a string is universal. There’s something intrinsic to the structure of brains that seems to pre-encode a lot of evolutionarily useful content without a training phase. I’d love to take a course on just this topic…

Evolution is kinda like pre-training in a sense.

Re: Bird brains (2023)

#123

Post by SoftTalker »

make3 wrote: post #109
justonceokay wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel similarly about cats. I absolutely love cats but I didn’t have one for five years because I refuse to own one in an apartment. It seems like people torture animals to make sure that they have some attention when they get home

it's funny because domesticated cats have much more developed frontal cortexes than their ancestors & it would be one of the things that feral cats lose to genetic drift (meaning, no conservation pressure in the wild). whatever boring stuff we have them do is apparently extremely mentally taxing compared to the wild.

Social interaction may take more mental capacity than hunting and surviving?

Re: Bird brains (2023)

#124

Post by srean »

kridsdale1 wrote: post #104
srean wrote: post #100

https://nautil.us/the-great-silence-237510 One of my all time favourite short stories, with or without intelligent parrots. Time for me to read it again. This is the Arecibo story, don't miss if you haven't read it before. "You be good". Strangely enough, was having a lot of difficulty coaxing google to fetch this link.

I’m not sure if you used “Classic Google” or not, but I put the quoted quote in to Google AI Mode (disclaimer; I am one of its developers) and got a full description of the story with links to online hostings of the full text in under 1 second. Not the same URL as your result, and I don’t know the IP validity of the hosting result pages I got, though. I recalled (once I was reminded of the author) that I read this or…

I got some of those links and links to the summary of the story.

But I did not want a summary (why massacre such a beautiful story *), and neither the later links (pretty bad visual presentation of the story), but the Nautilus link in particular.

I think that's where I had read it first on the web, by far the best layout compared to the other links.

Even a few years ago the Nautilus link used to be the canonical (first) result.

* If I want Michelangelo's David summarised, I think I would mention 'summary' explicitly.

Re: Bird brains (2023)

#125

Post by Zambyte »

unzadunza wrote: post #45
Philip-J-Fry wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Parrots can't "talk". They just mimick noises they've heard before

Isn't that what humans do too? We mimic noises we've heard before and we associate meaning to the noises. Parrots can do that. Our quaker parrot would bite you, then say 'not supposed to bite'. He clearly associated some kind of meaning to that phrase.

Not to make an argument against parrots understanding, but humans understand noises before they mimic them. Children are often able to learn and express themselves in sign language (if taught obviously) earlier than they can learn to speak, and they can respond to spoken word in sign language before they can speak.

Re: Bird brains (2023)

#126

Post by SoftTalker »

unzadunza wrote: post #45
Philip-J-Fry wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Parrots can't "talk". They just mimick noises they've heard before

Isn't that what humans do too? We mimic noises we've heard before and we associate meaning to the noises. Parrots can do that. Our quaker parrot would bite you, then say 'not supposed to bite'. He clearly associated some kind of meaning to that phrase.

Or maybe he just learned that's what people say when he bites them, so he started saying that himself.

Re: Bird brains (2023)

#127

Post by ninalanyon »

pks016 wrote: post #96

I work on some aspects of intelligence in birds, primarily in songbirds. There have been some effort finding general intelligence ("g" cognitive factor) in birds since last 15-20 years. The results have been mixed as you would expect. Animals' intelligence have evolved for survival and designing experiments to test those are quite hard. Research has shown brain size matters but not that much, we should look at relati…

> Animals' intelligence have evolved for survival

What do you mean by this? Surely this applies to humans too, we are animals after all. So what distinction did you intend to make?

Re: Bird brains (2023)

#128

Post by recallingmemory »

krona wrote: post #80
awsanswers wrote: post #69

If you're in tune with animals and spend time around a parrot, it's obvious there is a lot going on in their minds. They have incredible memories and their own understanding of their world. It looks simple to us but they are not simple creatures. That being said, I don't know how a bird lover can keep a bird in a cage.

Many animals (including birds, dogs, horses) like the sanctuary and comfort of a cage and choose to use them, but obviously it shouldn't be used like a prison.

How did you arrive at the conclusion that birds like cages?

Re: Bird brains (2023)

#129

Post by justonceokay »

CalRobert wrote: post #120
justonceokay wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel similarly about cats. I absolutely love cats but I didn’t have one for five years because I refuse to own one in an apartment. It seems like people torture animals to make sure that they have some attention when they get home

It’s for the best, house cats torture the birds and frogs around here and I hate it. I never knew frogs could scream.

Life sucks. I bet the 10s of 1000s of animals used to source the protein in your cat food had a great life though

Re: Bird brains (2023)

#130

Post by culi »

It seems like animals that have to memorize a really wide variety of plants, fruit, flowers, etc tend to have complex and dense brains
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