Can we know what animals are thinking? • Hacker News Board

Re: Can we know what animals are thinking?

#161

Post by StavrosK » Sat, Aug 26, 2017, 11:56 PM UTC

CuriouslyC wrote: post #151

StavrosK wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The question, to me, is whether machines will ever have consciousness, or whether consciousness is just "what it feels like to have a cortex". We assume that machines will have consciousness some day, but what if we had a machine that could do many things as well as a human, but didn't consider itself "alive"?

The way you're using consciousness conflates the human mind (which I would argue fits your definition of "what it feels like to have a cortex") and the property of experiencing existence. Animals might have a very different mind, but I'm quite certain they experience their existence.

Mammals still have a cerebral cortex.

Re: Can we know what animals are thinking?

#162

Post by hdivider » Sun, Aug 27, 2017, 12:25 AM UTC

arthurwinter wrote: post #99

I find it incredible that in 2017 people still debate if animals can think. You just need to interact with one or more dogs to understand that they think, and in most cases they think much better than humans. Lately seeing what humans did and still do to planet Earth, and what they do to each other based on completely made up topics like religion or plain material topics like skin color is making me wonder if humans…

Takes courage to make such statements on HN. Kudos to you for that.

Humans are biased to view themselves as the most evolved, sophisticated and important species. A glance at the history of science shows this.

Slowly, we become aware of our bias and notice how damn lucky we are to survive to this day.

Ages ago, nature almost killed us off:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toba_catastrophe_theory#Geneti...

And in modern times, we almost wiped out our civilization many times:

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

We are lucky to be here. Gotta make the most of it. IMO a good place to start: to value the other surviving animals on this planet. You could travel 10,000 light years but you will find them only on Earth.

Re: Can we know what animals are thinking?

#163

Post by bijection » Sun, Aug 27, 2017, 12:32 AM UTC

strictnein wrote: post #159

zpghjll wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cruelty depends on knowing what is moral and choosing to do something immoral. In this case, humans are cruel for knowing animals are sentient yet still subjecting them to horrible conditions and painful lives just to satisfy our pallette. The lion is not cruel for eating the zebra because it is necessary for its survival.

The cattle on farms wouldn't be off roaming the countryside if we didn't eat them. They just simply wouldn't exist at all.

Is unpleasant existence always better than nonexistence?

Put another way, would you make the same argument if the creatures in question were people?

Re: Can we know what animals are thinking?

#164

Post by tpeo » Sun, Aug 27, 2017, 12:36 AM UTC

AsyncAwait wrote: post #139

tpeo wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't say he was kind. I am good to people who are good. I am also good to people who are not good. Because Virtue is goodness. People should be thought as being free to speak their mind in whatever way it suits them. Not because they should, but because they will. And when the time comes, it's up to me whether to make an issue of it or not. And in so far as I know, I'd rather not.

It has nothing to do with being kind. It has a lot do do with contributing to the discussion with something useful. Just asserting things without any evidence is not useful and thus downvoted to make more room for more useful comments nearer where people would see them, that's all.

I disagree that a comment has to be sourced to be a contribution to the discussion. Whether or not something can be a contribution depends entirely on what people expect from comments. If all I expect is to have a little bit of thought, it doesn't really need to pack on citations, and even a question might suffice.

Which might sound dilletante-ish, but isn't really out of place for anyone reading a pop-sci article on animal cognition during a Saturday evening, on their spare time.

As for downvoting or upvoting, I've never seen any actual evidence that either does anything useful.

Re: Can we know what animals are thinking?

#165

Post by balfirevic » Sun, Aug 27, 2017, 12:46 AM UTC

wolco wrote: post #75

cryodesign wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A few things: * Veganism isn't about health[1]. It's about avoiding exploitation of other sentient and intelligent beings and reducing suffering on many levels. * The difference between us and other animals is that we have the ability of critical thinking. We can change our attitude and mind when presented with new information. A lion can't do this (also, a lion needs meat to survive, modern humans don't). There is a…

What is your take on the morally of eating plants. Plants are living creatures some would say sentient beings. Recent research is showing they feel pain, communicate with other plants. Do they deserve the same protection?

Plants are living organisms. Before we go into any kind of debate that presupposes that plants are "creatures", "sentient" or "feel" anything, you are going to have to provide a whole lot of explaining, backed by the same amount of citations.

Re: Can we know what animals are thinking?

#166

Post by newhere420 » Sun, Aug 27, 2017, 1:05 AM UTC

Can we know what humans are thinking?

Re: Can we know what animals are thinking?

#167

Post by red75prime » Sun, Aug 27, 2017, 1:16 AM UTC

pluma wrote: post #145

raarts wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe it only appears to be, but in fact it's some animal form of ML. Hard to say I guess.

Maybe humans only appear to be thinking but in fact only use some human form of ML?

Deep neural networks aren't aware of changes in their own performance, because their cannot remember or compare their own current performance to the one in the past.

Thus humans at least cannot be pure DNN ML algorithm.

RNNs have error propagation thru time, but connections' weight changes aren't represented as neuron activations and therefore aren't accessible to the neural network itself. That is RNNs aren't aware that they learn too.

Thus humans cannot be pure RNN ML algorithm.

Naturally, humans implement some learning algorithm. The question is which algorithms are capable of which sides of thinking.

Re: Can we know what animals are thinking?

#168

Post by khedoros1 » Sun, Aug 27, 2017, 1:21 AM UTC

Koshkin wrote: post #147

khedoros1 wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> First off, everyone would agree that humans, apes, dogs, squirrels, spiders - all "think" in essentially different ways. I wouldn't, and a lot of the other comments on this story imply that they wouldn't, either. As an example, when I think, it's not usually in the form of words until I try to map my thoughts and feelings into a more concrete form. I'm particularly conscious of this because I frequently wrack my mi…

An insect's "thinking" consists mostly of following instincts and some acquired reflexes. There's (much, much) more to the human thinking than that, and there are a few levels of consciousness in between.

If you'd stuck to that in the original post, I would've upvoted and moved down the thread. I was replying to the stronger claims that things like other advanced mammals "all think in essentially different ways", and your characterization of the nature of human thought.

Re: Can we know what animals are thinking?

#169

Post by Razengan » Sun, Aug 27, 2017, 1:21 AM UTC

hdivider wrote: post #162

arthurwinter wrote: post #99

I find it incredible that in 2017 people still debate if animals can think. You just need to interact with one or more dogs to understand that they think, and in most cases they think much better than humans. Lately seeing what humans did and still do to planet Earth, and what they do to each other based on completely made up topics like religion or plain material topics like skin color is making me wonder if humans…

Takes courage to make such statements on HN. Kudos to you for that. Humans are biased to view themselves as the most evolved, sophisticated and important species. A glance at the history of science shows this. Slowly, we become aware of our bias and notice how damn lucky we are to survive to this day. Ages ago, nature almost killed us off: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toba_catastrophe_theory#Geneti... And in modern…

> You could travel 10,000 light years but you will find them only on Earth.

(sorry for the Reddit'ism, but:) This. That sentence is subtly and unexpectedly profound.

Imagine having developed interstellar or even intergalactic travel, and after having colonized multiple solar systems, we find that life isn't so rare after all, but the specific lifeforms on Earth were.

What if we find that each life-bearing planet has its own unique creatures, not to be found anywhere else in the infinity of the Universe, and we may never again see the creatures we wiped out here on Earth?

Re: Can we know what animals are thinking?

#170

Post by Razengan » Sun, Aug 27, 2017, 1:34 AM UTC

StavrosK wrote: post #3

_dps wrote: post #2

"No animals have all the attributes of human minds; but almost all the attributes of human minds are found in some animal or other" This was a fun read in general, but I think it's particularly interesting to consider some of its implications in the context of trends in AI (to be clear, the article has nothing to do with AI). I think the excerpt above is rapidly becoming true for current generation ML/AI systems (I'm…

The question, to me, is whether machines will ever have consciousness, or whether consciousness is just "what it feels like to have a cortex". We assume that machines will have consciousness some day, but what if we had a machine that could do many things as well as a human, but didn't consider itself "alive"?