Training crows to pick up cigarette butts for food • Hacker News Board

Re: Training crows to pick up cigarette butts for food

#41

Post by spaceribs » Mon, Oct 16, 2017, 10:54 PM UTC

dTal wrote: post #34

__s wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The crows aren't punished for not exhibiting this behavior. Positive reinforcement training is distinctively different than negative reinforcement training. Slavery is the latter

Slavery is not 'negative reinforcement training'. Indeed, it is possible to be a slave and be rewarded for good work. Slavery is where you have no choice but to work. If the food reward is substantial enough to be worth a crow's while, then it confers a competitive advantage and crows that refrain from this behaviour will face pressure on their food sources from the offspring of the well-fed crows; essentially you've…

> If it ever gets tried on a large scale it'll be a hilarious disaster of unexpected second-order effects that will lead to the program's cancellation long before the whole crow species is subjugated.

This was kinda how I summed up the paper actually, the amount of side effects on any large scale deployment is mind boggling.

Re: Training crows to pick up cigarette butts for food

#42

Post by ch4s3 » Mon, Oct 16, 2017, 10:54 PM UTC

brulez wrote: post #19

glitcher wrote: post #12

This may also train smokers who do throw away their butts to instead think it's ok to throw them anywhere.

Why not also start enforcing littering fines? A $270-$500 ticket should be help to incentivize a behavior change.

This is the essence of "Broken Windows" policing, and at least in the US has proven to be a broken policy. A large number of factors, specifically officer discretion turn these types of minor offenses into taxes levied against the poorest communities. Also, I'm not sure I want the armed enforcers of the state getting into altercations with otherwise law abiding folks over littering.

Re: Training crows to pick up cigarette butts for food

#43

Post by fimbulvetr » Mon, Oct 16, 2017, 10:55 PM UTC

spaceribs wrote: post #16

Back in college I did a paper on if this was ethical or not for my bioethics class, I warn people to really take a step back from the positive possibilities with something like this and understand that these are wild animals being trained to become slaves to benefit our human failings and appetites. I would definitely draw a line between this kind of domestication and the domestication of animals by our ancestors for…

The idea that there is a black/white side of convenience vs. survival is not reasonable. It is very much a gradient, and I’m afraid that there’s much more nuance to it.

For instance, if I have a dog trained to fetch my fowl from a lake after shooting it, is that convenience or survival? Does it not depend on the circumstance? In the deep cold of winter it may spare me from a swift death, for the very same hunter in the summer it may save me from spending 30 minutes fetching it so that I can spend that 30 minutes making camp or playing cards.

This trade off runs the entire gamut, all the way from extreme survival to extreme convenience, and who are you to say what is right or wrong? Further, is there not a point where cirgarette butt collection increases survival for living things? Do you wait for that inflection point before you begin calling this ethical?

Re: Training crows to pick up cigarette butts for food

#44

Post by spaceribs » Mon, Oct 16, 2017, 10:59 PM UTC

diego_moita wrote: post #30

spaceribs wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really don't think it matters if it's positive or negative reinforcement. You are making their trained survival dependent on a contraption which accepts trash for their services, that doesn't sound like room and board to you?

> that doesn't sound like room and board to you? No, sounds like a job: do a task, get a reward. You do it, janitors do it. If the crows want...

If you're talking about jobs, most humans have a plethora of survival options.

Once a wild animal is trained to an easy single source of food, it prevents them from naturally diversifying their diet to prevent starvation, removing that natural challenge could be deadly.

This isn't just about doing a task and getting a reward, this is about addiction.

Re: Training crows to pick up cigarette butts for food

#45

Post by major505 » Mon, Oct 16, 2017, 11:00 PM UTC

ceedan wrote: post #18

glitcher wrote: post #12

This may also train smokers who do throw away their butts to instead think it's ok to throw them anywhere.

Yeah... the callousness of smokers and their littering is unacceptable. I understand that throwing your cigarette in the trash can be a fire hazard sometimes, but put the cigarette out and throw it out. Some smokers just seem to love flicking that still-burning cigarette into the road like it's no big deal.

In this case, you just smash the flasme in the floor and then throw in the trash. There is minimum hazard of the thing catch fire, specially if it has a cover.

Many places have designated trash for butts.

Where I work, thare is a company that collect these cans, and transform in paper.

After 2 years they are now being proffiteble.

But as a smoker, I fell terrible when there is a trash can in the place, but there are lots of butts in the floor. Makes me mad.

Re: Training crows to pick up cigarette butts for food

#46

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Oct 16, 2017, 11:01 PM UTC

clumsysmurf wrote: post #4

This seems neat, but cigarette butts contain toxic chemicals. Training birds to perform an action, but at the same time possibly poison themselves, is ethically perverse. What if their population collapses because of the exposure to something in the butts? (and perhaps this effects other parts of the ecosystem dependent on the services of crows ... like, but not limited to, mitigating hygiene hazards via carcass remo…

[deleted]

Re: Training crows to pick up cigarette butts for food

#47

Post by Falling3 » Mon, Oct 16, 2017, 11:02 PM UTC

spaceribs wrote: post #16

Back in college I did a paper on if this was ethical or not for my bioethics class, I warn people to really take a step back from the positive possibilities with something like this and understand that these are wild animals being trained to become slaves to benefit our human failings and appetites. I would definitely draw a line between this kind of domestication and the domestication of animals by our ancestors for…

>I would definitely draw a line between this kind of domestication and the domestication of animals by our ancestors for our own survival.

I don't understand why the treatment of other domesticated animals by our ancestors is the metric instead of the treatment of other domesticated animals today. Look at how our treatment of these crows compares to that of cows or chickens on any farm. Can you honestly say that training crows in the wild is the instance where we're crossing some ethical line?

Re: Training crows to pick up cigarette butts for food

#48

Post by KGIII » Mon, Oct 16, 2017, 11:03 PM UTC

fimbulvetr wrote: post #43

spaceribs wrote: post #16

Back in college I did a paper on if this was ethical or not for my bioethics class, I warn people to really take a step back from the positive possibilities with something like this and understand that these are wild animals being trained to become slaves to benefit our human failings and appetites. I would definitely draw a line between this kind of domestication and the domestication of animals by our ancestors for…

The idea that there is a black/white side of convenience vs. survival is not reasonable. It is very much a gradient, and I’m afraid that there’s much more nuance to it. For instance, if I have a dog trained to fetch my fowl from a lake after shooting it, is that convenience or survival? Does it not depend on the circumstance? In the deep cold of winter it may spare me from a swift death, for the very same hunter in t…

You are disappointed that they were allowed to write an opinion piece while in college?

I'm assuming it wasn't a peer reviewed science paper, but an opinion piece on ethics. Being allowed to explore the boundaries is a big thing that higher learning can enable.

I'd be more disappointed if they had been prohibited. I wish I still had my ranting papers about randomness and infinity. Those weren't published, or even intended to be published. Instead, they were a tool in the process of learning.

Edited to add: I have a working dog. I figure he is earning his keep. He's pretty lazy but he points and retrieves and, if motivated, can follow a scent. Mostly he is a bum.

Re: Training crows to pick up cigarette butts for food

#49

Post by andymcsherry » Mon, Oct 16, 2017, 11:05 PM UTC

ceedan wrote: post #18

glitcher wrote: post #12

This may also train smokers who do throw away their butts to instead think it's ok to throw them anywhere.

Yeah... the callousness of smokers and their littering is unacceptable. I understand that throwing your cigarette in the trash can be a fire hazard sometimes, but put the cigarette out and throw it out. Some smokers just seem to love flicking that still-burning cigarette into the road like it's no big deal.

Smoker in San Francisco here. I've thought about this quite a bit and here's my dilemma.

1. It is illegal to smoke indoors

2. San Francisco has made it illegal to have ash trays outdoors

3. Cigarettes set trash on fire so it's not acceptable to put them in the bin

4. Cigarettes have a tax on every pack earmarked to fund street clean-up

I'd prefer to not throw my cigarettes on the ground, but I've been left with no real alternative. Also, I've specifically paid a tax that should fund that clean-up.

Re: Training crows to pick up cigarette butts for food

#50

Post by nerfhammer » Mon, Oct 16, 2017, 11:09 PM UTC

clumsysmurf wrote: post #4

This seems neat, but cigarette butts contain toxic chemicals. Training birds to perform an action, but at the same time possibly poison themselves, is ethically perverse. What if their population collapses because of the exposure to something in the butts? (and perhaps this effects other parts of the ecosystem dependent on the services of crows ... like, but not limited to, mitigating hygiene hazards via carcass remo…

They aren't eating them, they're picking them up and dropping them into a bucket.