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A Cephalopod Has Passed a Cognitive Test Designed for Human Children

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Re: A Cephalopod Has Passed a Cognitive Test Designed for Human Children

#41

Post by motohagiography »

unstatusthequo wrote: post #27
jancsika wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To properly test, you'd need to: 1. Draw a triangle on your forehead 2. Make a shitty clone of yourself with a circle drawn on the clone's forehead, who comes out of the shop immediately after you walk in Then see if your dog decides to follow the shitty clone, or whether it waits a couple minutes for the regular version of you. Edit: also, repeat with many more dogs, many more dog owners, and many more shitty clones…

This made me laugh as a potential Rick & Morty episode

Was literally thinking the Rick & Morty tie-in would be that Morty gets a pet cuttlefish who not only speaks, but insists that even though he is stuck in this aquarium, he says it is preferable to the pathetic existential prison of their inferior human minds, and he uses his mesmerizing persuasive power to turn the rest of the house into a hippie comumune of drifters who do whatever he wants, and ultimately directs them to attack celebrities. The cuttlefish's name is Charlie.

Recurring villain, probably gets his own show.

Re: A Cephalopod Has Passed a Cognitive Test Designed for Human Children

#42

Post by throwanem »

40four wrote: post #35

I agree with the main thesis of the article, stated in the first paragraph. That idea of ”how important it is for us humans to not underestimate animal intelligence” . I think folks in modern times are less & less prone to thinking animals are ‘dumb’. But 1 or 2 generations ago this was not the case. I think humans for a long time have regarded animal intelligence in an inferior light. Cephalopods have proven to to b…

> I think folks in modern times are less & less prone to thinking animals are ‘dumb’. But 1 or 2 generations ago this was not the case.

The naturalist Jean-Henri Fabre, in the 19th century, made an extensive study of solitary, spider-hunting wasps. Much of what he discovered, with regard to the surprising complexity of their hunting and nesting behavior, became well known in his day - he was one of the first writers I discovered when I started delving into the literature to feed my own burgeoning interest in the aculeates, and one of the reasons his work is so easy to come by is that it was popular, and thus well preserved.

It was very much new to me, though; to whatever extent it had entered common knowledge a century and a half ago, it has since exited again. If anything, I think that in recent generations we have become less likely to recognize complex behavior and intelligence in nonhuman animals, not more so; that may be changing, but if so, I think it must have begun quite recently.

Re: A Cephalopod Has Passed a Cognitive Test Designed for Human Children

#43

Post by koalahedron »

unstatusthequo wrote: post #27
jancsika wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To properly test, you'd need to: 1. Draw a triangle on your forehead 2. Make a shitty clone of yourself with a circle drawn on the clone's forehead, who comes out of the shop immediately after you walk in Then see if your dog decides to follow the shitty clone, or whether it waits a couple minutes for the regular version of you. Edit: also, repeat with many more dogs, many more dog owners, and many more shitty clones…

This made me laugh as a potential Rick & Morty episode

I've never heard of Rick and Morty, but take my advice, don't try to shop your screenplay to VCs. They took a dim view of my "Adult Stewie" concept last year (think "Young Sheldon" backwards). Try Hollywood.

Anyway, I think a fun cartoon would be the Flintstones with ceph, for example their screen could be a smaller ceph whose chromataphores are pixels.

[edit]

Old drawing, back of a napkin (apologies to MIT AI Memo 554):

https://github.com/koalahedron/ideas-for-models/blob/main/RE...

Re: A Cephalopod Has Passed a Cognitive Test Designed for Human Children

#44

Post by mindfulplay »

hermitcrab wrote: post #12

If anyone is interested in cephalopod intelligence I heartily recommend the book: "Other Minds: The Octopus and the Evolution of Intelligent Life" by Peter Godfrey-Smith.

I second this recommendation. I think someone in HN recommended this, very fascinating. My respect and interest for octopuses and surprisingly cuttlefish went way high up after reading this book. Kudos to whoever recommended it!

It feels like we are wasting our time looking for aliens searching for them in the skies (especially the unscientific work around oumuamua).

They are living right beside us in the form of cephalopods. We haven't deployed enough science on these amazing creatures yet (without of course distributing them like putting them in cages), probably because it's not a sexy field as compared to say astronomy or other cool things...

Re: A Cephalopod Has Passed a Cognitive Test Designed for Human Children

#45

Post by Grustaf »

motohagiography wrote: post #4

As someone who trained my dog to sit and wait for me outside a shop while I got coffee, which was a similar delayed gratification and I didn't even use treats, I think science might be underestimating just how stupid human children are.

That’s not delayed gratification, it’s just obeying orders. In the marshmallow test it’s crucial that the subject makes their choice freely.

Re: A Cephalopod Has Passed a Cognitive Test Designed for Human Children

#46

Post by mindfulplay »

choxi wrote: post #34
hermitcrab wrote: post #12

If anyone is interested in cephalopod intelligence I heartily recommend the book: "Other Minds: The Octopus and the Evolution of Intelligent Life" by Peter Godfrey-Smith.

One of the most interesting concepts in the book was "efference copies." The idea is that your mind needs to distinguish between stimulus that you caused by voluntary action (moving your arm) versus stimulus that the environment causes (your arm being moved by something else), so you send these "echos" of your voluntary actions back to your brain and this is possibly where your sense of self comes from.

That. And the idea that the cuttlefish are perhaps showing their internal state via their changing color patterns and not as a sinajng device. And of course their fairly short lives.

Re: A Cephalopod Has Passed a Cognitive Test Designed for Human Children

#47

Post by numpad0 »

motohagiography wrote: post #4

As someone who trained my dog to sit and wait for me outside a shop while I got coffee, which was a similar delayed gratification and I didn't even use treats, I think science might be underestimating just how stupid human children are.

I think we’re all too ignorant about potentially including/integrating other animals into the society, Doctor Dolittle style. Wouldn’t it be just fantastic?

Re: A Cephalopod Has Passed a Cognitive Test Designed for Human Children

#48

Post by mindfulplay »

8fGTBjZxBcHq wrote: post #13

The article doesn't mention this but that test is not very well regarded currently. It's basically a test of food security and trust in adults rather than any particular behavioral benchmark.

I agree but this new adapted test for cuttlefish is actually pretty smart. They actually zone in on delayed gratification.

Re: A Cephalopod Has Passed a Cognitive Test Designed for Human Children

#49

Post by 317070 »

40four wrote: post #35

I agree with the main thesis of the article, stated in the first paragraph. That idea of ”how important it is for us humans to not underestimate animal intelligence” . I think folks in modern times are less & less prone to thinking animals are ‘dumb’. But 1 or 2 generations ago this was not the case. I think humans for a long time have regarded animal intelligence in an inferior light. Cephalopods have proven to to b…

> There is a considerable overlap between the intelligence of the smartest bears and the dumbest tourists.

Park Ranger at Yosemite National Park (on designing secure garbage cans)

https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2006/08/security_is_a...

Re: A Cephalopod Has Passed a Cognitive Test Designed for Human Children

#50

Post by TrispusAttucks »

ruffrey wrote: post #19
motohagiography wrote: post #4

As someone who trained my dog to sit and wait for me outside a shop while I got coffee, which was a similar delayed gratification and I didn't even use treats, I think science might be underestimating just how stupid human children are.

Perhaps. Small children are also exceptionally accident prone. On the other hand, human children are incredibly curious and experiment with everything. It may not be stupidity that keeps them from following directions.

Indeed!

There is much to be learned by occasionally breaking the rules.

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