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Cat Gap

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Re: Cat Gap

#51

Post by marcher »

b112 wrote: post #42
gradus_ad wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's funny to think that no matter how our technology develops, cats will be right there along for the ride, completely ignorant of it all. It's humorously comforting to think of an interstellar civilization powered by fusion and AGI serving cats just as they're served now. Scratching posts on starships seems to be inevitable.

This seems like a book. Humans extinct for a billion years, AGI and robots tasked to feed and "take care of the cats". I imagine entire cities, houses built, all empty save cat and humanform robot.

In the puzzle game series The Talos Principle, intelligent robots (who were made to outlive humanity after a species-ending global pandemic) seem to have the exact same kind of affinity for caring for cats that humans do. It's actually really sweet and cute.

Re: Cat Gap

#52

Post by cfraenkel »

b112 wrote: post #42
gradus_ad wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's funny to think that no matter how our technology develops, cats will be right there along for the ride, completely ignorant of it all. It's humorously comforting to think of an interstellar civilization powered by fusion and AGI serving cats just as they're served now. Scratching posts on starships seems to be inevitable.

This seems like a book. Humans extinct for a billion years, AGI and robots tasked to feed and "take care of the cats". I imagine entire cities, houses built, all empty save cat and humanform robot.

"There will come soft rains" Ray Bradbury

Re: Cat Gap

#53

Post by [deleted] »

b112 wrote: post #42
gradus_ad wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's funny to think that no matter how our technology develops, cats will be right there along for the ride, completely ignorant of it all. It's humorously comforting to think of an interstellar civilization powered by fusion and AGI serving cats just as they're served now. Scratching posts on starships seems to be inevitable.

This seems like a book. Humans extinct for a billion years, AGI and robots tasked to feed and "take care of the cats". I imagine entire cities, houses built, all empty save cat and humanform robot.

[deleted]

Re: Cat Gap

#54

Post by shawn_w »

xingped wrote: post #50
b112 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This seems like a book. Humans extinct for a billion years, AGI and robots tasked to feed and "take care of the cats". I imagine entire cities, houses built, all empty save cat and humanform robot.

This was a minor plot point in that one black mirror episode with the robots on a tourism trip to Earth, lol

You mean Love, Death and Robots?

Re: Cat Gap

#55

Post by the_af »

ursAxZA wrote: post #26

I’ve always wondered what it would feel like to dream as a cat. I don’t think I’ve ever had a dream where my body actually changed shape. Being loved just for existing seems like a pretty solid evolutionary strategy.

> I’ve always wondered what it would feel like to dream as a cat

If you haven't already, read "A Dream of a Thousand Cats", one of the Sandman stories. It was also adapted by Netflix as the last episode of season 1 of The Sandman.

Re: Cat Gap

#56

Post by jasonwatkinspdx »

gradus_ad wrote: post #25
verbify wrote: post #13

I once was thinking that if intelligent machines surpassed human intelligence, the end game would be human intelligence would atrophy but the machines would continue to serve us. Then I had a humorous thought - what if this already happened, i.e. cats were superintelligent, invented humans to serve them and then they had no need for their own intelligence.

It's funny to think that no matter how our technology develops, cats will be right there along for the ride, completely ignorant of it all. It's humorously comforting to think of an interstellar civilization powered by fusion and AGI serving cats just as they're served now. Scratching posts on starships seems to be inevitable.

The domestication of cats happened because of the invention of farming.

If you store grain in a granary, it attracts a lot of insects, rodents, etc. Cats that could tolerate getting close to human settlements found a good food source. And humans like this, because the cats protect the grain without eating it. So you can see why ancient agrarian societies like the Egyptians held cats in high esteem.

And despite only having a few thousand years to adapt to each other, ends up cats and humans can understand each other and form emotional bonds pretty easily.

I imagine we'll see cats on spaceships of the future just like they were the norm on ships in the age of sail.

Re: Cat Gap

#57

Post by jasonwatkinspdx »

b112 wrote: post #42
gradus_ad wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's funny to think that no matter how our technology develops, cats will be right there along for the ride, completely ignorant of it all. It's humorously comforting to think of an interstellar civilization powered by fusion and AGI serving cats just as they're served now. Scratching posts on starships seems to be inevitable.

This seems like a book. Humans extinct for a billion years, AGI and robots tasked to feed and "take care of the cats". I imagine entire cities, houses built, all empty save cat and humanform robot.

You might like the game Stray. Here's the trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kJawWyRUOBM

It's about a cat that lives in a city of robots long after humans are extinct.

Re: Cat Gap

#59

Post by jasonwatkinspdx »

Sharlin wrote: post #45
p_l wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cats are actually very social animals, they just don't firm similar pack structures to dogs With modem technology it became feasible to observe cats without disruption and it showed communal behaviours, including communal care for offspring and IIRC even bringing food to share. All along the line of somewhat transitionally joined communities instead of more stable groups

Yes, this is (outdoors, stray, or feral) domestic cats , which is exactly what I mentioned. And as I said, it's largely the females and their juvenile offspring that form colonies – unfixed adult males, while certainly capable of having friendly social encounters on "no cat's lands", definitely don't willingly share their territory with other adult males. But my point was that their immediate ancestor (and practicall…

This is a bit off the mark.

Cats have only been domesticated for like ~10k years, so not much in the way of change or adaptation has happened. So wildcats have the same capacity for forming social bands and such, they just don't in the wild as they don't have any incentive to.

Re: Cat Gap

#60

Post by Sharlin »

jasonwatkinspdx wrote: post #59
Sharlin wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, this is (outdoors, stray, or feral) domestic cats , which is exactly what I mentioned. And as I said, it's largely the females and their juvenile offspring that form colonies – unfixed adult males, while certainly capable of having friendly social encounters on "no cat's lands", definitely don't willingly share their territory with other adult males. But my point was that their immediate ancestor (and practicall…

This is a bit off the mark. Cats have only been domesticated for like ~10k years, so not much in the way of change or adaptation has happened. So wildcats have the same capacity for forming social bands and such, they just don't in the wild as they don't have any incentive to.

Neoteny is easy to achieve in 10k years. Cf. the Soviet experiments on domesticating foxes, which started showing juvenile, gregarious traits in a few generations of selective breeding. In general felids are social in kittenhood within their family unit, most wild species just "grow out of it" in puberty. Selection pressure (natural or artificial) favoring individuals that tolerate or even enjoy human (or conspecifics') presence favors retention of juvenile traits in adulthood, and this change can happen quite quickly.
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