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A girl who gets gifts from birds

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Re: A girl who gets gifts from birds

#51

Post by dragonwriter »

discardorama wrote: post #39
Varcht wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I blame this on the "DreamWorks Effect", animators have done such a good job giving animals human traits and emotions that millinials+ really can't help but be animists.

Conversely, I think Christians (for one) do not like the idea of animals having "human traits", because it goes against their core mythology, which says that God created man in His image. If animals also started showing human traits, then Man isn't so special anymore, is he? Edited: I'm being downvoted, but this was the exact reasoning given to me by a rather devout Christian; and it seemed to make sense. I'm agnosti…

> Conversely, I think Christians (for one) do not like the idea of animals having "human traits", because it goes against their core mythology

Lots of Christians, including fairly devout ones, have no problems with recognizing human traits in animals; sometimes, this is in part because of a core theology that distinguishes between traits in the material universe and spiritual essences (cf., Catholic doctrines related to transubstantiation.)

> I'm being downvoted, but this was the exact reasoning given to me by a rather devout Christian

Christians are a rather diverse group, even when it comes to religious beliefs. The explanation given by a rather devout Christian on just about any issue is not particularly likely to be valid as a generalization of Christian belief.

Re: A girl who gets gifts from birds

#52

Post by muraiki »

discardorama wrote: post #39
Varcht wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I blame this on the "DreamWorks Effect", animators have done such a good job giving animals human traits and emotions that millinials+ really can't help but be animists.

Conversely, I think Christians (for one) do not like the idea of animals having "human traits", because it goes against their core mythology, which says that God created man in His image. If animals also started showing human traits, then Man isn't so special anymore, is he? Edited: I'm being downvoted, but this was the exact reasoning given to me by a rather devout Christian; and it seemed to make sense. I'm agnosti…

I don't support any downvotes of you, but there are many different types of Christians; this kind of thought is a bit foreign to me as an Orthodox Christian. Consider what St. Isaac of Syria says:

"The humble man approaches wild animals, and the moment they catch sight of him their ferocity is tamed. They come up and cling to him as their Master, wagging their tails and licking his hands and feet. They scent as coming from him the same fragrance that came from Adam before the transgression, the time when they were gathered together before him and he gave them names in Paradise. This scent was taken away from us, but Christ has renewed it and given it back to us at his coming. It is this which has sweetened the fragrance of humanity."

To an Orthodox Christian, restoring the relationship of humanity with animals, which includes that of their expressing intelligence, love, and other such "human-like" traits, is to work towards restoration of our pre-fallen state. The Image of God lies not just in these traits... without going into a deep discussion here, for Orthodox this Image can be seen in the Transfiguration of Christ: that of glorified, deified[1] humanity united with the energy[2] of God.

Some more information is available here: http://www.orthodoxresearchinstitute.org/articles/misc/flana...

[1] http://orthodoxwiki.org/Theosis [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Essence%E2%80%93Energies_distin...

Re: A girl who gets gifts from birds

#53

Post by quadrangle »

Varcht wrote: post #35
discardorama wrote: post #32

A lot of people refuse to believe that animals (or birds) can show any kind of advanced thinking. "Oh, the crow was probably carrying something in its beak; it saw the peanut, and dropped the thing in its beak" is their explanation. I'm sorry, but animals are far more perceptive than they're given credit for. Also, how do you explain this? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o5NuBk5_Izc

I blame this on the "DreamWorks Effect", animators have done such a good job giving animals human traits and emotions that millinials+ really can't help but be animists.

bullshit. Perhaps you don't understand that crows use tools. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TtmLVP0HvDg and that they also are social and communicate with each other. They do give gifts to each other as part of courtship. We don't need to anthropomorphize to recognize plain facts about crows being intelligent and intentional and social.

Re: A girl who gets gifts from birds

#54

Post by gaius »

pavel_lishin wrote: post #23
dragontamer wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The final example though, where a Crow returns the camera-lens cap to the family requires some pretty advanced thinking. We know that Crows recognize human faces and expressions, and communicate these facts amongst each other. Crows / Ravens are the only creature aside from Humans who perform meta-tool use. They can use tools to grab tools to accomplish a goal. In many ways, they're smarter than (non-human) primates,…

> The final example though, where a Crow returns the camera-lens cap to the family requires some pretty advanced thinking. I think the article (and probably the podcast? haven't listened yet) make too big a deal of this. We don't know that the crows realized that the lens cap belonged to those people. Perhaps they just saw it as another neat thing to gift. Perhaps they smelled the family on it, and just returned it t…

Perhaps they smelled the family on it, and just returned it to a place that smelled similarly.

Can you do that?

Re: A girl who gets gifts from birds

#55

Post by Varcht »

tbrake wrote: post #36
Varcht wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I blame this on the "DreamWorks Effect", animators have done such a good job giving animals human traits and emotions that millinials+ really can't help but be animists.

I used to have a similar theory but personification of animals has been a part of human storytelling since the beginning of time. I'm just unsure if modern CGI is any more compelling in forming lasting notions of animism than, say, Bambi was.

Even with all the down votes I wouldn't write it off. These generations spent huge amounts of time watching real looking animals behave as humans while their brains were still developing.

Re: A girl who gets gifts from birds

#57

Post by dchichkov »

lloydde wrote: post #29
mxfh wrote: post #4

There already exists an automated exploit for this behavior: Joshua Klein's Crow Machine: https://www.josh.is/crow-machine/ see also: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=470840

I stopped being mesmerized by TED talks after reading http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/12/magazine/12letters-t-CORRE... . I was further disappointed that the Ted talk webpage was not updated after that development.

Er. So does it work or not on wild crows? This article implies that the study on wild crows hadn't been done.

Re: A girl who gets gifts from birds

#58

Post by metaphorm »

Udo wrote: post #45

Whenever someone asserts that mammalian-equivalent intelligence is incredibly unlikely to arise twice, I like to point towards very intelligent and social birds, like crows - who are capable of performing advanced mental feats without a neocortex .

nature rarely does anything just once. if it can happen once it can almost certainly happen more than once, and almost certainly does happen more than once.

Re: A girl who gets gifts from birds

#59

Post by MollyR »

discardorama wrote: post #39
Varcht wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I blame this on the "DreamWorks Effect", animators have done such a good job giving animals human traits and emotions that millinials+ really can't help but be animists.

Conversely, I think Christians (for one) do not like the idea of animals having "human traits", because it goes against their core mythology, which says that God created man in His image. If animals also started showing human traits, then Man isn't so special anymore, is he? Edited: I'm being downvoted, but this was the exact reasoning given to me by a rather devout Christian; and it seemed to make sense. I'm agnosti…

Is this really a christian issue though ? I have friends who are hindu's, atheists, muslims, and buddhists, who intellectually seem okay with animals having human traits, but in the day to day pretty heavily deny animals having human traits ex. chickens. I guess it's cause people like to eat chickens, and don't want to feel bad ? I don't know

Re: A girl who gets gifts from birds

#60

Post by Panoramix »

lloydde wrote: post #29
mxfh wrote: post #4

There already exists an automated exploit for this behavior: Joshua Klein's Crow Machine: https://www.josh.is/crow-machine/ see also: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=470840

I stopped being mesmerized by TED talks after reading http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/12/magazine/12letters-t-CORRE... . I was further disappointed that the Ted talk webpage was not updated after that development.

How does TED fits in all of this?
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