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Orangutans are the only great apes besides humans to ‘talk’ about the past

sciencemag.org

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Re: Orangutans are the only great apes besides humans to ‘talk’ about the past

#81

Post by vbuwivbiu »

subroutine wrote: post #62
vbuwivbiu wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

why not ? What's to say that mental computations can't come in discrete units ? Maybe communication about the past is a self-contained computation that can evolve independently in brain networks as diverse as those of bees, orangutans and humans

It's not impossible, just highly improbable given everything we know about population genetics and behavioral neuroscience. It seems their claim is based on a single behavior that was selected because they observed it during field study and found it interesting. They confirmed the behavior in their experiment; this itself would have been an interesting report. To make a Science paper out of it though, it needed to be…

and I guess delayed signalling implies mental time travel and consciousness, which being special and mysterious to us implies an expensive process - but maybe consciousness isn't expensive, and maybe it can be of only certain discrete things (like whatever bees might be conscious of).

Dogs like yours are undoubtedly conscious.

Re: Orangutans are the only great apes besides humans to ‘talk’ about the past

#82

Post by nicoburns »

johnchristopher wrote: post #77
nicoburns wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really? What word would you use to describe a baby (or androgynous looking person) whose gender you weren't sure of?

Most likely I would try to dance around it or find a different way to convey my thoughts (like for any other thing I couldn't express clearly) or use `it` because in my first language (french) `il` is the default pronoun for a baby (`il a faim ton bébé ?`) while thinking something's off and ask the person to forgive my blunder. I would certainly not used something like `is they a boy ?` though.

In english there are two ways to refer to a person of unknown gender. "it" and "they". Of a baby you could say:

"Is it a boy or a girl?" or "Are they are a boy or a girl?"

Both are perfectly correct and common, but "it" sounds impersonal and as such can be a bit rude.

Re: Orangutans are the only great apes besides humans to ‘talk’ about the past

#83

Post by progressiveweb »

subroutine wrote: post #20

Puts on critic hat The article is making a claim that can be summarized as... the cognitive capacity to share with conspecifics something learned more than 120 seconds ago, is unique to humans and orangutans They also inform you that bees have this capacity. That should be enough to make anyone skeptical. It seems like they identified a particular behavior unique among apes to Orangutans - suppressing vocalization in…

Your argument that because bees display a similar behavior, that it's grounds to invalidate the credibility the people conducting this study of Orangutan's cognitive abilities is based on conjecture. You are conflating a reference to another intelligent species as evidence to support a counter view to a commonly agreed upon advanced cognitive capabilities of the Orangutan.

A previous study shows Orangutans do indeed have excellent memories and are able to communicate with humans using commonly agreed upon visual symbols. Long past the 120 seconds.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kwslHICR7K4

side-note: I feel that often, parent's comment gets a lot of likes, not for the validity of the argument but rather being contrarian for the sake of it. It's troubling because often it appears that they are providing commentary on an area totally unfamiliar and outside the usual field of expertise like engineering. Instead what I see is erroneously inferring logic based on the specific pieces mentioned without taking account in to the larger picture. These scientific studies are conducted not one off but to support previous widely held beliefs by the scientific community with vastly more focused experience on their topic of research, just wish that HN folks would give them a more credit and practice modesty. Some people on HN don't even bother reading journals or studies being posted here, instead they just blindly hop on the bandwagon with serious holes in the argument.

Re: Orangutans are the only great apes besides humans to ‘talk’ about the past

#84

Post by dmos62 »

always_good wrote: post #47
dmos62 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that we, as a civilization, don't really have the infrastructure (habit?) to talk about language i.e. look at it as technology, much less modify it. There's people creating artificial languages, which is really cool, but there's no obvious way to apply that in a mainstream way. Then again, if someone were to start using English in a different way, it might catch on. He would just have to optimize his changes…

We easily treat language as a malleable device. Just look in literature or internet subcultures, but you can see it in day-to-day life if you think about it. You probably do it, too. The idea and exercise of this is so ubiquitous that I think you're blind to it, like when people suggest there is no American culture.

You missed my point. I elaborated in this comment [0]. I'd call the malleability you're talking about cosmetics in comparison. The examples I gave are human-centricity and sexism embedded in the very way we refer to objects.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18468142

Re: Orangutans are the only great apes besides humans to ‘talk’ about the past

#85

Post by dmos62 »

liftbigweights wrote: post #39
dmos62 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I actually mean the even more general usage. The English vocabulary of objects is hierarchical: he, she, it are the major categories. Male and female humans fall under the first two. All other objects under "it". Not long ago even children were "it"s, I believe. Not certain about English, but certainly in some other languages. That exerts a lot of ideology on communication, which has far-reaching effects. Simple exam…

> Male and female humans fall under the first two. No. Male and female anything fall under the first two. For example, when we talk about our dog, we say "He's a good boy". People use he or she for animals too. > Not long ago even children were "it"s, I believe. We use it for 'gender neutral'. For example, when my sister was pregnant, everyone used 'it' to refer to the baby. "I can't wait for it to be born". "I wonde…

I'm not sure what you meant by people having agendas.

Do you agree that the English language imposes an opinion about what's important and what kind of categories of objects there are in the world? That's what I'm saying. English is just an example. The principle of looking at human language as a tool is the same for all languages, so if it's your native tongue don't be offended.

To restate what I said, why are there these three top-most categories -- he, she, it? Is that ideal? How cognisant are we of the effects of this choice?

Re: Orangutans are the only great apes besides humans to ‘talk’ about the past

#86

Post by clarry »

netcan wrote: post #55
subroutine wrote: post #20

Puts on critic hat The article is making a claim that can be summarized as... the cognitive capacity to share with conspecifics something learned more than 120 seconds ago, is unique to humans and orangutans They also inform you that bees have this capacity. That should be enough to make anyone skeptical. It seems like they identified a particular behavior unique among apes to Orangutans - suppressing vocalization in…

Social insects have a way of spoiling intelligence tests. The mirror test is a good example. To recognize yourself in mirror, you need to understand that you are a person. Not many animals recognize themselves: apes, some ravens, elephants dolphins... all usual suspects known to be intellegnt. Give them a mirror and once they figure it out they spend the next hour making faces and checking out their own ass. Mark the…

> Give them a mirror and once they figure it out they spend the next hour making faces and checking out their own ass.

If you've good links, I'd be curious to see this.

Re: Orangutans are the only great apes besides humans to ‘talk’ about the past

#87

Post by creep »

Kapow wrote: post #67
subroutine wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, I'll ask - is a bird or a honey bee more intelligent? Before you answer, let me just say a few things... Pound-for-pound honey bees are indeed impressive. I actually didn't know all of those things, so thank you for sharing. Since I am no bee expert, I can only offer general principles. But yeah, that's a lot of fancy behaviors crammed into just ~1 million neurons; great optimization. However, with so few neurons…

> the ones making nests near urban areas were incorporating a lot of colorful man-made trinkets they scavenged from the big city to woo the ladies (which I think suggests some level of flexibility). If they avoided man-made objects, that would indicate that they're smart enough to tell the difference. They're just grabbing any object they find that stands out. If anything, that implies less intelligence.

>If they avoided man-made objects, that would indicate that they're smart enough to tell the difference.

Perhaps bower birds don't give a fuck if the object is man-made or not?

Ignoring vs not ignoring man-made objects could indicate a lot of things. Maybe ignoring man-made objects is an indication of instinctual fear, which would imply less adaptability and therefore less intelligence?

Re: Orangutans are the only great apes besides humans to ‘talk’ about the past

#88

Post by sjeohp »

AstralStorm wrote: post #69
netcan wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Social insects have a way of spoiling intelligence tests. The mirror test is a good example. To recognize yourself in mirror, you need to understand that you are a person. Not many animals recognize themselves: apes, some ravens, elephants dolphins... all usual suspects known to be intellegnt. Give them a mirror and once they figure it out they spend the next hour making faces and checking out their own ass. Mark the…

Getting how the mirror works is different from recognizing the object in the mirror as the image of yourself. The test has come trouble differentiating between the two. E.g. the ant might perceive the mirrored marked ant as another ant which would reasonably well fool this test.

They controlled for that using transparent glass with real ants on the other side.

https://www.udocz.com/read/are-ants-capable-of-self-recognit...

Re: Orangutans are the only great apes besides humans to ‘talk’ about the past

#89

Post by ginsu »

AstralStorm wrote: post #73
jobigoud wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Egg was first by millions of years.

Do you mean "cell" which is neither egg (which is a specific specialized kind of a cell - reproductive) nor chicken?

Well, the cellular specialization arose long before amphibians emerged from bodies of water, and amphibians laid eggs long before birds evolved, eventually branching out into any species of chicken.

Re: Orangutans are the only great apes besides humans to ‘talk’ about the past

#90

Post by subroutine »

vbuwivbiu wrote: post #81
subroutine wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not impossible, just highly improbable given everything we know about population genetics and behavioral neuroscience. It seems their claim is based on a single behavior that was selected because they observed it during field study and found it interesting. They confirmed the behavior in their experiment; this itself would have been an interesting report. To make a Science paper out of it though, it needed to be…

and I guess delayed signalling implies mental time travel and consciousness, which being special and mysterious to us implies an expensive process - but maybe consciousness isn't expensive, and maybe it can be of only certain discrete things (like whatever bees might be conscious of). Dogs like yours are undoubtedly conscious.

Yea, I agree. It's plausible. To clarify, I'm not at all saying bees aren't capable of conveying learned information. My position is that you, me, my dog, birds, bees, orangutans... we all seem to have this capacity. In fact, it seems more like a ubiquitous capacity, than a uniquely human capacity.

The authors of this paper don't agree though; instead they are promulgating the idea that "Orangutans are the only great apes besides humans to ‘talk’ about the past". Which directly implies that Chimps and Bonobos never refer to learned information in their conspecific communications. Maybe they don't engage in delayed warning calls after exposure to a predator, for whatever adaptive reason. Nevertheless, I'd bet the farm Chimps refer to episodic or declarative memories is some way/shape/form in some instances of communication (and I'll double down, given the criteria is only 2-minutes elapsed time since the referenced event took place).

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