Crows possess higher intelligence long thought a primarily human attribute • Hacker News Board

Re: Crows possess higher intelligence long thought a primarily human attribute

#91

Post by guerrilla » Thu, Sep 24, 2020, 10:24 PM UTC

TeMPOraL wrote: post #58

guerrilla wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

See, there's your arrogance again. They may have no interest in doing so or anything leading up to it and desire is not a measure of intelligence.

Occam's razor suggests that "not capable" is a better explanation than "not interested in", when considering things that are clearly an immediate and strong benefit to a life form.

Then you must be fundamentally and essentially "not capable" of masonry since that's a much simpler explanation than your lack of motivation and opportunity.

Re: Crows possess higher intelligence long thought a primarily human attribute

#92

Post by SonOfLilit » Thu, Sep 24, 2020, 10:25 PM UTC

sosuke wrote: post #64

SonOfLilit wrote: post #18

Hopefully someone in the field will read this and be able to answer my question: I've spent a lot of time googling research about animal intelligence, and I now know a bunch of things intelligent animals can do, but I have no idea where their limits are, what they can't do. Everything published uses such... nonflexible tasks. If we're trying to measure general intelligence, why isn't anybody trying to teach corvids,…

Sounds like you've come up with a cool personal project.

I'd like to build it. But having an animal intelligence researcher consulting would be very helpful...

Re: Crows possess higher intelligence long thought a primarily human attribute

#93

Post by spideymans » Thu, Sep 24, 2020, 10:26 PM UTC

liability wrote: post #72

spideymans wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would our physical abilities not play a role in our ability to "rule" the world? We're relatively large animals, blessed with arms, finger, thumbs and a remarkable degree of physical dexterity. These physical abilities collectively enable us to physically manipulate the world. Or in other words, if dolphins had arms and thumbs (or generally any physical attributes that allows them to manipulate their environment as h…

Besides lacking thumbs, dolphins would also have a pretty hard time harnessing fire as a tool. This probably truncates their tech tree severely.

It would truncate the human tech tree. It's anybody's guess what a Dolphin-based tech tree would look like, given their environmental constraints.

Re: Crows possess higher intelligence long thought a primarily human attribute

#94

Post by JackFr » Thu, Sep 24, 2020, 10:26 PM UTC

cassalian wrote: post #7

> crows know what they know and can ponder the content of their own minds, a manifestation of higher intelligence and analytical thought long believed the sole province of humans and a few other higher mammals. I've always found the common thought that only humans and a select few of other animals are the only ones that posses higher intelligence to be incredibly arrogant of our species. Why wouldn't they have higher…

Consider the Turing Test, not as a goal for AI, but rather the working definition of intelligence. Put another way, game knows game.

Re: Crows possess higher intelligence long thought a primarily human attribute

#95

Post by ummonk » Thu, Sep 24, 2020, 10:27 PM UTC

novok wrote: post #20

cassalian wrote: post #7

> crows know what they know and can ponder the content of their own minds, a manifestation of higher intelligence and analytical thought long believed the sole province of humans and a few other higher mammals. I've always found the common thought that only humans and a select few of other animals are the only ones that posses higher intelligence to be incredibly arrogant of our species. Why wouldn't they have higher…

Humans were effective in their intelligence and rule the world with it, no other animal has shown anything approaching something like that. You judge them by their results.

Eh, I'd argue beavers come close, especially when compared with paleolithic humans.

Re: Crows possess higher intelligence long thought a primarily human attribute

#96

Post by notahacker » Thu, Sep 24, 2020, 10:28 PM UTC

snazz wrote: post #49

missedthecue wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The specifics of jumbo jet manufacture really has nothing to do with my point. The point of my comment is that there is a very evident and very clear discrepancy between human intelligence and animal intelligence. It's always fun to watch a clever squirrel find its way into a bird feeder, a cunning fox outsmart a rabbit, or a curious monkey recognize himself in the mirror. These are signs of sentience, sure, but all…

Building anything significant requires a relatively high level of dexterity, does it not? Even if crows could figure out how to build and operate tools that would allow them to build significant physical structures and objects, their bodies are not well-suited to doing so.

Birds might lack the physique to use human tools, but they have plenty of dexterity when it comes to building nests. They just seem to have relatively little interest in using that dexterity to build things which are not nests

Re: Crows possess higher intelligence long thought a primarily human attribute

#97

Post by outworlder » Thu, Sep 24, 2020, 10:29 PM UTC

novok wrote: post #20

cassalian wrote: post #7

> crows know what they know and can ponder the content of their own minds, a manifestation of higher intelligence and analytical thought long believed the sole province of humans and a few other higher mammals. I've always found the common thought that only humans and a select few of other animals are the only ones that posses higher intelligence to be incredibly arrogant of our species. Why wouldn't they have higher…

Humans were effective in their intelligence and rule the world with it, no other animal has shown anything approaching something like that. You judge them by their results.

> Humans were effective in their intelligence

Well, another thing humans have going for them is hands

Re: Crows possess higher intelligence long thought a primarily human attribute

#98

Post by armatav » Thu, Sep 24, 2020, 10:29 PM UTC

summitsummit wrote: post #87

RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But this type of reasoning went out the window, as soon as humans started killing dolphins in large numbers (see tuna nets), and the dolphins had no way to defend themselves or otherwise dissuade humans from doing that. This is one of the big lessons in history. The civilizations that use their intelligence to make tools and weapons end up screwing civilizations that "muck about, having a good time".

what would be the next trump card above intelligence for survival/evolution/procreation/whatever the "goal" is?

Omnipotence. Or something approaching it.

Re: Crows possess higher intelligence long thought a primarily human attribute

#99

Post by TeMPOraL » Thu, Sep 24, 2020, 10:30 PM UTC

guerrilla wrote: post #91

TeMPOraL wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Occam's razor suggests that "not capable" is a better explanation than "not interested in", when considering things that are clearly an immediate and strong benefit to a life form.

Then you must be fundamentally and essentially "not capable" of masonry since that's a much simpler explanation than your lack of motivation and opportunity.

I absolutely am capable of masonry, I just don't do it much because I'm also capable of getting (by using money) someone else who's capable and willing to do it for me. Same applies to just about any other thing anyone outsources in their lives, but the end result is the same - the advanced work gets done. Other animals don't demonstrate any of that.

Re: Crows possess higher intelligence long thought a primarily human attribute

#100

Post by Eyas » Thu, Sep 24, 2020, 10:32 PM UTC

RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #79

derg wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't necessarily completely disagree here, but I'm always thinking of the Douglas Adams quote in Hitchhiker's Guide on this: "For instance, on the planet Earth, man had always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much—the wheel, New York, wars and so on—whilst all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But conversely, the dolphins had alw…

But this type of reasoning went out the window, as soon as humans started killing dolphins in large numbers (see tuna nets), and the dolphins had no way to defend themselves or otherwise dissuade humans from doing that. This is one of the big lessons in history. The civilizations that use their intelligence to make tools and weapons end up screwing civilizations that "muck about, having a good time".

That's uncomfortably close to Eurocentric claims of superiority that point to their colonization and exploitation of other countries in the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth century.

I don't necessarily buy it. A pacifist civilization might be "dominated" by a violent civilization, but they might still choose death over becoming violent themselves.