I thought this was an awesome article and it is scientifically supported!
http://www.smh.com.au/world/zoo-chimp-planned-rock-attacks-on-visitors-20090310-8tkv.html
Especially in comparison with the article about a monkey in the religious thread. Wonder whether there is a "link" between the two?
A shortcut to the thread where the temple monkey was discussed is below:
http://www.frihost.com/forums/vt-103315.html
Perhaps the monkey also "planned" its attack on the demolision squad? It wasn't a monkey - it was a chimpanzee. Monkey =/= Ape.
This article doesn't amaze me much because there have been plenty of cases where chimps have had wars against different family groups and using tools isn't new either. Many people underestimate the miraculous abilities of non-human animals to the point where calling someone an "ape" or "animal" is an insult when in reality human-beings are animals and apes.
Some more pretty cool similar information can be found in these youtube.com videos:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vSgLQ4yI6dI
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UDGBq04WxlY
The first video is about chimps in the Congo using tools while the second is about gorillas in the Congo using tools. What's really interesting is that different chimps/apes from different parts of the Congo jungle use DIFFERENT tools, which shows different evolution at its finest. | Afaceinthematrix wrote: |
| It wasn't a monkey - it was a chimpanzee. Monkey =/= Ape. |
Are you referring to the Religious Forum thread about the monkey at the Indian temple - that is the one I was referring to as a monkey? I thought that was a monkey. The one in the article that was enclosed was a chimpanzee viz Zoo chimp in the heading of the thread.Oh I am sorry. I just read the article and skimmed through the post, where I saw the word "monkey" 3 times and (incorrectly) assumed you were calling a chimpanzee a monkey.
| Afaceinthematrix wrote: |
This article doesn't amaze me much because there have been plenty of cases where chimps have had wars against different family groups and using tools isn't new either. Many people underestimate the miraculous abilities of non-human animals to the point where calling someone an "ape" or "animal" is an insult when in reality human-beings are animals and apes.
|
It isn't limited to apes, mammals, or even vertebrates either.
I know of one species of spider that has been known to make and carry out plans as well. | ocalhoun wrote: |
It isn't limited to apes, mammals, or even vertebrates either.
I know of one species of spider that has been known to make and carry out plans as well. |
That sounds pretty fascinating. What species are they? | ocalhoun wrote: |
| Afaceinthematrix wrote: |
This article doesn't amaze me much because there have been plenty of cases where chimps have had wars against different family groups and using tools isn't new either. Many people underestimate the miraculous abilities of non-human animals to the point where calling someone an "ape" or "animal" is an insult when in reality human-beings are animals and apes.
|
It isn't limited to apes, mammals, or even vertebrates either.
I know of one species of spider that has been known to make and carry out plans as well. |
Yes. It isn't. I just brought up apes because this article is about apes. Apes also, as far as my limited knowledge of zoology is aware of, does this at the most complex level, though. | deanhills wrote: |
| ocalhoun wrote: | It isn't limited to apes, mammals, or even vertebrates either.
I know of one species of spider that has been known to make and carry out plans as well. |
That sounds pretty fascinating. What species are they? |
... :(
I forgot the species name, and it isn't easy to find.
It's green colored, doesn't make webs, eats other spiders, lives in South America, and shows evidence of planning assaults on a the web of a different species of spider, then carrying out the plans. (It will sometimes find the web of the other spider from an unfavorable direction, then plan what to do about it, then travel a very wide path around the web (often far out of visual range) to come at it from the right direction, which shows that when it first found the web, it planned to come at it from the other direction, and kept that plan in mind while making its way there. Sometimes it will climb high above, and then lower itself down on a strand in order to surprise the other spider.) It also does some interesting things when luring the other spider close: it will shake the web just like a trapped bug, and the rhythm that it shakes is determined by the species of spider its trying to attract and what that other species likes best to eat.That is a very interesting topic. It's wierd to think that an Ape can basically think like us. And i think it would be great if there was a video. I want to see him pelt humans lol.
| ocalhoun wrote: |
| deanhills wrote: | | ocalhoun wrote: | It isn't limited to apes, mammals, or even vertebrates either.
I know of one species of spider that has been known to make and carry out plans as well. |
That sounds pretty fascinating. What species are they? |
... 
I forgot the species name, and it isn't easy to find.
It's green colored, doesn't make webs, eats other spiders, lives in South America, and shows evidence of planning assaults on a the web of a different species of spider, then carrying out the plans. (It will sometimes find the web of the other spider from an unfavorable direction, then plan what to do about it, then travel a very wide path around the web (often far out of visual range) to come at it from the right direction, which shows that when it first found the web, it planned to come at it from the other direction, and kept that plan in mind while making its way there. Sometimes it will climb high above, and then lower itself down on a strand in order to surprise the other spider.) It also does some interesting things when luring the other spider close: it will shake the web just like a trapped bug, and the rhythm that it shakes is determined by the species of spider its trying to attract and what that other species likes best to eat. |
WOW It's interesting that it can determine the species of spider. Can you give me a link to a website? | manlear wrote: |
WOW It's interesting that it can determine the species of spider. Can you give me a link to a website? |
If I could find a website about it, I'd be able to give you the species name, but I forgot what the species is called (it only has a latin name, no common name), so I couldn't find any websites about it in google.I tried looking it up... i cried. I couldn't find it.
There is a lot of evidence that several different varieties of animal can plan - which is actually a remarkable thing when you think of the level of intelligence required to make a plan - but there is also a lot of evidence that this ability is extremely restricted.
i am pretty sure that this is not the same spider ocalhoun was talking about: but sit-and-wait predator spiders do exhibit behaviours that look planned. They often do nothing when juicy prey walks right in front of them, preferring to wait until they can strike prey that is alone or only in the company of other insects that pose no threat to the spider.
But i am constantly warning people not to anthropomorphize. Just because a behaviour looks planned... or just because if it were performed by a human it would be planned... that doesn't mean the animal planned. Often in nature, animals are so precisely tuned to a certain pattern of stimulus and behaviour that even though that pattern seems crazy complex to us - to the point that we can't imagine doing it without thinking - it really is done with no intelligence whatsoever in any sense that we understand.
For example, many species of ape have been observed to not only plan, but to scheme. They do things like steal food or mates from the alpha when he isn't looking, or even distract the alpha so other apes can steal food or mates (!!!). They take food and then rearrange food piles to hide the fact that food was taken, play innocent when a crime is discovered by the alpha... they even have political structures, such as alliances... surely this means they have to be intelligent, right?!?!
Well... no, not quite.
What studies have found is that this behaviour is quite automatic and entirely unintelligent. And, in fact, you can turn it off simply by removing the key element: competition. When you put two apes - an alpha male and a beta - in a situation where they can only get food by begging an experimenter, they seem positively brilliant. They will only beg when the experimenter can see them, and if the experimenter is looking away they will just sit and wait. But! Take the alpha away and the beta turns stupid: it begs even when the experimenter is turned away... even when the experimenter is in another room with a bag over his head the ape still begs! It no longer seems to understand that it is wasting its energy to beg when the begging can't be seen. But again, reintroduce the alpha, and the beta gets smart again.
DON'T ANTHROPOMORPHIZE ANIMAL BEHAVIOUR! Just because it looks like human intelligence and planning skills, that doesn't mean that it is.
Conversely, I wonder how much of what we regard as being "intelligent" is really of the ape in ourselves and animal? We act in exactly the same way? We usually plot and plan in secret. We do better with plots and plans in company of peers and do it behind the back of our supervisors when they are watching us. Is that animal/human behaviour?
| Indi wrote: |
- it really is done with no intelligence whatsoever in any sense that we understand.
|
Many animals are smarter than we think.
The basic problem is a subconscious assumption of superiority in each individual.
If you start with the assumption that you are the very peak of perfection, then it follows that the more different something or someone is from you, the less perfect he/she/it is. (This also causes things like racism.)
This, I believe, is the root cause of thinking animals are (far) less intelligent than they are. They may think in different ways though, and since we're unable to recognize it as identical to the way we think, we assume it is inferior (or more inferior than it really is).
Another facet of the problem is applying a human scale to a very different intelligence.
As an allegory, suppose we were trying to determine which is more powerful: a heavy-duty pickup truck or a Ferrari. Being the race car drivers we are, we naturally assume that the Ferrari is far more powerful, because of it's much faster acceleration: we don't consider the truck's much larger towing capacity because that doesn't factor in to our idea of 'power'. Now, in an ideal world, we could easily shed our preconceptions about what power was, and use a more universal measure, like torque or horsepower, and we'd find that the two are actually much closer than we think.
Just like the race car drivers used to thinking of power only in terms of acceleration, we humans are used to thinking of intelligence only in human terms of intelligence. There may be other types that are nearly as good, or perhaps even better, that we can't recognize because they are so alien to us that we don't recognize them as intelligence.
Along the same subject, I often wonder if we were to come into contact with an extra-terrestrial intelligence, even if 'they' had superior capabilities, would we assume that they were less intelligent because we couldn't relate to they type of intelligence they had? | ocalhoun wrote: |
| Another facet of the problem is applying a human scale to a very different intelligence. |
I think humans are already doing that to one another. We apply our own scales to other people subconsciously without thinking about it. No two people think alike, and some really differ radically, and with our preoccupation with our egos and what we consider to be right, we sometimes miss out. We are perhaps much less intelligent than we think we are in a million ways.
| ocalhoun wrote: |
| Along the same subject, I often wonder if we were to come into contact with an extra-terrestrial intelligence, even if 'they' had superior capabilities, would we assume that they were less intelligent because we couldn't relate to they type of intelligence they had? |
I have a feeling we would be open-minded about this. Much more open-minded than we are of one another, and of animals, plants and the environment in general.
I like your point of view about animals. In another thread tonight someone made a statement that dinosaurs could not communicate with one another when they were around. Think we as a human species (and I am definitely included in this) have so little knowledge of the animal and plant species of the world, especially when we take that position as being superior to it. | ocalhoun wrote: |
| The basic problem is a subconscious assumption of superiority in each individual. |
Oh, is it? ^_^; i am curious as to how you were able to come to that conclusion without taking into account how people come to the opinion that animals are not intelligent.
| ocalhoun wrote: |
If you start with the assumption that you are the very peak of perfection, then it follows that the more different something or someone is from you, the less perfect he/she/it is. (This also causes things like racism.)
This, I believe, is the root cause of thinking animals are (far) less intelligent than they are. They may think in different ways though, and since we're unable to recognize it as identical to the way we think, we assume it is inferior (or more inferior than it really is). |
i am not aware of any animal behaviour researchers, comparative neuropsychologists or even zookeepers that start with the assumption that they or humans in general are the very peak of perfection. That seems like a particularly ridiculous assumption for any rational person to make. In fact, most biologists are pretty blasι in their writings about dismissing humans as big, dumb animals and pretty much nothing more.
Rather than simply saying "anyone who says animals are not intelligent are simply saying that because they are making a subconscious assumption of human superiority", and then just dismissing them all, perhaps you should consider why these people that study animal intelligence seriously (as opposed to people that simply collect anecdotal evidence) say that animals aren't all that intelligent.
i'll explain why.
What these people do is break down observed behaviours that look intelligent to find out what kind of intelligence they would really require if they were actually intelligent. Now this does not require "thinking of intelligence only in human terms of intelligence" in any way. It's as simple as this: assume that chimp really was planning its attacks on people. What would that require in terms of intelligence? Well, just consider the thought "i will throw these rocks at people later"... in order to think that, the chimp would have to understand "i" vs. the rest of the world, how to identify the people as targets, persistence of objects out of their perception, and temporal dissociation ("later"). It doesn't matter if their mode of thinking is completely alien or not... they can't plan an "attack" "later" if they don't understand later and that other beings feel pain (just as a start).
What the researchers do next is test each of these capabilities separately... do chimps understand "later"? are they aware that other beings feel (and thus, can feel pain when attacked)? etc.
And what they have found is that they don't understand many of these things. Some, they do, but most they don't. Thus, it is impossible for chimps to actually intelligently "plan" an attack like the one described in the article. They just don't have the mental tools, and we can show it. This is not about human arrogance or blindly assuming that if they don't think the same way we do, then they don't think. This is simple logic: if you claim they are planning, then they must understand "later"... you can't avoid that conclusion... and we can show experimentally that they don't.
Ah, but correction! And this is why i said: "in any sense that we understand". It was not an admission that maybe chimps are smart in some unspecified way that we don't understand. It was picked out of a context where i was trying to explain why animals can appear intelligent in certain circumstances. Animals (and humans! in some instances, and i can show you, too!) have what some people describe as "laser beam intelligence". They are like precisely tuned machine components where, if you slot them into their precise location on the machine they look positively brilliant... but outside of that one particular application... they're pretty dumb. Like a $300 computer graphics card: plugged into a computer and properly installed it is incredibly smart at optimizing my graphics output... but sitting here on my desk it's about as intelligent as a rock (just a lot more expensive). And oddly, the same functionality used to optimize graphics (matrix transforms) has other applications... but the graphics card can only do graphics... even when the other task requires the same skills!
That's how it is with animals: plugged in to their evolved habitats, they perform like little geniuses... apparently planning, scheming, and whatever else they have to do to survive. Take them out of areas they have evolved to operate in, and give them tasks that require the same skills that they demonstrated so beautifully in the wild... and they fail. Miserably. They look downright stupid.
They are like the graphics card in that they're not really "thinking" about what they're doing... their biological machinery is just designed to make it happen... and happen well. But it only works in precisely the right conditions. Even when they are assigned a new task that requires the same skills, unless their biological machinery is activated correctly, they just sit there stupidly.
Animals are machines - biological machines, and extremely complex biological machines, but ultimately just machines. Humans are machines, too, but they are unique in that they are the only animals in the world that have certain mental capabilities (particularly, pattern recognition and transference) that allow them to rewrite their own software (within certain limitations). Animals can look intelligent because they are very complex machines, but they are still just dumb machines without any intelligence about what they are doing... other than "laser beam intelligence", which is not really intelligence at all, it's just us anthropomorphizing their adaptivity.
Bottom line: animals are not intelligent. The few species that come closest (some primates and dolphins) are close... but still easy to show as incredibly stupid. They don't have mental faculties required to do things "intelligently". This is not a statement of arrogance, because no part of it has anything to do with "thinking like us". It is simply based on what atoms of awareness are required to actually do a task, which can be objectively identified and tested... no opinions - superior or otherwise - required.
-----------------
Incidentally, you used analogies to explain why you think that humans are simply not "thinking like animals", and thus cannot correctly conclude anything about animal intelligence. i will correct your analogy:
This is not about race car drivers and truck drivers defining "power" differently (which, by the way... is not a really good analogy because both examples are power, which is a universal measure, just applied differently... you've basically got two people talking about P = m a v... with one interested in maximizing m and the other interested in maximizing a... horsepower is a unit, not a property), it is about race car drivers asking if trucks even have drivers or if they're just automatically moving down the road brainlessly. Without actually seeing a truck driver, how could a race car driver find out if trucks have drivers? Easy: figure out something that a truck could not do without a driver, and try to make it happen. If the truck can do something that requires a driver... then you know trucks have drivers.
Now, note that none of that has anything to do with race car drivers saying that truck drivers aren't race car drivers, or are not as good a driver as a race car driver. This is not about arrogance. When i say "figure out something the truck can't do without a driver", i am not expecting them to say "drive a race car?", i am expecting them to come up with something that no machine can do, but that anything that can be remotely considered to be called a "driver" (even if not a race car driver) can do. | Indi wrote: |
| ocalhoun wrote: | | The basic problem is a subconscious assumption of superiority in each individual. |
Oh, is it? ^_^; i am curious as to how you were able to come to that conclusion without taking into account how people come to the opinion that animals are not intelligent.
|
Certainly.
When looking at examples of how humans generally tend to view anyone or anything different than themselves (to include other races, other gender, people with deformities/differences, other species, et cetera) I noticed a common trend.
1: The more difference there was between the two, the more likely they were to regard the other as inferior.
2: The more similarities there were between the two, the more likely they were to regard the other as an equal, and complement them.
I pondered to myself what could be the cause of this...
I decided it must be because they saw themselves as near-perfect, which would explain the way they saw differences as deficiencies.
But, most of them don't consciously believe themselves to be perfect!
Therefore, I figured it must be a part of the subconscious psychological makeup. Something they aren't aware of, but which affects the way the perceive things.
Hence, the subconscious assumption of self-perfection theory.
(I also think that this may be one reason why people are driven to rationalize actions and conditions that don't fit in with their conscious ideals of perfection.)
| Quote: |
That's how it is with animals: plugged in to their evolved habitats, they perform like little geniuses... apparently planning, scheming, and whatever else they have to do to survive. Take them out of areas they have evolved to operate in, and give them tasks that require the same skills that they demonstrated so beautifully in the wild... and they fail. Miserably. They look downright stupid.
|
Humans are pretty stupid when put into a situation they don't understand as well...
The animal mind might be to foreign to understand, even when it is put into an environment that we understand best.
I'll grant you that many animals are stupid, but I think we do often underestimate them.
| Quote: |
Incidentally, you used analogies to explain why you think that humans are simply not "thinking like animals", and thus cannot correctly conclude anything about animal intelligence. i will correct your analogy:
This is not about race car drivers and truck drivers defining "power" differently (which, by the way... is not a really good analogy because both examples are power, which is a universal measure, just applied differently... you've basically got two people talking about P = m a v... with one interested in maximizing m and the other interested in maximizing a... horsepower is a unit, not a property), it is about race car drivers asking if trucks even have drivers or if they're just automatically moving down the road brainlessly. Without actually seeing a truck driver, how could a race car driver find out if trucks have drivers? Easy: figure out something that a truck could not do without a driver, and try to make it happen. If the truck can do something that requires a driver... then you know trucks have drivers.
Now, note that none of that has anything to do with race car drivers saying that truck drivers aren't race car drivers, or are not as good a driver as a race car driver. This is not about arrogance. When i say "figure out something the truck can't do without a driver", i am not expecting them to say "drive a race car?", i am expecting them to come up with something that no machine can do, but that anything that can be remotely considered to be called a "driver" (even if not a race car driver) can do. |
Eh, that analogy didn't have anything to do with the intelligence of the driver, or the intelligence of the car with or without the driver in it, nor was it about weather or not trucks have drivers.
That was simply to give an example of how people could get so used to measuring something in one way, that they apply that measurement to everything equally, even when it isn't the most accurate comparison.
In it, power=intelligence, race car drivers=us, Ferrari=human, truck=animal, horsepower=normal human concept of measuring intelligence, torque=a different concept of measuring intelligence, p from the equation p=mav represents a universal measure of intelligence that could be used on both humans and other species with equally accurate conclusions. | ocalhoun wrote: |
When looking at examples of how humans generally tend to view anyone or anything different than themselves (to include other races, other gender, people with deformities/differences, other species, et cetera) I noticed a common trend.
1: The more difference there was between the two, the more likely they were to regard the other as inferior.
2: The more similarities there were between the two, the more likely they were to regard the other as an equal, and complement them.
I pondered to myself what could be the cause of this...
I decided it must be because they saw themselves as near-perfect, which would explain the way they saw differences as deficiencies.
But, most of them don't consciously believe themselves to be perfect!
Therefore, I figured it must be a part of the subconscious psychological makeup. Something they aren't aware of, but which affects the way the perceive things.
Hence, the subconscious assumption of self-perfection theory.
(I also think that this may be one reason why people are driven to rationalize actions and conditions that don't fit in with their conscious ideals of perfection.) |
So, let me see if understand your methodology here:
- Humans in general judge anything different to be inferior.
Probably true.
- The reason humans in general believe animals to be unintelligent is because they are different.
Possibly true, but i won't speculate. If it is true then it is certainly a bad reason to believe animals are unintelligent.
- You disagree with this conclusion, and think that animals are intelligent in some unspecified way.
Now, there is nothing wrong with disagreeing with the conclusion because it is the result of bad reasoning. You don't really have any reasoning for your conclusion either, but that's not a problem. Neither conclusion has any reasons for believing it, so you can pretty much take your pick.
- Scientists studying animal intelligence have concluded by experimentation that animals are unintelligent.
As i explained in great detail.
- You dismiss the scientific results.
Your reasoning for this: they reach the same conclusion that the general population reached by bad reasoning, thus their reasoning must be bad, too. Of course, that's not true, because unlike the general population, scientists carefully design their experiments to eliminate experimenter bias. So even if the experimenters were arrogant as all hell, it won't affect the results.
- Therefore, you conclude that animals are intelligent.
Is that about right?
| ocalhoun wrote: |
Humans are pretty stupid when put into a situation they don't understand as well...
The animal mind might be to foreign to understand, even when it is put into an environment that we understand best.
I'll grant you that many animals are stupid, but I think we do often underestimate them. |
Oh good grief, don't be ridiculous. ^_^; Humans are - by far - the most awesomely adaptive things in all of human knowledge: no other device, creature or anything is anywhere near as adaptive to new situations as human beings are. We started as plains hunters on African savannas, and now there is virtually nowhere on the planet where humans don't live quite comfortably (just about the only place where you won't find humans living is under the ocean, but we visit there with alarming frequency). The only time humans are stupid in the manner you suggest is when they panic. And, biologically, what happens then is the prefrontal cortex shuts down and the midbrain... also known as the animal brain... takes over. In other words, when humans turn stupid, what is actually happening is they are using the non-human part of their brain. Draw your own conclusions from that.
As i tried to explain - at great length - this is not simply a matter of animal brains being "foreign to understand". Everything science studies, more or less, is foreign to our understanding, at least at first. Do you think we "naturally" understand general relativity or structural mechanics? What we do to understand topics foreign to our understanding is break them down into parts we do understand and study by parts. i assume you accept that approach as perfectly valid everywhere else in human knowledge. Why not here?
And while it is almost certainly true that we underestimate animals the majority of the time, the key word there is estimate. You are estimating their intelligence. i quoted measurements, taken under experimental conditions. These people are not estimating animal intelligence. They are running tests to measure it.The article reminds me of one time when I visited the Los Angeles Zoo. I heard a commotion from the chimpanzees and when I looked over there, they were all hurling feces at the people. I was laughing my ass off and the time, but if I think about it they had to have planned it because of the large amount being thrown they probably had to have been saving and collecting the feces.
| Indi wrote: |
| These people are not estimating animal intelligence. They are running tests to measure it. |
I think our basic disagreement is about the accuracy of these scientific tests.
Yes, you can measure something very precisely, but if you measure it with the wrong scale, or measure it in only one dimension, you can get an inaccurate measurement.
Yes, humans are almost certainly the most intelligent species on the Earth, but some others could be closer than we think. | ocalhoun wrote: |
| Indi wrote: | | These people are not estimating animal intelligence. They are running tests to measure it. |
I think our basic disagreement is about the accuracy of these scientific tests.
Yes, you can measure something very precisely, but if you measure it with the wrong scale, or measure it in only one dimension, you can get an inaccurate measurement.
Yes, humans are almost certainly the most intelligent species on the Earth, but some others could be closer than we think. |
Like when you go to a doctor with a discomfort, and he chooses the tests you should have, and come to the conclusion that there is nothing wrong. Whereas if he had chosen a different test, that may or may not exist, he could have come up with evidence supporting the discomfort. The laboratories do not yet cover all the medical tests necessary for testing all of human beings' maladies. Only some, and then there is the human factor of a medical doctor choosing which tests he thinks matches your condition. He may miss one of the tests that should have been included, or that test may not be in existence. | ocalhoun wrote: |
| Indi wrote: | | These people are not estimating animal intelligence. They are running tests to measure it. |
I think our basic disagreement is about the accuracy of these scientific tests.
Yes, you can measure something very precisely, but if you measure it with the wrong scale, or measure it in only one dimension, you can get an inaccurate measurement.
Yes, humans are almost certainly the most intelligent species on the Earth, but some others could be closer than we think. |
No, our basic disagreement is due to the fact that you are not interested in the science at all. You have conclusions that you formed in advance of knowledge of any testing or experimentation, and even now, after being presented with those facts, you dismiss them with no rational explanation... just "i think", and "could be". The Earth "could be" flat, with faeries altering all of our readings and perceptions to trick us... but given the evidence, that is not a rational conclusion. The same goes for animal intelligence: animals could be far more intelligent than we normally think, and may even be far more intelligent than us, and just playing dumb to amuse themselves... but given the evidence, that is not a rational conclusion.
i say again, this is not a matter of measuring with the wrong scale, it is a simple matter of reasoning. If an animal is making an intelligent judgement - however it makes that judgement, and whatever that judgement is - it must have the tools for making that judgement. We can test for those tools. We did test for those tools. They ain't there.
We don't need to "think" about how close other species are to our own intelligence, we can simply test. Yes, some species are remarkably intelligent - some even come very, very close to the intelligence of human infants (humans develop some of their cognitive capabilities long after birth). But they're not really as intelligent as they look. They are very powerful organic computers, but they don't have anywhere near the kind of capability that we attribute to them when we anthropomorphize. | Indi wrote: |
- it must have the tools for making that judgement. We can test for those tools. We did test for those tools. They ain't there.
|
What if they were using different tools, other than the ones we knew about or knew how to test for?
Could we be wrong in assuming we know about all the 'tools' there are, or even that we have them all? | ocalhoun wrote: |
| Indi wrote: | - it must have the tools for making that judgement. We can test for those tools. We did test for those tools. They ain't there.
|
What if they were using different tools, other than the ones we knew about or knew how to test for?
Could we be wrong in assuming we know about all the 'tools' there are, or even that we have them all? |
Now you're straining the metaphor, because we're not actually talking about "tools", we're talking about capabilities.
For example, let's suppose someone claimed that a certain creature liked to hide in darkness and avoid the light because that's where they're safer. Now, in order for this to be true, the creature has to have a way to sense light and dark... because if they have no way to know the difference between light and dark, they can't possibly know whether they're in light or dark, or even which area is more preferable. And if they can't tell the difference between light and dark, they can't possibly feel safer in one or the other.
So, we test if they can tell the difference between light and dark. If they fail, then they clearly can't possibly be "preferring" dark areas over light areas, no matter how much they may look like it.
Now this is a pretty simplified example. In reality, we're not testing for something as blatant as vision, but for more complex psychological capabilities. For example - and i warn you, this is complex - if you want to claim that a monkey kisses up to people that can give it food, you test whether they are capable of being aware of whether the person is aware. So you stand an experimenter in a room with the monkey, and of course the monkey begs for food. Now you blindfold the experimenter... and the monkey still begs for food. In fact, you go to all kinds of ridiculous lengths to make sure that the experiment can't possibly be aware of the monkey... and that the monkey knows this... and the monkey still begs for food. Yet under the same conditions except with an alpha male monkey and not a human experimenter, the monkey will never eat food when it thinks the alpha male can see it, but will when it knows the alpha cannot.
The final conclusion from all this is that a monkey is not as smart as it looks. It has a very simple program that it learns by simple Pavlovian conditioning: see human, beg for food. Unlike with humans, it doesn't actually apply any "intelligence" to the problem... it doesn't think about what it's doing, or it would realize that it is wasting its time when the human simply can't see him. And we know that it understands when the human can or can't see him, because of the way it acts around the alpha monkey. It simply doesn't have the capability to understand empathetic perception - the ability of other creatures to perceive the way it does. Without that capability, it can't possibly do anything for you.
So even though it looks like it is thinking "if i dance for this human, i will get food", it really isn't. It is just running a simple, mindless program: "if see human then dance unless full or tired" (and possibly not even that complex!). Yet almost inevitably, every human that comes in front of this monkey and gets a dance will think, "Oh! It likes me!" or "Oh, it is performing for me!" and then give it a snack in reward (reinforcing the conditioning)... when nothing like that is happening at all. | Indi wrote: |
Now this is a pretty simplified example. In reality, we're not testing for something as blatant as vision, but for more complex psychological capabilities. For example - and i warn you, this is complex - if you want to claim that a monkey kisses up to people that can give it food, you test whether they are capable of being aware of whether the person is aware. So you stand an experimenter in a room with the monkey, and of course the monkey begs for food. Now you blindfold the experimenter... and the monkey still begs for food. In fact, you go to all kinds of ridiculous lengths to make sure that the experiment can't possibly be aware of the monkey... and that the monkey knows this... and the monkey still begs for food. Yet under the same conditions except with an alpha male monkey and not a human experimenter, the monkey will never eat food when it thinks the alpha male can see it, but will when it knows the alpha cannot.
|
Not really understanding how you can be sure that the monkey knows that the experimenter can't see, hear, or otherwise know that the monkey is begging...
At the risk of anthropomorphizing again, wouldn't a monkey in a laboratory environment already be very confused, and prone to overestimate a human's awareness of what's going on, what with being watched all the time, often without its knowledge?
If superior aliens captured me and ran similar tests, I'd find myself likely to work with the assumption that they knew about everything I did, even when hampered by things that I'd assume would keep a human from knowing what I was doing. | ocalhoun wrote: |
| Not really understanding how you can be sure that the monkey knows that the experimenter can't see, hear, or otherwise know that the monkey is begging... |
The monkey can tell when an alpha male can or can't see them stealing food. So they must know that a human can or can't see them begging in the same experimental set up.
They react properly in the first case because it is part of their natural programming - monkeys have to be aware of whether or not alphas are aware of them, and act accordingly, or they won't be able to pass their genes on. They don't react properly in the second case because it is outside of their natural programming - they don't need to know how to to dance for humans to pass their genes on - and the simplistic Pavlovian programming doesn't cover taking into account whether or not their sugar daddy is aware of them.
| ocalhoun wrote: |
| At the risk of anthropomorphizing again, wouldn't a monkey in a laboratory environment already be very confused, and prone to overestimate a human's awareness of what's going on, what with being watched all the time, often without its knowledge? |
There comes a point where you can take anthropomorphizing to the ridiculous level. ^_^; How would a monkey, fresh in from the wild, understand about covert surveillance (when even young human children don't!)?
The other thing to bear in mind is that i've just described one test, isolated from the entire body of knowledge, and not even in that great detail. Researchers have been studying animal intelligence for hundreds of years (although, admittedly, only with proper rigour for around half a century or so). Even without me explaining explicitly that they do it, doesn't it make sense to assume that they will control for these kinds of factors? Or do you sincerely believe the monkey is smarter than the experimenters? ^_^;
But, for the record, these same tests have been performed in field experiments, with the same results, so the laboratory itself isn't changing the results. Also, monkeys do treat humans the same as alpha monkeys in other tests - for example when an experimenter has forbidden a monkey from taking food, the monkey will take food when the experimenter isn't looking. This works because it is using the same natural mechanism - same program - as dealing with taking food from alpha male monkeys. So the monkeys clearly don't think humans are omniscient.
The reason why it breaks down is that there is no natural program for begging, so in order to beg, the monkey either has to do it with a newly installed program, or... by using its natural intelligence. If the monkey really is aware of what it is doing when it begs, then there's no reason for it to beg when the experimenter can't see them. And from other data, we know the monkey can understand when it is being seen and when it can't. Yet it begs... which shows it is not using any kind of reasoning to decide when to beg or not.
We don't need to understand how the monkey understands when it is being watched... we just know that it does (because of how it acts in other situations). We don't need to understand what the monkey thinks when it begs to know that there is no point to begging when it is not being watched. So, as i have been saying, this is not a matter of requiring human thinking patterns in the monkey. This is simply a matter of looking at what the monkey would need to be able to do in order to be doing something intelligently... and then testing to see if the monkey really can do that.
| ocalhoun wrote: |
| If superior aliens captured me and ran similar tests, I'd find myself likely to work with the assumption that they knew about everything I did, even when hampered by things that I'd assume would keep a human from knowing what I was doing. |
Yes, but you're a human, the monkey is not. Assuming that because you can do something, that the monkey can do it as well is - almost by definition - anthropomorphizing.
You could just as well say, "If I were living in the jungle, i would stay in the trees as much as possible because it's safer up there - less chance of being pounced by something. That's what monkeys do, and since my reason for staying in the trees is rational, the monkey must have reasoned it out, too."(Wouldn't a monkey 'fresh from the wild' either run away from or attack the experimenter, not beg? ^.^)
| Indi wrote: |
But, for the record, these same tests have been performed in field experiments, with the same results, so the laboratory itself isn't changing the results. Also, monkeys do treat humans the same as alpha monkeys in other tests - for example when an experimenter has forbidden a monkey from taking food, the monkey will take food when the experimenter isn't looking. This works because it is using the same natural mechanism - same program - as dealing with taking food from alpha male monkeys. So the monkeys clearly don't think humans are omniscient.
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Ah, that's all I needed though.
The only question remaining is, do we know that the monkey knows that the experimenter must be watching in order to give treats?
The case of the monkey is a little atypical anyway though, in that it is closely related to humans. I'd think we'd be more prone to misunderstand animals that were more different. If a monkey did think, it would probably think much the same way as a human, but something else, say, a bird, might be much different. | ocalhoun wrote: |
| but something else, say, a bird, might be much different. |
Absolutely agreed. Their senses for example are completely different to monkeys and human beings. They have a different strength in vision, they fly rather than walk, they operate completely differently. | ocalhoun wrote: |
| (Wouldn't a monkey 'fresh from the wild' either run away from or attack the experimenter, not beg? ^.^) |
Tsk, wild monkeys are a little smarter than wild squirrels. As someone who grew up with a tropical jungle as my "backyard" (yes, literally), i can tell you that wild monkeys may be cautious around humans at first, but they're not aggressive or frightened unless you threaten them. They're more curious than anything else. And once they realize you have food they will beg, steal, whatever to get that food.
(Remember, begging for food is in their DNA - they are wired to beg the alpha for scraps. Begging an experimenter for food doesn't require any "reasoning", they just more or less run their natural program with him as the alpha.)
| ocalhoun wrote: |
| The only question remaining is, do we know that the monkey knows that the experimenter must be watching in order to give treats? |
We don't. But if the monkey actually understands what it is doing on any conscious level - if it is acting out of intelligence and not instinct or conditioned response - then it should know that begging requires the experimenter to see the begging. That all follows pure reasoning, and from other behaviours and experiments.
| ocalhoun wrote: |
| The case of the monkey is a little atypical anyway though, in that it is closely related to humans. I'd think we'd be more prone to misunderstand animals that were more different. If a monkey did think, it would probably think much the same way as a human, but something else, say, a bird, might be much different. |
The same methodology can be used on any animal because it doesn't presuppose how the animal is thinking about what it's doing, just that the animal is thinking about what it's doing. As the case i mentioned shows, it's not a simple process and requires carefully building a solid argument out of many, many little experiments.
Simians are the only interesting results so far... pretty much everything else fails spectacularly on every level. Even things you wouldn't suspect, like dolphins, are really dumb. i'd assume birds have been tested, but i have only been curious about animals that showed the slightest glimmer of intelligence, and since i haven't heard anything about birds, i'd guess they haven't.
It seems to me that what you are describing - the idea of not measuring animal intelligence by human standards - is actually the way animal cognition is really studied by scientists... as opposed to the way the general public thinks they do it. To paraphrase Dr. Shettleworth from the University of Toronto (one of the world leaders in animal cognition), it makes no sense to imagine a scale of intelligence where some animals are higher than others (and humans on the top, at least as far as Earth goes) - doing that is like imagining a scale of "body shape" and then arguing that bears have a "better" body shape than fish because they are closer to the human form. Instead, the goal is to look for what "mind features" a creature has (as an analogy to physical features, we look to see if they have fins or stifle joints). When you ask what makes a bird fly, you don't make a comparison to human anatomy - you just analyze the bird's anatomy and see what's going on. The same is true in animal cognition - when they ask how an animal "knows" to do something, they don't really sit there and compare to human cognition. They investigate, piece by piece, the cognitive processes the animal uses.
i'm just giving you the bottom line. Animals don't really think about what they do, no matter how much it may seem so. Not in any way that actually makes sense as thinking. They lack several of the key features that human minds have. Oh yes, they have some features - they have memory, they have the power of imitation (which is actually due to a bunch of features, like the ability to connect actions and results, recognizing the difference between self and other... which is not the same as self-awareness). But not nearly enough to actually think about what they do. What they have is a very limited "laser beam intelligence", which means they have just enough brains precisely to perform the tasks they need to survive, and nothing more. As horrible and unromantic as it sounds, it is a scientific fact that your dog isn't really loyal to you, and has no empathy or sympathy to your feelings at all, no matter how much it may appear that it does. | Indi wrote: |
Simians are the only interesting results so far... pretty much everything else fails spectacularly on every level. Even things you wouldn't suspect, like dolphins, are really dumb. i'd assume birds have been tested, but i have only been curious about animals that showed the slightest glimmer of intelligence, and since i haven't heard anything about birds, i'd guess they haven't.
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Well, there's two examples of surprising bird intelligence I'm aware of. One is a youtube video of wild birds, in India I think, solving complex puzzles in order to get food.
The other is a grey parrot, which has been trained to such a high level that it can do things that a human 3 year old can, like identify shapes, colors, letters, and numbers.
For example, you could show it three red squares and ask, "what color?" "what shape?" "how many?" and it would answer, red, square, three, respectively.
Of course, it must be just associating the word 'red' with the color and so on, but isn't that how humans learn as well?
| Quote: |
It seems to me that what you are describing - the idea of not measuring animal intelligence by human standards - is actually the way animal cognition is really studied by scientists... as opposed to the way the general public thinks they do it. To paraphrase Dr. Shettleworth from the University of Toronto (one of the world leaders in animal cognition), it makes no sense to imagine a scale of intelligence where some animals are higher than others (and humans on the top, at least as far as Earth goes) - doing that is like imagining a scale of "body shape" and then arguing that bears have a "better" body shape than fish because they are closer to the human form. Instead, the goal is to look for what "mind features" a creature has (as an analogy to physical features, we look to see if they have fins or stifle joints). When you ask what makes a bird fly, you don't make a comparison to human anatomy - you just analyze the bird's anatomy and see what's going on. The same is true in animal cognition - when they ask how an animal "knows" to do something, they don't really sit there and compare to human cognition. They investigate, piece by piece, the cognitive processes the animal uses.
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A very good way to go about it, and what I've been trying to say the whole time. They may be different, but difference alone doesn't mean inferiority. We humans might have a monopoly on 'thinking', but perhaps there are other types of intelligence that don't involve thinking, yet can give some surprisingly good results.
| Quote: |
Not in any way that actually makes sense as thinking. [...] But not nearly enough to actually think about what they do. |
I suppose we need a definition of 'thinking' now... | ocalhoun wrote: |
Well, there's two examples of surprising bird intelligence I'm aware of. One is a youtube video of wild birds, in India I think, solving complex puzzles in order to get food.
The other is a grey parrot, which has been trained to such a high level that it can do things that a human 3 year old can, like identify shapes, colors, letters, and numbers.
For example, you could show it three red squares and ask, "what color?" "what shape?" "how many?" and it would answer, red, square, three, respectively.
Of course, it must be just associating the word 'red' with the color and so on, but isn't that how humans learn as well? |
Replace "bird" with "horse", and the colour/shape tasks with mathematics.
Notice anything familiar?
Do not trust anecdotal evidence of animal intelligence. Natural conditions are just far too complex to provide anything even remotely resembling experimental controls, people are prone to anthropomorphizing, and - let's face it - many people have an agenda, conscious or otherwise, to promote their favourite animals as "intelligent". Nobody likes to be told that their dog doesn't really love them and is about as loyal to them as their lawn, even though it's scientifically true, so they will "see" signs of intelligence in their favourite animals and ignore signs of ripping stupidity.
| ocalhoun wrote: |
A very good way to go about it, and what I've been trying to say the whole time. They may be different, but difference alone doesn't mean inferiority. We humans might have a monopoly on 'thinking', but perhaps there are other types of intelligence that don't involve thinking, yet can give some surprisingly good results.
| Quote: |
Not in any way that actually makes sense as thinking. [...] But not nearly enough to actually think about what they do. |
I suppose we need a definition of 'thinking' now... |
Most animal cognition experts would smack me upside the head for using the term "thinking" at all, because of these problems. i don't have a problem with it because i come from a technical background. When i say a computer is processing some problem, no one seriously believes the computer is actually "thinking" about it in any meaningful way. The same is true for animals - they process their surroundings, sure, but with no awareness, no flexibility in their programs, and no intelligence.
Now the computer/animal analogy isn't perfect, because a computer is adaptable while an animal is not. A better analogy might be computer program/animal. A computer program can do one thing and one thing only, but it does that one thing crazy well. That's what animals are like - they are tuned to solve their own, specific, limited set of problems, and break down into gibberish behaviours when given a different set. We can adapt, conceptualize, and apply old knowledge to new situations - that is intelligence. Animals can't. The "intelligence" they have is just a really well-designed program (well-designed for their environment), but a program nonetheless.
Of course monkeys and apes can plan, whats the confusion about it? there are temples in india/nepal where monkeys make good plans to steal things from visitors , like a purse or some food brought to offer it to god....
Yes, of course there was a link between the 'two'.
Think! | Indi wrote: |
Replace "bird" with "horse", and the colour/shape tasks with mathematics.
Notice anything familiar?
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So, how exactly does the trainer of the bird give away the answer?
The key difference is that the horse merely needs to tap a hoof until getting a subtle clue from the trainer. The bird must come up with the correct answer on the first try, not just continue until told to stop.
| Quote: |
The same is true for animals - they process their surroundings, sure, but with no awareness, no flexibility in their programs, and no intelligence.
|
No awareness of what?
And no flexibility and no using prior knowledge on new situations? It almost sounds like saying they're incapable of any learning. | Indi wrote: |
| Nobody likes to be told that their dog doesn't really love them and is about as loyal to them as their lawn, even though it's scientifically true, so they will "see" signs of intelligence in their favourite animals and ignore signs of ripping stupidity. |
How does one then explain that some dogs are more "intelligent" than other dogs? Not all dogs are the same in intelligence, nor are all cats equal in intelligence. Ditto birds. Presently there is a Myna Bird dive bombing cats in our compound! It has something to do with the garbage bins and this particular Myna Bird developed an aversion to cats scrambling out of the bins. I get your point that plenty of what we observe in our favourite pets is mirrored behaviour, but there is quite a bit that is completely individual that stands out on its own. | ocalhoun wrote: |
So, how exactly does the trainer of the bird give away the answer?
The key difference is that the horse merely needs to tap a hoof until getting a subtle clue from the trainer. The bird must come up with the correct answer on the first try, not just continue until told to stop. |
i dunno, how do you expect me to guess that without more information? If you want possible answers, there are hundreds. Animals have been performing tricks on cues all through recorded history. All that would be necessary is for someone looking on to tense as the bird moves toward the right answer.
The bottom line is this. There are two possibilities here: either this experiment has been misreported and/or you have misunderstood the results... or this experiment has turned everything we know about animal intelligence on its head, and the scientific establishment dedicated to studying it has somehow not caught on. Which do you think is more likely?
| ocalhoun wrote: |
| Quote: |
The same is true for animals - they process their surroundings, sure, but with no awareness, no flexibility in their programs, and no intelligence.
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No awareness of what? |
i have already repeated that several times.
| ocalhoun wrote: |
| And no flexibility and no using prior knowledge on new situations? It almost sounds like saying they're incapable of any learning. |
Correct. Except for a small number of the higher primates, animals cannot learn.
Do not confuse conditioning with learning. Virtually all animals can be conditioned. Both mechanisms exist in humans, and are entirely different things. Conditioning can look like learning, but it is most certainly not.
| deanhills wrote: |
| How does one then explain that some dogs are more "intelligent" than other dogs? |
Anthropomorphism.
| deanhills wrote: |
| Not all dogs are the same in intelligence, nor are all cats equal in intelligence. Ditto birds. |
That is anthropomorphism in action. What is being observed here is not differences in "intelligence", it is differences in compliance, in alertness, in ease of conditioning, etc. etc. A dog that acquiesces well (one that is not aggressive or dominant), that is alert (one that is not half asleep on its feet) and that takes conditioning easily will be called more "intelligent" than one that does not measure up so well.
| deanhills wrote: |
| Presently there is a Myna Bird dive bombing cats in our compound! It has something to do with the garbage bins and this particular Myna Bird developed an aversion to cats scrambling out of the bins. |
"Developing an aversion" is not learning, it is conditioning. Conditioning has nothing to do with intelligence. Conditioning doesn't even require a brain.
| deanhills wrote: |
| I get your point that plenty of what we observe in our favourite pets is mirrored behaviour.... |
That is not my point at all. I never said anything remotely like that, and it's not true. Most animals cannot imitate. | Indi wrote: |
The bottom line is this. There are two possibilities here: either this experiment has been misreported and/or you have misunderstood the results... or this experiment has turned everything we know about animal intelligence on its head, and the scientific establishment dedicated to studying it has somehow not caught on. Which do you think is more likely?
|
The latter ^.^
Perhaps they are too busy looking at easily 'experimentable' (yes I just made that word up) micro-facets of intelligence that they miss how macro-intelligence could develop to some degree even without those facets.
| Quote: |
| ocalhoun wrote: | | And no flexibility and no using prior knowledge on new situations? It almost sounds like saying they're incapable of any learning. |
Correct. Except for a small number of the higher primates, animals cannot learn.
Do not confuse conditioning with learning. Virtually all animals can be conditioned. Both mechanisms exist in humans, and are entirely different things. Conditioning can look like learning, but it is most certainly not.
|
Conditioning would imply a lengthy process of associating an experience with a result, yes?
But what about when an animal only needs one time to 'learn' something, like how to defeat an electric fence?
I suppose you might say that the animal is 'conditioned' to associate that action with the result of being able to break loose in just one time experiencing it, but how is that fundamentally different than how humans 'learn'?
| Quote: |
| deanhills wrote: | | How does one then explain that some dogs are more "intelligent" than other dogs? |
Anthropomorphism. |
Or perhaps some 'condition' (or should we call it 'learn'?) faster than others? | Indi wrote: |
| Most animals cannot imitate. |
What about parrots? I'm thinking about dogs too. Say the dog owner is a very old lady, with no energy, sluggish and can barely walk, and ten to one the dog will also walk sluggishly with no energy. Whereas the young German guy around the corner who walks briskly as though on springs, will have a dog imitating that level of energy? | deanhills wrote: |
| Indi wrote: | | Most animals cannot imitate. |
What about parrots? I'm thinking about dogs too. Say the dog owner is a very old lady, with no energy, sluggish and can barely walk, and ten to one the dog will also walk sluggishly with no energy. Whereas the young German guy around the corner who walks briskly as though on springs, will have a dog imitating that level of energy? |
Did the old woman's dog learn that from her? Or did she pick that dog because it was old and sluggish. Perhaps it is sluggish because it never gets any exercise. Did the young man's dog learn that from him? Or did he pick the dog for its energy. Perhaps it has more energy because it gets more exercise. It is easy to support either side of the argument with anecdotes like these.
Also, Parrots(who really only imitate words and phrases) and dogs in no way take away from Indi's statement that most animals cannot imitate. | ocalhoun wrote: |
The latter ^.^
Perhaps they are too busy looking at easily 'experimentable' (yes I just made that word up) micro-facets of intelligence that they miss how macro-intelligence could develop to some degree even without those facets. |
i have already debunked that view.
| ocalhoun wrote: |
Conditioning would imply a lengthy process of associating an experience with a result, yes?
But what about when an animal only needs one time to 'learn' something, like how to defeat an electric fence?
I suppose you might say that the animal is 'conditioned' to associate that action with the result of being able to break loose in just one time experiencing it, but how is that fundamentally different than how humans 'learn'? |
In order:
- No. Conditioning can happen instantaneously, with a single exposure to the stimulus pairing. Poison avoidance is a classic example of extremely powerful single-shot conditioning. Conditioning does not really require that lengthy a process if you are dealing with stimuli the animal has evolved to accept as natural. Conditioning to a bell and food being served is not particularly natural, so it will take a few tries. Conditioning to territorial borderlines (especially in territorial animals, like dogs) and pain is natural, so conditioning should be quite rapid.
- See above. Conditioning doesn't imply a lengthy, repetitive training process. A lengthy, repetitive training process will certainly strengthen the conditioning, but technically it is created on the very first shot (and usually overwritten, unless reinforced). All animals naturally follow paths they have already tread, because it is an adaptive behaviour (if you went down a path once without incident, chances are very high that you will have a safe passage the next time, too) - that is why there are animal trails. So if your animal encounters an electric fence, and gets through it, it will naturally follow the same path the next time. There is no intelligence involved, that's just what animals do.
- It is fundamentally different on several levels: but for brevity, let's just say that it's an entirely different physical process (learning happens in the brain, conditioning can happen anywhere in the body), an entirely different acquisition process (if i wanted you to learn something, i would have to take an entirely different course of action than i would have to take if i wanted to condition some association into you), and an entirely different mental process (you would know you learned something, because it is a conscious, mental function - but i can condition you and you would never know, because it is neither conscious or mental).
| ocalhoun wrote: |
| Quote: |
| deanhills wrote: | | How does one then explain that some dogs are more "intelligent" than other dogs? |
Anthropomorphism. |
Or perhaps some 'condition' (or should we call it 'learn'?) faster than others? |
We shouldn't call it "learn", but in practise we often do. And yes, different individuals in a species condition with different levels of ease.
(You can even observe this in humans! Some people can handle changing conditions without complaint, but others have a hard time acclimatizing to new climates, foods, etc..)
| deanhills wrote: |
| Say the dog owner is a very old lady, with no energy, sluggish and can barely walk, and ten to one the dog will also walk sluggishly with no energy. Whereas the young German guy around the corner who walks briskly as though on springs, will have a dog imitating that level of energy? |
That's not imitation, that's basic pack behaviour: moving at the same speed as the pack (or just the alpha). Dogs are pack animals.
| Xanatos wrote: |
| Also, Parrots(who really only imitate words and phrases) and dogs in no way take away from Indi's statement that most animals cannot imitate. |
(Technically, parrots imitate sounds... which is quite common in birds. Lots of birds mimic sounds in their bird songs, and yes, they are generally quite intelligent in comparison with the vast majority of animals - and even the vast majority of birds (but still dumb as stumps compared with the higher primates). In the case of talking birds, you have a combined effect of the natural mimicry of bird songs, combined with extremely adaptive vocal apparatus, combined with positive feedback conditioning: the birds are naturally inclined to attempt to imitate sounds, they can imitate very complex sounds that sound almost speech like, and are coaxed by food rewards to make sounds closer and closer to human sounds.) | Indi wrote: |
It is fundamentally different on several levels: but for brevity, let's just say that it's an entirely different physical process (learning happens in the brain, conditioning can happen anywhere in the body), an entirely different acquisition process (if i wanted you to learn something, i would have to take an entirely different course of action than i would have to take if i wanted to condition some association into you), and an entirely different mental process (you would know you learned something, because it is a conscious, mental function - but i can condition you and you would never know, because it is neither conscious or mental).
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Okay, but wouldn't conditioning just be a type of learning, not entirely separate? | Xanatos wrote: |
| deanhills wrote: | | Indi wrote: | | Most animals cannot imitate. |
What about parrots? I'm thinking about dogs too. Say the dog owner is a very old lady, with no energy, sluggish and can barely walk, and ten to one the dog will also walk sluggishly with no energy. Whereas the young German guy around the corner who walks briskly as though on springs, will have a dog imitating that level of energy? |
Did the old woman's dog learn that from her? Or did she pick that dog because it was old and sluggish. Perhaps it is sluggish because it never gets any exercise. Did the young man's dog learn that from him? Or did he pick the dog for its energy. Perhaps it has more energy because it gets more exercise. It is easy to support either side of the argument with anecdotes like these.
Also, Parrots(who really only imitate words and phrases) and dogs in no way take away from Indi's statement that most animals cannot imitate. |
I still believe there is a dimension of understanding that is missing here. Science is not finite and since it is only looking at non-human animals from a rational point of view and comparing it with what it knows, there is a lot that is missing. It's like that movie "Gorillas in the mist". One can only learn about their behaviour when you have been accepted as "part of the pack". And it does not come with preconceived notions of being superior, it only comes with humility of not knowing and genuinely wishing to discover what they are about from a position of love. | ocalhoun wrote: |
| Okay, but wouldn't conditioning just be a type of learning, not entirely separate? |
No, not really. Obviously, if you are willing to redefine "learning" to be loose enough, then you could get away with it... but watch what happens.
First of all, you have to understand the difference between true learning - the acquisition of knowledge - and conditioning. Imagine you have two kids, L and C. You "teach" them both that Ottawa is the capitol of Canada, where L learns that fact, and C is conditioned with it. Here's what happens:
- What is the capitol of Canada?
- L: Ottawa.
- C: Ottawa.
- Good. Now, is Ottawa the capitol of Canada?
- L: Yes.
- C: I don't know.
- Ok... name all the North American capitols.
- L: Washington DC and Ottawa.
- C: Washington DC.
- Er... Ottawa is the capitol of what country?
- L: Canada.
- C: I don't know.
- C... is something wrong? You got the answer right when I asked, "What is the capitol of Canada?"
- C: Ottawa.
- Yes... but you didn't get it when I asked it any other way. Is there something special about the phrase, "What is the capitol of Canada?"
- C: Ottawa.
- So as long as I say, "What is the capitol of Canada?", you w-
- C: Ottawa.
- And the capitol of Canada is what?
- C: I don't know.
- Ok... both of you, give the wrong answer to the following question: What is the capitol of Canada?
- L: Washington DC.
- C: Ottawa.
That is the difference between learning and conditioning. Learning is the acquisition of new knowledge. Conditioning is the acquisition of new responses to stimuli. L has been given the knowledge that Ottawa is the capitol of Canada. C has been conditioned to give the answer "Ottawa" whenever he hears the stimulus phrase "What is the capitol of Canada?"... so he may appear to give the right answer most of the time, but really understands nothing (as the other questions show). He's like an idiot robot that regurgitates "Ottawa" whenever the input is right, regardless of anything else - even when he is told not to (as in the last example).
Now, psychologists and animal behaviourists commonly use "learning" as a lump word to cover all forms of adaptation by a single organism - even when it's not really learning at all. Thus, you will often hear "conditioning" lumped in with learning. But just because it's done doesn't make it right (and most behaviourists studying conditioning will admit that it's wrong). But let's be generous for a moment, and ask if it makes sense to consider conditioning as a form of learning.
Well, what is conditioning? Conditioning is when an organism makes physical changes - often in the brain, but not even usually - based on links between stimuli in their environment, that better facilitate operating in that environment. They hear a bell, then they get food, so they rewire their digestive system to link with their auditory system, so they salivate earlier (when they hear the bell, before they food comes). You would like to say that means the dog "learned" to salivate when they hear the bell? Ok, but then consider this:
i want to fit a square peg into a round hole, so line them up... then smash it with a sledgehammer. The sides of the peg are stripped clean, and now it fits better in the round hole. So basically, the peg made physical changes based on the link between lining up with the hole and being forced into it, to better facilitate fitting into that hole. The peg learned to fit in the hole.
Or, i run a car engine hard, and the sides of the piston rings are, over time, smoothed down so they slide easier up and down. The piston rings made physical changes based on linking environmental stimuli - moving up and down, and sliding against the casing - to facilitate operating better. The piston rings learned to be smoother.
Starts to get silly, doesn't it? Now it is true that we do say that these things learned metaphorically (people do talk of "training" inanimate objects to get better operation or a better fit), but we don't literally believe these things learned anything.
Let's look at a real example of conditioning: drug addiction. If i inject you with cocaine, your body has a powerful reaction. Your body associates the visual stimulus of the needle, with the internal chemical effects. The next time i pull out a needle, your body chemistry will react in preparation... before i inject the drug. Did you learn your cocaine dependency?
How about this: when i was younger i had baby soft fingers. Then i took up guitar. At first, the strings were hard on my fingers, but my fingers toughened up. That's conditioning. Did my fingers learn to be calloused?
No, it makes no sense. If any adaptation to the environment is "learning", then eating turkey "teaches" you to be tired... which is pure nonsense. Learning means the acquisition of knowledge. We can use it in metaphorical sense in many sloppy ways - and we do - but that doesn't change it's real meaning. Conditioning has nothing to do with knowledge, it's a purely physical and chemical response. Therefore, conditioning is not learning.
| deanhills wrote: |
| I still believe there is a dimension of understanding that is missing here. Science is not finite and since it is only looking at non-human animals from a rational point of view and comparing it with what it knows, there is a lot that is missing. It's like that movie "Gorillas in the mist". One can only learn about their behaviour when you have been accepted as "part of the pack". And it does not come with preconceived notions of being superior, it only comes with humility of not knowing and genuinely wishing to discover what they are about from a position of love. |
As i already explained, science does not work the way you think it does. Scientists are not idiots, and they are trained right from the starting gates to watch out for being trapped by their own assumptions. They do not walk into experiments with "preconceived notions of being superior", and they live and breathe on the notion of "humility of not knowing and genuinely wishing to discover what they are about from a position of love". (In fact, that last quote defines good scientists.) | Indi wrote: |
Conditioning has nothing to do with knowledge, it's a purely physical and chemical response. Therefore, conditioning is not learning.
|
^.^ Learning is also a purely physical and chemical response, just a more complicated one.
Couldn't all learning be explained in terms of conditioning?
In your example, 'C' was conditioned to associate the phrase 'what is the capitol of Canada?' with the word 'Ottowa'.
The only difference in 'L' though, is that instead of conditioning a link between two phrases, you condition a link between two concepts: 'Ottowa' and 'capitol of Canada'
And yes, even the conditioning of inanimate objects could be seen as a type of learning. If you layered enough levels of complexity onto it, you could envision a purely mechanical logic system that (theoretically) could get to the level of intelligence humans have, and beyond. It would be cumbersome, but there's no reason it couldn't, say, stick a soft, square peg into a round hole and thereby 'learn' the shape of that hole. Other mechanical processes could then be dependent upon the shape of that peg, and so on...
Perhaps we could get your definition of learning? | ocalhoun wrote: |
| Indi wrote: | Conditioning has nothing to do with knowledge, it's a purely physical and chemical response. Therefore, conditioning is not learning.
|
^.^ Learning is also a purely physical and chemical response, just a more complicated one. |
Learning is not a purely physical and chemical response - not even close! If materialism is true, then learning uses a purely physical and chemical substrate, but that doesn't make it purely physical and chemical anymore than it would make a story purely physical and chemical just because it was written on paper by a biological entity.
Or, if you prefer a more modern, technological explanation: learning is a software change, conditioning is a hardware change. What you are trying to claim by saying that "Learning is also a purely physical and chemical response, just a more complicated one." is that upgrading software is simply a very complicated hardware upgrade. While it is true that the hardware does change, more or less (the bits stored on your hard drive are now different), the situation is far, far, far more complex than that. i'll outline this analogy in more detail below.
| ocalhoun wrote: |
Couldn't all learning be explained in terms of conditioning?
In your example, 'C' was conditioned to associate the phrase 'what is the capitol of Canada?' with the word 'Ottowa'.
The only difference in 'L' though, is that instead of conditioning a link between two phrases, you condition a link between two concepts: 'Ottowa' and 'capitol of Canada' |
No, you have misunderstood both conditioning and learning.
First, C was not conditioned to associate the phrase "what is the capitol of Canada?" with the word "Ottawa", he was conditioned to associate the phrase with the response "Ottawa". There is no intelligence involved whatsoever, it is identical to the way your leg jerks when your knee is hit. C does not even understand that he is answering a question! He is like Pavlov's salivating dog - the sound of the key phrase triggers an unconscious physical response: spitting out the conditioned response. C doesn't even need to speak English!!!
On the other hand, you are severely underestimating the power of learning. Even in this trivial case it is not simply linking two concepts... thousands of links are formed! Maybe millions, and maybe uncountably many. As a sample of just a tiny few: when you learn that "Ottawa" is "the capitol of Canada", you also learn that Ottawa is a city. And that Canada is a state of some kind with at least one city in it. And that Ottawa is one of the major cities in Canada. And that people like to name things in Canada with three syllables ending in "-a".
The last example illustrates that the links you make may not always be correct, but you make them nonetheless. The bottom line is that there is simply no way this massive explosion in knowledge can be explained simply by physically moving neurons around - something else has to be happening. We don't know exactly what, and both psychologists and philosophers are working on that question, but we have ruled out simple conditioning as the answer. Consider the simple physics of the problem: if that many neurons were moved around just by learning a simple fact, your head would actually get measurably hotter as you learned in school. ^_^;
And yes, for a long time, psychologists did believe that all learning was simply conditioning - that goes back to the behaviourists in the 1950s. But that view has fallen out of favour as our understanding about how the brain handles knowledge has grown.
And it's intuitive, too. You know how your body works, you know that conditioning is entirely different from learning. You can know something (via learning), but still be completely unable to help doing or thinking it (because you have been conditioned to). Take fear for example: you can know there's no axe murderer in the closet when you go to bed at night, but still break out in cold sweat because you can't help but think there is. You can know this person is bad for you, but still not help being able to go back to them.
| ocalhoun wrote: |
| And yes, even the conditioning of inanimate objects could be seen as a type of learning. If you layered enough levels of complexity onto it, you could envision a purely mechanical logic system that (theoretically) could get to the level of intelligence humans have, and beyond. It would be cumbersome, but there's no reason it couldn't, say, stick a soft, square peg into a round hole and thereby 'learn' the shape of that hole. Other mechanical processes could then be dependent upon the shape of that peg, and so on... |
That was the view pushed forward in the early days of psychology - and there are still remnants of that view visible today: for example, studies of conditioning fall under the heading "learning", even though no psychologist today would confuse the two.
But it doesn't work, not even theoretically. It is actually, literally, physically impossible to design a mechanism that can learn at the same level as a human by purely physical means. We can't even make a purely physical machine that will keep up with the capabilities of modern computers - the size of the mechanism would increase to absurd proportions, the complexity of the linkages would require more than three dimensions, simply driving that much machinery to move as often as it would have to would task even the toughest science fiction materials to the limits of their strength and heat transfer capabilities. It simply can't be done.
Now the answer was figured out almost 150 years ago, by Babbage (although some credit Ada Byron). The answer is not in mechanisms, but in data. In your computer right now, the number 88 could be the number "88", or it could be a multiplication factor of "22528", or it could be the letter "X", or it could be a shade of red, it could be how fast you have to go in miles per hour to travel in time, or it could be part of the shape of the monster attacking you in the game you're playing. From a finite - and actually very small - set of physical changes, you get a functionally infinite amount of potential information. Within the "data space", you are not limited by three dimensions or material physical properties as you are in "physical space" (you can make neural nets with an infinite number of dimensions, for example). The key is interpreting the data in the right way at the right time... and that's not something you can solve physically either (because there are a functionally infinite number of ways to interpret "88", for example).
In computers, the software we design handles the task of interpreting data and creating linkages as necessary. The same is true in our brain. It's not hardware, it's software. Yes, it runs on hardware, but it is not hardware simply because it runs on it. We don't understand the "software" in our brains yet - not even close - but know it must exist because, physically, our brains cannot function the way they do without it.
So, if you prefer it in computer terms: conditioning is changing the hardware, learning is changing the software. They are two entirely different processes, each with different pros and cons. And the disconnect between the two is as obvious in computers (who hasn't had a software driver looking for hardware that has been removed, or a hardware device you can't find the right software for?) as it is in people (like craving cigarettes even while you assert mentally that you've quit).
| ocalhoun wrote: |
| Perhaps we could get your definition of learning? |
The acquisition of knowledge.
And conditioning is the acquisition of new stimulus-response pairings, or in plain terms, the acquisition of new behaviours in response to specific sensory inputs.Humans may have a one upmanship in their thinking abilities (or so we think), however in design I think quite a number of animals are much more superior. Take for example the camel in the Middle East that has three eye-lids with one acting as wipers in dust storms. Humans don't have that. I think I would prefer the more intelligent design in form than the ability to think intelligently. Maybe animals don't need the intelligence and thinking abilities as their design has intelligence incorporated into it. It is more perfect than human beings.
| deanhills wrote: |
| Humans may have a one upmanship in their thinking abilities (or so we think), however in design I think quite a number of animals are much more superior. Take for example the camel in the Middle East that has three eye-lids with one acting as wipers in dust storms. Humans don't have that. I think I would prefer the more intelligent design in form than the ability to think intelligently. Maybe animals don't need the intelligence and thinking abilities as their design has intelligence incorporated into it. It is more perfect than human beings. |
These animals are excellent in surviving in their ecosystems. They evolved that way. It does make them more suited for survival in that ecosystem. It does not make them more perfect than human beings (we sure as hell aren't perfect either by the way). | Indi wrote: |
| ocalhoun wrote: | Couldn't all learning be explained in terms of conditioning?
In your example, 'C' was conditioned to associate the phrase 'what is the capitol of Canada?' with the word 'Ottowa'.
The only difference in 'L' though, is that instead of conditioning a link between two phrases, you condition a link between two concepts: 'Ottowa' and 'capitol of Canada' |
No, you have misunderstood both conditioning and learning.
First, C was not conditioned to associate the phrase "what is the capitol of Canada?" with the word "Ottawa", he was conditioned to associate the phrase with the response "Ottawa". There is no intelligence involved whatsoever, it is identical to the way your leg jerks when your knee is hit. C does not even understand that he is answering a question! He is like Pavlov's salivating dog - the sound of the key phrase triggers an unconscious physical response: spitting out the conditioned response. C doesn't even need to speak English!!!
|
It makes no difference, the point is that the conditioning linked not concepts, but just words. (Which indeed does not require that they know what the words mean.)
My point is that for the one conditioned to link the concepts of Ottowa and Capitol of Canada, it is an equally knee-jerk reaction for the brain to think of Ottowa when the concept of Capitol of Canada is thought about. Stimulus and response, just like you say, only both are just thoughts.
| Quote: |
On the other hand, you are severely underestimating the power of learning. Even in this trivial case it is not simply linking two concepts... thousands of links are formed! Maybe millions, and maybe uncountably many. As a sample of just a tiny few: when you learn that "Ottawa" is "the capitol of Canada", you also learn that Ottawa is a city. And that Canada is a state of some kind with at least one city in it. And that Ottawa is one of the major cities in Canada. And that people like to name things in Canada with three syllables ending in "-a".
The last example illustrates that the links you make may not always be correct, but you make them nonetheless. The bottom line is that there is simply no way this massive explosion in knowledge can be explained simply by physically moving neurons around - something else has to be happening. We don't know exactly what, and both psychologists and philosophers are working on that question, but we have ruled out simple conditioning as the answer. Consider the simple physics of the problem: if that many neurons were moved around just by learning a simple fact, your head would actually get measurably hotter as you learned in school. ^_^;
|
All those connections are not made at the same time.
That Ottowa is a major city and that Canada is a state of some kind are not things you learn at that point. They are things that are already conditioned to be associated with 'capitol' in the mind, so when you condition a link between Ottowa and capitol, Ottowa becomes linked with 'major city' because 'major city' has already been conditioned to be linked with 'capitol'.
To take your hardware vs software example for it, it would be like connecting a wire between 'Ottowa' and 'capitol', but you don't have to connect a wire between 'Ottowa' and 'major city', because there is already a wire in place between 'capitol' and 'major city'.
All the things you know could be explained by conditioned links like this between different concepts, and I would consider learning to be conditioning new links into that large network.
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Take fear for example: you can know there's no axe murderer in the closet when you go to bed at night, but still break out in cold sweat because you can't help but think there is. You can know this person is bad for you, but still not help being able to go back to them.
|
Simply cases of being conditioned for two different responses, but one response being more strongly conditioned than the other.
| Quote: |
| ocalhoun wrote: | | And yes, even the conditioning of inanimate objects could be seen as a type of learning. If you layered enough levels of complexity onto it, you could envision a purely mechanical logic system that (theoretically) could get to the level of intelligence humans have, and beyond. It would be cumbersome, but there's no reason it couldn't, say, stick a soft, square peg into a round hole and thereby 'learn' the shape of that hole. Other mechanical processes could then be dependent upon the shape of that peg, and so on... |
That was the view pushed forward in the early days of psychology - and there are still remnants of that view visible today: for example, studies of conditioning fall under the heading "learning", even though no psychologist today would confuse the two.
But it doesn't work, not even theoretically. It is actually, literally, physically impossible to design a mechanism that can learn at the same level as a human by purely physical means. We can't even make a purely physical machine that will keep up with the capabilities of modern computers - the size of the mechanism would increase to absurd proportions, the complexity of the linkages would require more than three dimensions, simply driving that much machinery to move as often as it would have to would task even the toughest science fiction materials to the limits of their strength and heat transfer capabilities. It simply can't be done.
|
I did say it would be cumbersome, and yes, it would grow exponentially more so the more intelligent you tried to make it, quickly growing to proportions that approach the limits of what is physically possible. But, for the sake of argument, we can assume some infinitely strong motors, infinitely strong components, infinitely temperature-resistant components, and even extra spatial dimensions if we need them. Since our mechanical thinking machine is purely imaginary anyway, we don't need to obey all the laws of physics when constructing it.
| Quote: |
So, if you prefer it in computer terms: conditioning is changing the hardware, learning is changing the software. They are two entirely different processes, each with different pros and cons. And the disconnect between the two is as obvious in computers (who hasn't had a software driver looking for hardware that has been removed, or a hardware device you can't find the right software for?) as it is in people (like craving cigarettes even while you assert mentally that you've quit).
|
So, are you trying to say that animals don't have 'software' at all? Hardware only?
My hand-held calculator isn't as complex or as capable as my laptop, but the calculator does still have software that it runs on. The two still both operate on the same fundamental principles.
| Quote: |
| ocalhoun wrote: | | Perhaps we could get your definition of learning? |
The acquisition of knowledge.
And conditioning is the acquisition of new stimulus-response pairings, or in plain terms, the acquisition of new behaviours in response to specific sensory inputs. |
But what is knowledge but stimulus-response pairings within the mind?
