9 ms·

This Slate article is worth a read, concerning the science involving Koko. "Critics also allege that the abilities of apes like Koko and Kanzi are overstated b

This Slate article is worth a read, concerning the science involving Koko. "Critics also allege that the abilities of apes like Koko and Kanzi are overstated by their loving caregivers. Readers with pets may recognize this temptation; we can’t help but attribute intelligence to creatures we know so well." http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2014/08/koko_kanzi_and_ape_language_research_criticism_of_working_conditions_and.html http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/201...

nerfhammer 11y ago
Robert Sapolsky's lecture, mentioned in the article, wherein he discusses ape language projects, is a good watch: https://youtu.be/SIOQgY1tqrU?t=1h28m1s https://youtu.be/SIOQgY1tqrU?t=1h28m1s He completely dismisses Koko but considers Kanzi to be more credible.
- rancur 11y ago
  (off topic) I have to say I'm very thankful to have found HN. I grew up in a decent, moderately sized city (300k) going to a private religious school with children whose parents were similarly strongly interested in the intellectual development of their children. I had access to all the sports teams. I played soccer through Varsity, played with the golf team [but note I was not on the golf team, hehe], and basketball in middle school. I played piano for 8 years. I attended one of the top 5 schools of my field in the nation, and graduated into a small company with other graduates from my school, MIT, etc. From 'good places'. Because of this, education was always something I always took for granted. I always valued it, but always took it for granted. My education, however, took humans for granted. Your value to society was sometimes considered limited by what you could produce. Additionally, many of those I highschooled and undergraduated with held little reservation filtering people out of their life based on, I'll call it, 'being dumb'. This always bothered me. I believed in the intrinsic value of the human, so I always sought to correct for it. Because I always tried my hardest, it never occurred to me how people could willfully and knowingly not aspire themselves to something greater than what required minimal effort. Everyone I grew up with did, I did, and my parents did, so naturally I assumed everyone else did, too. As such, I was regularly perplexed at the value judgements certain colleagues would place on other members of humanity. So I left that company, and struck out on my own. I have since discovered what a rare breed my background nurtured, and now understand the wisdom in filtering those you spend time with. Instead of a prideful superiority [which I certainly observed], I exercise with a cautious respect for, and in protection of, talent and time. I exercise without placing value judgements on the people I come in contact with, but I do judge the values of the people I spend time with. In this way I safely continue to respect their humanity, and avoid pride. It's only since I moved and became aware of my need to protect that I became aware of how hard it is to find knowledge seekers. And so, when I come across someone from a different field but similar excellence, who carries with them persuasive content helpful for advancement, I am thankful. And so I am thankful to have found HackerNews, and specifically this lecture material that I can't wait to watch. It's very important to surround yourself with excellence. You'll become the ones you're around, and believe their idiocy, if you're not careful. Be careful.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
  - RGamma 11y ago
    Yes, and on the other hand of the spectrum, be careful that you don't belong to the kind posted at https://www.reddit.com/r/iamverysmart https://www.reddit.com/r/iamverysmart
    - rancur 11y ago
      what's reddit?
  - time4hn 11y ago
    Hmmm. No offense dude, but you come off as super privileged in this post. I mean, I'm glad you've overcome your pride and can appreciate humanity. But you're still judging people based on your own metrics. And somehow it seems like your acting as though your own enlightened judgements and approach to handling the people around you is much better, and that we should be happy to be here on Hacker News since its ideals conform to your own. Don't get me wrong, there's really no "right" thing to believe here and you're not wrong, it's just that this post comes off as strange and masturbatory. Thank you and have a nice day.
Retra 11y ago
We attribute intelligence to humans, most of which are barely able to parrot what they hear from each other. I don't see why being generous to animals is any kind of a problem... I have a very strong suspicion that our idea of intelligence basically boils down to "can you communicate with it easily?"
- salmonfamine 11y ago
  > We attribute intelligence to humans, most of which are barely able to parrot what they hear from each other. I don't see why being generous to animals is any kind of a problem... Barely? Humans have an incredibly unique ability to constantly create new sentences, infinitely many of which can express the same idea. That is a unique facet of the human brain. Being snide about humans doesn't make apes any more intelligent. They simply don't have the same linguistic capabilities.
  - grecy 11y ago
    >They simply don't have the same linguistic capabilities Which has nothing to do with them being intelligent or not. It would be awesome to see aliens land here with blatantly superior technology, but they have no linguistics at all. Finally everyone would stop thinking you can't have intelligence without linguistics.
    - Swizec 11y ago
      It's almost like our definition of intelligence is biased to favor us. News at 11.
    - stan_rogers 11y ago
      That only makes sense if you conceive of language as primarily an instrument of communication rather than of thought; that is, language is merely communication turned up to eleven. What inclines you to believe that's the case? That isn't to say that a "mechanism" for symbolic thought needs to resemble human language in any particular way, at least as far as serialization goes.
joliv 11y ago
In the late 80s-early 90s there was a movement attempting to prove the communication abilities of those with severe communication disabilities. Very sad story—turned out it was only the facilitator's subconcious manipulation of the communicator's hands that produced the messages. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facilitated_communication https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facilitated_communication
Nursie 11y ago
Have you ever heard of Clever Hans? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clever_Hans https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clever_Hans Worth a read. Doesn't mean to say animals can't be intelligent, and in fact it shows they can be, but in unexpected ways. (tl;dr - horse that people thought could count but was actually looking for its handler to smile when it hit the right number)
hanniabu 11y ago
I'd really like to argue that it's probably because it takes more than a glance to realize how intelligent the animals are. We see all the time that even with humans, as intelligent as we are, we judge people for how they are constant. I'm sure we ask have encountered people in our lives that as the more we talked to them we realized that our assumptions of them the first we times you meet were wrong. Some people you think are really smart and then it turns out the opposite and vice versa. I would even argue that the opposite is true. Those who do not spend time with these animals and those that do not have pets, often tend to assume the animals aren't very smart because they don't have languages and technology. When there is no shared common language, you must gather knowledge of how smart these animals are by studying their mannerisms, and that is something that can only be done by spending time with these animals. Maybe that's why "the abilities of apes like Koko and Kanzi are overstated by their loving caregivers". The abilities aren't overstated, but understood. Everyone else undrained the abilities because they are not present enough.
akkartik 11y ago
Oddly enough I just turned the page and found the scifi book I'm reading discuss this controversy. Apparently Chomsky and Pinker are noted ape-communication skeptics. (The book I'm reading: http://www.amazon.com/WWW-Trilogy-Robert-J-Sawyer/dp/044101853X http://www.amazon.com/WWW-Trilogy-Robert-J-Sawyer/dp/0441018...)

nerfhammer 11y ago

Robert Sapolsky's lecture, mentioned in the article, wherein he discusses ape language projects, is a good watch: https://youtu.be/SIOQgY1tqrU?t=1h28m1s https://youtu.be/SIOQgY1tqrU?t=1h28m1s He completely dismisses Koko but considers Kanzi to be more credible.

rancur 11y ago
(off topic) I have to say I'm very thankful to have found HN. I grew up in a decent, moderately sized city (300k) going to a private religious school with children whose parents were similarly strongly interested in the intellectual development of their children. I had access to all the sports teams. I played soccer through Varsity, played with the golf team [but note I was not on the golf team, hehe], and basketball in middle school. I played piano for 8 years. I attended one of the top 5 schools of my field in the nation, and graduated into a small company with other graduates from my school, MIT, etc. From 'good places'. Because of this, education was always something I always took for granted. I always valued it, but always took it for granted. My education, however, took humans for granted. Your value to society was sometimes considered limited by what you could produce. Additionally, many of those I highschooled and undergraduated with held little reservation filtering people out of their life based on, I'll call it, 'being dumb'. This always bothered me. I believed in the intrinsic value of the human, so I always sought to correct for it. Because I always tried my hardest, it never occurred to me how people could willfully and knowingly not aspire themselves to something greater than what required minimal effort. Everyone I grew up with did, I did, and my parents did, so naturally I assumed everyone else did, too. As such, I was regularly perplexed at the value judgements certain colleagues would place on other members of humanity. So I left that company, and struck out on my own. I have since discovered what a rare breed my background nurtured, and now understand the wisdom in filtering those you spend time with. Instead of a prideful superiority [which I certainly observed], I exercise with a cautious respect for, and in protection of, talent and time. I exercise without placing value judgements on the people I come in contact with, but I do judge the values of the people I spend time with. In this way I safely continue to respect their humanity, and avoid pride. It's only since I moved and became aware of my need to protect that I became aware of how hard it is to find knowledge seekers. And so, when I come across someone from a different field but similar excellence, who carries with them persuasive content helpful for advancement, I am thankful. And so I am thankful to have found HackerNews, and specifically this lecture material that I can't wait to watch. It's very important to surround yourself with excellence. You'll become the ones you're around, and believe their idiocy, if you're not careful. Be careful.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- RGamma 11y ago
  Yes, and on the other hand of the spectrum, be careful that you don't belong to the kind posted at https://www.reddit.com/r/iamverysmart https://www.reddit.com/r/iamverysmart
  - rancur 11y ago
    what's reddit?
- time4hn 11y ago
  Hmmm. No offense dude, but you come off as super privileged in this post. I mean, I'm glad you've overcome your pride and can appreciate humanity. But you're still judging people based on your own metrics. And somehow it seems like your acting as though your own enlightened judgements and approach to handling the people around you is much better, and that we should be happy to be here on Hacker News since its ideals conform to your own. Don't get me wrong, there's really no "right" thing to believe here and you're not wrong, it's just that this post comes off as strange and masturbatory. Thank you and have a nice day.

Retra 11y ago

We attribute intelligence to humans, most of which are barely able to parrot what they hear from each other. I don't see why being generous to animals is any kind of a problem... I have a very strong suspicion that our idea of intelligence basically boils down to "can you communicate with it easily?"

salmonfamine 11y ago
> We attribute intelligence to humans, most of which are barely able to parrot what they hear from each other. I don't see why being generous to animals is any kind of a problem... Barely? Humans have an incredibly unique ability to constantly create new sentences, infinitely many of which can express the same idea. That is a unique facet of the human brain. Being snide about humans doesn't make apes any more intelligent. They simply don't have the same linguistic capabilities.
- grecy 11y ago
  >They simply don't have the same linguistic capabilities Which has nothing to do with them being intelligent or not. It would be awesome to see aliens land here with blatantly superior technology, but they have no linguistics at all. Finally everyone would stop thinking you can't have intelligence without linguistics.
  - Swizec 11y ago
    It's almost like our definition of intelligence is biased to favor us. News at 11.
  - stan_rogers 11y ago
    That only makes sense if you conceive of language as primarily an instrument of communication rather than of thought; that is, language is merely communication turned up to eleven. What inclines you to believe that's the case? That isn't to say that a "mechanism" for symbolic thought needs to resemble human language in any particular way, at least as far as serialization goes.

joliv 11y ago

In the late 80s-early 90s there was a movement attempting to prove the communication abilities of those with severe communication disabilities. Very sad story—turned out it was only the facilitator's subconcious manipulation of the communicator's hands that produced the messages. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facilitated_communication https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facilitated_communication

Nursie 11y ago

Have you ever heard of Clever Hans? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clever_Hans https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clever_Hans Worth a read. Doesn't mean to say animals can't be intelligent, and in fact it shows they can be, but in unexpected ways. (tl;dr - horse that people thought could count but was actually looking for its handler to smile when it hit the right number)

hanniabu 11y ago

I'd really like to argue that it's probably because it takes more than a glance to realize how intelligent the animals are. We see all the time that even with humans, as intelligent as we are, we judge people for how they are constant. I'm sure we ask have encountered people in our lives that as the more we talked to them we realized that our assumptions of them the first we times you meet were wrong. Some people you think are really smart and then it turns out the opposite and vice versa. I would even argue that the opposite is true. Those who do not spend time with these animals and those that do not have pets, often tend to assume the animals aren't very smart because they don't have languages and technology. When there is no shared common language, you must gather knowledge of how smart these animals are by studying their mannerisms, and that is something that can only be done by spending time with these animals. Maybe that's why "the abilities of apes like Koko and Kanzi are overstated by their loving caregivers". The abilities aren't overstated, but understood. Everyone else undrained the abilities because they are not present enough.

akkartik 11y ago

Oddly enough I just turned the page and found the scifi book I'm reading discuss this controversy. Apparently Chomsky and Pinker are noted ape-communication skeptics. (The book I'm reading: http://www.amazon.com/WWW-Trilogy-Robert-J-Sawyer/dp/044101853X http://www.amazon.com/WWW-Trilogy-Robert-J-Sawyer/dp/0441018...)