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That's pretty interesting. I think most people feel that animals only have a simple subset of human emotions they can feel but maybe there are emotions they hav
by jotux 10y ago
That's pretty interesting. I think most people feel that animals only have a simple subset of human emotions they can feel but maybe there are emotions they have that we do not. I imagine dogs, with a strong sense of social belonging to a pack, experience emotions related to social structure that are difficult for us to understand.
- SwellJoe 10y agoVernor Vinge, in Fire Upon The Deep, explored that idea in pretty interesting ways. I didn't love the book (I like him as an author, and this one is considered a classic, but it didn't really grab me), but the Tines (dog-like pack animals) were an interesting thought experiment. In it, a single Tine is roughly akin to a smart dog, but when combined into a pack (linked via some sort of sound-based communication), they're of roughly human intelligence (or better) and able to perform advanced tasks, allowing them to build complex machines. Their individual pack members act as limbs in a whole "person". When one member dies, it is more like an amputation than a death...and a new pack member can be added, while mostly keeping the character and memories of the whole person. Thus Tines are potentially very long-lived (like great grandfather's ax). There is discussion of emotions that members and packs experience that humans find foreign. Belonging to a pack being one of them; a lone Tine member that can't merge into a new pack is considered a tragic case. Anyway, probably worth a read just for those novel ideas about other lifeforms.