4 ms·

How many of these "new and unique ideas" could be attributable to Koko and not her handlers? Almost all interpretations of what Koko's signing means come from h

by lambda 8y ago

How many of these "new and unique ideas" could be attributable to Koko and not her handlers? Almost all interpretations of what Koko's signing means come from her handlers, not from neutral observers. Dogs can be trained to recognize hundreds of words, perform many tricks based on hand gestures, can engage in different body language to indicate different things that they want at the time, and can show true affection to their human companions or other pets in the house. What bothers me most about Koko is that she has been presented as something entirely different than a smart, well trained dog; that she has some deeper understanding of language and can combine words in novel ways, but the evidence really looks like there's a lot of cherry picking and prompting by the researchers to get at that.

lawlessone 8y ago
How many new and unique ideas that you have come up with in life could be attributed to your parents, teachers , the media?
- apeace 8y ago
  You're talking about the source of the idea. I can't speak for lambda, but I believe what they meant is that the researchers only interpreted Koko's ideas as unique, or as ideas at all. There has never been scientific validation that she actually meant what the researchers thought she meant. I think there's something wonderful about Koko and her relationship with humans. But at the same time, it saddens me that the scientists involved seem to have mostly treated her as a friend, and lacked the scientific rigor to answer some of the most important questions about her actions.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
- lambda 8y ago
  This isn't about "new and unique ideas" in the sense of some profound insight. I was responding to the "was capable of communicating new and unique ideas" from the parent, which is a way of paraphrasing some of the claims about Koko's language ability, in which it is claimed that Koko was going beyond mere use of single words to refer to literal objects or actions. I can put together a complex sentence describing abstract ideas, which is what I'm doing here. A dog cannot; a dog can understand a single word or sign in isolation, and may be some amount of literal sequencing, but there is no ability to understand an arbitrarily complex sequence of signs or words containing abstraction like human language is capable of. The claim about Koko's use of sign language is that she has been able to compose sentences out of combinations of words, and express abstract ideas; maybe somewhat more limited than humans in some way, but fundamentally the same way that human language works. That's what the skepticism is about; since while it's clear that she could be trained to recognize individual words and produce individual signs, and maybe some limited pairs, all of the evidence of anything more complex seems to come from interpretation through her handlers, who could have been consciously or subconsciously prompting her, and are using their own theories of mind and inference ability to read more into Koko's actions than what is really there. There's plenty of non-verbal communication you can do with a dog or even a cat. They can pick up on emotional states. They have memories. They can learn words or signs. They can be caring. A lot of the claims about Koko seem to be either unsurprising for anyone who has owned a pet (yes, pets can sometimes be surprisingly emotionally intelligent), or go far beyond what the evidence actually supports, relying much too much on subjective judgements and unblinded tests by the researchers. One of the reasons that this is a problem is that this exact same kind of thing is done with humans sometimes, in the form of "Facilitated Communication" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facilitated_communication https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facilitated_communication), which is claimed to be a way of training "facilitators" to help calm and guide non-verbal autistic children's hands to be able to type out sentences and communicate. This was a very popular form of assistance for a while, and it even led to autistic children being able to speak out about their abusive parents. Except, as it it turns out, it was entirely based on pseudoscience. Once you did any kind of blinded testing, where you showed something different to the facilitator as you did to the patient, they would spell out the word for what the facilitator saw. The parental abuse, for which parents had been kicked out of their own homes and not allowed contact with their children? Entirely imagined by the facilitators. I'd recommend watching the PBS documentary "Prisoners of Silence" on this topic (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5sO9LyXuOQY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5sO9LyXuOQY). Allowing this kind of pseudoscience to get so much coverage can cause real harm to people, and it erodes faith in the scientific process.
  - bmer 8y ago
    I agree with all the points you have presented, in that they seem to make sense to me. Something you said stuck out to me though (triple asterisks around the word I want to put emphasis around): > ...are using their own theories of mind and inference ability to read more into Koko's actions than what is really there. Isn't that a judgement, that one should avoid when doing science. That is to say, the following could also be valid options, unless ruled out: > ...something else into Koko's actions than what is really there. > ...less into Koko's actions than what is really there. Your thoughts?
    - lambda 8y ago
      Yes, I should have been more clear that what I meant was that this is one possible alternative explanation that hasn't been ruled out by the experiments done, not that this is the only possibility. I had said "could have been consciously or subconsciously prompting her" and should have also said "could have been using their own theories of mind and inference ability to read more into Koko's actions than what is really there." I was just trying to list one more possible explanation that the experiments hadn't ruled out, not cover everything, but you're right, those are each also possibilities.
asciimo 8y ago
Why does it bother you that another animal might understand language? Everything humans have we got from our animal ancestors. Is language different? Is it divine?
- weberc2 8y ago
  You're misrepresenting the OP. They were perfectly clear that they weren't objecting to the conclusion, but the poor, cherry-picked evidence that was used to support the conclusion. You can disagree about the quality of the evidence, but please don't put words in others' mouths.
  - trhway 8y ago
    >You're misrepresenting the OP. no. The OP's "entirely different" is that religious dogma of "only humans have soul". Poisoned by the human exceptionality dogma over thousands of years, people refuse, implicitly and explicitly, the continuous incrementality of evolution and continue to cling to the divine-based "entirely different" like a drowning man clings to the flotation device.
    - lambda 8y ago
      The "entirely different" part is about specific claims about language. There are many different ways animals are able to communicate with each other, and with humans. Sounds, gestures, songs, body language, scents, and so on. They can get quite creative, they can be used to communicate emotion, they can indicate that the animals have some sense for the mental state of who they are communicating with, and so on. Almost all of this is fairly obvious to anyone who's ever owned a pet (though there are plenty of cases in which there can be some subjective bias there, so it can be good to devise better tests if you're really skeptical). But none of them have been demonstrated to have the arbitrarily complex, abstract, compositional nature that human language does; in which a finite (but large) set of words or signs can be strung together in arbitrarily complex ways, allowing a countably infinite number of different ideas to be potentially conveyed. This is qualitatively different than any other communication method that has been demonstrated in other animals. There's no dogma about it; it's just something that is unique to humans, as far as we know, just like the amazing ability to manipulate skin color and texture is something that's unique to cuttlefish. There are some things that certain kinds of animals can do that other kinds of animals can't, like flight, breathing via water or air, producing venoms, and so on. It would be a pretty big scientific breakthrough to discover that there was some mammal that could change its skin like cuttlefish, or to discover that a mammal could be trained to breath water. Likewise, discovering that non-human animal can learn a human-like language, with its arbitrary complexity through compositionality and ability to express abstract thought, is a pretty big claim too. The problem is, some people make this claim, without sufficient evidence to back it up.
xkcd-sucks 8y ago
I mean, who's to say the humans you communicate with daily are actually conscious? They just appear that way because they look and talk like you, and you believe yourself to be conscious. If a neutral third party observer saw Helen Keller communicating to one of her "handlers" -- Someone with the specialized training to do such communication at all -- They might very well think the handlers are inferring special meaning, because Helen Keller looks like a retarded person that can't originate meaningful thoughts. This obviously has implications upon our treatment of people with disabilities, people of different races/cultures etc.
- lambda 8y ago
  Helen Keller was able to communicate directly with people without a specific facilitator, eventually by learning to speak, to write, to read braille, to understand sign language by touch, and to lip read by touch. She was best with her first teacher, Anne Sullivan, but she could communicate directly with other people in many ways without facilitation. This definitely does have implication on treatment of people with disabilities; the same kind of pseudoscience was once popular with non-verbal autistic children, called "facilitated communication." However, some fairly basic blinded testing, showing the facilitator one picture and the subject another (possibly the same, possibly different), demonstrated that it was entirely the thoughts of the facilitator being communicated. Many of the facilitators didn't even realize this; they didn't realize they were subconsciously prompting. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facilitated_communication https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facilitated_communication I recommend the PBS documentary "Prisoners of Silence" on this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5sO9LyXuOQY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5sO9LyXuOQY So yes, there are implications, and those implications are that it is important to be thorough in demonstrating that some kind of facilitator in any communication is actually accurately representing communication from the subject, as opposed to themselves.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

by lambda 8y ago

lawlessone 8y ago

How many new and unique ideas that you have come up with in life could be attributed to your parents, teachers , the media?

apeace 8y ago
You're talking about the source of the idea. I can't speak for lambda, but I believe what they meant is that the researchers only interpreted Koko's ideas as unique, or as ideas at all. There has never been scientific validation that she actually meant what the researchers thought she meant. I think there's something wonderful about Koko and her relationship with humans. But at the same time, it saddens me that the scientists involved seem to have mostly treated her as a friend, and lacked the scientific rigor to answer some of the most important questions about her actions.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
lambda 8y ago
This isn't about "new and unique ideas" in the sense of some profound insight. I was responding to the "was capable of communicating new and unique ideas" from the parent, which is a way of paraphrasing some of the claims about Koko's language ability, in which it is claimed that Koko was going beyond mere use of single words to refer to literal objects or actions. I can put together a complex sentence describing abstract ideas, which is what I'm doing here. A dog cannot; a dog can understand a single word or sign in isolation, and may be some amount of literal sequencing, but there is no ability to understand an arbitrarily complex sequence of signs or words containing abstraction like human language is capable of. The claim about Koko's use of sign language is that she has been able to compose sentences out of combinations of words, and express abstract ideas; maybe somewhat more limited than humans in some way, but fundamentally the same way that human language works. That's what the skepticism is about; since while it's clear that she could be trained to recognize individual words and produce individual signs, and maybe some limited pairs, all of the evidence of anything more complex seems to come from interpretation through her handlers, who could have been consciously or subconsciously prompting her, and are using their own theories of mind and inference ability to read more into Koko's actions than what is really there. There's plenty of non-verbal communication you can do with a dog or even a cat. They can pick up on emotional states. They have memories. They can learn words or signs. They can be caring. A lot of the claims about Koko seem to be either unsurprising for anyone who has owned a pet (yes, pets can sometimes be surprisingly emotionally intelligent), or go far beyond what the evidence actually supports, relying much too much on subjective judgements and unblinded tests by the researchers. One of the reasons that this is a problem is that this exact same kind of thing is done with humans sometimes, in the form of "Facilitated Communication" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facilitated_communication https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facilitated_communication), which is claimed to be a way of training "facilitators" to help calm and guide non-verbal autistic children's hands to be able to type out sentences and communicate. This was a very popular form of assistance for a while, and it even led to autistic children being able to speak out about their abusive parents. Except, as it it turns out, it was entirely based on pseudoscience. Once you did any kind of blinded testing, where you showed something different to the facilitator as you did to the patient, they would spell out the word for what the facilitator saw. The parental abuse, for which parents had been kicked out of their own homes and not allowed contact with their children? Entirely imagined by the facilitators. I'd recommend watching the PBS documentary "Prisoners of Silence" on this topic (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5sO9LyXuOQY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5sO9LyXuOQY). Allowing this kind of pseudoscience to get so much coverage can cause real harm to people, and it erodes faith in the scientific process.
- bmer 8y ago
  I agree with all the points you have presented, in that they seem to make sense to me. Something you said stuck out to me though (triple asterisks around the word I want to put emphasis around): > ...are using their own theories of mind and inference ability to read more into Koko's actions than what is really there. Isn't that a judgement, that one should avoid when doing science. That is to say, the following could also be valid options, unless ruled out: > ...something else into Koko's actions than what is really there. > ...less into Koko's actions than what is really there. Your thoughts?
  - lambda 8y ago
    Yes, I should have been more clear that what I meant was that this is one possible alternative explanation that hasn't been ruled out by the experiments done, not that this is the only possibility. I had said "could have been consciously or subconsciously prompting her" and should have also said "could have been using their own theories of mind and inference ability to read more into Koko's actions than what is really there." I was just trying to list one more possible explanation that the experiments hadn't ruled out, not cover everything, but you're right, those are each also possibilities.

asciimo 8y ago

Why does it bother you that another animal might understand language? Everything humans have we got from our animal ancestors. Is language different? Is it divine?

weberc2 8y ago
You're misrepresenting the OP. They were perfectly clear that they weren't objecting to the conclusion, but the poor, cherry-picked evidence that was used to support the conclusion. You can disagree about the quality of the evidence, but please don't put words in others' mouths.
- trhway 8y ago
  >You're misrepresenting the OP. no. The OP's "entirely different" is that religious dogma of "only humans have soul". Poisoned by the human exceptionality dogma over thousands of years, people refuse, implicitly and explicitly, the continuous incrementality of evolution and continue to cling to the divine-based "entirely different" like a drowning man clings to the flotation device.
  - lambda 8y ago
    The "entirely different" part is about specific claims about language. There are many different ways animals are able to communicate with each other, and with humans. Sounds, gestures, songs, body language, scents, and so on. They can get quite creative, they can be used to communicate emotion, they can indicate that the animals have some sense for the mental state of who they are communicating with, and so on. Almost all of this is fairly obvious to anyone who's ever owned a pet (though there are plenty of cases in which there can be some subjective bias there, so it can be good to devise better tests if you're really skeptical). But none of them have been demonstrated to have the arbitrarily complex, abstract, compositional nature that human language does; in which a finite (but large) set of words or signs can be strung together in arbitrarily complex ways, allowing a countably infinite number of different ideas to be potentially conveyed. This is qualitatively different than any other communication method that has been demonstrated in other animals. There's no dogma about it; it's just something that is unique to humans, as far as we know, just like the amazing ability to manipulate skin color and texture is something that's unique to cuttlefish. There are some things that certain kinds of animals can do that other kinds of animals can't, like flight, breathing via water or air, producing venoms, and so on. It would be a pretty big scientific breakthrough to discover that there was some mammal that could change its skin like cuttlefish, or to discover that a mammal could be trained to breath water. Likewise, discovering that non-human animal can learn a human-like language, with its arbitrary complexity through compositionality and ability to express abstract thought, is a pretty big claim too. The problem is, some people make this claim, without sufficient evidence to back it up.

xkcd-sucks 8y ago

I mean, who's to say the humans you communicate with daily are actually conscious? They just appear that way because they look and talk like you, and you believe yourself to be conscious. If a neutral third party observer saw Helen Keller communicating to one of her "handlers" -- Someone with the specialized training to do such communication at all -- They might very well think the handlers are inferring special meaning, because Helen Keller looks like a retarded person that can't originate meaningful thoughts. This obviously has implications upon our treatment of people with disabilities, people of different races/cultures etc.

lambda 8y ago
Helen Keller was able to communicate directly with people without a specific facilitator, eventually by learning to speak, to write, to read braille, to understand sign language by touch, and to lip read by touch. She was best with her first teacher, Anne Sullivan, but she could communicate directly with other people in many ways without facilitation. This definitely does have implication on treatment of people with disabilities; the same kind of pseudoscience was once popular with non-verbal autistic children, called "facilitated communication." However, some fairly basic blinded testing, showing the facilitator one picture and the subject another (possibly the same, possibly different), demonstrated that it was entirely the thoughts of the facilitator being communicated. Many of the facilitators didn't even realize this; they didn't realize they were subconsciously prompting. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facilitated_communication https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facilitated_communication I recommend the PBS documentary "Prisoners of Silence" on this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5sO9LyXuOQY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5sO9LyXuOQY So yes, there are implications, and those implications are that it is important to be thorough in demonstrating that some kind of facilitator in any communication is actually accurately representing communication from the subject, as opposed to themselves.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]