16 ms·

A ‘Self-Aware’ Fish Raises Doubts About a Cognitive Test

162 points by toufiqbarhamov 8y ago

eksemplar 8y ago
I’m completely out of my field, but I never understood why it was so hard for us to imagine that other animals were capable of having rich inner lives or even being self-aware. To me it seem obvious that other animals would also possess various degrees of cognitive ability, I mean, we do.
- uhtred 8y ago
  Because it makes it easier for us to abuse, exploit and murder them.
  - ozzmotik 8y ago
    just a minor nitpick: the technical definition of murder is the unlawful killing of another. in most cases, the killing of animals is not unlawful and therefore can't really be called murder. also depending on the source of the definition, murder more specifically refers to the unlawful killing of a human, specifically. if you remove the need for it to be a human then there certainly can be cases of killing animals that count as murder, for instance killing endangered species, or hunting without a permit/hunting a species out of season, or the killing of an animal with clear malice (eg animal abuse). but still, for most intents and purposes, the killing of animals can't really be called murder because the majority of animal death is merely to provide food and as such is most certainly not unlawful.
    - monocasa 8y ago
      I'd call it murder when a antebellum plantation owner killed a slave, even though that was lawful.
      - ozzmotik 8y ago
        id probably consider that to be murder as well but there are two concessions that have to be made: 1.) we are making that evaluation within the context of modern society where the ownership of slaves is generally seen as inhumane and atrocious, and that people are not property. the context in antebellum society was extremely different and as such one could make the claim that during such times, that wouldn't have been considered murder by a majority of (slave owning) individuals. 2.) another element of the definition of murder is generally the existence of malicious intent. i would say that it's fair to see the taking of life of slaves as something that generally was done with malicious intent, that is to say as an authoritarian method of controlling the rest of the slaves by using the killed slaves to show them who is in control. of course, again, this is being framed within the context of modern society, but I think this argument could be much more easily applied in a manner that is independent of the general values of the time, because im pretty sure that malice as a concept has remained a lot more consistent that what is lawful, over time.
    - perfmode 8y ago
      Lawyers are partially responsible for the dismissive attitude that makes certain humans feel superior and justified as treating others as instrumental. It is likely that present day legal concepts impede progress and deeper understanding and appreciation of the world. Lawyers write laws that ensnare us in self-righteousness and complacency. It is totally fine for me to determine that there are things which are legal which are unethical. I will not wait for the law to catch up to the idea that people are not property. I will not wait for the law to classify for me which life forms are means to an end and which are ends in themselves. The American legal code has been used to justify countless injustices against indigenous peoples and does not deserve to own our language. It does not deserve the privilege to declare what is murder and not murder.
      - ianai 8y ago
        That’s a great explanation and sentiment about ethics. I wish more people adopted it.
      - michaelmrose 8y ago
        Very insightful. I can't up vote this enough.
      - visarga 8y ago
        Lawyers, yes, but religion also plays a major part. > "Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it; and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky, and over every living thing that moves on the earth." So righteous people felt entitled to exploit animals with no regard to their inner lives, and exploit nature with no concern about the ecological disasters they might cause. Only now, after we 'multiplied and filled the earth', have come to a point where we can't just ignore ecology, there are limits and constraints we now understand. So we developed new ethics that would help humanity survive.
    - Falling3 8y ago
      Words have multiple meanings applicable in different contexts. Murder is not exclusively a legal term. Your parent comment clearly was not looking to make a legal argument. Was that not obvious?
      - ozzmotik 8y ago
        it was obvious, just as it's obvious that the first words i said were that it was just a minor nitpick based on what the technical definition of the word "murder" is. i wasn't per se trying to make a legal argument, more making the claim that murder itself is defined as an unlawful act. obviously it can be used in other contexts, but then again, so can basically any other word in any language if you're willing to warp semantics enough to suit your purposes.
        Falling3 8y ago
        > obviously it can be used in other contexts, but then again, so can basically any other word in any language if you're willing to warp semantics enough to suit your purposes. Sure. But this isn't about "warping semantics". The word predates our current legal definition. It's used frequently outside of legal discussions. The parent was trying to make an argument contingent on the legal definition so nitpicking about proper usage under that definition is pointless as best.
    - Svettie 8y ago
      You're right, but here the word is used intentionally for dramatic/emotional effect, akin to a metaphor.
      - ozzmotik 8y ago
        yes im aware. it's just that i think maybe that murder isn't the most effective terminology because of the simple fact that most of the taking of animal life in the context of providing food to the population isn't performed with any intentional malice, and even if murder isn't being used in a legal context, another important context within it is general malicious intent. i can see that maybe some people who are against the food industry could easily convince themselves that there is malicious intent and directed evil in the way that said industry works, but I'm almost 100% positive that in the overwhelming majority of cases that the only intent that exists is to provide food for the population, or arguably one of financial superiority. something something evil is banal something something
- hirundo 8y ago
  It's hard for humans to understand that people not in their tribe have rich inner lives or can be self-aware, let alone animals. We're wired to believe almost anything if our interest depends on it. We have an interest in pillaging other tribes and eating other animals, so it's easy to convince ourselves that they are non-player characters. It makes doing those things more pleasant.
  - wincy 8y ago
    Perhaps too off topic, but I’ve often wondered how the descendants of Vikings, once considered the most terrifying raiders of the sea, are now some of the most egalitarian and nonviolent nation states.
    - hirundo 8y ago
      Maybe because their more aggressive ancestors went viking, conquered, and settled abroad, those remaining were more placid.
      - User23 8y ago
        The Russians are a good example.
        pavel_lishin 8y ago
        How so?
        blawson 8y ago
        Scandinavians (the Rus' people) are thought to have had a part in the founding of a lot of 'modern' eastern Europe. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rus%27_people https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rus%27_people
      - dboreham 8y ago
        This however doesn't explain North Dakota.
- castle-bravo 8y ago
  I suspect that it's cultural and derives from our economic relationship to animals. I remember seeing a film as a child that depicted a native hunter killing a deer and profusely thanking the spirit of the deer; attributing intelligence and identity to the deer would predispose a hunter to pay close attention to the animal's behaviour and give him an edge in hunting it. In cultures with domestcated animals bred for compliance with human will, it is less advantageous to view the animal as another mind. Instead, we see them as tools to be used and discarded. To do otherwise would compromise our ability to extract maximum economic advantage from use of the animal.
  - wincy 8y ago
    I’m not so sure that’s the case though, as for example Talmudic law prohibits castrating animals. A gelded oxen is much calmer and easier to work with than a bull. I think it certainly varies from society to society, but ancient agrarian traditions also respect animals in ways you might not expect.
    - colordrops 8y ago
      Humans aren't perfect economic machines. A single example doesn't necessarily refute the claim. And even then there might be some other advantage to not castrating oxen that isn't being considered.
      - doctorpangloss 8y ago
        > And even then there might be some other advantage to not castrating oxen that isn't being considered. I supposed you could come up with one. Your OP basically gave you a really knowledgeable counterexample, rooted in a rich field of study in anthropology (treatment of animals), in societies that long predated capitalism. This is actually a pretty common pattern in HN. When the HNers hear something like: "According to this book that the recipient of the information (the HNers) didn't read, here's an illustrative example of how rich the study is." They respond: "But capitalism." You've adopted a world-explaining model (capitalism) that works most of the time (that "single examples don't necessarily refute") not because it's powerful, but because it requires extremely little knowledge. That's really why derivatives of this line of thinking (think LessWrong/singularity/Paul Graham worship) are so widely adopted. Not because the ideas are right. It's that the ideas work for people who don't read, or are just really god damned rich, or who don't really know anything, or think they 'know enough,' like true hacks would say. The downside is that when someone tells you this fascinating tidbit of Talmudic law, instead of typing in "anthropology of the treatment of animals in historic societies," the reaction is, "Well fuck this guy's knowledge." One name for this phenomenon is "first principles." A great, positive spin on knowing nothing! This forum's discourse has declined exactly because of first principles, and others have observed the same (characterizing their criticism as a criticism of "first principles thinking.")
- luxuryballs 8y ago
  I think it’s not hard to imagine at all and that’s exactly why they’re making time and effort to find some scientific proof.
- EliRivers 8y ago
  There is a poster here somewhere who maintains that because animals don't have a language, they cannot think; presumably extrapolating from noticing that they themselves think in words (edit: found it - "Animals don't think, because thinking requires language..."). From what I can tell in the animal research game, it's like AI; every so often someone posits some qualitative property that only humans do as the difference twixt animals and humans, and then an observer sees that qualitative behaviour in an animal (or sometime has seen it years or decades before). Frans de Waal's books on this are very readable. The big ones of previous years - empathy, planning, tool-using and so on - all fall pretty easily.
  - rsynnott 8y ago
    That’s... a weird argument. Humans can think without words (and indeed without words or images).
    - hirundo 8y ago
      Not everyone thinks so. See the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis.
      - User23 8y ago
        While semiotic has become something of a joke, it has been seriously investigated[1]. We don't really think in language or even in symbols, it's rather a lot more complex than that. [1]https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/peirce-semiotics/ https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/peirce-semiotics/
      - dltnhic 8y ago
        It is not contradictory to maintain both.
    - PyroLagus 8y ago
      How do you think without words, or rather sounds, or images? How do you keep track of a concept without a label you can attach to it?
- techiferous 8y ago
  Because we view animals as resources to be used for our ends. Cognitive dissonance is at play.
  - randyrand 8y ago
    Throughout history humans have treated humans like dirt as well. There must be more to the answer.
    - emj 8y ago
      Some of us still do, it's easy to call people from groups unfamiliar to us useless or worse.
- blhack 8y ago
  Because they don't act as though they have rich inner lives (especially fish and birds). If you're actually interested in this topic, I highly recommend the book "On Intelligence" by Jeff Hawkins.
  - zaq_xsw 8y ago
    I'm not so sure about that. Certain species pf crows and parrots have long been understood (even by non-scientists) to have general/abstract reasoning abilities. And people who actually study them seem to think that we often underestimate them [0] - probably because of widely held myths like the 5 second memory one. I haven't read Hawkins' book yet, but he and the vicarious crew tend to conflate "neocortex" with "general intelligence" in their public talks. Birds and, it seems, the vast majority of animal species rely on predictive models of the world to navigate it - even if their "model-builder" doesn't look exactly like the mammalian one.[1] It makes complete sense to me - if a lizard loses a leg, it quickly learns how to walk with just 3 legs. If a finch is born with slightly larger wings than normal, and it also loses some of its tail feathers at some point, it quickly learns to adjust its motor patterns to suit the new conditions. You solve problems like these with sensory-motor models, not with hard-coded algorithms. [0] https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21528836-200-animals-are-conscious-and-should-be-treated-as-such/ https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21528836-200-animals-... [1] https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/10/121001151953.htm https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/10/121001151953.h...
  - vbuwivbiu 8y ago
    nor do most humans
  - amanaplanacanal 8y ago
    Birds are a lot smarter than most people give them credit for. I think most people just have more experience dealing with mammals.
- nineteen999 8y ago
  There is a massive segment of the movie market (primarily aimed at children) where the starring characters are anthropomorphised animals which live rich inner lives and are self-aware. This is almost Pixar/Disney and Dreamworks entire very successful business model. So I don't think it is really so hard for most of us to imagine ...
  - Varcht 8y ago
    Chicken or the egg? Definitely some feedback loop going on, not sure which is which.
    - nineteen999 8y ago
      Well even before animated movies, there were books, first that comes to mind was Charlotte's Web (1952). Winnie the Pooh (1926) has a talking owl. I'm not particularly well read, I'm sure others could come up with better/earlier examples. If you go back in history, Eve was supposedly tempted by a talking snake. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talking_animals_in_fiction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talking_animals_in_fiction
  - Falling3 8y ago
    I think imagine is probably not the best word to convey what the parent is talking about. Maybe "take seriously". We also have plenty of movies involved anthropomorphized inanimate objects, but (almost) no one believes they have any kind of inner lives or self-awareness.
- roywiggins 8y ago
  For the first half of the 20th century, scientists didn't believe that human babies felt pain. What's obvious isn't universal. http://www.nocirc.org/symposia/second/chamberlain.html http://www.nocirc.org/symposia/second/chamberlain.html
  - berlinstartup 8y ago
    They knew. I mean, it's pretty obvious from the screaming. They just had to have an excuse for the lucrative practice of mutilating babies, which American doctors still do today.
  - perl4ever 8y ago
    Setting circumcision aside, AFAIK anesthesia is not possible when doing surgery on infants, so with serious conditions, it's either operate without it or nothing. Therefore, believing they don't feel pain is a matter of expediency allowing doctors to save lives.
    - tait 8y ago
      We routinely anesthetize infants with either local or general anesthesia. Here is a 2015 discussion from the American Society for Anesthesiology comparing regional with general: “General anesthesia safe for infants, does not impair neurological development, study finds” - https://www.asahq.org/about-asa/newsroom/news-releases/2015/10/general-anesthesia-safe-for-infants https://www.asahq.org/about-asa/newsroom/news-releases/2015/...
      - ars 8y ago
        That's today. Anesthesia was considerably more risky in the past. (For everyone not just babies.)
      - perl4ever 8y ago
        I didn't think it was a matter of "impairing neurological development" but of getting the right dosage. Also, if there is a 2015 study saying it's safe, that would seem to imply general anesthesia is not so routine.
- goatlover 8y ago
  Part of it has involved controversies over language, culture and consciousness, and part of it has been not wanting to anthropomorphize animals as having human personalities, since being human has a lot to do with thinking in language derived from culture, and that we're apes with vision as our dominant sense instead of smell.
- swayvil 8y ago
  Ignoring 99% of your reality frees up tons of attention for attention-demanding tasks like engineering and officework. Not to mention somewhat insulating you from the toxicity of urban life. It's an attention-management-strategy that's popular and efficient for cultures like ours. Of course it's evil as hell too. So we compensate with an appropriately self-serving "well they're just dumb animals" narrative.
- JauntyHatAngle 8y ago
  I don't follow you. People have been imagining animals have complex inner lives for thousands of years. It's a natural thing for us to do in our want to relate to things. People disagree with each other, sure, but I think that's fair that people disagree on a contentious topic. There is hardly an answer to whether fish have complex inner worlds yet. Are you talking about scientific thought about it? >possess various degrees of cognitive ability I can't say I agree with this. I agree with you that perhaps people failed to recognise and test for variances within the species. (Im not in this field either so I can't say for sure...) but again, the majority of people would know that different animals of the same type don't have different quirks and differing intelligence. Anyone who has had some pet fish has recognised some as being more shy or more aggressive than the other. Cow farmers know some of their cows are dumber and smarter than the other. To take that thought and say "well therefore some fish have rich inner lives and others dont" is a bit of a stretch to me. I would suppose that there is a limit to their capacity and variance. Sure, Chimps, Dolphins, Elephants - very easy to convince people they do and I'd believe it easily. Convince me that a trout does? I'm not so sure, and would need to be convinced in some way. I can imagine it, but I won't believe something just because of my want to anthropomorphise. While I can understand that many people are too dismissive of animals as being basic or unfeeling, that doesn't invalidate the idea that animals have a more limited mental capacity for what we perceive to be conciousness, and that includes sense of self at least somewhere along the line of complexity.
- nobody271 8y ago
  I too am outside of my very (very very very) narrow five things that I can do BUT I've had the same question as you so allow me to throw some of my thoughts your way. It starts off with a rough guess about something hard to define and because it's so hard to define no one ever changes it but it's not as though the rough guess was ever correct. That's the part we forget. I think it's similar to the Turing test which to some people has become like a blindly dogmatic rule for machine intelligence. I don't think the Turing test was ever meant to be used how it's used today. I think it was just a rough guess. More like a "yeah, something like that" kind of thing than a definition.
- kyllo 8y ago
  It's because it causes an uncomfortable degree of cognitive dissonance to imagine that animals have self-awareness and rich inner lives, and also justify killing and eating them. I'm not a vegan, I eat a lot of meat--I just feel uncomfortable when I think about it this way.
- zachguo 8y ago
  Anthropomorphism is what you described. It's not a falsifiable scientific theory.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
tsherr 8y ago
We're still in the "earth is the centre of the universe" stage when it comes to other life forms.
- gnulinux 8y ago
  2018 Ig Nobel Prize in Anthropology winner: Spontaneous Cross-Species Imitation in Interaction Between Chimpanzees and Zoo Visitors [1] "[...] for collecting evidence, in a zoo, that chimpanzees imitate humans about as often, and about as well, as humans imitate chimpanzees." I think this is evidence towards your point that we understand very little of cognition of other species. [1]: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10329-017-0624-9 https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10329-017-0624-9
  - PacifyFish 8y ago
    I'm sure this work was groundbreaking , but let's not kid ourselves that imitation is some high and misunderstood form of intelligence. Nor should we kid ourselves that this is new information. The adage "monkey see, monkey do" has been around for, what, centuries? Is it really that surprising that apes imitate things they see? Does it really reveal a paltry understanding of monkey cognition?
    - jamiek88 8y ago
      Hence the ignoble prize!
      - PacifyFish 8y ago
        Ah thanks, missed the "ig."
        gnulinux 8y ago
        Yeah there is no Nobel in Anthropology.
  - Varcht 8y ago
jvagner 8y ago
I've been doing a 30 day vegetarian challenge this month. It hasn't even been hard. Pizza is already not working for me. You can guess where I'm going in January. I'm pretty sure I'm not going back.
- uhtred 8y ago
  Going vegan is also easy, so many amazing recipe books and blogs, off the shelf goods, restaurants.
- gnulinux 8y ago
  Going vegan isn't easy at all, I even doubt it's possible if you care about your protein intake. Plant sources are very carb rich and more and more evidence suggests high carb, low fat diets aren't good for humans. There is simply no way to get enough protein from plant sources unless you wanna eat highly processed tofu every day. A full vegan, high protein diet would require eating low carb tofu at least 2 meals a day. Otherwise you need to accept taking exorbitant amounts of carb to get enough protein (basically, from beans). Seeing that how popular weightlifting in young Americans (especially males) today, suggesting "vegan diet is easy" is intellectual dishonesty. I'm not arguing anything about ethics or availability or cost of vegan diet. There is simply no evidence suggesting full vegan diet is healthy. The most alarming thing about vegan diet is that you'll have absolutely no source of Omega 3 except expensive açai berry and walnut (all other plant sources have trace amount of Omega 3). So in a vegan diet you get excess amount of carbs (especially sugars) and Omega 6 which causes inflammatory diseases. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/11/171113095430.htm https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/11/171113095430.h... If I were vegan I would eat Trader Joes low carb tofu, avacado, açai berries and walnut every day, all day and supplement it with high fiber veggies like broccoli, and brussel sprouts. This is simply not feasible and practical from a cost and social aspect. Eat too much fruits to get cheap, and widely available calories and you'll get bizarre amounts of fructose. Good luck with that.
  - jvagner 8y ago
    i'm a certified personal trainer, a competitive strength athlete, best friend is a nutritionist and doctor, and we can look at a selective subset of science and studies all day long but i'll go with the research i've selected and believe in, the cohorts i know and socialize with and whose examples i can see, and the actions i've decided on. even if we take inactive, S.A.D. eaters out of the mix, there are healthy and unhealthy examples of most eating modalities. ultimately, i'm of the belief that paining over any "healthy" modality will increase harm, and not-paining over any "healthy" modality won't. in the end, we meet our end. until then...
miltondts 8y ago
The value of these types of tests has been called into question long before: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pHSbvjq1nm4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pHSbvjq1nm4 The above video had a tremendous effect on how I view intelligence and creativity. Seeing pigeons "talking" and solving problems really puts in perspective the power of the context/environment. That is why I think we already have the algorithms for AGI.(i.e. reinforcement learning is probably all you need) We just don't have the processing and/or the right context for it to develop. But I also think the result will have all the downsides of animals/humans. That is, it will be as hard to get the desired behavior from an AI as it is to get it out of an animal/human because the predicting the behavior out of the cost function+environment will remain extremely hard. In fact you can see this mentioned in the video. Getting the right repertoire even for seemingly "simple" behaviors is hard.
- joe_the_user 8y ago
  Indeed, that's BF Skinner and associates talking about how creative behavior arises naturally from learned behavior. And key here is that things like "the mirror test" are about testing animals for what humans naively believe are their unique traits. And this seems like it could be easily faulty if these naively human beliefs are false, which seems quite likely actually. And also I'd view the focus on consciousness as a naive belief even if psychologists and philosophers have attempted to systematize it. At the same time, Skinner in particular as "behaviorist" seems to go from a lab where he's seeing most behavior mediated by stimulus to a position that seems to imply behavior coming mechanically from stimulus.
b_tterc_p 8y ago
Unless I’m reading this incorrectly, their sample size is 4 fish, 3 of which sort of passed.
- Buldak 8y ago
  I don't know if the usual caveats about sample size should be salient when we're investigating something like self-awareness. If I found a fish who could talk, I wouldn't demur, " ... but it's a small sample."
  - b_tterc_p 8y ago
    Point taken, but we’re a far cry from evidence as strong as talking. The article itself mentions refuted studies which were later proven to not be reproduceable. It’s more likely to find three weird fish than three fish that have self awareness unlike the rest of their species. Also unclear how many chances these fish were given, and I am guessing it was very generous.
  - adrianN 8y ago
    Effect size is pretty important too. If the effect is strong enough you don't need huge sample sizes. Talking fish certainly is a strong effect.
- orky56 8y ago
  That was just the sample size when they first tried to publish. It seems like it's been retested since and only now has been accepted into publication. No hard numbers on that in the article though.
godelski 8y ago
This is an anecdotal story, but has made me feel weird about this test in general. I have a cat (who do not pass the mirror test) who loves mirrors. She just likes looking at herself in them. It is weird. She also frequently walks in on me in the bathroom and frequently looks at me through the mirror. And I know she looks at that one because it is the one I look at her with. So it always has made me feel like this test may be doing something else, because she clearly recognizes that I'm not in the mirror, but that she can see me with it. So it seems like she understands what a reflection is, but not her self in the reflection. So it seems that animals can understand reflections, but does that really mean they recognize a self if they recognize themselves in it? IDK, I'm not a biologist and may be missing a lot from this test.
- IAmGraydon 8y ago
  I have two Siamese cats, one of which does exactly what you describe. So I started testing this a bit and noticed that if she’s facing away from me and looking at me in the mirror and I reach for her from behind like I’m going to scratch her, she will stand up to meet my hand. This seems to mean that she understands that what she’s seeing in the mirror is just a reflection and that when the guy in the mirror is about to scratch the cat in the mirror, it’s actually me that’s about to scratch her.
  - godelski 8y ago
    Yes! She does exactly that too. And I do have to mention that my cat is deathly afraid of anyone that isn't me. So it wound stand to reason that she recognizes that it is the "me" that she knows. That being said, cats don't have excellent eyesight. But it is hard to do the mirror test with a creature that is so sensitive to feels and smells. I wonder how they test it for cats. Because surely a little dot isn't good enough. Maybe a laser dot?
- namlem 8y ago
  Cats have been observed passing the mirror test. One popular hypothesis is that they can recognize themselves, they just don't care. That or some cats are capable of recognizing themselves and some aren't.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
clubm8 8y ago
Reminds me of this article from 2009 where a dead salmon "reacted" to ""a series of photographs depicting human individuals in social situations." https://www.wired.com/2009/09/fmrisalmon/ https://www.wired.com/2009/09/fmrisalmon/
- thanatropism 8y ago
  The irreplaceable Alone, the pirate doctor, thus reacted to the dead salmon fMRIs: https://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2009/10/the_problem_with_science_is_sc.html https://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2009/10/the_problem_with_sci...
  - perl4ever 8y ago
    "behavior is, in large part, genetically determined" I disagree with the qualification "in large part", which implies there is behavior that is not genetically determined. Suppose you do an experiment to test. Disrupt the genetic code in a fertilized mammalian egg completely. You will find there is no subsequent behavior of the organism. Hence, it is clear that all behavior is dependent on genetics. On the other hand, if you place that egg in a box for several years, you will likewise find that there is no ensuing behavior. Therefore, it is clear that all behavior is dependent on the environment.
    - Dylan16807 8y ago
      So you're being pedantic about an especially uncharitable interpretation of "determined"? Thanks?
      - perl4ever 8y ago
        I was saying there is no behavior which can be disconnected from either genes or environment. Why do you dismiss that as mere pedantry?
        Dylan16807 8y ago
qwerty456127 8y ago
The ink-dot and mirror "self-awareness" always sounded ridiculous to me. Isn't it obvious that a self-aware creature does not necessarily has to care about their appearance and can ignore the dot and that a creature driven by instincts and reflexes only can be programmed to maintain their skin color pattern (as the species has developed the pattern for a reason)? I would rather believe it might be self-aware if the same creature would remove the dot some times, would do it later every now and then and would ignore it occasionally. In fact I even doubt every human is consciously self-aware, a huge number of people probably live their lives the way we see dreams. So many people have no doubts their bare feelings and judgments are the reality e.g. believing the fact they're upset means a counterpart has done something really wrong and/or hates them while in fact they might just have not slept well or followed a bad diet...
- fwip 8y ago
  Contrary to popular belief, other people have rich inner lives, not just you. I know it's gratifying to think you're in an exclusive club of smart people, but you're really fooling yourself. You're like a half-step away from the "NPC" meme.
  - qwerty456127 8y ago
    It's not gratifying, it's depressing. And I didn't say anything about "just me" (I meant a portion of people and I don't know how big or small it is) and also didn't say I myself had always been consciously self-aware nor that I easily manage to maintain self-awareness all the time. In fact I wish somebody would explain this idea to me a decade ago so I would wake up and develop the skill&habit of conscious presence and critical perception of subjective reality earlier, my life could have made much more sense and less struggle for me and whoever I've interacted with then.
  - PavlovsCat 8y ago
    Define "rich". > It is unbelievable how blank and devoid of meaning, seen from the outside, and how muffled and unconscious, felt from the inside, the lives of most people flow along. It's a dull desiring and suffering, a dream-like tumbling through the four season towards death, accompanied by a series of trivial thoughts. -- Arthur Schopenhauer > [..] the individual citizen has very little possibility of having any influence - of making his opinion felt in the decision-making. And I think that, in itself, leads to a good deal of political lethargy and stupidity. It is true that one has to think first and then to act -but it's also true that if one has no possibility of acting, one's thinking kind of becomes empty and stupid. -- Erich Fromm, who also said > The fact that millions of people share the same vices does not make these vices virtues, the fact that they share so many errors does not make the errors to be truths, and the fact that millions of people share the same form of mental pathology does not make these people sane.
namlem 8y ago
The cleaner wrasse has long been known to be extremely intelligent. The fact that scientists are questioning the mirror test because of this fish is more telling of their credibility than the test's. The cleaner wrasse even engages in complex economic behavior: http://freakonomics.com/podcast/animal-economics/ http://freakonomics.com/podcast/animal-economics/
colordrops 8y ago
An anecdote here - my wife and I both met a tropical fish in a tank at a restaurant and it was clear to both of us that the fish exhibited significant intelligence. It observed us patiently and even made playful eye contact. It seems that there are different levels of intelligence within fish species and they can't just all be categorized the same. It's only very recently where humans realized the great intelligence found on octopuses. The same may be true of some fish.
ada1981 8y ago
If the fish is able to bring up concerns about the test being used, it has to have some degree of intelligence.
rv-de 8y ago
The mirror test always seemed flawed to be because of its reliance on visual perception. For many animals eyes and the primary source of environmental information. For some it's the nose. Now how about a special device that synthesizes your body odor and fans it back to you - would you recognize yourself?

I’m completely out of my field, but I never understood why it was so hard for us to imagine that other animals were capable of having rich inner lives or even being self-aware. To me it seem obvious that other animals would also possess various degrees of cognitive ability, I mean, we do.

uhtred 8y ago
Because it makes it easier for us to abuse, exploit and murder them.
- ozzmotik 8y ago
  just a minor nitpick: the technical definition of murder is the unlawful killing of another. in most cases, the killing of animals is not unlawful and therefore can't really be called murder. also depending on the source of the definition, murder more specifically refers to the unlawful killing of a human, specifically. if you remove the need for it to be a human then there certainly can be cases of killing animals that count as murder, for instance killing endangered species, or hunting without a permit/hunting a species out of season, or the killing of an animal with clear malice (eg animal abuse). but still, for most intents and purposes, the killing of animals can't really be called murder because the majority of animal death is merely to provide food and as such is most certainly not unlawful.
  - monocasa 8y ago
    I'd call it murder when a antebellum plantation owner killed a slave, even though that was lawful.
    - ozzmotik 8y ago
      id probably consider that to be murder as well but there are two concessions that have to be made: 1.) we are making that evaluation within the context of modern society where the ownership of slaves is generally seen as inhumane and atrocious, and that people are not property. the context in antebellum society was extremely different and as such one could make the claim that during such times, that wouldn't have been considered murder by a majority of (slave owning) individuals. 2.) another element of the definition of murder is generally the existence of malicious intent. i would say that it's fair to see the taking of life of slaves as something that generally was done with malicious intent, that is to say as an authoritarian method of controlling the rest of the slaves by using the killed slaves to show them who is in control. of course, again, this is being framed within the context of modern society, but I think this argument could be much more easily applied in a manner that is independent of the general values of the time, because im pretty sure that malice as a concept has remained a lot more consistent that what is lawful, over time.
  - perfmode 8y ago
    Lawyers are partially responsible for the dismissive attitude that makes certain humans feel superior and justified as treating others as instrumental. It is likely that present day legal concepts impede progress and deeper understanding and appreciation of the world. Lawyers write laws that ensnare us in self-righteousness and complacency. It is totally fine for me to determine that there are things which are legal which are unethical. I will not wait for the law to catch up to the idea that people are not property. I will not wait for the law to classify for me which life forms are means to an end and which are ends in themselves. The American legal code has been used to justify countless injustices against indigenous peoples and does not deserve to own our language. It does not deserve the privilege to declare what is murder and not murder.
    - ianai 8y ago
      That’s a great explanation and sentiment about ethics. I wish more people adopted it.
    - michaelmrose 8y ago
      Very insightful. I can't up vote this enough.
    - visarga 8y ago
      Lawyers, yes, but religion also plays a major part. > "Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it; and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky, and over every living thing that moves on the earth." So righteous people felt entitled to exploit animals with no regard to their inner lives, and exploit nature with no concern about the ecological disasters they might cause. Only now, after we 'multiplied and filled the earth', have come to a point where we can't just ignore ecology, there are limits and constraints we now understand. So we developed new ethics that would help humanity survive.
  - Falling3 8y ago
    Words have multiple meanings applicable in different contexts. Murder is not exclusively a legal term. Your parent comment clearly was not looking to make a legal argument. Was that not obvious?
    - ozzmotik 8y ago
      it was obvious, just as it's obvious that the first words i said were that it was just a minor nitpick based on what the technical definition of the word "murder" is. i wasn't per se trying to make a legal argument, more making the claim that murder itself is defined as an unlawful act. obviously it can be used in other contexts, but then again, so can basically any other word in any language if you're willing to warp semantics enough to suit your purposes.
      - Falling3 8y ago
        > obviously it can be used in other contexts, but then again, so can basically any other word in any language if you're willing to warp semantics enough to suit your purposes. Sure. But this isn't about "warping semantics". The word predates our current legal definition. It's used frequently outside of legal discussions. The parent was trying to make an argument contingent on the legal definition so nitpicking about proper usage under that definition is pointless as best.
  - Svettie 8y ago
    You're right, but here the word is used intentionally for dramatic/emotional effect, akin to a metaphor.
    - ozzmotik 8y ago
      yes im aware. it's just that i think maybe that murder isn't the most effective terminology because of the simple fact that most of the taking of animal life in the context of providing food to the population isn't performed with any intentional malice, and even if murder isn't being used in a legal context, another important context within it is general malicious intent. i can see that maybe some people who are against the food industry could easily convince themselves that there is malicious intent and directed evil in the way that said industry works, but I'm almost 100% positive that in the overwhelming majority of cases that the only intent that exists is to provide food for the population, or arguably one of financial superiority. something something evil is banal something something
hirundo 8y ago
It's hard for humans to understand that people not in their tribe have rich inner lives or can be self-aware, let alone animals. We're wired to believe almost anything if our interest depends on it. We have an interest in pillaging other tribes and eating other animals, so it's easy to convince ourselves that they are non-player characters. It makes doing those things more pleasant.
- wincy 8y ago
  Perhaps too off topic, but I’ve often wondered how the descendants of Vikings, once considered the most terrifying raiders of the sea, are now some of the most egalitarian and nonviolent nation states.
  - hirundo 8y ago
    Maybe because their more aggressive ancestors went viking, conquered, and settled abroad, those remaining were more placid.
    - User23 8y ago
      The Russians are a good example.
      - pavel_lishin 8y ago
        How so?
        blawson 8y ago
        Scandinavians (the Rus' people) are thought to have had a part in the founding of a lot of 'modern' eastern Europe. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rus%27_people https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rus%27_people
    - dboreham 8y ago
      This however doesn't explain North Dakota.
castle-bravo 8y ago
I suspect that it's cultural and derives from our economic relationship to animals. I remember seeing a film as a child that depicted a native hunter killing a deer and profusely thanking the spirit of the deer; attributing intelligence and identity to the deer would predispose a hunter to pay close attention to the animal's behaviour and give him an edge in hunting it. In cultures with domestcated animals bred for compliance with human will, it is less advantageous to view the animal as another mind. Instead, we see them as tools to be used and discarded. To do otherwise would compromise our ability to extract maximum economic advantage from use of the animal.
- wincy 8y ago
  I’m not so sure that’s the case though, as for example Talmudic law prohibits castrating animals. A gelded oxen is much calmer and easier to work with than a bull. I think it certainly varies from society to society, but ancient agrarian traditions also respect animals in ways you might not expect.
  - colordrops 8y ago
    Humans aren't perfect economic machines. A single example doesn't necessarily refute the claim. And even then there might be some other advantage to not castrating oxen that isn't being considered.
    - doctorpangloss 8y ago
      > And even then there might be some other advantage to not castrating oxen that isn't being considered. I supposed you could come up with one. Your OP basically gave you a really knowledgeable counterexample, rooted in a rich field of study in anthropology (treatment of animals), in societies that long predated capitalism. This is actually a pretty common pattern in HN. When the HNers hear something like: "According to this book that the recipient of the information (the HNers) didn't read, here's an illustrative example of how rich the study is." They respond: "But capitalism." You've adopted a world-explaining model (capitalism) that works most of the time (that "single examples don't necessarily refute") not because it's powerful, but because it requires extremely little knowledge. That's really why derivatives of this line of thinking (think LessWrong/singularity/Paul Graham worship) are so widely adopted. Not because the ideas are right. It's that the ideas work for people who don't read, or are just really god damned rich, or who don't really know anything, or think they 'know enough,' like true hacks would say. The downside is that when someone tells you this fascinating tidbit of Talmudic law, instead of typing in "anthropology of the treatment of animals in historic societies," the reaction is, "Well fuck this guy's knowledge." One name for this phenomenon is "first principles." A great, positive spin on knowing nothing! This forum's discourse has declined exactly because of first principles, and others have observed the same (characterizing their criticism as a criticism of "first principles thinking.")
luxuryballs 8y ago
I think it’s not hard to imagine at all and that’s exactly why they’re making time and effort to find some scientific proof.
EliRivers 8y ago
There is a poster here somewhere who maintains that because animals don't have a language, they cannot think; presumably extrapolating from noticing that they themselves think in words (edit: found it - "Animals don't think, because thinking requires language..."). From what I can tell in the animal research game, it's like AI; every so often someone posits some qualitative property that only humans do as the difference twixt animals and humans, and then an observer sees that qualitative behaviour in an animal (or sometime has seen it years or decades before). Frans de Waal's books on this are very readable. The big ones of previous years - empathy, planning, tool-using and so on - all fall pretty easily.
- rsynnott 8y ago
  That’s... a weird argument. Humans can think without words (and indeed without words or images).
  - hirundo 8y ago
    Not everyone thinks so. See the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis.
    - User23 8y ago
      While semiotic has become something of a joke, it has been seriously investigated[1]. We don't really think in language or even in symbols, it's rather a lot more complex than that. [1]https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/peirce-semiotics/ https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/peirce-semiotics/
    - dltnhic 8y ago
      It is not contradictory to maintain both.
  - PyroLagus 8y ago
    How do you think without words, or rather sounds, or images? How do you keep track of a concept without a label you can attach to it?
techiferous 8y ago
Because we view animals as resources to be used for our ends. Cognitive dissonance is at play.
- randyrand 8y ago
  Throughout history humans have treated humans like dirt as well. There must be more to the answer.
  - emj 8y ago
    Some of us still do, it's easy to call people from groups unfamiliar to us useless or worse.
blhack 8y ago
Because they don't act as though they have rich inner lives (especially fish and birds). If you're actually interested in this topic, I highly recommend the book "On Intelligence" by Jeff Hawkins.
- zaq_xsw 8y ago
  I'm not so sure about that. Certain species pf crows and parrots have long been understood (even by non-scientists) to have general/abstract reasoning abilities. And people who actually study them seem to think that we often underestimate them [0] - probably because of widely held myths like the 5 second memory one. I haven't read Hawkins' book yet, but he and the vicarious crew tend to conflate "neocortex" with "general intelligence" in their public talks. Birds and, it seems, the vast majority of animal species rely on predictive models of the world to navigate it - even if their "model-builder" doesn't look exactly like the mammalian one.[1] It makes complete sense to me - if a lizard loses a leg, it quickly learns how to walk with just 3 legs. If a finch is born with slightly larger wings than normal, and it also loses some of its tail feathers at some point, it quickly learns to adjust its motor patterns to suit the new conditions. You solve problems like these with sensory-motor models, not with hard-coded algorithms. [0] https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21528836-200-animals-are-conscious-and-should-be-treated-as-such/ https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21528836-200-animals-... [1] https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/10/121001151953.htm https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/10/121001151953.h...
- vbuwivbiu 8y ago
  nor do most humans
- amanaplanacanal 8y ago
  Birds are a lot smarter than most people give them credit for. I think most people just have more experience dealing with mammals.
nineteen999 8y ago
There is a massive segment of the movie market (primarily aimed at children) where the starring characters are anthropomorphised animals which live rich inner lives and are self-aware. This is almost Pixar/Disney and Dreamworks entire very successful business model. So I don't think it is really so hard for most of us to imagine ...
- Varcht 8y ago
  Chicken or the egg? Definitely some feedback loop going on, not sure which is which.
  - nineteen999 8y ago
    Well even before animated movies, there were books, first that comes to mind was Charlotte's Web (1952). Winnie the Pooh (1926) has a talking owl. I'm not particularly well read, I'm sure others could come up with better/earlier examples. If you go back in history, Eve was supposedly tempted by a talking snake. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talking_animals_in_fiction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talking_animals_in_fiction
- Falling3 8y ago
  I think imagine is probably not the best word to convey what the parent is talking about. Maybe "take seriously". We also have plenty of movies involved anthropomorphized inanimate objects, but (almost) no one believes they have any kind of inner lives or self-awareness.
roywiggins 8y ago
For the first half of the 20th century, scientists didn't believe that human babies felt pain. What's obvious isn't universal. http://www.nocirc.org/symposia/second/chamberlain.html http://www.nocirc.org/symposia/second/chamberlain.html
- berlinstartup 8y ago
  They knew. I mean, it's pretty obvious from the screaming. They just had to have an excuse for the lucrative practice of mutilating babies, which American doctors still do today.
- perl4ever 8y ago
  Setting circumcision aside, AFAIK anesthesia is not possible when doing surgery on infants, so with serious conditions, it's either operate without it or nothing. Therefore, believing they don't feel pain is a matter of expediency allowing doctors to save lives.
  - tait 8y ago
    We routinely anesthetize infants with either local or general anesthesia. Here is a 2015 discussion from the American Society for Anesthesiology comparing regional with general: “General anesthesia safe for infants, does not impair neurological development, study finds” - https://www.asahq.org/about-asa/newsroom/news-releases/2015/10/general-anesthesia-safe-for-infants https://www.asahq.org/about-asa/newsroom/news-releases/2015/...
    - ars 8y ago
      That's today. Anesthesia was considerably more risky in the past. (For everyone not just babies.)
    - perl4ever 8y ago
      I didn't think it was a matter of "impairing neurological development" but of getting the right dosage. Also, if there is a 2015 study saying it's safe, that would seem to imply general anesthesia is not so routine.
goatlover 8y ago
Part of it has involved controversies over language, culture and consciousness, and part of it has been not wanting to anthropomorphize animals as having human personalities, since being human has a lot to do with thinking in language derived from culture, and that we're apes with vision as our dominant sense instead of smell.
swayvil 8y ago
Ignoring 99% of your reality frees up tons of attention for attention-demanding tasks like engineering and officework. Not to mention somewhat insulating you from the toxicity of urban life. It's an attention-management-strategy that's popular and efficient for cultures like ours. Of course it's evil as hell too. So we compensate with an appropriately self-serving "well they're just dumb animals" narrative.
JauntyHatAngle 8y ago
I don't follow you. People have been imagining animals have complex inner lives for thousands of years. It's a natural thing for us to do in our want to relate to things. People disagree with each other, sure, but I think that's fair that people disagree on a contentious topic. There is hardly an answer to whether fish have complex inner worlds yet. Are you talking about scientific thought about it? >possess various degrees of cognitive ability I can't say I agree with this. I agree with you that perhaps people failed to recognise and test for variances within the species. (Im not in this field either so I can't say for sure...) but again, the majority of people would know that different animals of the same type don't have different quirks and differing intelligence. Anyone who has had some pet fish has recognised some as being more shy or more aggressive than the other. Cow farmers know some of their cows are dumber and smarter than the other. To take that thought and say "well therefore some fish have rich inner lives and others dont" is a bit of a stretch to me. I would suppose that there is a limit to their capacity and variance. Sure, Chimps, Dolphins, Elephants - very easy to convince people they do and I'd believe it easily. Convince me that a trout does? I'm not so sure, and would need to be convinced in some way. I can imagine it, but I won't believe something just because of my want to anthropomorphise. While I can understand that many people are too dismissive of animals as being basic or unfeeling, that doesn't invalidate the idea that animals have a more limited mental capacity for what we perceive to be conciousness, and that includes sense of self at least somewhere along the line of complexity.
nobody271 8y ago
I too am outside of my very (very very very) narrow five things that I can do BUT I've had the same question as you so allow me to throw some of my thoughts your way. It starts off with a rough guess about something hard to define and because it's so hard to define no one ever changes it but it's not as though the rough guess was ever correct. That's the part we forget. I think it's similar to the Turing test which to some people has become like a blindly dogmatic rule for machine intelligence. I don't think the Turing test was ever meant to be used how it's used today. I think it was just a rough guess. More like a "yeah, something like that" kind of thing than a definition.
kyllo 8y ago
It's because it causes an uncomfortable degree of cognitive dissonance to imagine that animals have self-awareness and rich inner lives, and also justify killing and eating them. I'm not a vegan, I eat a lot of meat--I just feel uncomfortable when I think about it this way.
zachguo 8y ago
Anthropomorphism is what you described. It's not a falsifiable scientific theory.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

tsherr 8y ago

We're still in the "earth is the centre of the universe" stage when it comes to other life forms.

gnulinux 8y ago
2018 Ig Nobel Prize in Anthropology winner: Spontaneous Cross-Species Imitation in Interaction Between Chimpanzees and Zoo Visitors [1] "[...] for collecting evidence, in a zoo, that chimpanzees imitate humans about as often, and about as well, as humans imitate chimpanzees." I think this is evidence towards your point that we understand very little of cognition of other species. [1]: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10329-017-0624-9 https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10329-017-0624-9
- PacifyFish 8y ago
  I'm sure this work was groundbreaking , but let's not kid ourselves that imitation is some high and misunderstood form of intelligence. Nor should we kid ourselves that this is new information. The adage "monkey see, monkey do" has been around for, what, centuries? Is it really that surprising that apes imitate things they see? Does it really reveal a paltry understanding of monkey cognition?
  - jamiek88 8y ago
    Hence the ignoble prize!
    - PacifyFish 8y ago
      Ah thanks, missed the "ig."
      - gnulinux 8y ago
        Yeah there is no Nobel in Anthropology.
- Varcht 8y ago

jvagner 8y ago

I've been doing a 30 day vegetarian challenge this month. It hasn't even been hard. Pizza is already not working for me. You can guess where I'm going in January. I'm pretty sure I'm not going back.

uhtred 8y ago
Going vegan is also easy, so many amazing recipe books and blogs, off the shelf goods, restaurants.
gnulinux 8y ago
Going vegan isn't easy at all, I even doubt it's possible if you care about your protein intake. Plant sources are very carb rich and more and more evidence suggests high carb, low fat diets aren't good for humans. There is simply no way to get enough protein from plant sources unless you wanna eat highly processed tofu every day. A full vegan, high protein diet would require eating low carb tofu at least 2 meals a day. Otherwise you need to accept taking exorbitant amounts of carb to get enough protein (basically, from beans). Seeing that how popular weightlifting in young Americans (especially males) today, suggesting "vegan diet is easy" is intellectual dishonesty. I'm not arguing anything about ethics or availability or cost of vegan diet. There is simply no evidence suggesting full vegan diet is healthy. The most alarming thing about vegan diet is that you'll have absolutely no source of Omega 3 except expensive açai berry and walnut (all other plant sources have trace amount of Omega 3). So in a vegan diet you get excess amount of carbs (especially sugars) and Omega 6 which causes inflammatory diseases. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/11/171113095430.htm https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/11/171113095430.h... If I were vegan I would eat Trader Joes low carb tofu, avacado, açai berries and walnut every day, all day and supplement it with high fiber veggies like broccoli, and brussel sprouts. This is simply not feasible and practical from a cost and social aspect. Eat too much fruits to get cheap, and widely available calories and you'll get bizarre amounts of fructose. Good luck with that.
- jvagner 8y ago
  i'm a certified personal trainer, a competitive strength athlete, best friend is a nutritionist and doctor, and we can look at a selective subset of science and studies all day long but i'll go with the research i've selected and believe in, the cohorts i know and socialize with and whose examples i can see, and the actions i've decided on. even if we take inactive, S.A.D. eaters out of the mix, there are healthy and unhealthy examples of most eating modalities. ultimately, i'm of the belief that paining over any "healthy" modality will increase harm, and not-paining over any "healthy" modality won't. in the end, we meet our end. until then...

miltondts 8y ago

The value of these types of tests has been called into question long before: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pHSbvjq1nm4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pHSbvjq1nm4 The above video had a tremendous effect on how I view intelligence and creativity. Seeing pigeons "talking" and solving problems really puts in perspective the power of the context/environment. That is why I think we already have the algorithms for AGI.(i.e. reinforcement learning is probably all you need) We just don't have the processing and/or the right context for it to develop. But I also think the result will have all the downsides of animals/humans. That is, it will be as hard to get the desired behavior from an AI as it is to get it out of an animal/human because the predicting the behavior out of the cost function+environment will remain extremely hard. In fact you can see this mentioned in the video. Getting the right repertoire even for seemingly "simple" behaviors is hard.

joe_the_user 8y ago
Indeed, that's BF Skinner and associates talking about how creative behavior arises naturally from learned behavior. And key here is that things like "the mirror test" are about testing animals for what humans naively believe are their unique traits. And this seems like it could be easily faulty if these naively human beliefs are false, which seems quite likely actually. And also I'd view the focus on consciousness as a naive belief even if psychologists and philosophers have attempted to systematize it. At the same time, Skinner in particular as "behaviorist" seems to go from a lab where he's seeing most behavior mediated by stimulus to a position that seems to imply behavior coming mechanically from stimulus.

b_tterc_p 8y ago

Unless I’m reading this incorrectly, their sample size is 4 fish, 3 of which sort of passed.

Buldak 8y ago
I don't know if the usual caveats about sample size should be salient when we're investigating something like self-awareness. If I found a fish who could talk, I wouldn't demur, " ... but it's a small sample."
- b_tterc_p 8y ago
  Point taken, but we’re a far cry from evidence as strong as talking. The article itself mentions refuted studies which were later proven to not be reproduceable. It’s more likely to find three weird fish than three fish that have self awareness unlike the rest of their species. Also unclear how many chances these fish were given, and I am guessing it was very generous.
- adrianN 8y ago
  Effect size is pretty important too. If the effect is strong enough you don't need huge sample sizes. Talking fish certainly is a strong effect.
orky56 8y ago
That was just the sample size when they first tried to publish. It seems like it's been retested since and only now has been accepted into publication. No hard numbers on that in the article though.

godelski 8y ago

This is an anecdotal story, but has made me feel weird about this test in general. I have a cat (who do not pass the mirror test) who loves mirrors. She just likes looking at herself in them. It is weird. She also frequently walks in on me in the bathroom and frequently looks at me through the mirror. And I know she looks at that one because it is the one I look at her with. So it always has made me feel like this test may be doing something else, because she clearly recognizes that I'm not in the mirror, but that she can see me with it. So it seems like she understands what a reflection is, but not her self in the reflection. So it seems that animals can understand reflections, but does that really mean they recognize a self if they recognize themselves in it? IDK, I'm not a biologist and may be missing a lot from this test.

IAmGraydon 8y ago
I have two Siamese cats, one of which does exactly what you describe. So I started testing this a bit and noticed that if she’s facing away from me and looking at me in the mirror and I reach for her from behind like I’m going to scratch her, she will stand up to meet my hand. This seems to mean that she understands that what she’s seeing in the mirror is just a reflection and that when the guy in the mirror is about to scratch the cat in the mirror, it’s actually me that’s about to scratch her.
- godelski 8y ago
  Yes! She does exactly that too. And I do have to mention that my cat is deathly afraid of anyone that isn't me. So it wound stand to reason that she recognizes that it is the "me" that she knows. That being said, cats don't have excellent eyesight. But it is hard to do the mirror test with a creature that is so sensitive to feels and smells. I wonder how they test it for cats. Because surely a little dot isn't good enough. Maybe a laser dot?
namlem 8y ago
Cats have been observed passing the mirror test. One popular hypothesis is that they can recognize themselves, they just don't care. That or some cats are capable of recognizing themselves and some aren't.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

clubm8 8y ago

Reminds me of this article from 2009 where a dead salmon "reacted" to ""a series of photographs depicting human individuals in social situations." https://www.wired.com/2009/09/fmrisalmon/ https://www.wired.com/2009/09/fmrisalmon/

thanatropism 8y ago
The irreplaceable Alone, the pirate doctor, thus reacted to the dead salmon fMRIs: https://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2009/10/the_problem_with_science_is_sc.html https://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2009/10/the_problem_with_sci...
- perl4ever 8y ago
  "behavior is, in large part, genetically determined" I disagree with the qualification "in large part", which implies there is behavior that is not genetically determined. Suppose you do an experiment to test. Disrupt the genetic code in a fertilized mammalian egg completely. You will find there is no subsequent behavior of the organism. Hence, it is clear that all behavior is dependent on genetics. On the other hand, if you place that egg in a box for several years, you will likewise find that there is no ensuing behavior. Therefore, it is clear that all behavior is dependent on the environment.
  - Dylan16807 8y ago
    So you're being pedantic about an especially uncharitable interpretation of "determined"? Thanks?
    - perl4ever 8y ago
      I was saying there is no behavior which can be disconnected from either genes or environment. Why do you dismiss that as mere pedantry?
      - Dylan16807 8y ago

qwerty456127 8y ago

The ink-dot and mirror "self-awareness" always sounded ridiculous to me. Isn't it obvious that a self-aware creature does not necessarily has to care about their appearance and can ignore the dot and that a creature driven by instincts and reflexes only can be programmed to maintain their skin color pattern (as the species has developed the pattern for a reason)? I would rather believe it might be self-aware if the same creature would remove the dot some times, would do it later every now and then and would ignore it occasionally. In fact I even doubt every human is consciously self-aware, a huge number of people probably live their lives the way we see dreams. So many people have no doubts their bare feelings and judgments are the reality e.g. believing the fact they're upset means a counterpart has done something really wrong and/or hates them while in fact they might just have not slept well or followed a bad diet...

fwip 8y ago
Contrary to popular belief, other people have rich inner lives, not just you. I know it's gratifying to think you're in an exclusive club of smart people, but you're really fooling yourself. You're like a half-step away from the "NPC" meme.
- qwerty456127 8y ago
  It's not gratifying, it's depressing. And I didn't say anything about "just me" (I meant a portion of people and I don't know how big or small it is) and also didn't say I myself had always been consciously self-aware nor that I easily manage to maintain self-awareness all the time. In fact I wish somebody would explain this idea to me a decade ago so I would wake up and develop the skill&habit of conscious presence and critical perception of subjective reality earlier, my life could have made much more sense and less struggle for me and whoever I've interacted with then.
- PavlovsCat 8y ago
  Define "rich". > It is unbelievable how blank and devoid of meaning, seen from the outside, and how muffled and unconscious, felt from the inside, the lives of most people flow along. It's a dull desiring and suffering, a dream-like tumbling through the four season towards death, accompanied by a series of trivial thoughts. -- Arthur Schopenhauer > [..] the individual citizen has very little possibility of having any influence - of making his opinion felt in the decision-making. And I think that, in itself, leads to a good deal of political lethargy and stupidity. It is true that one has to think first and then to act -but it's also true that if one has no possibility of acting, one's thinking kind of becomes empty and stupid. -- Erich Fromm, who also said > The fact that millions of people share the same vices does not make these vices virtues, the fact that they share so many errors does not make the errors to be truths, and the fact that millions of people share the same form of mental pathology does not make these people sane.

namlem 8y ago

The cleaner wrasse has long been known to be extremely intelligent. The fact that scientists are questioning the mirror test because of this fish is more telling of their credibility than the test's. The cleaner wrasse even engages in complex economic behavior: http://freakonomics.com/podcast/animal-economics/ http://freakonomics.com/podcast/animal-economics/

colordrops 8y ago

An anecdote here - my wife and I both met a tropical fish in a tank at a restaurant and it was clear to both of us that the fish exhibited significant intelligence. It observed us patiently and even made playful eye contact. It seems that there are different levels of intelligence within fish species and they can't just all be categorized the same. It's only very recently where humans realized the great intelligence found on octopuses. The same may be true of some fish.

ada1981 8y ago

If the fish is able to bring up concerns about the test being used, it has to have some degree of intelligence.

rv-de 8y ago

The mirror test always seemed flawed to be because of its reliance on visual perception. For many animals eyes and the primary source of environmental information. For some it's the nose. Now how about a special device that synthesizes your body odor and fans it back to you - would you recognize yourself?