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Here is a video of pigeons playing "sokoban", "talking" and playing "ping pong": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QKSvu3mj-14&feature=youtu.be https://www.youtub

Here is a video of pigeons playing "sokoban", "talking" and playing "ping pong": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QKSvu3mj-14&feature=youtu.be https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QKSvu3mj-14&feature=youtu.be The main problem mentioned in the video is that pigeons don't come with a repertoire that allows them to do those tasks naturally. So, the researchers have to teach them each of the behaviors independently. The pigeons then manage to put the behaviors together, in what is arguably a display of creativity.

SonOfLilit 6y ago
I'll refer to what I assume you called the sokoban example, the "banana test" from part 2, which is the most relevant to our discussion. In it, a pigeon who has been trained that sometimes pushing stuff around is rewarded with food and sometimes climbing stuff is rewarded with food manages to solve a puzzle where it must push a box to below a banana and then climb the box to reach the banana. First of all, thanks, that's a really cool video and exactly the kind of research I'm looking for. However, I don't think it goes far enough to actually measure what I'm interested in. In the comments of this similar video [1] about a crow who has been trained to do each of A, B, C, D separately to get food doing A+B+C+D to get food, a comment captures what's wrong with it perfectly by saying: > 2:20 The "use everything on everything" stage of playing a point-and-click adventure game. Sure, we know birds can figure out that if step 1 is sometimes good and step 2 is sometimes good, then step 1 and then step 2 might be good. But that's not at all enough to solve, say, level 2 in [2], a video of a Sokoban game. If I trained a toddler to solve puzzles like level 1 (so it knows how to walk and it knows how to push crates), if could spend weeks moving and pushing crates around and not reach a solution. The repertoire of behaviors that allows them to play the game is just a foundation for a whole world of logic and planning that needs to be mastered to actually solve nontrivial Sokoban levels. Had I seen a crow solve level 3, I'd believe it is no less intelligent than some of my friends, and that if we put our minds to it, we could find a way to communicate, trade, and help our new corvid friends build a civilization not less sophisticated than our own. Based on that video, I see no reason to believe that about pigeons (yet). [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cbSu2PXOTOc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cbSu2PXOTOc [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yix2AVVUwe0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yix2AVVUwe0
- miltondts 6y ago
  There are at least two things I think differentiate human intelligence from other animals. One is the size of the brain. Just from this difference there is probably no way for a pigeon to ever reach human level intelligence. The other part is perhaps more interesting. For much of human history I'm not even sure that humans could solve sokoban puzzles. In fact if you raise a human without social contact I suspect he would not be able to do it. This appears to indicate that we now have something in our environment (quite possibly what we call language) that allows us to be much more intelligent with the same DNA. Can other species with the same kind of brain complexity/power develop this? That's a very interesting question. This story [1] appears to indicate that at least raising other species as humans doesn't appear to work, but to me, this doesn't mean that there is no way of getting them to our level of intelligence, just that they don't have the same communication tools we do. [1] - https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/guy-simultaneously-raised-chimp-and-baby-exactly-same-way-see-what-would-happen-180952171/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/guy-simultaneously...
  - SonOfLilit 6y ago
    I'm not sure how much I buy the "size of the brain" limitation, given the brain-size ratio between parrots and chimps hardly reflects their intelligence ratio as far as we can tell. I tend to believe any creature who has the capacity to learn language also has ehe capacity to solve Sokoban and vice-versa, so testing the easier to test of the two should be the first step and figuring how to teach them a complex language should be the second. (By the way, corvids pass such complex information that some people suspect they already have language, although I would bet against. We know of cases where people the crows hated left a place, returned years later to visit and all the local crows still hated them, and it was implied where I read it that it was long enough that it was all a new generation of crows.

SonOfLilit 6y ago

I'll refer to what I assume you called the sokoban example, the "banana test" from part 2, which is the most relevant to our discussion. In it, a pigeon who has been trained that sometimes pushing stuff around is rewarded with food and sometimes climbing stuff is rewarded with food manages to solve a puzzle where it must push a box to below a banana and then climb the box to reach the banana. First of all, thanks, that's a really cool video and exactly the kind of research I'm looking for. However, I don't think it goes far enough to actually measure what I'm interested in. In the comments of this similar video [1] about a crow who has been trained to do each of A, B, C, D separately to get food doing A+B+C+D to get food, a comment captures what's wrong with it perfectly by saying: > 2:20 The "use everything on everything" stage of playing a point-and-click adventure game. Sure, we know birds can figure out that if step 1 is sometimes good and step 2 is sometimes good, then step 1 and then step 2 might be good. But that's not at all enough to solve, say, level 2 in [2], a video of a Sokoban game. If I trained a toddler to solve puzzles like level 1 (so it knows how to walk and it knows how to push crates), if could spend weeks moving and pushing crates around and not reach a solution. The repertoire of behaviors that allows them to play the game is just a foundation for a whole world of logic and planning that needs to be mastered to actually solve nontrivial Sokoban levels. Had I seen a crow solve level 3, I'd believe it is no less intelligent than some of my friends, and that if we put our minds to it, we could find a way to communicate, trade, and help our new corvid friends build a civilization not less sophisticated than our own. Based on that video, I see no reason to believe that about pigeons (yet). [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cbSu2PXOTOc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cbSu2PXOTOc [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yix2AVVUwe0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yix2AVVUwe0

miltondts 6y ago
There are at least two things I think differentiate human intelligence from other animals. One is the size of the brain. Just from this difference there is probably no way for a pigeon to ever reach human level intelligence. The other part is perhaps more interesting. For much of human history I'm not even sure that humans could solve sokoban puzzles. In fact if you raise a human without social contact I suspect he would not be able to do it. This appears to indicate that we now have something in our environment (quite possibly what we call language) that allows us to be much more intelligent with the same DNA. Can other species with the same kind of brain complexity/power develop this? That's a very interesting question. This story [1] appears to indicate that at least raising other species as humans doesn't appear to work, but to me, this doesn't mean that there is no way of getting them to our level of intelligence, just that they don't have the same communication tools we do. [1] - https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/guy-simultaneously-raised-chimp-and-baby-exactly-same-way-see-what-would-happen-180952171/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/guy-simultaneously...
- SonOfLilit 6y ago
  I'm not sure how much I buy the "size of the brain" limitation, given the brain-size ratio between parrots and chimps hardly reflects their intelligence ratio as far as we can tell. I tend to believe any creature who has the capacity to learn language also has ehe capacity to solve Sokoban and vice-versa, so testing the easier to test of the two should be the first step and figuring how to teach them a complex language should be the second. (By the way, corvids pass such complex information that some people suspect they already have language, although I would bet against. We know of cases where people the crows hated left a place, returned years later to visit and all the local crows still hated them, and it was implied where I read it that it was long enough that it was all a new generation of crows.