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A Cephalopod Has Passed a Cognitive Test Designed for Human Children
- hour_glass 6y agoUh oh the humans are on to us
- d--b 6y agoLet's just complain about how click-baity the title is. It works every time.
- motohagiography 6y agoAs someone who trained my dog to sit and wait for me outside a shop while I got coffee, which was a similar delayed gratification and I didn't even use treats, I think science might be underestimating just how stupid human children are.
- bryanrasmussen 6y agohttps://www.vox.com/2015/4/7/8360143/dogs-intelligence-science https://www.vox.com/2015/4/7/8360143/dogs-intelligence-scien... On the whole, psychologist and dog researcher Stanley Coren estimates, the average dog's intelligence is roughly as sophisticated as a 2.5-year-old baby's.
- luplex 6y agoAs a human researcher, I don't think that's a fair comparison. A 2.5-year-old human can talk in simple sentences. The experiments in that article don't really measure intelligence. Babies are just much more curious. I think dogs are still surprisingly smart.
- bryanrasmussen 6y agoBy that argument no animal, dolphin, porpoise, dog, gorilla, elephant can be as intelligent as a 2.5 year old baby because none of them have evolved a tongue and vocal apparatus capable of making the correct sounds.
- rbanffy 6y agoI know a dog that sings along when his humans sing. It's obviously not a human voice, but the little thing is trying his best and totally nails the pitch and rhythm.
- sokoloff 6y agoOur dog will howl along with some of the emergency vehicle sirens. Remarkably similar to the particular siren that is sounding outside. (We live on a 4 lane parkway an easy walking distance from a major hospital, so we get different sirens from many different jurisdictions. She'll sing (edit: said sign before) along or in back-and-forth with about 1/3 of the distinct sirens.)
- please-reread 6y agoShe also can sign? That's amazing!
- sokoloff 6y agoThe comment history of this username really checks out! I take zero offense and thank you for the correction, but it's somewhat amusing to think that someone presumably has two accounts and switches between them to make comments when a post is inadequately proofed.
- pvaldes 6y agodogs sign walls and trees all the time
- spijdar 6y ago> because none of them have evolved a tongue and vocal apparatus capable of making the correct sounds. And the neurological development to process and produce speech. I'm no cognitive scientist but I think verbal speech and reasoning is a huge amount of what we call "intelligence" in humans and goes beyond simple communication of immediate facts or commands. I suspect babies do have similar problem solving abilities compared to those animals, but I think it's disingenuous to throw out speech just because a dog hasn't evolved vocal chords. They're also missing the brain to use them, with whatever that means for reasoning.
- wizzwizz4 6y agoDogs can also talk in simple (<4 word) sentences: https://yewtu.be/watch?v=AHiu-EDJUx0 https://yewtu.be/watch?v=AHiu-EDJUx0
- f154hfds 6y agoI have a 2.5 year old. A few weeks ago she (on her own) decided to dry her wet painting by taping it to the heat vent. We have never used tape in any way similar to that, and certainly have never used the heat vent to dry anything (it being a long-term safety hazard, and potentially bad for the ventilation system). She routinely falls on her face because of getting herself into ridiculous precarious situations (in disturbingly similar ways). The problem is intelligence just isn't 1D no matter how much we wish it was. Delayed gratification, problem solving and communication ability are not necessarily highly correlated enough for a single metric to make sense of the three.
- lostlogin 6y ago> She routinely falls on her face because of getting herself into ridiculous precarious situations The clumsiness might be a different thing. Changes in height, weight, strength and sight and probably a load of other things come into this. If you change something about an adult it takes them a while to adapt. The example that comes to mind is a pregnant woman squeezing though some gap. To any observer the attempt was obviously not going to go smoothly.
- everdrive 6y agoIt's been verified: https://vaviper.blogspot.com/2019/06/from-onion-study-reveals-babies-are.html https://vaviper.blogspot.com/2019/06/from-onion-study-reveal...
- goodcanadian 6y agoFrom the article: Some primates can delay gratification, along with dogs, albeit inconsistently. Corvids, too, have passed the marshmallow test. Having had a couple of human children, I would definitely not claim that they are anything but extremely clever, but then so are many primates, dogs, and corvids.
- emilecantin 6y agoYes. Children are literally little humans. They have enormous brainpower, they just lack the experience they need to use it properly.
- rbanffy 6y agoThat and their brains are insanely malleable. As someone who contemplated learning Irish as an adult, I have to say that their brains can do things ours simply can't. And I learned Hungarian (and Portuguese) as a kid.
- OrbitRock 6y agoAdults can actually learn language much more quickly then children in my opinion. The only issue is that there’s a critical window in there that shapes your accent.
- ruffrey 6y agoPerhaps. Small children are also exceptionally accident prone. On the other hand, human children are incredibly curious and experiment with everything. It may not be stupidity that keeps them from following directions.
- TrispusAttucks 6y agoIndeed! There is much to be learned by occasionally breaking the rules.
- jancsika 6y agoTo properly test, you'd need to: 1. Draw a triangle on your forehead 2. Make a shitty clone of yourself with a circle drawn on the clone's forehead, who comes out of the shop immediately after you walk in Then see if your dog decides to follow the shitty clone, or whether it waits a couple minutes for the regular version of you. Edit: also, repeat with many more dogs, many more dog owners, and many more shitty clones.
- unstatusthequo 6y agoThis made me laugh as a potential Rick & Morty episode
- sparkywolf 6y agoThe 'dog' is Jerry. We all know it.
- motohagiography 6y agoWas literally thinking the Rick & Morty tie-in would be that Morty gets a pet cuttlefish who not only speaks, but insists that even though he is stuck in this aquarium, he says it is preferable to the pathetic existential prison of their inferior human minds, and he uses his mesmerizing persuasive power to turn the rest of the house into a hippie comumune of drifters who do whatever he wants, and ultimately directs them to attack celebrities. The cuttlefish's name is Charlie. Recurring villain, probably gets his own show.
- koalahedron 6y agoI've never heard of Rick and Morty, but take my advice, don't try to shop your screenplay to VCs. They took a dim view of my "Adult Stewie" concept last year (think "Young Sheldon" backwards). Try Hollywood. Anyway, I think a fun cartoon would be the Flintstones with ceph, for example their screen could be a smaller ceph whose chromataphores are pixels. [edit] Old drawing, back of a napkin (apologies to MIT AI Memo 554): https://github.com/koalahedron/ideas-for-models/blob/main/README.md#ceph https://github.com/koalahedron/ideas-for-models/blob/main/RE...
- LatteLazy 6y agoI mean, the dog gets nothing for sitting and waiting. He stopped getting treats once training was over. So is he smarter than the kid that wonders off or comes inside demanding cake and acting cute?
- Grustaf 6y agoThat’s not delayed gratification, it’s just obeying orders. In the marshmallow test it’s crucial that the subject makes their choice freely.
- numpad0 6y agoI think we’re all too ignorant about potentially including/integrating other animals into the society, Doctor Dolittle style. Wouldn’t it be just fantastic?
- hypertele-Xii 6y ago> I think science might be underestimating just how stupid human children are. Human children are stupid by design (well, evolution). Language, culture, and technology are overtaking genetics as the more effective information transfer mechanism. As we shed our instincts to make room for learning, human children will be born more and more stupid over time. It's a trade-off: At the same time, human adults will have greater capacity for smarts. It is the increasing stupidity at birth which enables us to learn so much into adulthood. Animals without developed language haven't been able to afford this progress. They are smarter than human children from birth, but are unable to learn as much. So while your dog outperforms a human child at waiting outside the store, it will never have the capacity for art, mathematics, nor engineering, no matter how hard you train it. Humans on the other hand, can be trained quite a bit.
- slavik81 6y agoObedience and intelligence are different things.
- bryanrasmussen 6y agoI mean the signature characteristic of the most famous Cephalopod in fiction is that it waits dreaming in its house in R'lyeh. Evidently not coming out until the food on offer is better, either.
- amarant 6y agoYou sure? I seem to recall some kind of mass hysteria happening fairly recently, made it was the first signs of his coming
- HenryBemis 6y ago> "They break camouflage when they forage, so they are exposed to every predator in the ocean that wants to eat them. We speculate that delayed gratification may have evolved as a byproduct of this, so the cuttlefish can optimise foraging by waiting to choose better quality food." It's a bit of natural selection. I don't know if cephalopods have a 'patience' gene. If yes, then --> natural selection. The ones who didn't have this gene got eaten many generations ago. The ones who do (and their genetically blessed offsprings), are alive to 'tell the tale'. This is a bit biased if you ask me. They examined only the ones thay they found. The ones they found are the ones that are alive. The ones that are alive are the ones that are patient. To disqualify my above 'theory' the scientists must capture eggs of 100 (?) eggs, raise them, treat them all the same, and then release them in a controlled 'wild' environment and see how fast they get eaten/how many survive for how long. Then they compare results with their observations in the wild. I am not a marine biologists, so I probably wasted 30secs of your life (apologies).
- JoeAltmaier 6y agoSays more about how hard it is to design tests, than it does about this particular test. Lots of reasons for delayed gratification. Not all of them mean "as smart as humans".
- yboris 6y agoThat's not the conclusion: no one is claiming "as smart as humans". Intelligence is multidimensional, and along some dimensions animals outperform us by a long shot. Some birds remember thousands of locations of their stashed food. Some animals have a detailed internal map of many square miles of land on which they live. Pick just about anything a typical 3 year old can do, and we can find an animal to outperform them in that respect. Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are? https://www.amazon.com/Are-Smart-Enough-Know-Animals/dp/0393353664 https://www.amazon.com/Are-Smart-Enough-Know-Animals/dp/0393...
- treetoppin 6y agoGlad to see someone else referenced this book. For anyone who wants to learn more about just how difficult it is to peer into the minds of other creatures, I highly recommend this book. Also, it's filled with delightful anecdotes of animal behavior that you would only experience if you spent hundreds of hours observing an individual.
- JoeAltmaier 6y agoSure they were; that's what the title implies. Else, why the comparison? And I'm curious if those studies of animal intelligence, actually tried a human. Could I remember thousands of place I put stuff? I think I do. I have a whole house full of stuff, and can find most of it quickly. I remember where I kept my socks in an apartment I lived in 30 years ago. So yeah no, animals maybe aren't ahead of us in cognitive function.
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- EliRivers 6y ago
- hermitcrab 6y agoIf anyone is interested in cephalopod intelligence I heartily recommend the book: "Other Minds: The Octopus and the Evolution of Intelligent Life" by Peter Godfrey-Smith.
- yboris 6y agoRelated: I highly recommend the documentary My Octopus Teacher https://www.netflix.com/title/81045007 https://www.netflix.com/title/81045007
- hermitcrab 6y agoYes, that is excellent as well. And quite moving.
- choxi 6y agoOne of the most interesting concepts in the book was "efference copies." The idea is that your mind needs to distinguish between stimulus that you caused by voluntary action (moving your arm) versus stimulus that the environment causes (your arm being moved by something else), so you send these "echos" of your voluntary actions back to your brain and this is possibly where your sense of self comes from.
- mindfulplay 6y agoThat. And the idea that the cuttlefish are perhaps showing their internal state via their changing color patterns and not as a sinajng device. And of course their fairly short lives.
- mindfulplay 6y agoI second this recommendation. I think someone in HN recommended this, very fascinating. My respect and interest for octopuses and surprisingly cuttlefish went way high up after reading this book. Kudos to whoever recommended it! It feels like we are wasting our time looking for aliens searching for them in the skies (especially the unscientific work around oumuamua). They are living right beside us in the form of cephalopods. We haven't deployed enough science on these amazing creatures yet (without of course distributing them like putting them in cages), probably because it's not a sexy field as compared to say astronomy or other cool things...
- 8fGTBjZxBcHq 6y agoThe article doesn't mention this but that test is not very well regarded currently. It's basically a test of food security and trust in adults rather than any particular behavioral benchmark.
- mr-wendel 6y agoI think it's even worse than that. I hate this test because both now and as a kid I'd take the single marshmallow and just be done. I don't want two, even if you hand them to me back-to-back... let alone 15 minutes later. I don't care if its my favorite treat either. I believed quite strongly that a little vs a lot doesn't matter: the best parts are in the anticipation, the initial bite, and enjoying the lingering aftertaste. Having more more bites to eat is a gimmick with nothing but downsides (however now I get how things like addiction can drastically alter that equation so the "more" is practically everything). So show me a version of this test that doesn't have the assumption "all kids are greedy for food and the most successful ones will optimize for that" at its core.
- tiagod 6y agoThe cuttlefish test was very different though. Instead of more food, it's about better food.
- mindfulplay 6y agoI agree but this new adapted test for cuttlefish is actually pretty smart. They actually zone in on delayed gratification.
- mzs 6y agoThere's more to the paper, though only six cuttlefish: >The other part of the experiment was to test how good the six cuttlefish were at learning. They were shown two different visual cues, a grey square and a white one. When they approached one, the other would be removed from the tank; if they made the "correct" choice, they would be rewarded with a snack. >Once they had learnt to associate a square with a reward, the researchers switched the cues, so that the other square now became the reward cue. Interestingly, the cuttlefish that learnt to adapt to this change the quickest were also the cuttlefish that were able to wait longer for the shrimp reward. https://rs.figshare.com/articles/dataset/Data_set_raw_training_trials_for_reversal_learning_task_from_Cuttlefish_exert_self-control_in_a_delay_of_gratification_task/14054186?backTo=/collections/Supplementary_material_from_Cuttlefish_exert_self-control_in_a_delay_of_gratification_task_/5309888 https://rs.figshare.com/articles/dataset/Data_set_raw_traini...
- markhahn 6y agoIt is a test, and it is used on humans. It isn't a qualification for human-ness, any more than "breathing" is. Theory of Mind is much more a test of human-ness - a stage person-ness really. And yes, quite a few animals qualify.
- 40four 6y agoI agree with the main thesis of the article, stated in the first paragraph. That idea of ”how important it is for us humans to not underestimate animal intelligence”. I think folks in modern times are less & less prone to thinking animals are ‘dumb’. But 1 or 2 generations ago this was not the case. I think humans for a long time have regarded animal intelligence in an inferior light. Cephalopods have proven to to be incredibly intelligent, and emotional. I think you could easily argue many of them are smarter than human children, maybe even a lot of adults :) I highly recommend an episode of ‘Nature’ I saw recently on PBS about octopi. It’s called “Octopus: Making Contact”. It’s the story of a professor who decided to install a tank and keep an octopus in his home, and the relationship he & his daughter developed with it. Absolutely stunning! https://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/octopus-making-contact-preview-a98u9n/19851/ https://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/octopus-making-contact-previ... https://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/baby-cephalopods-first-moments-tzuuij/19380/ https://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/baby-cephalopods-first-momen...
- steve_adams_86 6y agoI believe I underestimated animal intelligence, and as an extension of that, animal consciousness. I have no proof that animals are intelligent or sentient or whatever. I do however have no reason to assume otherwise. As a result I’ve stopped eating meat almost entirely, and I suspect I’ll eliminate it entirely eventually. I still eat fish and shellfish. I struggle to understand how I disregarded animal minds for decades, but I suspect it can be reduced to arrogance, convenience, and gluttony. It has been a difficult revelation in some ways. Cooking meat has almost been a part of my way of life; it’s something I took pride in and always did to the best of my ability. Now I don’t really have much interest in food at all.
- Jeff_Brown 6y agoIt's a very hard realization to have. I applaud you. I was vegan for a couple years, until I devleped tooth problems for the first time in my life, which spooked me and I quit. Now I just try to moderate my meat intake, consume the less-in-demand parts like tongue (nobody raises a cow for its tongue), and buy from sources that impose less, albeit clearly still substantial, suffering. But that said, there's so much great vegetarian food to be eaten!
- Jeff_Brown 6y ago> That seems like cuttlefish can exert self control, all right, but what's not clear is why. In species such as parrots, primates, and corvids, delayed gratification has been linked to factors such as tool use (because it requires planning ahead), food caching (for obvious reasons) and social competence (because prosocial behaviour - such as making sure everyone has food - benefits social species). > > Cuttlefish, as far as we know, don't use tools or cache food, nor are they especially social ... This feels like an evolutionary attribution error, if that's a thing. Self control is different from a thumb; there aren't necessarily any genes that code for it. My first guess would be that, in order for a creature to be as smart as a cuttlefish, it needs to have a mental model of spacetime and of itself. Self-control is just one of the many results of such intelligence.
- glsdfgkjsklfj 6y ago*a biased cognitive test
- carapace 6y agoThere are implications of certain recent discoveries. Not to be mysterious, I'm talking about Levin's lab.[1] All cells "think" using the same bio-molecular machinery as neurons. Neurons are just denser and faster. -> Intelligence is ambient. All cells think, and all collections of cells (from biofilms and stomatolites on up) think. In computer terms all cells use compatible protocols and processors and the living world is a kind of biological internet ("Wood-Wide Web"). -> All life shares one mind. Whatever mind is, if you believe it "runs on" the physical substrate of cellular internet, then our minds are not separate from the minds of other living things. This would explain a lot. When I bring this up people often object that this is anthropomorphism, but don't see it that way. Since all living tissue is intelligent, I see humans as the anthropomorphism of that ambient intelligence of the biosphere. -> The biosphere is the result of "intelligent design": it's own. From early on, the evolution of life would have become (more deeply) self-referential through mental feedback, meaning that the advent of intelligence itself becomes a factor in the further evolution of life. Things like the great switch-over from anaerobic to aerobic metabolism and the concomitant massive increase in atmospheric oxygen may well have been deliberate choice on the part of the global mind. In any event, the reductive mechanistic view of "dumb" life is faulty. Earth is Solaris. Now this changes nothing about evolution. It's still a chemical tautology with no purpose, and adaptive pressure doesn't stop just because cells can think. ("Science does not remove the terror of the gods.") The Earth as a single being still has to navigate the "slings and arrows of outrageous fortune". Gaia is mortal. Part of the reason living systems seem so wildly inefficient (an illusion) is that they are so inconceivably resilient. (Efficiency vs. inefficiency is meaningless in evolution: there is no purpose so there can be no measurement of efficiency.) [1] "What Bodies Think About: Bioelectric Computation Outside the Nervous System" (youtube.com) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18736698 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18736698
- ykevinator 6y agon=6