3 ms·

This is a bit "circular". Presumably the researchers have determined what these gestures mean, and now they're asking other humans to see if they can get the sa

This is a bit "circular". Presumably the researchers have determined what these gestures mean, and now they're asking other humans to see if they can get the same meanings that these researcher-humans determined. We don't know for sure what the apes think. So we've shown that the way a group of human researchers interpret ape gestures is the same way many other humans from a self-selected subset interpret ape gestures.

slowmovintarget 4y ago
They're also not accounting for cross-species training in the first place. The number of apes that have seen and emulated humans, then passed emulation to their children is not zero.
technothrasher 4y ago
Your objection reminded me of when I was a senior in college, and for independent study credit I helped a couple of postdocs with a psychology paper they were writing. They were concerned with researcher bias in category selection in surveys. Good for them! But their solution was to offer much more free form surveys and then have us, the researchers, spend many, many hours examining the individual surveys and picking categories to make up to fit the responses. I completely failed to see how this fixed anything as it was still us, the researchers, choosing the categories, and they failed to seem to want to comprehend that there might be a problem with their approach. The other undergrad who was also working with us approached me and thought we should ask for our names on the paper. I told him I didn't want my name associated in any way, but that he should shoot for the moon.
- whatshisface 4y ago
  I've seen people do a study like that the right way. It works by having separate researchers invent categories independently and then compare them once they have classified everything. No talking about the project is allowed until everybody is done.

3 ms·

This is a bit "circular". Presumably the researchers have determined what these gestures mean, and now they're asking other humans to see if they can get the sa

by fortran77 4y ago

slowmovintarget 4y ago
They're also not accounting for cross-species training in the first place. The number of apes that have seen and emulated humans, then passed emulation to their children is not zero.
technothrasher 4y ago
Your objection reminded me of when I was a senior in college, and for independent study credit I helped a couple of postdocs with a psychology paper they were writing. They were concerned with researcher bias in category selection in surveys. Good for them! But their solution was to offer much more free form surveys and then have us, the researchers, spend many, many hours examining the individual surveys and picking categories to make up to fit the responses. I completely failed to see how this fixed anything as it was still us, the researchers, choosing the categories, and they failed to seem to want to comprehend that there might be a problem with their approach. The other undergrad who was also working with us approached me and thought we should ask for our names on the paper. I told him I didn't want my name associated in any way, but that he should shoot for the moon.
- whatshisface 4y ago
  I've seen people do a study like that the right way. It works by having separate researchers invent categories independently and then compare them once they have classified everything. No talking about the project is allowed until everybody is done.