5 ms·

Why is it so hard to believe that early humans possess these qualities? After all, nonhuman animals like elephants possess many of the qualities we assume to be

by jb1991 3y ago

Why is it so hard to believe that early humans possess these qualities? After all, nonhuman animals like elephants possess many of the qualities we assume to be unique to human spirituality, like making long journeys to remember and mourn their dead even years after the fact. Or anyone who has witnessed the astounding behavior that dogs are capable of would certainly consider them intelligent in many of the same ways. So why can’t a primitive human also demonstrate these qualities?

Ozzie_osman 3y ago
My take on this is that the uproar is less about the conclusion and more about the way the conclusion was reached.
- rramadass 3y ago
  Right!
- kaycebasques 3y ago
  The evidence does indeed seem quite flimsy for such grand conclusions: > It was unclear how their remains got deep into the cave system, however. There were no signs that predatorsbrought them into the chamber or that underground streams swept them there. So Berger’s team concluded that the bones had been deliberately placed
  - baja_blast 3y ago
    I watched the documentary on Netflix the narrow passageway that the bodies were found require climbing up an incline before reaching the chute. Also one of the children had a tool placed in it's hand. The idea that small brains can not be intelligent is wrong, how the brain is connected and shaped determines intelligence to a higher degree. Neanderthals had larger brain masses than modern humans but were less intelligent. And look at Bird brains have more than twice the neurons per unit mass as mammals making parrots/crows have the same number of neurons of as primates despite being much smaller and highly concentrated in the forebrain which is why they are able to make compound tools despite not having hands and more complex communication and social structures.
godelski 3y ago
> Or anyone who has witnessed the astounding behavior that dogs are capable of would certainly consider them intelligent in many of the same ways Interestingly enough, even in the 60's people thought humans were the only animals with intelligence and emotions. Here's an excerpt from Jane Goodall's PIMA interview[0] > GOODALL: Yes. And when these Cambridge professors told me that only humans had personalities, minds, and emotions, I knew they were totally wrong because I had this great teacher when I was a child. That was my dog, Rusty. You can’t share your life in a meaningful way with a dog, a cat, a rabbit, a horse, a bird, and not know that we are not the only beings on this planet who are sentient and sapient. Later... > GOODALL: When I started in 1960, nobody had studied chimps in the wild. No scientist, that is. If, at that time you had gone into some of the indigenous people living deep in the rainforest, they would’ve told you chimpanzees used to make tools. They knew it. But, of course, now we are back on the scientific bandwagon. ... But there’s a wonderful book written by a psychologist, called The Mentality of Apes, Wolfgang Köhler, and he studied this colony of captive apes, and he described so many innovative uses of objects. But at that time, the scientific community said, “Oh, well, these were chimpanzees in captivity. Therefore, our human characteristics had rubbed off onto them. It’s nothing to do with what they, as wild individuals, would be capable of.” ... Even now there are a lot of people who believe that there is a certain magic when discussing brains. Quite a lot of people think it would be impossible to build one, theoretically. I'll say it loud and clear, unless there's magic, there's no reason we can't -- theoretically -- build a brain. It must follow the same principles of physics that the rest of the universe does. I'll also say that a fuck ton of life is intelligent, even my idiot cat. Just look at how they dream, you can tell that tiny dumb brain can simulate its environment (or else they wouldn't try to eat, run in their sleep, or wake up to nightmares). I know AI can do a lot of things right now, but boy is it not close to this incredible thing that the smallest and stupidest mammal is doing with magnitudes lower computational budget. It really is quite impressive. But this is also why AI research should be so interesting, because there's still so much left that we haven't even scratched the surface of. It is possible to be highly critical in one hand and hold curiosity in the other. The details are important though and we must not be tricked by statistics. But the area we're moving into now is going to get murky really fast and I'd warn anyone from trusting metrics as a way to measure performance more than a guide, because there's a lot we don't know. But that's the fun of it all, the puzzle, the draw to research in the first place. [0] https://freakonomics.com/podcast/jane-goodall-changed-the-way-we-see-animals-shes-not-done/ https://freakonomics.com/podcast/jane-goodall-changed-the-wa...
muskmusk 3y ago
Exactly, also 3year olds are capable of language. How do you prove that something that lived 300.000 years ago could communicate?
- simonh 3y ago
  Proof is tough, but there are approaches to reasoning about it. One is statistical models of phoneme development which indicates that languages in Africa started diversifying up to about 150,000 years ago. However I think it seems likely that our cognitive ability to reason about linguistic structures is an adaptation of our ability to reason about making and using tools. Tools leave physical evidence, so if we can figure out an evolutionary relationship with language development we might make traction that way.
- IshKebab 3y ago
  With difficulty, but that's not really relevant to the issue here is it? Nobody is arguing that early humans couldn't have communicated.
stinos 3y ago
> Why is it so hard to believe that early humans possess these qualities? I's not. I don't think any of the involved scientists reject the idea right away. But that is besides the point. The point is to try and prove it in a scientific process so that we can know it, not merely believe.
- mcpackieh 3y ago
  The problem I see with this is that although not assuming something until you have strong evidence to 'prove' it is good policy for scientists, it's often not good policy for people in the general case. A scientist may struggle to rigorously define nebulous concepts like 'love' in an empirical manner, and will particularly resist applying such terms to the behavior of non-human animals. They call doing so anthropomorphism, and rail against it. It's not scientific to assume dogs have human emotions, so they need to be careful about incorporating such assumptions into their scientific work. But then you get laymen picking up on this and saying things like "love is a human emotion and dogs aren't human. what seems to be love to you is merely food-seeking behavior." But this is not the appropriate way for dog owners to think about their dogs. In everyday contexts, people should be making these sort of intuitive assumptions about the way other people and animals feel, even though they aren't necessarily scientific beliefs.
  - stinos 3y ago
    I don't quite agree. In fact I'd argue what would be good policy for more people would be more of a scientific, skeptical, realistic mindset and definitely not less. And the argument that goes like 'a scientist cannot use emotions (or whatever) because it cannot be scientifically explained' makes no sense. Could be that one key part you're missing is: when a scientist cannot easily prove something that doesn't make it non-existing nor unusable, but a scientist doesn't have to turn to belief for that: a scientist can simply admit to not knowing and not caring how something works yet use it, likewise scientists are allowed to make assumptions. It's just that they'll always realize it's an assumption. I'm for instance very well aware that my pets seem to love me and I know that me providing them food plays a big role in that and that it's likely (likeley, because assuming certain animals have no emotions would be equally wrong plus by now proven false already IIRC) very different kind of love than the one between humans. I fail to see how that is in any way not appropriate though. Despite realizing that the enjoyment of interaction between me and my pets is based on certain hormones being released in my body when I'm around them, my pets give me great joy, I do a lot for them, and I'm grieving for days if not weeks if one of them passes away.

by jb1991 3y ago

Ozzie_osman 3y ago

My take on this is that the uproar is less about the conclusion and more about the way the conclusion was reached.

rramadass 3y ago
Right!
kaycebasques 3y ago
The evidence does indeed seem quite flimsy for such grand conclusions: > It was unclear how their remains got deep into the cave system, however. There were no signs that predatorsbrought them into the chamber or that underground streams swept them there. So Berger’s team concluded that the bones had been deliberately placed
- baja_blast 3y ago
  I watched the documentary on Netflix the narrow passageway that the bodies were found require climbing up an incline before reaching the chute. Also one of the children had a tool placed in it's hand. The idea that small brains can not be intelligent is wrong, how the brain is connected and shaped determines intelligence to a higher degree. Neanderthals had larger brain masses than modern humans but were less intelligent. And look at Bird brains have more than twice the neurons per unit mass as mammals making parrots/crows have the same number of neurons of as primates despite being much smaller and highly concentrated in the forebrain which is why they are able to make compound tools despite not having hands and more complex communication and social structures.

godelski 3y ago

> Or anyone who has witnessed the astounding behavior that dogs are capable of would certainly consider them intelligent in many of the same ways Interestingly enough, even in the 60's people thought humans were the only animals with intelligence and emotions. Here's an excerpt from Jane Goodall's PIMA interview[0] > GOODALL: Yes. And when these Cambridge professors told me that only humans had personalities, minds, and emotions, I knew they were totally wrong because I had this great teacher when I was a child. That was my dog, Rusty. You can’t share your life in a meaningful way with a dog, a cat, a rabbit, a horse, a bird, and not know that we are not the only beings on this planet who are sentient and sapient. Later... > GOODALL: When I started in 1960, nobody had studied chimps in the wild. No scientist, that is. If, at that time you had gone into some of the indigenous people living deep in the rainforest, they would’ve told you chimpanzees used to make tools. They knew it. But, of course, now we are back on the scientific bandwagon. ... But there’s a wonderful book written by a psychologist, called The Mentality of Apes, Wolfgang Köhler, and he studied this colony of captive apes, and he described so many innovative uses of objects. But at that time, the scientific community said, “Oh, well, these were chimpanzees in captivity. Therefore, our human characteristics had rubbed off onto them. It’s nothing to do with what they, as wild individuals, would be capable of.” ... Even now there are a lot of people who believe that there is a certain magic when discussing brains. Quite a lot of people think it would be impossible to build one, theoretically. I'll say it loud and clear, unless there's magic, there's no reason we can't -- theoretically -- build a brain. It must follow the same principles of physics that the rest of the universe does. I'll also say that a fuck ton of life is intelligent, even my idiot cat. Just look at how they dream, you can tell that tiny dumb brain can simulate its environment (or else they wouldn't try to eat, run in their sleep, or wake up to nightmares). I know AI can do a lot of things right now, but boy is it not close to this incredible thing that the smallest and stupidest mammal is doing with magnitudes lower computational budget. It really is quite impressive. But this is also why AI research should be so interesting, because there's still so much left that we haven't even scratched the surface of. It is possible to be highly critical in one hand and hold curiosity in the other. The details are important though and we must not be tricked by statistics. But the area we're moving into now is going to get murky really fast and I'd warn anyone from trusting metrics as a way to measure performance more than a guide, because there's a lot we don't know. But that's the fun of it all, the puzzle, the draw to research in the first place. [0] https://freakonomics.com/podcast/jane-goodall-changed-the-way-we-see-animals-shes-not-done/ https://freakonomics.com/podcast/jane-goodall-changed-the-wa...

muskmusk 3y ago

Exactly, also 3year olds are capable of language. How do you prove that something that lived 300.000 years ago could communicate?

simonh 3y ago
Proof is tough, but there are approaches to reasoning about it. One is statistical models of phoneme development which indicates that languages in Africa started diversifying up to about 150,000 years ago. However I think it seems likely that our cognitive ability to reason about linguistic structures is an adaptation of our ability to reason about making and using tools. Tools leave physical evidence, so if we can figure out an evolutionary relationship with language development we might make traction that way.
IshKebab 3y ago
With difficulty, but that's not really relevant to the issue here is it? Nobody is arguing that early humans couldn't have communicated.

stinos 3y ago

> Why is it so hard to believe that early humans possess these qualities? I's not. I don't think any of the involved scientists reject the idea right away. But that is besides the point. The point is to try and prove it in a scientific process so that we can know it, not merely believe.

mcpackieh 3y ago
The problem I see with this is that although not assuming something until you have strong evidence to 'prove' it is good policy for scientists, it's often not good policy for people in the general case. A scientist may struggle to rigorously define nebulous concepts like 'love' in an empirical manner, and will particularly resist applying such terms to the behavior of non-human animals. They call doing so anthropomorphism, and rail against it. It's not scientific to assume dogs have human emotions, so they need to be careful about incorporating such assumptions into their scientific work. But then you get laymen picking up on this and saying things like "love is a human emotion and dogs aren't human. what seems to be love to you is merely food-seeking behavior." But this is not the appropriate way for dog owners to think about their dogs. In everyday contexts, people should be making these sort of intuitive assumptions about the way other people and animals feel, even though they aren't necessarily scientific beliefs.
- stinos 3y ago
  I don't quite agree. In fact I'd argue what would be good policy for more people would be more of a scientific, skeptical, realistic mindset and definitely not less. And the argument that goes like 'a scientist cannot use emotions (or whatever) because it cannot be scientifically explained' makes no sense. Could be that one key part you're missing is: when a scientist cannot easily prove something that doesn't make it non-existing nor unusable, but a scientist doesn't have to turn to belief for that: a scientist can simply admit to not knowing and not caring how something works yet use it, likewise scientists are allowed to make assumptions. It's just that they'll always realize it's an assumption. I'm for instance very well aware that my pets seem to love me and I know that me providing them food plays a big role in that and that it's likely (likeley, because assuming certain animals have no emotions would be equally wrong plus by now proven false already IIRC) very different kind of love than the one between humans. I fail to see how that is in any way not appropriate though. Despite realizing that the enjoyment of interaction between me and my pets is based on certain hormones being released in my body when I'm around them, my pets give me great joy, I do a lot for them, and I'm grieving for days if not weeks if one of them passes away.