6 ms·
A test of memory for stimulus sequences in great apes
- dbmikus 3y agoCrows can solve puzzles that require a sequential series of steps. Would that imply they have sequential memory? I saw someone in the article comments mentioning this as well.
- cma 3y agoNot sure about crows, but there is this with songbirds: https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1207207109 https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1207207109
- SanderNL 3y agoHow would they survive without? What is “sequential memory” if I may ask a stupid question? (Other than memory that is ordered.. sequentially)
- dbmikus 3y agoI very far from the field of biology, but from the article it means " ability to recognize and recall sequential data". For crows, I was using it to mean that a crow knows it needs to get tool A so it can get tool B to then use tool B to get the treat.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- golemotron 3y agoGotta love the never ending hunt for things that are uniquely human. For a while, we thought it was language and then discovered that it wasn't. Same for tool use. Maybe the search for uniquely human things is the uniquely human thing? We can get over that too if we consider that we may not be that special.
- yyyk 3y agoIt's too easy to accuse every such article of arrogance - after all, something is obviously different, especially given that crows and apes didn't take over the planet long before humans existed. It's fair enough to look for it.
- golemotron 3y agoHave we really taken over the planet or is it just that it looks like that from our perspective? https://www.science.org/content/article/how-many-ants-live-earth https://www.science.org/content/article/how-many-ants-live-e... (answer: 20 quadrillion)
- incongruity 3y agoThe impact humanity has had on the planet is undeniable. Further, we really are the apex predator globally and we have caused the extinction of numerous species. By most measures it’s absolutely true that we have taken over the planet, imho.
- gizmo686 3y agoIf you go by impact alone, humans are still not the most influential organism. Cyanobacteria literally poisoned the atmosphere and triggered a global ice age. [0] [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Oxidation_Event https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Oxidation_Event
- incongruity 3y agoGive us a few years? Sadly…
- philipov 3y agoBut that was billions of years ago! Cyanobacteria just peaked early. Give us a few more years, and I'm sure we'll catch up splendidly.
- 3y ago
- bedobi 3y agowhat? chimps destroy humans at remembering sequences of numbers
- syndicatedjelly 3y agoNo
- Tostino 3y agoWell I've been thoroughly convinced by this argument.
- syndicatedjelly 3y agoGP should provide evidence then
- SolarNet 3y agoYou should be though. Without evidence, raw skepticism is a valid argument. My prior beliefs were not updated by either statement. Though I agree the polite/generous version of this is asking for source rather than just posting "No".
- jasonhong 3y agoHere's a BBC video showing how good chimpanzees are with short-term memory. Short version, the chimp beats all humans at the memory test. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zsXP8qeFF6A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zsXP8qeFF6A
- behnamoh 3y agoIt’s unique to humans until it isn’t (LLMs).
- chrisco255 3y agoLLMs are a human technology.
- behnamoh 3y agodoesn’t matter. that’s orthogonal to this discussion.
- chrisco255 3y agoIt's not orthogonal, our tech is our tech. If dolphins invent LLMs I suppose we can cede that category as non-human as well.
- verytrivial 3y agoI had a bad experience very recently with hash (in the non-CS sense.) There was a harm done, for a couple of hours, to my understanding of time, of recalling "when" each memory I was using was formed. I could not tell AT ALL if it was from literally 10 seconds ago, or weeks/months ago. It was incapacitating, but upon reflection, really showed as is often the case with medical science and pathology, there was a faculty at play here that was only apparent when removed. I could not function without the ability to sequence events, including the provenence of each damn propositions I was trying to use to explain my current existence. Bad times. But with some distance quite interesting.
- nerdponx 3y agoI wonder if this is a more extreme manifestation of the common experience of losing sense of time passing when high, often thinking that something is taking a very long time while actually not taking very long.
- verytrivial 3y agoI'm describing something I thought was salient. This was a passage of time issue, but it was specifically the loss of the ability to temporaily sequence the provenance of recollection. Imagine having a discussion where you couldn't tell if you said something in the previous sentence, or last week. We (apparently) feel this information and use it to guide the process. There was clearly some sort of 'tagging' of memory regarding it's age and how it "should" be used in reasoning, and I lost that. TFA is talking about this sequence being unique to humans. I felt like I was 102 years old. I wonder how other organisms function without relying upon this appently inate ability.
- gardenfelder 3y agoThe paper https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0290546 https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...