6 ms·

I don't think people are surprised that animals have thoughts and emotions. No farmer I know of thinks cows aren't capable of being trained: the ones down the r

by strken 3y ago

I don't think people are surprised that animals have thoughts and emotions. No farmer I know of thinks cows aren't capable of being trained: the ones down the road from my parents line up in an orderly queue to go into the dairy every morning and afternoon, including leaving a gap across the road and giving way to cars. On the other hand, a lot of people who claim animals have thoughts and emotions seem to think that cows have complicated human-level thoughts like "I am an oppressed cog; my owner will send me to the glue factory when I am too old to give milk, and yet I must queue up regardless, for my spirit is broken; my calf has been taken and I will never know if he got a college degree; life is pure suffering." This seems unlikely to be true.

tehjoker 3y ago
The part about "my calf has been taken" doesn't seem so far fetched though.
- strken 3y ago
  Yes, but do we know how a cow experiences the loss of a calf? The loss of a human child is very painful because of human comprehension of permanence, death, and the future. Is a cow thinking "I can't find my child, I am sad, I'm going to bellow and walk around for a few days searching" or is she experiencing a longer-term loss which she understands as the irrevocable death of her calf + social isolation from the experience + the end of her personal dreams for the calf? This is what I meant by "my calf has been taken and he'll never get a college degree". I'm not saying that a cow isn't upset when you take her calf away, but I am skeptical that she is capable of being upset in the way a human would be, or for as long and as deeply. I'm skeptical that even earlier humans from a time with ~50% child mortality would be as sad as a modern mother upon losing a child, just due to the relative normality of the loss.
Mandelmus 3y ago
> On the other hand, a lot of people who claim animals have thoughts and emotions seem to think that cows have complicated human-level thoughts like "I am an oppressed cog; my owner will send me to the glue factory when I am too old to give milk, and yet I must queue up regardless, for my spirit is broken; my calf has been taken and I will never know if he got a college degree; life is pure suffering." This seems unlikely to be true. That straw man could fatten a whole cow.
mo_42 3y ago
Your second description involves many aspects of human culture. No matter how smart cows are, they'll never think this way. Then, a big difference of humans compared to other animals is accumulation. We create stuff (buildings, language, knowledge, ...) that further generations will use. To really compare, I'd say, we have to take that away. Let's assume some people decide to go back into the forest. They go there with nothing and teach their children only the necessary skills to live in the forest. After some generations, a scientist discovers them. How would we compare them to humans and other animals like the great apes? How would they score on common IQ tests?
- deleted 3y ago
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- krisoft 3y ago
  > They go there with nothing and teach their children only the necessary skills to live in the forest. To live in the forest like humans do? Because then they would absolutely teach them language, and show them how to make fire and use sticks and stones. > How would they score on common IQ tests? Common human IQ tests? Very badly, they would probably not do much with the paper other than maybe take it with them for fire starter, and would just wander out of the room. On an IQ test you could conduct with great apes? Like various physical puzzles which hide treats? Very well presumably. They would have dexterous hands and great eyesight and problem solving skills, and oral traditions.
- deaddodo 3y ago
  Are you honestly trying to say humans living in a primitive society would be comparable to most other animals (not even "intelligent" ones such as chimps)? The cognitive dissonance in that statement is blinding. Even in the pre-agrarian hunter-gather millennia of human existence, human societies the world over independently figured out housing, carried the knowledge for fire and the wheel, had intensely complex (relative to every other species on the planet) communication and social skills. They all came up with ways to develop knives, arrows, cooking+eating utensils, protective clothing, complex hunting strategies, etc. Like, yeah...they didn't have computers in front of them, but all of the inate skills that allows modern humans to conceptualize, build, repair and utilize those things existed just as inately in them. You could teach one of them about things piece by piece...you'll never be able to do that with even a chimp, let alone a cow.
whoknowsidont 3y ago
To be fair, large swaths of the human population don't really come to the second realization either.

by strken 3y ago

tehjoker 3y ago

The part about "my calf has been taken" doesn't seem so far fetched though.

strken 3y ago
Yes, but do we know how a cow experiences the loss of a calf? The loss of a human child is very painful because of human comprehension of permanence, death, and the future. Is a cow thinking "I can't find my child, I am sad, I'm going to bellow and walk around for a few days searching" or is she experiencing a longer-term loss which she understands as the irrevocable death of her calf + social isolation from the experience + the end of her personal dreams for the calf? This is what I meant by "my calf has been taken and he'll never get a college degree". I'm not saying that a cow isn't upset when you take her calf away, but I am skeptical that she is capable of being upset in the way a human would be, or for as long and as deeply. I'm skeptical that even earlier humans from a time with ~50% child mortality would be as sad as a modern mother upon losing a child, just due to the relative normality of the loss.

Mandelmus 3y ago

> On the other hand, a lot of people who claim animals have thoughts and emotions seem to think that cows have complicated human-level thoughts like "I am an oppressed cog; my owner will send me to the glue factory when I am too old to give milk, and yet I must queue up regardless, for my spirit is broken; my calf has been taken and I will never know if he got a college degree; life is pure suffering." This seems unlikely to be true. That straw man could fatten a whole cow.

mo_42 3y ago

Your second description involves many aspects of human culture. No matter how smart cows are, they'll never think this way. Then, a big difference of humans compared to other animals is accumulation. We create stuff (buildings, language, knowledge, ...) that further generations will use. To really compare, I'd say, we have to take that away. Let's assume some people decide to go back into the forest. They go there with nothing and teach their children only the necessary skills to live in the forest. After some generations, a scientist discovers them. How would we compare them to humans and other animals like the great apes? How would they score on common IQ tests?

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
krisoft 3y ago
> They go there with nothing and teach their children only the necessary skills to live in the forest. To live in the forest like humans do? Because then they would absolutely teach them language, and show them how to make fire and use sticks and stones. > How would they score on common IQ tests? Common human IQ tests? Very badly, they would probably not do much with the paper other than maybe take it with them for fire starter, and would just wander out of the room. On an IQ test you could conduct with great apes? Like various physical puzzles which hide treats? Very well presumably. They would have dexterous hands and great eyesight and problem solving skills, and oral traditions.
deaddodo 3y ago
Are you honestly trying to say humans living in a primitive society would be comparable to most other animals (not even "intelligent" ones such as chimps)? The cognitive dissonance in that statement is blinding. Even in the pre-agrarian hunter-gather millennia of human existence, human societies the world over independently figured out housing, carried the knowledge for fire and the wheel, had intensely complex (relative to every other species on the planet) communication and social skills. They all came up with ways to develop knives, arrows, cooking+eating utensils, protective clothing, complex hunting strategies, etc. Like, yeah...they didn't have computers in front of them, but all of the inate skills that allows modern humans to conceptualize, build, repair and utilize those things existed just as inately in them. You could teach one of them about things piece by piece...you'll never be able to do that with even a chimp, let alone a cow.

whoknowsidont 3y ago

To be fair, large swaths of the human population don't really come to the second realization either.