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It always bothers me how little intelligence we assume of and thus ascribe to the animal kingdom. Especially to our mammalian brethren, who have many of the sa

It always bothers me how little intelligence we assume of and thus ascribe to the animal kingdom. Especially to our mammalian brethren, who have many of the same underlying neurological mechanisms (though in differing quantities). Dogs have co-evolved with humans for thousands of years. Remembering names seems like a useful albeit unsurprising skill, especially when it comes to recognizing/avoiding danger. “The bear/wolf/demon tribe is back!” Will we ever stop looking down from our heavenly pedestal? Can we instead treat at our earthly contemporaries as different but equal?

accrual 2y ago
I agree, I think there is a lot of intelligence around us, perhaps even in ways we don't fully see or imagine. One of the largest organisms on Earth is a mycelium network in Oregon, it's nearly 4 square miles in size. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/strange-but-true-largest-organism-is-fungus/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/strange-but-true-... Is it possible this mass of mycelium has some form of intelligence that is difficult for humans to measure? Maybe it "knows" things we can barely conceptualize. What about trees that stand in place for hundreds, or even thousands of years? https://www.treehugger.com/the-worlds-oldest-living-trees-4869356 https://www.treehugger.com/the-worlds-oldest-living-trees-48... Perhaps the trees experience time differently due to their slow growth, and they too have "witnessed" many different events in their environment over time, encapsulating them in the rings and structures within themselves. We could write this off as non-sense as trees have no nervous system, but maybe a lack of such a system doesn't necessarily preclude some type of intelligence we just don't consider "intelligent".
- sethammons 2y ago
  I think you will enjoy the documentary The Hidden Life of Trees. It talks about trees and social networks of mycelium where trees share nutrients and information on threats (ant species X attacking, start chemical defenses) and mother trees prioritize their offspring over other neighbors when sharing nutrients. There are whole worlds to be discovered yet here on our little blue dot of a planet
- BoingBoomTschak 2y ago
  >Is it possible this mass of mycelium has some form of intelligence that is difficult for humans to measure? Maybe it "knows" things we can barely conceptualize. That's actually the plot of a Garrett P.I. novel.
throwaway892552 2y ago
It's almost as if we have some type of coping mechanism. If we recognized more of ourselves in our animals, we would need to treat them more humane. Just look at all the cases in human history where other people were reduced to primitive beings and could be treated more cruelly. If we can rationalize these actions towards fellow humans, I assume that the barrier for accepting animal emotions is even harder to break
- jjtheblunt 2y ago
  Didn’t you just describe several religions’ beliefs about humans and animals, where humans are claimed to be a priori more special in various ways (besides reading that they’re more special)?
hdivider 2y ago
Every time I encounter resistance to your points here, I feel like an alien among humans. I think it cuts so deep into people's psychology, and frequently religion. The very notion that we are not the apex of anything. And that we no longer need to eat other animals to live and be healthy. Too much to bear for many, so it frequently results in low-quality conversation, laden with emotions. The fact remains, however. Non-human animals are not that different from us. Pretty much all mental behavior is represented in the animal kingdom. They, in so many ways, are us. And we are them. Why should it be otherwise, after all? It would be strange to have a quantum jump in mental behavior with humans, and only primitive behavior in all other animals. It'll probably take some centuries for humans to see other animals as inherently worthy of respect.
- cortesoft 2y ago
  I am in no way religious, and I don't think we are fundamentally different than other animals, but I don't think it is surprising that most of us (myself included) think of human emotions and intelligence as being on a completely different level than animals. The complexity of human language, social structure, and technology is not even in the same ballpark as animals. Humans make iPhones and travel to space and write War and Peace. We dominate the world, changing its very climate and wiping countless species off the planet, and no other species even tries to stop us. It seems a bigger stretch to think other animals have similar emotions to humans than the opposite.
  - cebu_blue 2y ago
    [flagged]
  - gefriertrockner 2y ago
    > The complexity of human language, social structure, and technology is not even in the same ballpark as animals. Humans make iPhones and travel to space and write War and Peace. We dominate the world, changing its very climate and wiping countless species off the planet, and no other species even tries to stop us. That's true only for a small subset of humans. 99.9% of humans achieve no feat as you describe. You can easily make the case for attributing these feats to smaller subsets. E.g., Africans, Native Americans do not make iPhones, travel to space, etc. And therefore its ok to colonize them. I think that sounds familiar to history. If you go by this notion, it would rather make sense to attribute these feats to a small elite and not humans entirely. And by that logic, this elite is siphoning money, creating riches for their own benefit. Which is probably what is happening in most countries (more so if they are authoritarian). I think its simply about a feeling of superiority, might makes right. If you can, you abuse others for your own benefit. Whether they are a human or another animal.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
hirvi74 2y ago
I am also bothered by mainstream definitions of intelligence and our humanity's egocentric ascription. I personally really appreciate the definition of intelligence from Dr. David Krakauer, a mathematical biologist. Krakauer once said on Sam Harris' podcast (episode 40): Intelligence is, as I say to people, one of the topics about which we have been most stupid. All our definitions of intelligence are based on measurements that can only be applied to humans. An IQ test is not interesting if you’re trying to calculate the intelligence of an octopus — which I would like to know, because I believe in evolution. I think we need to understand where these things come from, and having a definition that applies just to one particular species doesn’t help us. We’ve talked about entropy and computation, and they’re going to be the keys to understanding intelligence. Let’s go back to randomness. The example I like to give is Rubik’s cube, because it’s a beautiful little mental model, a metaphor. If I gave you a cube and asked you to solve it, and you just randomly manipulated it, since it has on the order of 10 quintillion solutions, which is a very large number, if you were immortal, you would eventually solve it. But it would take a lifetime of several universes to do so. That is random performance. Stupid performance is if you took just one face of the cube and manipulated that one face and rotated it forever. As everyone knows, if you did that, you would never solve the cube. It would be an infinite process that would never be resolved. That, in my definition, would be stupid. It is significantly worse than chance. Now let’s take someone who has learned how to manipulate a cube and is familiar with various rules that allow you, from any initial configuration, to solve the cube in 20 minutes or less. That is intelligent behavior, significantly better than chance. This sounds a little counterintuitive, perhaps, until you realize that’s how we use the word in our daily lives. If I sat down with an extraordinary mathematician and I said, “I can’t solve that equation,” and he said, “Well, no, it’s easy. Here, this is what you do,” I’d look at it and I’d say, “Oh, yes, it is easy. You made that look easy.” That’s what we mean when we say someone is smart. They make things look easy. If, on the other hand, I sat down with someone who was incapable, and he just kept dividing by two, for whatever reason, I would say, “What on earth are you doing? What a stupid thing to do. You’ll never solve the problem that way.” So that is what we mean by intelligence. It’s the thing we do that ensures that the problem is efficiently solved and in a way that makes it appear effortless. And stupidity is a set of rules that we use to ensure that the problem will be solved in longer than chance or never and is nevertheless pursued with alacrity and enthusiasm.”

accrual 2y ago

I agree, I think there is a lot of intelligence around us, perhaps even in ways we don't fully see or imagine. One of the largest organisms on Earth is a mycelium network in Oregon, it's nearly 4 square miles in size. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/strange-but-true-largest-organism-is-fungus/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/strange-but-true-... Is it possible this mass of mycelium has some form of intelligence that is difficult for humans to measure? Maybe it "knows" things we can barely conceptualize. What about trees that stand in place for hundreds, or even thousands of years? https://www.treehugger.com/the-worlds-oldest-living-trees-4869356 https://www.treehugger.com/the-worlds-oldest-living-trees-48... Perhaps the trees experience time differently due to their slow growth, and they too have "witnessed" many different events in their environment over time, encapsulating them in the rings and structures within themselves. We could write this off as non-sense as trees have no nervous system, but maybe a lack of such a system doesn't necessarily preclude some type of intelligence we just don't consider "intelligent".

sethammons 2y ago
I think you will enjoy the documentary The Hidden Life of Trees. It talks about trees and social networks of mycelium where trees share nutrients and information on threats (ant species X attacking, start chemical defenses) and mother trees prioritize their offspring over other neighbors when sharing nutrients. There are whole worlds to be discovered yet here on our little blue dot of a planet
BoingBoomTschak 2y ago
>Is it possible this mass of mycelium has some form of intelligence that is difficult for humans to measure? Maybe it "knows" things we can barely conceptualize. That's actually the plot of a Garrett P.I. novel.

throwaway892552 2y ago

It's almost as if we have some type of coping mechanism. If we recognized more of ourselves in our animals, we would need to treat them more humane. Just look at all the cases in human history where other people were reduced to primitive beings and could be treated more cruelly. If we can rationalize these actions towards fellow humans, I assume that the barrier for accepting animal emotions is even harder to break

jjtheblunt 2y ago
Didn’t you just describe several religions’ beliefs about humans and animals, where humans are claimed to be a priori more special in various ways (besides reading that they’re more special)?

hdivider 2y ago

Every time I encounter resistance to your points here, I feel like an alien among humans. I think it cuts so deep into people's psychology, and frequently religion. The very notion that we are not the apex of anything. And that we no longer need to eat other animals to live and be healthy. Too much to bear for many, so it frequently results in low-quality conversation, laden with emotions. The fact remains, however. Non-human animals are not that different from us. Pretty much all mental behavior is represented in the animal kingdom. They, in so many ways, are us. And we are them. Why should it be otherwise, after all? It would be strange to have a quantum jump in mental behavior with humans, and only primitive behavior in all other animals. It'll probably take some centuries for humans to see other animals as inherently worthy of respect.

cortesoft 2y ago
I am in no way religious, and I don't think we are fundamentally different than other animals, but I don't think it is surprising that most of us (myself included) think of human emotions and intelligence as being on a completely different level than animals. The complexity of human language, social structure, and technology is not even in the same ballpark as animals. Humans make iPhones and travel to space and write War and Peace. We dominate the world, changing its very climate and wiping countless species off the planet, and no other species even tries to stop us. It seems a bigger stretch to think other animals have similar emotions to humans than the opposite.
- cebu_blue 2y ago
  [flagged]
- gefriertrockner 2y ago
  > The complexity of human language, social structure, and technology is not even in the same ballpark as animals. Humans make iPhones and travel to space and write War and Peace. We dominate the world, changing its very climate and wiping countless species off the planet, and no other species even tries to stop us. That's true only for a small subset of humans. 99.9% of humans achieve no feat as you describe. You can easily make the case for attributing these feats to smaller subsets. E.g., Africans, Native Americans do not make iPhones, travel to space, etc. And therefore its ok to colonize them. I think that sounds familiar to history. If you go by this notion, it would rather make sense to attribute these feats to a small elite and not humans entirely. And by that logic, this elite is siphoning money, creating riches for their own benefit. Which is probably what is happening in most countries (more so if they are authoritarian). I think its simply about a feeling of superiority, might makes right. If you can, you abuse others for your own benefit. Whether they are a human or another animal.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

hirvi74 2y ago

I am also bothered by mainstream definitions of intelligence and our humanity's egocentric ascription. I personally really appreciate the definition of intelligence from Dr. David Krakauer, a mathematical biologist. Krakauer once said on Sam Harris' podcast (episode 40): Intelligence is, as I say to people, one of the topics about which we have been most stupid. All our definitions of intelligence are based on measurements that can only be applied to humans. An IQ test is not interesting if you’re trying to calculate the intelligence of an octopus — which I would like to know, because I believe in evolution. I think we need to understand where these things come from, and having a definition that applies just to one particular species doesn’t help us. We’ve talked about entropy and computation, and they’re going to be the keys to understanding intelligence. Let’s go back to randomness. The example I like to give is Rubik’s cube, because it’s a beautiful little mental model, a metaphor. If I gave you a cube and asked you to solve it, and you just randomly manipulated it, since it has on the order of 10 quintillion solutions, which is a very large number, if you were immortal, you would eventually solve it. But it would take a lifetime of several universes to do so. That is random performance. Stupid performance is if you took just one face of the cube and manipulated that one face and rotated it forever. As everyone knows, if you did that, you would never solve the cube. It would be an infinite process that would never be resolved. That, in my definition, would be stupid. It is significantly worse than chance. Now let’s take someone who has learned how to manipulate a cube and is familiar with various rules that allow you, from any initial configuration, to solve the cube in 20 minutes or less. That is intelligent behavior, significantly better than chance. This sounds a little counterintuitive, perhaps, until you realize that’s how we use the word in our daily lives. If I sat down with an extraordinary mathematician and I said, “I can’t solve that equation,” and he said, “Well, no, it’s easy. Here, this is what you do,” I’d look at it and I’d say, “Oh, yes, it is easy. You made that look easy.” That’s what we mean when we say someone is smart. They make things look easy. If, on the other hand, I sat down with someone who was incapable, and he just kept dividing by two, for whatever reason, I would say, “What on earth are you doing? What a stupid thing to do. You’ll never solve the problem that way.” So that is what we mean by intelligence. It’s the thing we do that ensures that the problem is efficiently solved and in a way that makes it appear effortless. And stupidity is a set of rules that we use to ensure that the problem will be solved in longer than chance or never and is nevertheless pursued with alacrity and enthusiasm.”