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"What blew my mind was when one of the first dogs to use buttons was confronted with her "beach" button being broken. She started using the phrase "outside-wate

"What blew my mind was when one of the first dogs to use buttons was confronted with her "beach" button being broken. She started using the phrase "outside-water" to compensate for being unable to say "beach"." This is actually something that the skeptics should address when they claim that all that button pushing is just simple conditioning. Spontaneously creating a logically sound approximation for a broken button doesn't sound like conditioning at all.

cgriswald 2y ago
I think it is rather up to those making the claims to show that these stories are more than just selection bias.
- inglor_cz 2y ago
  How should such a study even look like? I mean, some people are perfectly fine with labeling other people NPCs.
  - cgriswald 2y ago
    I don't think I would want to design such a study, but at a minimum arguments would have to be made ahead of time for meaningful pairings "outside-water" == "beach", all button presses would have to be recorded, and then a statistical conclusion could be reached. > I mean, some people are perfectly fine with labeling other people NPCs. Indeed. So whatever such a study concludes is unlikely to change people's ideas about dogs much.
    - observationist 2y ago
      This is actually a study being run - https://www.theycantalk.org/research https://www.theycantalk.org/research They are recording button presses and sequences in both controlled and open situations, and have already observed a consistent capacity to chain multiple buttons together in naming a thing, and have found patterns in the names dogs come up with (I think they're also doing cat studies.)
observationist 2y ago
My own dog has used "outside water good before" to tell me about going potty outside, but over time, outside water has come to mean rain. There needs to be an acknowledgement that conditioning does happen, and that animals who don't learn language can still recognize words as signals without having any deeper understanding. With buttons, animals are brought to understand the words through contextual use and modeling of the word - emotions and time and abstractions are taught that take the word beyond mere signaling and conditioning. If you go back and review reports about Clever Hans, what you find is an overwhelming bias and a perverse incentive to deny any and all "cleverness" the horse may have had in favor of maintaining humanity's sole domain of complex and abstract thought. Clever Hans could likely accomplish simple arithmetic. Nearly everyone who "debunked" the claims at the time was hopelessly biased and tangled up with their own worldviews. Horses are brilliant. I've met horses that are smarter than many people I know. (I've also met horses that were sociopathic asshats without any redeeming personality traits, but that's a story for a different thread.) If dogs can learn complex, abstract language and simple counting with a brain the size of a ping pong ball or a peach, a horse brain 4-8 times larger is going to be much more capable and facile. I think this type of research that takes an unbiased and rational approach to animal cognition will lead to better outcomes for everyone. There's a lot that veterinarians and biologists are taught with roots deep in religious myths and cultural tropes, so it's left a large and mostly untapped field of discovery available for a new generation.
- sonofhans 2y ago
  Horses are brilliant, and it’s good to hear someone say so. A friend says it would take at most 8 vampire horses to wipe out all of humanity.

cgriswald 2y ago

I think it is rather up to those making the claims to show that these stories are more than just selection bias.

inglor_cz 2y ago
How should such a study even look like? I mean, some people are perfectly fine with labeling other people NPCs.
- cgriswald 2y ago
  I don't think I would want to design such a study, but at a minimum arguments would have to be made ahead of time for meaningful pairings "outside-water" == "beach", all button presses would have to be recorded, and then a statistical conclusion could be reached. > I mean, some people are perfectly fine with labeling other people NPCs. Indeed. So whatever such a study concludes is unlikely to change people's ideas about dogs much.
  - observationist 2y ago
    This is actually a study being run - https://www.theycantalk.org/research https://www.theycantalk.org/research They are recording button presses and sequences in both controlled and open situations, and have already observed a consistent capacity to chain multiple buttons together in naming a thing, and have found patterns in the names dogs come up with (I think they're also doing cat studies.)

observationist 2y ago

My own dog has used "outside water good before" to tell me about going potty outside, but over time, outside water has come to mean rain. There needs to be an acknowledgement that conditioning does happen, and that animals who don't learn language can still recognize words as signals without having any deeper understanding. With buttons, animals are brought to understand the words through contextual use and modeling of the word - emotions and time and abstractions are taught that take the word beyond mere signaling and conditioning. If you go back and review reports about Clever Hans, what you find is an overwhelming bias and a perverse incentive to deny any and all "cleverness" the horse may have had in favor of maintaining humanity's sole domain of complex and abstract thought. Clever Hans could likely accomplish simple arithmetic. Nearly everyone who "debunked" the claims at the time was hopelessly biased and tangled up with their own worldviews. Horses are brilliant. I've met horses that are smarter than many people I know. (I've also met horses that were sociopathic asshats without any redeeming personality traits, but that's a story for a different thread.) If dogs can learn complex, abstract language and simple counting with a brain the size of a ping pong ball or a peach, a horse brain 4-8 times larger is going to be much more capable and facile. I think this type of research that takes an unbiased and rational approach to animal cognition will lead to better outcomes for everyone. There's a lot that veterinarians and biologists are taught with roots deep in religious myths and cultural tropes, so it's left a large and mostly untapped field of discovery available for a new generation.

sonofhans 2y ago
Horses are brilliant, and it’s good to hear someone say so. A friend says it would take at most 8 vampire horses to wipe out all of humanity.