Are humans *really* smarter than animals?

[pferdefreund]

What if sorting everything out would mean for the artificial intelligence to use all available resources recklessly to advance itself as much as possible and spread in the universe? A more advanced intelligence does not necessarily need to be what we would consider benevolent. Indeed, if we humans are the most intelligent species on this planet and eradicate other species as quickly as we do although we understand the mechanisms, then that doesn't shine a very likable light on intelligence.

And vice versa, there is no fundamental reason to believe it could not be benevolent. Much like some humans invest their lives into protecting/creating/stewarding nature sanctuaries. In particular as it could be a signs [as marked] of (very) advanced intelligence(s) to foresee (1) implications of your own and others actions (2) and therefore (3) collectively decide to take oneself back (4). Only a stupid farmer pulls absolutely everything that is there from the ground this year to maximize his profits. The smarter ones leave enough to maintain or even ever so slightly build up the humus.

It is important to spell that out: Just because something is in nature, or looks natural - that doesn't mean it is 'a great way to do it, or to be'. "Nature", if we personify the happenings of natural science phenomena around us for a second, is incredibly wasteful and dumb at the same time. It is not this greater force of good that people like to take it as when they look at pictures with a lot of green and are happy about the "intact" landscape.
For example, if humans don't screw up, but manage a game-reserve well, the number of animals stabilizes and events of mass starvations of game due to overpopulation of the reserve don't happen. The number and variety of plants increases, as the young plants are not immediately eaten by the young game. Nature can't do that. She cycles around a stable point. The natural mechanisms at work there are indeed "grab everything you can get as fast as you can get it and grow as much as possible" - And where are nature's solution to use ground water in areas which would otherwise be lush if not for the sole reason of lacking water? She will also probably never come up with energy-saving solutions in her organisms like geardrives.

And to address the specific thing: You are talking about von-Neumann probes. A true universal AI would quickly realize (I mean, when I can do it, then an AI with a comparable IQ of 500 must be bored by this) that it takes merely a single space-launch and some operations and industry in space to get that scheme going. Why bother on pesky Earth with an oxygenating atmosphere, locals which sue you over everything, etc when you just need to blast a tiny computer with a copy of your self, some robotics and some miniaturized chemical plant into space? Land it on the Moon, use the resources there to make a few more copies, land those on the asteroids, orbit the gas giants and comets, and presto you have access to every chemical element and the energy (the sun/solar) to fabricate it all. Then send that off to the next star systems with further copies of yourself and the scheme continues like this. Space is vast, and the resources in space are almost endless. An AI also can afford patience, as it doesn't really die. Why then use "up" all the resources on Earth as quickly as possible and get in trouble with the monkeys there? Or hurt your AI-ethics by not protecting lifeforms lower than you? Buggering off with one launch and happily populating the biologically "liveless" universe is actually the easy way out.
If this AI thing happens, it will present a plan how to fix every problem with the minimal impact on everyone possible, and what will happen? We'll see newspaper op-eds that this is all well and nice but has the AI considered that "plan" is a very masculin-y word and maybe it should have used "plans and women-plans" as a formulation instead.

And who wants to deal with idiots like that when you just resolved the ring-magnetic-field problem of fusion reactors for them?

 

[Mammal-lover]

Personally I think instincts play a part in intelligence. A predator comes into the mix or a natural disaster animals they get the fuck out. Not us humans though most of us will keep on walking right into the lion's den with smile saying oh wow it's so quiet out.

Just because we can drive a car or the rare few of us can fix a airplane with a paper clip and a stick of gum does not mean we are smarter than animals. It's all subjective and because we got lucky enough to grow hands we were able to do more. If it wasnt for the constant education we would be just as "dumb" as the them.

 

[Tailo]

I like your post, @pferdefreund, yet ...

And vice versa, there is no fundamental reason to believe it could not be benevolent.

... it's advisable to be cautious. If we lay the power into the hand of a universally higher intelligence—not talking about chess computers here—we will probably never get it back when we regret the decision.

An AI also can afford patience, as it doesn't really die. Why then use "up" all the resources on Earth as quickly as possible and get in trouble with the monkeys there?

You are right, it doesn't need to exploit the resources as quickly as possible, but it may do so recklessly. As long as nature (including us) would be helpful for its goals or entertaining, it doesn't have a reason to trample on us. Recklessness would really show when we stand in the way. It's not malevolence. It would just mean that the AI's priorities are given more weight than our needs—and that they happen to not align. As for us being potential trouble-makers ... I think it's reasonable to believe that a higher intelligence would hide any ambition to get rid of us or exploit us as long as we can still pull the plug. It can afford the patience indeed.

Or hurt your AI-ethics by not protecting lifeforms lower than you? [...] If this AI thing happens, it will present a plan how to fix every problem with the minimal impact on everyone possible

Is that what its ethics are?

...

I don't know, maybe an AI in power would solve problems nicely, maybe not. I'd say, let's try to fix them ourselves and not shift power and responsibility to someone else. We actually have good ideas for solutions to some real problems already, we are just slow with taking action. What do we expect from a benevolent higher intelligence there? That it will find a different solution that works without our participation while we continue to do what we have always done, or that the IA will force us to do what we already know is right?

 

[zooznz]

I'd say no, and Trump getting elected is proof of that !

 

[pferdefreund]

that the IA will force us to do what we already know is right?

Oh-lala, tu parles Francais -

yes. at some point the parents force the children (to various degrees of mild force) to what is better for them than gluttony, and goal-less existence.
just as at some point the children suggest to their 85 year old parents to maybe sell the car and leave it be.

despite us taking credit for being intelligent (they put a man on the MOON!), the collective us is currently and for the foreseeable future unable to even admit / realize that we are replicating the rat-paradise experiment. proof for this is the current total state of the world and the debate arguments brought to suggestions for changing this state and course of history.

so my personal hope is that "someone" more clever and powerful than the collective humans at the helm of this species takes away our control and does the things we all know would be great: lackluster example - it's great that we spend more on public health and education, but Earth currently and foreseeably has no outer enemies. If we used the 3.2 billion spent on the military today on ameliorating the reasons why humans go to war, we'll probably don't need any military. they do have cool planes, but such a world seems to be the better Nash equilibrium. So why can't humans do this on their own? if we were talking about children in a playground, this would be the point where the adults come in...

I don't see any difference to the game-reserve management example, just that the dashboard now looks more like this:

Worldometer - real time world statistics

Live world statistics on population, government and economics, society and media, environment, food, water, energy and health.

www.worldometers.info

And to integrate all the information, a super-human mind would be needed, solely already because a single human could not get all the data into their heads. So that's excusable.

 

[BlueBeard]

The need to define intelligence as our capacity for logic/math/language/technology is so strong in us, it carried over into a discussion on artificial intelligence, a term that merely perpetuates the definition, "begging the question."

If you begin with that definition, congratulations. You're smarter than other animals.

But what is attracting my attention, why I'm interested in this discussion, is that there are more ways to define intelligence. What are those? And why are some behavioral scientists saying, "No. You're not necessarily smarter. There are other kinds of intelligence. Some animals are on a par with you, but their intelligence is different."

Stop thinking of cars, buildings, rockets and computers. Those are demonstrations, products, of *human* intelligence.

Our evolution turned us into "story telling" animals. Our languages used to tell the stories include language, math and music. Our stories are our arts, religions and sciences. We still react to some things directly as the result of "stimulus-response." But more than any other animal, we routinely run experience through a process of perceptual interpretation first. We want to know its story. We compare it other stories we know. How does it fit. What does it mean.

And we can imagine new stories. That power of imagination *is* fundamental to story telling ability. We don't just learn, we compare, evaluate, predict, theorize, hypothesize. We call them higher order thinking skills. And while we aren't entirely alone as a species in some of these capabilities, a lot of individuals in our species have great facility with them, unmatched by other species.

We once distinguished ourselves as the "language-using" animals. So what? Other animals use language, and some animal languages are mind-bogglingly complex.

Then we refined it, calling ourselves the "symbol using" animals, capable of written speech and mathematical formulas -- Until we learned other animals can see/read/interpret symbols, too. And they can invent new ways to express names they had not been taught. So ... what?

I've always preferred to think of us as the "story telling" animals. And as humans, everything we experience in the world is forced into a story shape -- beginning, middle, end; pattern and moral/conclusion." The result were stories. Religion is a story. History is told as stories. God is a story. Science is a story. But they're all just "stories." Competing stories.

We need stories to make our lives to "make sense." And we bend over bass-ackward to get it our stories to work out. To justify our behavior. Even to justify interspecies sex, humans mating with animals.

But our stories begin with a presumption the universe makes sense. Does it?

My dog could give a rat's ass if the universe has dimensions or a creator. He does not waste time or resources trying to figure out if time travel is possible -- traveling through something that is a manmade concept to measure change and exists only as a theory with fragmentary, coincidental evidence.

What if there is no god. What if there is no beginning or end? What if it's just *us* forcing our "intellectual preferences" upon the universe at large? The universe (and then earth itself) are continually changing so slowly, it really doesn't make sense to invest so much in making sense of it.

And to ponder these things is a relic of just one *kind* of intelligence. It's also a sign of its limitations, right? It where our intelligence goes dumb.

Humans HAVE to find the beginning and the end. It's worked for them short term so it's the fundamental presumption for everything. They've learned to pay their bills to have heat and internet access to the end of the pay period. They know *how* to log in to the internet to access email, surf the Web, and (some of us "boomers") how to use Usenet. They've got a lot of the kinks worked out recreating the history of the plant. They think they're pretty close to figuring out the origins of the solar system -- though they're still trying to define "planet."

They've found ways to empty their own planet of hydrocarbon fuel resources and put them to use getting around and keeping warm and manufacturing things they've designed. Not as the most clever of apes, but as a distinctly different kind of animal -- with its own unique kind of intelligence.

But its the kind of intelligence that depends on beginnings and ends -- leading most of us to ponder about every kind of "beginning" and "end" -- the end of our own lives. The end of the earth. The end of the universe. All things have to have a beginning and an end!

They really don't, do they. Beginning and end are *also* artificial, manmade concepts. Wherever we mark a "beginning" or "end" is arbitrary, a convenience for starting and stopping a story. We reach into the time continuum (another manmade concept necessary to mark select points of a story) and say, "Here. Call this the beginning. And here. Call this the end."

In reality, there is always one more thing before, and another. And in reality, the past no longer exists and the future doesn't exist yet. They are *not* reality any more. Reality is only ever "now." "Eternity" is only ever now, a continuous string of now, regardless of what has changed. Where did *you* begin? Were you a spirit or ball of energy before your conception? Don't start me down this road. I'll go frickin' insane! (Which, by the way, is no longer a possibility. The concept of "insanity" is archaic. Psychology realizes there is no such thing as insanity. If your brain is fully developed and functioning, you're just telling your story differently that some of us would. No one's story is superior to another's, they're telling us now).

The need for a beginning and an end has made most humans give up their "god story," because an eternal being no longer fits with the rest of the story. God doesn't have a beginning or an end. Nor does that story fit with modern gender politics. Why a man? Why a father? Why a parent-type? And maybe, MAYBE a god created earth -- if you don't know anything about the vastness of the universe. Then where does a god fit?

Your dog is immune to these story limitations. As is a gorilla or orangutang. They are not "intellectual" creatures. They are not limited by stories built from artificial connections or told as religion or science, problems that need finite, conclusive resolutions. Animal intelligences are different kinds. Can we as humans even begin to comprehend them?

Well, not if we keep saying intelligence is defined as ability to invent, use and converse about math and science -- "human" intelligence. That's just us saying animals ain't smart as humans because animals ain't us.

Think I'll go do more searching. What *are* these comparative behaviorists telling us? I'm going to get this. I really am. I consider myself at least *that* intelligent! (but maybe not)

 

[Pillar]

In my op no.

Sure we can create on a scale unique to the animal kingdom.

However I consider us one of the most idiotic species on this planet.

How much we have lost in the pursuit of technology and so called higher learning.
We have lost touch with nature and have become a self imploding disaster.

Seam all our government's like or want to do is bicker and put more money in the pockets of ppl who dont need it.

Even the omega in a pack gets to eat!

I would rather a silverback(gorilla) be in charge of the world.

I was about to thumbs this up until I read the omega comment. (I want to eat and survive too! Just because I'm someone at the bottom of the barrel means my life don't count? ?)

The need to define intelligence as our capacity for logic/math/language/technology is so strong in us, it carried over into a discussion on artificial intelligence, a term that merely perpetuates the definition, "begging the question."

If you begin with that definition, congratulations. You're smarter than other animals.

But what is attracting my attention, why I'm interested in this discussion, is that there are more ways to define intelligence. What are those? And why are some behavioral scientists saying, "No. You're not necessarily smarter. There are other kinds of intelligence. Some animals are on a par with you, but their intelligence is different."

Stop thinking of cars, buildings, rockets and computers. Those are demonstrations, products, of *human* intelligence.

Our evolution turned us into "story telling" animals. Our languages used to tell the stories include language, math and music. Our stories are our arts, religions and sciences. We still react to some things directly as the result of "stimulus-response." But more than any other animal, we routinely run experience through a process of perceptual interpretation first. We want to know its story. We compare it other stories we know. How does it fit. What does it mean.

And we can imagine new stories. That power of imagination *is* fundamental to story telling ability. We don't just learn, we compare, evaluate, predict, theorize, hypothesize. We call them higher order thinking skills. And while we aren't entirely alone as a species in some of these capabilities, a lot of individuals in our species have great facility with them, unmatched by other species.

We once distinguished ourselves as the "language-using" animals. So what? Other animals use language, and some animal languages are mind-bogglingly complex.

Then we refined it, calling ourselves the "symbol using" animals, capable of written speech and mathematical formulas -- Until we learned other animals can see/read/interpret symbols, too. And they can invent new ways to express names they had not been taught. So ... what?

I've always preferred to think of us as the "story telling" animals. And as humans, everything we experience in the world is forced into a story shape -- beginning, middle, end; pattern and moral/conclusion." The result were stories. Religion is a story. History is told as stories. God is a story. Science is a story. But they're all just "stories." Competing stories.

We need stories to make our lives to "make sense." And we bend over bass-ackward to get it our stories to work out. To justify our behavior. Even to justify interspecies sex, humans mating with animals.

But our stories begin with a presumption the universe makes sense. Does it?

My dog could give a rat's ass if the universe has dimensions or a creator. He does not waste time or resources trying to figure out if time travel is possible -- traveling through something that is a manmade concept to measure change and exists only as a theory with fragmentary, coincidental evidence.

What if there is no god. What is there is no beginning or end? The universe (and then earth itself) are continually changing so slowly, it really doesn't make sense to invest so much in making sense of it.

And to ponder these things is a relic of just one *kind* of intelligence. And it is also a sign of its limitation.

Humans HAVE to find the beginning and the end. It's worked for them short term so it's the fundamental presumption for everything. They've learned to pay their bills to have heat and internet access to the end of the pay period. They know *how* to log in to the internet to access email, surf the Web, and (some of us "boomers") how to use Usenet. They've found ways to empty the earth of hydrocarbon fuels and put it to use. Not as the most clever of apes, but as a distinctly different kind of animal -- with its own unique kind of intelligence.

The kind of intelligent dependent on beginnings and ends -- leading most of us to ponder the "end" -- the end of our own lives. The end of the earth. The end of the universe. All things have to have a beginning and and end!

But they really don't, do they. Where we mark a "beginning" or and "end" is arbitrary. The past no longer exists. The future doesn't exist yet. There is only ever "now," and eternity is only ever now, a continuous string of now, regardless of what has changed. Where did *I* begin? Was I a spirit or ball of energy before my conception? Don't start me down this road. I'll go frickin' insane! (Which, by the way, is no longer a possibility. The concept of "insanity" is archaic. Psychology realizes there is no such thing as insanity. If your brain is fully developed and functioning, you're just telling your story differently that some of us would. No one's story is superior to another's, they're telling us now).

The need for a beginning and an end has made most humans give up their "god story," because an eternal being no longer fits with the rest of the story. God doesn't have a beginning or an end. Nor does that story fit with modern gender politics. Why a man? Why a father? Why a parent-type? And maybe, MAYBE a god created earth -- if you don't know anything about the vastness of the universe. Then where does a god fit?

I would say your dog is immune to these limitations. As is a gorilla or orangutang. They are not intellectual creatures. They are not limited by language and math, problems that need finite, conclusive resolutions. Their intelligence is a different kind. Can we as humans even begin to comprehend it?

Not if we keep saying intelligence is defined as ability to invent, use and converse about math and science -- "human" intelligence. That's just saying animals ain't smart as humans because animals ain't human.

Think I'll go do more searching. What *are* these comparative behaviorists telling us? I'm going to get this. I really am. I consider myself at least *that* intelligent! (but maybe not)

Well said. But I do not have enough intelligence to respond to this post in a meaningful manner.

 

[BlueBeard]

I was about to thumbs this up until I read the omega comment. (I want to eat and survive too! Just because I'm someone at the bottom of the barrel means my life don't count? ?)

Well said. But I do not have enough intelligence to respond to this post in a meaningful manner.

Me, either.

 

[Pillar]

Me, either.

I call it being half brained. Sometimes I can, sometimes I can't.

 

[pferdefreund]

The need to define intelligence as our capacity for logic/math/language/technology is so strong in us, it carried over into a discussion on artificial intelligence, a term that merely perpetuates the definition, "begging the question."

That is what I initially hinted to: IQ tests do what they do: measure the IQ as defined in "what the IQ tests give". The questions in these tests are in the fields you describe, because that enables to make comparable results (asking for how blue this blue is would not give a good result as comparisons of answers are difficult, though of course the ability to quickly discern a color precisely can give an indicator of intelligence). This is not a need, this is the best thing you can make in order to make it measureable, until we figure out the hard-wire reasons and soft reasons that make intelligence in a brain and we can move to the synapse- and axion-connection number count as well as the real data-density of a person's brain (or whatever measurable things intelligence will be found to be composed of). IQ is like the hardware in your head. The processing speed. This benchmark thing you can do on a computer's resources.

A lot else is just goal-post moving, to be honest. When someone starts with "why don't we measure intelligence by the amount of kindness given to others?" then I want to warm up some tea for all and hand out warm blankets and talk about socialism.

Yes. You can do that. But that's not the intelligence as defined above. You can pick any (figure of merit) you like and measure against that. You will get some results according to your definition. I just don't get the need people have to wedge that in with IQ. IQ is just a number a test gulps up.
MENSA often uses to comparison to tall people when these vanity-problems come up. Somehow people dislike discussing intelligence and they dislike that some or somehow you could rank everyone. Tall people have the nice thing for them that they can reach the top shelf. Yet somehow there doesn't seem to be such a need nor drive to wedge into "tall" that 'yeah, but couldn't we measure the height of people not only by centimeters, but also by kindness?'

You can pick whatever FOM you like, it's then just not the IQ. You can embark on a linguistic journey whether or not people mean the IQ or something similar to what is tested when they say 'intelligence' (I would think they do, as the test results are often well accepted). Or you can just move the goal posts all the time and everyone can be happy that they just did that. But where could this lead us? If we measure intelligence by the ability to get treats from me, then my mare is the smartest person on the planet, leaving absolutely everyone in the dust. And treats are nutritious and thus immediately important for survival, obviously. I don't know how you guys are still alive - or maybe this FOM isn't very accurate or useful.

Interesting tidbit by the way: We humans "lift up" our pets in terms of intelligence by a vast amount. Wild dogs and companion dogs are like three year olds compared to Einstein because of the knowledge, useful behaviors and - to a tiny degree - culture we infuse into them all their waking time. Seeing-eye dogs in particular or like Oppenheimer on steroids and truth drugs compared to normal dogs.

I can't think of a non-discriminating measure of 'smartness' however, in which animals surpass human-animals. Sorry. I mean, yeah we cannot fly by our own muscles, but since we don't have them wings, we shouldn't be judged by that. As a firm and die-hard atheist, I am even on par with your dog on that whole free-of-god thing.

 

[Hewflungpew]

We couldn't pick out a zoo in a crowd.

But I bet a dogs nose could!
We are all smart and dumb in our own ways.

Human or not

In some ways we are smarter and dumber than animals

 

[Tailo]

The need to define intelligence as our capacity for logic/math/language/technology is so strong in us, it carried over into a discussion on artificial intelligence, a term that merely perpetuates the definition, "begging the question."

If you begin with that definition, congratulations. You're smarter than other animals.

But what is attracting my attention, why I'm interested in this discussion, is that there are more ways to define intelligence. What are those? And why are some behavioral scientists saying, "No. You're not necessarily smarter. There are other kinds of intelligence. Some animals are on a par with you, but their intelligence is different."

Stop thinking of cars, buildings, rockets and computers. Those are demonstrations, products, of *human* intelligence.

Our evolution turned us into "story telling" animals. Our languages used to tell the stories include language, math and music. Our stories are our arts, religions and sciences. We still react to some things directly as the result of "stimulus-response." But more than any other animal, we routinely run experience through a process of perceptual interpretation first. We want to know its story. We compare it other stories we know. How does it fit. What does it mean.

And we can imagine new stories. That power of imagination *is* fundamental to story telling ability. We don't just learn, we compare, evaluate, predict, theorize, hypothesize. We call them higher order thinking skills. And while we aren't entirely alone as a species in some of these capabilities, a lot of individuals in our species have great facility with them, unmatched by other species.

We once distinguished ourselves as the "language-using" animals. So what? Other animals use language, and some animal languages are mind-bogglingly complex.

Then we refined it, calling ourselves the "symbol using" animals, capable of written speech and mathematical formulas -- Until we learned other animals can see/read/interpret symbols, too. And they can invent new ways to express names they had not been taught. So ... what?

I've always preferred to think of us as the "story telling" animals. And as humans, everything we experience in the world is forced into a story shape -- beginning, middle, end; pattern and moral/conclusion." The result were stories. Religion is a story. History is told as stories. God is a story. Science is a story. But they're all just "stories." Competing stories.

We need stories to make our lives to "make sense." And we bend over bass-ackward to get it our stories to work out. To justify our behavior. Even to justify interspecies sex, humans mating with animals.

But our stories begin with a presumption the universe makes sense. Does it?

My dog could give a rat's ass if the universe has dimensions or a creator. He does not waste time or resources trying to figure out if time travel is possible -- traveling through something that is a manmade concept to measure change and exists only as a theory with fragmentary, coincidental evidence.

What if there is no god. What if there is no beginning or end? What if it's just *us* forcing our "intellectual preferences" upon the universe at large? The universe (and then earth itself) are continually changing so slowly, it really doesn't make sense to invest so much in making sense of it.

And to ponder these things is a relic of just one *kind* of intelligence. It's also a sign of its limitations, right? It where our intelligence goes dumb.

Humans HAVE to find the beginning and the end. It's worked for them short term so it's the fundamental presumption for everything. They've learned to pay their bills to have heat and internet access to the end of the pay period. They know *how* to log in to the internet to access email, surf the Web, and (some of us "boomers") how to use Usenet. They've got a lot of the kinks worked out recreating the history of the plant. They think they're pretty close to figuring out the origins of the solar system -- though they're still trying to define "planet."

They've found ways to empty their own planet of hydrocarbon fuel resources and put them to use getting around and keeping warm and manufacturing things they've designed. Not as the most clever of apes, but as a distinctly different kind of animal -- with its own unique kind of intelligence.

But its the kind of intelligence that depends on beginnings and ends -- leading most of us to ponder about every kind of "beginning" and "end" -- the end of our own lives. The end of the earth. The end of the universe. All things have to have a beginning and an end!

They really don't, do they. Beginning and end are *also* artificial, manmade concepts. Wherever we mark a "beginning" or "end" is arbitrary, a convenience for starting and stopping a story. We reach into the time continuum (another manmade concept necessary to mark select points of a story) and say, "Here. Call this the beginning. And here. Call this the end."

In reality, there is always one more thing before, and another. And in reality, the past no longer exists and the future doesn't exist yet. They are *not* reality any more. Reality is only ever "now." "Eternity" is only ever now, a continuous string of now, regardless of what has changed. Where did *you* begin? Were you a spirit or ball of energy before your conception? Don't start me down this road. I'll go frickin' insane! (Which, by the way, is no longer a possibility. The concept of "insanity" is archaic. Psychology realizes there is no such thing as insanity. If your brain is fully developed and functioning, you're just telling your story differently that some of us would. No one's story is superior to another's, they're telling us now).

The need for a beginning and an end has made most humans give up their "god story," because an eternal being no longer fits with the rest of the story. God doesn't have a beginning or an end. Nor does that story fit with modern gender politics. Why a man? Why a father? Why a parent-type? And maybe, MAYBE a god created earth -- if you don't know anything about the vastness of the universe. Then where does a god fit?

Your dog is immune to these story limitations. As is a gorilla or orangutang. They are not "intellectual" creatures. They are not limited by stories built from artificial connections or told as religion or science, problems that need finite, conclusive resolutions. Animal intelligences are different kinds. Can we as humans even begin to comprehend them?

Well, not if we keep saying intelligence is defined as ability to invent, use and converse about math and science -- "human" intelligence. That's just us saying animals ain't smart as humans because animals ain't us.

Think I'll go do more searching. What *are* these comparative behaviorists telling us? I'm going to get this. I really am. I consider myself at least *that* intelligent! (but maybe not)

Nice story.

 

[BlueBeard]

That is what I initially hinted to: IQ tests do what they do: measure the IQ as defined in "what the IQ tests give". The questions in these tests are in the fields you describe, because that enables to make comparable results (asking for how blue this blue is would not give a good result as comparisons of answers are difficult, though of course the ability to quickly discern a color precisely can give an indicator of intelligence). This is not a need, this is the best thing you can make in order to make it measureable, until we figure out the hard-wire reasons and soft reasons that make intelligence in a brain and we can move to the synapse- and axion-connection number count as well as the real data-density of a person's brain (or whatever measurable things intelligence will be found to be composed of). IQ is like the hardware in your head. The processing speed. This benchmark thing you can do on a computer's resources.

A lot else is just goal-post moving, to be honest. When someone starts with "why don't we measure intelligence by the amount of kindness given to others?" then I want to warm up some tea for all and hand out warm blankets and talk about socialism.

Yes. You can do that. But that's not the intelligence as defined above. You can pick any (figure of merit) you like and measure against that. You will get some results according to your definition. I just don't get the need people have to wedge that in with IQ. IQ is just a number a test gulps up.
MENSA often uses to comparison to tall people when these vanity-problems come up. Somehow people dislike discussing intelligence and they dislike that some or somehow you could rank everyone. Tall people have the nice thing for them that they can reach the top shelf. Yet somehow there doesn't seem to be such a need nor drive to wedge into "tall" that 'yeah, but couldn't we measure the height of people not only by centimeters, but also by kindness?'

You can pick whatever FOM you like, it's then just not the IQ. You can embark on a linguistic journey whether or not people mean the IQ or something similar to what is tested when they say 'intelligence' (I would think they do, as the test results are often well accepted). Or you can just move the goal posts all the time and everyone can be happy that they just did that. But where could this lead us? If we measure intelligence by the ability to get treats from me, then my mare is the smartest person on the planet, leaving absolutely everyone in the dust. And treats are nutritious and thus immediately important for survival, obviously. I don't know how you guys are still alive - or maybe this FOM isn't very accurate or useful.

Interesting tidbit by the way: We humans "lift up" our pets in terms of intelligence by a vast amount. Wild dogs and companion dogs are like three year olds compared to Einstein because of the knowledge, useful behaviors and - to a tiny degree - culture we infuse into them all their waking time. Seeing-eye dogs in particular or like Oppenheimer on steroids and truth drugs compared to normal dogs.

I can't think of a non-discriminating measure of 'smartness' however, in which animals surpass human-animals. Sorry. I mean, yeah we cannot fly by our own muscles, but since we don't have them wings, we shouldn't be judged by that. As a firm and die-hard atheist, I am even on par with your dog on that whole free-of-god thing.

Agree. Strongly.

And now, all afternoon, I've been second-guessing my own postulations. Humans, as a whole, do *not* rely on logic. I mean, I'm in marketing. Logic is a complete fail in marketing.

I keep coming back to something Cardinal John Henry Newman said: "Reason is a slave to passion." The storytelling we do, the logic and evidence and all that, it's something secondary. It's what we do to justify (or test) initial presumptions.

Mainly because it's too slow. If we had to form deductive and inductive logical defenses for everything we just "knew," we'd move along at a snail's pace.

Even human intelligence is "something other" that we're measuring, just as you say. Again I'd use Trump as an example. He's incredibly successful -- not because he "thinks" but because he just *acts*. What's he acting on? It's almost "instinctual." The rest of us accuse him of being reckless and careless. He immediately recognizes ways to manipulate other people, sees immediately how to gain advantage over them. He does it so lightning fast that the rest of us either have to call him a genius or ... evil incarnate.

Same as my boss. All of us employees recognize he has NONE of the skillsets that he thinks he does. Yet he keeps winning. And we rally behind him because he does. He keeps "saving the company" doing things we think are too risky, too foolhardy. He can't explain what he's doing. And we can't reason it out. Reason would prevent us from doing what he's doing. And... as reasonable people, we should be jumping ship. We don't, because we know he'll do something "unreasonable" that will score us more business. We don't even *trust* our ability to reason. We trust what works. Whether we can explain it or not.

I think when people discredit intellect by calling such things -- and animal genius -- "instinct" they're simply harkening back to when we attributed things to god, just using a different name, and we make "instinct" the go-to explanation for "why." It's why we hear people give advice such as "go with your gut."

If we were a logical creature, as we presume to be, we'd never say that. We'd much more often than we do say "reason it out, gather evidence." We seem to already know that "takes too long," and leads us down blind alleyways and dead ends.

What is it, then, that we're *really* depending on to navigate obstacles in our lives, get what we need, solve problems.

We call them "savants," those who know answers seemingly without thinking. Some "see" answers without having to "show their work." Showing their work is a post-process. I'm betting all humans go through their day this way. These savants are just really stark examples, standouts in what we all are doing, just not so ostentatiously.

So... I'm starting to think we completely misunderstand even "human" intelligence. We may be more like animals than we care to admit, intelligence-wise. We just "know." And we *need* technology to keep up with them. It's something they just don't seem to give a fig about, while we would die without it, cease to exist as a species.

 

[BlueBeard]

Nice story.

You GOT me! I'm doing that *thing* right now, aren't I? ... I have this idea. It won't leave me. I *know* I'm onto something. But because I'm human, it's not enough to know it. I think I have to put it in "story form" to make sense of it, to wrestle it down, make it real, "justify" it.

Touché, mon ami!!!

 

[knotinterested]

All animals are smarter than me because they know when to keep their mouth shut. ?

 

[BlueBeard]

... Sorry. I mean, yeah we cannot fly by our own muscles, but since we don't have them wings, we shouldn't be judged by that. As a firm and die-hard atheist, I am even on par with your dog on that whole free-of-god thing.

Ah! I love this one. I am a pilot. One day I was flying in the pattern doing touch-n-goes. A bald eagle joined me. It was marvelous! He was out my left window, hanging on his wings, swiveled his head to take me in. "Silly human! You built that metal room around you and hauled your fat ass up here. You call *that* flying? Can *you* do a mating ritual in that? Can you catch prey by swooping on it? You are barely hanging on in that metallic thing, so limited. So awkward."

... It was spectacular to share the air with such a creature. But no, by comparison I was out of my element, trespassing momentarily in his. And he seemed amused before finally, lazily, catching a thermal, disappeared from view.

We have the technological capability to "imitate" so many, many other animals. That's a kind of genius, you betcha. And it's almost entirely human, imitating other creatures like that. I imitate a bison, here in the Upper Midwest USA in winter, by wearing thermal underwear and thinsulate to endure the cold he and his kind have done for 20,000 years. I imitate most predators when I grab my York compound bow or Hawkins mountain rifle or Weatherby shotgun. My ancestors accomplished much the same with what was available to them to manipulate: longbows or spears. We are very, very clever monkeys. And without our technology, we'd have perished long ago as a species. It's our special gift. It's let us go places our ancient ancestors didn't dare to go, even to outer space.

And now? We're planning to colonize on Mars. What.... the... hell. WHAT the HELL? We're doing it just to prove we can?

My dog shakes his head and seems to say, "What the fuck? You call *that* intelligence?" All those resources. You're investing the little time you have on this planet to see if a few of you will live or die on another rock in space? Silly primate."

"But truth be told, my favorite human, my species wouldn't even exist if not for you. Carry on, my friend."

To our pets, we are gods. *WE* are gods. That's so cool.

 

[BlueBeard]

I've read dog "psychology" books, you know. You probably have, too. I like this piece from one where it tries to imagine "us" from a dog's point of view when we come back from the grocery store:

"Holy SHIT, you're a fuckin' awesome hunter! I don't know why you don't take me with you. I mean, it's what my kind do. We love to help you hunt. But fuckin' A awesome! I love what you do. You leave, you come back, and you bring in all this shit with you. You RULE!!!

"BTW, bring biscuits? Did you bring me a new toy? Did I tell you lately, I love you???"

 

[BlueBeard]

Whole 'nother angle...

I like sometimes to muse about the time before we *were* as intellectual as we are today. Do you believe Neanderthals were a different kind of human? Some say it was a different species. Some say it was just another faction of "us." Either way, they seem to have been "self actualized." They were already thinking about an "afterlife," afraid of mortality, the idea that "this was it," we live, we die, we're done. Evidence is that they ceremoniously took care of their dead? Something like that.

At what point did we become "us"? When did we stop relying on our senses to survive and rely more on our "higher order" reasoning capabilities? Who were "we" back then? And is that completely gone?

Or ... somewhere within us ... is there still that primal animal, no different, really, from all other animals today?

I want to find that part in me and join my bestial companions as kin. I really believe that's a possibility -- that I have physical capabilities and instincts still, that I haven't lost what makes "me" an animal.

 

[Panda Chen]

I think people get understanding and inelegance confused. Humans understand how to break things down into numbers and words. Dogs understand how to break things down into scents and sounds. But is understanding intelligence?
I have always thought of raw intelligence as an ability to learn not necessarily how many things you can learn.
Some humans are terrible at math but they can do other things better than most or all people who can do math well.
Humans have a lot more understanding of certain things. They also have some attributes that help them both increase their ability to understand and manipulate the world. Things like opposable thumbs and bipedal movement that frees up the hands. Animals have intelligence, is it more or less. Some can learn constantly and some pass that knowledge on. Elephants seem to know which bones of the dead belong to their heard and honor them. Many herds and flocks navigate huge distances. Canids will teach young ones to hunt.

So are humans more intelligent. I think they are not. I think human expansion is not in their intelligence but in what they have chosen to understand. Humans found a niche. They choose to focus on understanding things like how a rock breaks and how water rolls of of leaves and a large part I suspect is because of lacking in certain areas. Not seeing as well and not smelling as well. I suspect humans muted senses made them realize they were lacking something and they sought it in the world around them. A lion does not have to think about rocks breaking. They can smell something coming. They have big sharp teeth and claws.
Early humans were likely emulating the things other animals had like claws and so tried to make their own. This looking to something else for power is probably the very beginning of what grew to be the external deity. It is probably also what lead to the need to explore. Always looking for that thing to make them more powerful. Which is very evident in modern humans.
Some could say we have more learning potential because we have more understanding capabilities in certain areas. However animals do learn and some learn a lot. Given the right circumstances I think it is possible some could take a similar path to humans but maybe they don't want to. Maybe they know and understand some things we don't. Or maybe they see what we do and have no use for it.
Just some thoughts, good luck with your quest.

 

[caikgoch]

Indulge me in a bit of speculation. Cetaceans have a spectacularly large brain even by proportion. Darwin states decisively that all that brain must be doing something or it would waste away. My best guess is that since the live in a 3 dimensional environment and have a sense (sonar) that can detect density for miles around them, they are maintaining a detailed three dimensional map of everything around them. We know that this sense is detailed enough to "see" the interior of those around them allowing them to evaluate sexual status and other personal details.

How would you class an ability like that as comparative intelligence?

 

[BlueBeard]

Indulge me in a bit of speculation. Cetaceans have a spectacularly large brain even by proportion. Darwin states decisively that all that brain must be doing something or it would waste away. My best guess is that since the live in a 3 dimensional environment and have a sense (sonar) that can detect density for miles around them, they are maintaining a detailed three dimensional map of everything around them. We know that this sense is detailed enough to "see" the interior of those around them allowing them to evaluate sexual status and other personal details.

How would you class an ability like that as comparative intelligence?

I don't know. Trying to figure stuff like that out. The mature adult sperm whale's brain weighs an average of 18 pounds, and can grow to be nearly 500 cubic inches in size. For comparison, the human brain is only about 80 cubic inches. But that whale as a lot of body, a lot of nerves to account for. Does that require noggin space? Gotta be a least some of it. Compared to its mass, the sperm whale's brain is actually tiny (compared to how a human brain is a percentage of entire body mass).

Dolphins have very similar sized brains and brain-to-body-mass of humans.

And a starfish doesn't "have" a brain -- it *is* a brain. No central nervous system. A distributed nervous system.

All demonstrate curiosity, don't they? All of them learn. All of them are perceptive. But is the starfish a "dunce" 2 IQ points higher than a stone, and the sperm wale is the Dumbledore of the sea? Sure is cool to think so.

Now add personality on top of it. I bet each whale and dolphin have their own. Geez, my dog sure does. I try never to "anthropomorphize" my animals. I try to learn who they are, each of them, exhibiting behaviors and characteristics of their species and breed, but also distinct from each other. Not so much a "person-" -ality... a "canine-ality." So frickin' cool. Demonstrating their intelligence their own way. So damn smart.

He's learned how to communicate with us so quickly. I wonder.... If I were "domesticated" by a group of whales, and they kept me as their "air-dependent pet," how hard would it be for *me* to learn to communicate with *them*? What could they teach me? How long would it take me to catch on?

 

[caikgoch]

Mass is the wrong measure. The size of the muscle doesn't change the number of nervous connections required to operate it. Cetaceans in general have fewer muscles because they have lost their limbs.

 

[BlueBeard]

Do they have larger sensory nerves or more of them? Just wondering. And I was wondering if that's why mass is considered an important factor by the biologists. It would never have occurred to me, I think, to factor in body size.

 

[TaintedSlutXoX]

No.. if we really were smart, we wouldn't be fucking this planet up.

The way I see it is that because we as a species consider ourselves the top of the animal intelligence pyramid, then we should have a responsibility to look after all the animals that aren't capable of our level of thinking. Not killing and destroying so many habits purely for our benefit.

 

[caikgoch]

Do they have larger sensory nerves or more of them? Just wondering. And I was wondering if that's why mass is considered an important factor by the biologists. It would never have occurred to me, I think, to factor in body size.

That's what I'm thinking. They have an extra sense and it must take a lot processing power to build and maintain a 3D image of cubic miles of ocean and all the critters in it.

 

[ᴎoɘA]

What's the most bulletproof argument against the "animals have intelligence comparable to a child/toddler" reasoning?

 

[caikgoch]

What's the most bulletproof argument against the "animals have intelligence comparable to a child/toddler" reasoning?

My favorite is to drop an adult horse and any human into the middle of the Western Prairie and see how long everyone survives. The adult animals are complete and fully functional within their normal environment to the point of being able to form social groups and reproduce with wild animals. Can your human say that?

 

[ᴎoɘA]

Good one, but I fear it's open to arguments like "OH! but that's just instinct! that's not TRUE cognitive intelligence!" and crap like that.

 

[Mickflare]

I think people of low intellect jump on the Trump bashing train.

 

[sara2020sara]

I remember reading / hearing something that put it this way:

One on one surprised, a predator could easily kill a human. But a reasonably intelligent human with five minutes of preparation / warning who does not make any mistakes will beat any and every animal, every time.

The idea being that we have the advantage of innovation - the animal relies on instincts in a threatening encounter, but a human can come up with novel solutions to the problem, as well as bring insurmountable advantages to the table - foreknowledge, animal-specific adaptations, tools, a malleable environment, ect.

I don't think there is any animal that can, on its own, overcome a human who has prepared for it. So, I'd definitely say in that area we're smarter to a lethal degree.

I can't agree im sorry...
There are so many animals that if humans venture into their environment they can outmaneuver and outsmart them with ease.
Take sharks for example. If you are in their environment and they want to take you, they will take you.
Same situation for alligators and crocodiles, hippos, bears, tigers, and honestly a number of canines