| Author |
|
John Byrne
Grumpy Old Guy
Joined: 11 May 2005
Posts: 134302
|
| Posted: 12 May 2025 at 2:18pm | IP Logged | 1
|
post reply
|
|
Avian Intelligence I find myself thinking back to fourth grade, when our teacher explained to us that animals were not intelligent, and operated entirely on instinct. Even then I had trouble with the idea that animals were born pre-programmed for every situation they would ever encounter.
|
| Back to Top |
profile
| search
|
| |
Evan S. Kurtz
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 04 July 2022
Location: Canada
Posts: 77
|
| Posted: 12 May 2025 at 2:42pm | IP Logged | 2
|
post reply
|
|
I think we've made a grave mistake in underestimating, or downplaying, the intelligence of other species on this planet. I understand the "why" - it might be kinda hard to get people behind mass producing wholesale animal slaughter if, in a different environment, those animals would all have unique, individual personalities. But it doesn't change the fact that to progress the way we have, it's been at the expense of the environment to which we belong. I mean, haven't we learned that even trees and vegetation has a form of communication and awareness? It's wild how much we've taken for granted our superiority on this planet.
I worry that in acting as if we are somehow above, or beyond, or if we act like we are the masters of nature, we've gravely miscalculated, because we've disrupted the natural balance. I think that when a force acts to disrupt the balance - and we are that force - then there tends to be an equal, opposite force which occurs in response. So, if we have indeed disrupted things, then we're not going to be in for a good time as nature reacts to us. And I think we are seeing that more and more frequently in terms of our impact on our environment.
|
| Back to Top |
profile
| search
|
| |
John Byrne
Grumpy Old Guy
Joined: 11 May 2005
Posts: 134302
|
| Posted: 12 May 2025 at 3:01pm | IP Logged | 3
|
post reply
|
|
There’s no incentive to prove animal intelligence. No Nobel prize waiting for anyone who does. The reason is as you cite—demonstrate that cows think, even at a primitive level (those four year old humans often suggested when describing canine intelligence) and the Holocaust pales by comparison. For too many centuries, in too many cultures, humans have been set at the top of the pyramid, and any effort to broaden that scope has been discouraged.
|
| Back to Top |
profile
| search
|
| |
Michael Penn
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 12 April 2006
Location: United States
Posts: 12897
|
| Posted: 12 May 2025 at 3:19pm | IP Logged | 4
|
post reply
|
|
It's quite something to envision a day, if the species survives long enough, when humans might bio-techno-logically engineer themselves into autotrophs.
Until then...
"...nature is... like an enormous restaurant."
(Woody Allen, Love and Death)
|
| Back to Top |
profile
| search
|
| |
John Byrne
Grumpy Old Guy
Joined: 11 May 2005
Posts: 134302
|
| Posted: 12 May 2025 at 3:32pm | IP Logged | 5
|
post reply
|
|
…autotrophs…••• Thank you for a new word!
|
| Back to Top |
profile
| search
|
| |
Evan S. Kurtz
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 04 July 2022
Location: Canada
Posts: 77
|
| Posted: 12 May 2025 at 3:33pm | IP Logged | 6
|
post reply
|
|
JB says: For too many centuries, in too many cultures, humans have been set at the top of the pyramid, and any effort to broaden that scope has been discouraged.
*****
Of course - it would mean we are making room for competition. It's why if we ever actually experienced alien contact, it wouldn't go well because we would be hostile and mistrusting regardless of how they present themselves.
In a way we're seeing this play out with the advancements in AI. We may very well be on the brink of developing an artificial intelligence as sophisticated and capable as our own, if not moreso. The idea of this leaves a lot of us feeling uncomfortable, because can we ever really trust anything different from us that's as capable as we are?
It reminds me a lot of Terry Pratchett's novel, "Feet of Clay," which was a story in part about the nature of golems - artificial constructs who exist only based on the programming we give them, and when they start reaching to be more than what they were made to be, people lose their minds and start trying to destroy them.
If it is natural to our species to be hostile and mistrusting, and to instinctively swat down other forms of intelligent life, then we need to recognize it's either a flaw of our species or, if it's a tendency of how life develops, then we are going to cross paths with things that will look down on us - and perhaps be as hostile towards us - in the same the way that look down on other species on our planet, regardless of their actual capabilities.
|
| Back to Top |
profile
| search
|
| |
Brennan Voboril
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 15 January 2011
Posts: 1816
|
| Posted: 12 May 2025 at 3:43pm | IP Logged | 7
|
post reply
|
|
Sometimes I watch squirrels. They seem quite intelligent.
|
| Back to Top |
profile
| search
|
| |
Evan S. Kurtz
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 04 July 2022
Location: Canada
Posts: 77
|
| Posted: 12 May 2025 at 4:20pm | IP Logged | 8
|
post reply
|
|
I understood that reference.
|
| Back to Top |
profile
| search
|
| |
Michael Penn
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 12 April 2006
Location: United States
Posts: 12897
|
| Posted: 12 May 2025 at 5:02pm | IP Logged | 9
|
post reply
|
|
Yesterday my niece came over and brought her dog, named Moo. I didn't pull out a volume of Kant for him to peruse, but it took all of a single minute for him to find a shelf that had some tennis balls set aside for my grandson and to immediately come to me and ask to play. We wouldn't dream of eating this Moo, but a cow... bring "it" on! Weird, eh?
Tangentially, this topic reminds me of a Monty Python bit:
This is a vegetarian restaurant only, we serve no animal flesh of any kind. We're not only proud of that, we're smug about it. So if you were to come in here asking me to rip open a small defenseless chicken, so you could chew its skin and eat its intestines, then I'm afraid I'd have to ask you to leave.
Likewise if you were to ask us to slice the sides of a cow and serve it with small pieces of its liver... or indeed drain the life blood from a pig before cutting off one of its legs... or carve the living giblets from a sheep and serve them with the fresh brains, bowels, guts and spleen of a small rabbit... WE WOULDN'T DO IT!
Not for food anyway. |
| Back to Top |
profile
| search
|
| |
Evan S. Kurtz
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 04 July 2022
Location: Canada
Posts: 77
|
| Posted: 12 May 2025 at 5:46pm | IP Logged | 10
|
post reply
|
|
For me, the Fermi Paradox has a pretty simple solution. Life doesn't advance to the point where it is capable of traveling beyond its home star without understanding that a balance must be maintained in nature. We don't see aggressive alien races showing up to strip-mine our resources because things that consume more than they can produce don't make it that far - particularly if they are in the habit of using sentient life as another resource to exploit, like we do.
As far as if there is advanced sentient life out there, if I were them I wouldn't want to make contact with us, either. We are in the business of making weapons. We make bigger, more dangerous weapons all the time. Who the hell would want anything to do with us? They must know we'll destroy ourselves before we ever become a threat to them.
The key, I feel, is to rewire our thinking away from "this world is ours to use and exploit as we please," to "this is our home and we need to protect it and everything within it or we endanger ourselves as well as the other species living here." And maybe that starts by recognizing that other animals on this planet are more than simple, even if they aren't as complex as we are.
|
| Back to Top |
profile
| search
|
| |
John Byrne
Grumpy Old Guy
Joined: 11 May 2005
Posts: 134302
|
| Posted: 12 May 2025 at 6:59pm | IP Logged | 11
|
post reply
|
|
The so-called Fermi Paradox isn’t about contact. It’s about detection. And it overlooks the incredibly narrow window in which that detection must take place.
|
| Back to Top |
profile
| search
|
| |
