Chimpanzees Beat out Children in Reasoning Test 663
caffeinemessiah writes "The New York Times has a story on how chimpanzees seem to exhibit a better understanding of cause and effect than human children. While training chimps to perform a routine task with redundant steps, the chimps were able to figure out and eliminate the redundant steps, while the human children routinely performed them despite their evident uselessness. It says something about the way we learn compared to chimps and should be interesting to cognitive scientists and those interested in computational learning theory, at the least."
but children will become adults (Score:5, Funny)
Lucky bastards.
slashdot is proof (Score:5, Funny)
oh, and First Post(though i've probably failed it, i have Karma to burn so do whatever to me)
Re:Experiment Proposal (Score:5, Funny)
So let me get this straight. (Score:2, Funny)
I'm shocked. Shocked!
Re:but children will become adults (Score:5, Funny)
I am certain it will happen, I just hope its in the next 20 yeas.
Re:Clarification (Score:1, Funny)
Re:A little bit biased, isn't it? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Experiment Proposal (Score:1, Funny)
Isn't this already being tested in the Kansas public schools?
I have two children (Score:5, Funny)
Excellent (Score:1, Funny)
brothel - what?
the fucking captcha word was "brothel"!
Forget child labor... (Score:1, Funny)
Efficient, and they work for peanuts, bannanas, apples, etc...
That's what happens when... (Score:1, Funny)
I was more excited about this when... (Score:5, Funny)
I didn't know what sort of a reasoning test involved children and simians to engage in fisticuffs, but I was all for it.
Re:Not sure if this is true or myth (Score:2, Funny)
Thats because the human already is insane. All humans are insane, but since we control the dictionary, we get to call ourselves sane.
Re:Human survival trait (Score:3, Funny)
What? like running windows, if it is really working as intended, it should crash on boot, saveing all that valuable work time you could have spent so you can look at buying a new PC
Re:Chimps writing PHP code. (Score:5, Funny)
$ook = new Banana.GiveMeBanana();
my $stomach = _FULL_;
my $sound = loudContentedScreech();
throwFeces();
?>
Re:So let me get this straight. (Score:4, Funny)
Fool! The banana is with the BLUE button! Not the RED one!
Re:but children will become adults (Score:5, Funny)
Then why post as an AC?
Re:Chimps writing PHP code. (Score:5, Funny)
Seriously man, did Rasmus Lerdorf systematically kill off every one of your remaining family members, or something?
Seriously man. These are all CyricZ PHP trolls from THIS MONTH. I skipped a good 10 that were all on the "PHP5 Recipes" thread, for sanity's sake.
Re:but children will become adults (Score:5, Funny)
We do have precedent now.
Re:Chimps writing PHP code. (Score:3, Funny)
Well? (Score:5, Funny)
Don't leave us hangin, man; did they learn why?
Re:A little bit biased, isn't it? (Score:5, Funny)
I agree, you should always train your wife from day one.
Re:but children will become adults (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Language (Score:4, Funny)
On the Continuing Evolution of Language (Score:5, Funny)
I know that that sounds entroniant, perhaps even bleavisome, but it had to be said.
Re:A little bit biased, isn't it? (Score:5, Funny)
Did you....ahh..check under the hood before you married
Re:On the Continuing Evolution of Language (Score:5, Funny)
Perhaps they have, and humans just haven't recognized them.
It's entirely possible that they have words for chimp concepts.
For example, they probably have a simple verb that means "to fling my excrement at".
So rather than saying/signing "I flung my excrement at the keeper this morning.", a chimp might say/sign, "I feced the keeper this morning.", where "feced" is a verb meaning "flung my excrement at".
I think that more research should be done into this area, possibly by seeing what sorts of signs/sounds/facial expressions/etc. chimps make to each other shortly after they fling their excrement at people or do other chimp things.
A child eh? How Old? (Score:3, Funny)
And the point of the headline?
So long and thanks for all the fish (Score:2, Funny)
Re:but children will become adults (Score:2, Funny)
Yeah, but the sharks are gonna have frikkin laser beams.
Re:On the Continuing Evolution of Language (Score:4, Funny)
I know that that sounds entroniant, perhaps even bleavisome, but it had to be said.
I'm imbiggened by your cromulent words.
Re:On the Continuing Evolution of Language (Score:2, Funny)
(For a short time, my sig line was "Embiggen cromulency!".)
Re:Language (Score:3, Funny)
You've got deaf and mute people? Where do you keep them?