Dog Trained on 200-Word Vocabulary 532
An anonymous reader writes "The Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany is reporting in Science Magazine today on an example of successful human to non-human communication: Rico, a collie trained on a vocabulary of 200 words. Their conclusion is that 'brain structures that support this kind of learning are not unique to humans...[Rico has a] retrieval rate comparable to the performance of three-year-old toddlers'. In case you ever wondered if your dog understands what you are saying, Rico 'can learn the names of unfamiliar toys after just one exposure to the new word-toy combination.'"
how about... (Score:5, Funny)
I'd buy THAT dog for a Dollar!
Re:how about... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:how about... (Score:5, Funny)
Forget outsourcing to India.
Re:I've never had a dog lie to me. (Score:3, Insightful)
It seems to be a very strong thing in a lot of people that they'd rather guess, or lie than be seen to not know the answer to something.
Re:how about... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:how about... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:how about... (Score:3)
Re:how about... (Score:3, Informative)
read up.
Re:how about... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:how about... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:how about... (Score:3, Insightful)
It's about time. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:It's about time. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:It's about time. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:It's about time. (Score:3, Funny)
I don't get it. What does my ability to make dog sounds have to do with whether or not I Am A Lawyer?
Parrots (Score:2, Interesting)
To me, I think this would be a very important thing, because some people I know define "soul" as the ability to reason. If we cou
Max plank? (Score:3, Interesting)
Max Planck (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Max Planck (Score:2)
Re:Max plank? (Score:3, Interesting)
It's generally out of respect i suppose
like we have a Mahatma Gandhi institute of technology/medical sciences/business administration/.* in every city of India
good to know that even a scientist receives such a respect in germany
(Karma be damned; I am no better than an AC anyway)
Glossary (Score:2)
Re:Glossary (Score:2)
If Only... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Macdonalds knows the secret Re:If Only... (Score:3, Funny)
er, pick any two.
Inspector Rex? (Score:2)
(although the TV show is Austrian, not German...)
Does the language matter? (Score:5, Interesting)
Last I heard the average human had a vocab of around 2500 words or less. Raising an animals higher could lead to full fledged conversations rather than just an instructional command oriented relationship.
Re:Does the language matter? (Score:5, Informative)
From an article that I read on this exact topic (the dog that is) a few days ago it claimed that the average high-schooler graduating has a 60,000 word vocabulary. A quick search on news.google.com found:
But Lori Markson of the University of California at Berkeley stressed that children develop a diverse and extensive language base. A 5-year-old child knows 7,000 to 8,000 words and what they represent. An average adult knows 60,000 words. Educated adults may know upwards of 100,000 words. Most of these words are learned after a single exposure, said Markson, who collaborated with Bloom on a study of fast-mapping in children.
Re:Does the language matter? (Score:3, Informative)
http://www.pimsleurapproach.com/learn-
I'm trying to learn German so thats what I linked to.
Re:Does the language matter? (Score:3, Informative)
Fundamentally, I think it's pretty difficult to measure a person's vocabulary. Do we measure the range of words they use every day, or the range of words they might ever use, the words they understand out of all dictionary words, the words they kind of understand in context but couldn't give a definition for... and so on.
I think 5,000 might be reasonable for a daily-use
Get over it. (Score:3, Insightful)
Why do you care?
If you simply accept that languages have always changed, and will always change, you'll probably be a lot happier.
There's a difference between using language incorrectly according to the culture you live in, and the meaning of a word changing over time....
be descriptive, not prescriptive.
Re:Does the language matter? (Score:3, Insightful)
In the case of "decimate", its far more useful in the general sense of "destroy". How often have you wanted to say "destroy one in ten"? Odds are, very infrequently or never. So the benefit gained from another word for "destroy" - variety in language - outweighs the loss of a word inhabiting a vanishingly small niche.
What gets me annoyed is the use of "of" instead of "have" in the forms "
Re:Does the language matter? (Score:5, Informative)
I don't buy that. I live in a very racially diverse area, and have a number of friends and acquaintences who learned English as a second language.
The age at which they learned English varies from early childhood to adolescence, but one thing they have in common is that their vocabulary in either language is not as good as a native speaker's. These are my friends, so don't take this as some sort of insult to people who speak English as a second language -- this is something they freely admit.
In general, their conversational vocabularies are perfect, just as large as a native speaker's. But there are a tremendous number of words, often obscure or technical, that they know in one language but not the other. A Chinese friend of mine, for instance, told me that she has a lot of trouble talking to her Chinese-speaking friends about computers, because she only knows the technical terms in English. And Chinese is her native language. I would guess that I know as many English words as she knows of English and Chinese put together. Judging from what I have seen, I would guess that that is pretty representative of the average bilingual person.
Obviously some bilingual speakers will have an average vocabulary in each language (and therefore double the average single-language speaker's), just as some people who only speak one language have double the average person's vocabulary. But I don't believe that that is the general case -- people can only remember so many words, and branching off into another language doesn't magically make your memory bigger.
Re:Does the language matter? (Score:5, Interesting)
Apparently you've never been to Montreal. I'm not a Montrealer, but I do speak both official languages essentially flawlessly -- or as flawlessly as a "native" speaker could be expected to speak. Although I grew up in western Canada, which is primarily anglophone, I've spoken both English and French my entire life, and to this day, I turn my radio dial to both English and French stations, watch both English and French TV, and read novels and websites in both languages.
A number of people in this country worried about the same old-wives tale you've just inferred -- that programmes like French Immersion would cause students' English to suffer. In fact, the opposite turns out the be the case; French Immersion students have tended to do better in their English courses than non-French Immersion students.
Of course, an interesting point is that English and French share some common linguistic history, hence an understanding of French can be very helpful in understanding the etymology of English words and so on. I wonder if the same stats would hold true for students who were bilingual in English-Japanese, for example. That said, I'll admit that I actually spent this afternoon talking to a Japanese guy who immigrated to Canada at age 18 and spoke English fluently enough that I had thought he'd been born here until he told me where he was from.
While I was able to go from zero Spanish to fluent conversational Spanish in about a year of living in Mexico (mostly due to its common roots with French), it has taken six years of study for me to attain the same level of confidence with my Japanese. I also speak a little Slovak. I have less trouble with Slovak than Japanese, but certainly more than with the Romance languages.
I would argue that if a bilingual (or trilingual) speaker does not have an average vocabulary in each language he speaks, it is not through some inate limitation of the human mind, but due solely to his environment. Very few of us live in an environment where we *need* to be bilingual, and hence we tend to favour one language over the others. In cities such as Montreal, where you essentially have a 50/50 split of anglophones and francophones, you'll find a great many people who are fluent in both languages at a level where you'd be hard pressed to determine which language was their "native" language.
Re:Does the language matter? (Score:5, Informative)
A friend of mine who learned Japanese was complemented - even before he was good - on the size of his vocabulary. The reason for this is that, not knowing which symbols to learn, he learned them all - including the rare ones. I don't know enough about Chinese or Japanese to tell you more about that though.
Back to size of vocabulary within a language - there is a major difference between active and passive vocabulary. Add homonyms and proper names and the issue becomes even more confusing. Take the words 'homonym', 'bar', 'Reagan' and 'London'. Homonym is in my English active vocabulary, but I wouldn't know it in any other language I speak (despite being fluent in another and able to communicate in a couple more). I can think a lot of meanings for bar, ranging from chocolate to law - can the dog deal with that? These can be hard for new students of a language to deal with too - especially when they use the wrong one! Reagan - or any name - is a word too. And London becomes Londres in French, so there is no guarantee that you know all proper names you know in all languages you speak.
Learning a word doesn't take a lot of memory. It is learning the meaning which takes the real memory, and then associating it with the word, and keeping the association - which means using the word at least occasionally.
So for sake of argument I may have a very slight reduction in my 'uncommon' english vocabulary, because I don't live in an english-speaking country. As it happens, I have a much larger rare vocabulary (though much of it is passive), but we shall ignore that and say I have 95% of normal vocabulary in English. By your logic, because me memory is limited - I could only know 5% of my second language's average vocabulary. I would estimate it as closer to 80%.
My numbers and odds are picked out of the air in the following:
The first 100 words are essential and anybody claiming to speak the language at all will know them all (100%).
The next 1000 words are common and anybody claiming to be fluent will know almost all of these (99%)
The next 10,000 words are uncommon and fluent speakers will know quite a lot of them (90%). Bilinguals may know a little less than expected here.
The next 100,000 words are rare and fluent native speakers will - on average - know 50% of them. Relatively fluent learners will know less - perhaps as little as 10%.
All other words are very rare or jargon.
So the main area of opportunity for increasing the total size of your vocabulary is in the rare area. But this is where the words you rarely need are (unsurprisingly!) Whereas learning the common and uncommon words in a second language is easy if you are using that language quite a lot too.
Now I grew up in the country of my second language, but never suffered at the hands of their educational establishment. Nevertheless, I am fluent with the exception of some idioms - I know all the words, but not the expression. However, I do admit to not knowing as many rare terms. After all, all my technical reading and study has been in English. However, there are some rare terms which I actually don't know in English - cooking ingredients, for example.
So lets say I know the first 10,000 in each language, but 'only' 45,000 and 15,000 rare words. The 5000 I lose from English I instead know in the other language, and there is an overlap of 10,000 which I know in both. So I know the same number of concepts as the average monolingual person, at the 'cost' of 20,000 vocabulary spaces. But if I hadn't learned that other language, it wouldn't make my English vocabulary 20,000 words richer.
Ah well, that was a lot of stating the obvious.
Re:Does the language matter? (Score:4, Insightful)
Even in my native tongue there are a lot of words I do not know and there are several Computer related words that I know only in English, and that do not even have a proper translation in Dutch because the industry is very English-centered.
My point is that every profession has a specific vocabulary and therefore the total word count in a language is huge, and every speaker only knows a small portion of it.
This is different from the everyday common language used in newspapers for example. If you can read a newspaper in another language and you know all the words in it, then I think you have a vocabulary that is comparable to that of a native speaker, everything beyond that is propably proffesion related.
I think I have a very large vocabulary in Dutch as I often use words that people do not know, but in my sisters theology thesis were a lot of words I did not know.
Next to that you have the phenomenon of children of immigrants that have a limited vocabulary in the language of their parents because it is limited to the topics they talk about with their parents, and there is no pressure on them to develop their vocabulary beyond that.
Talking a language is a different matter completely. I knew someone from Spain that could read and write English quite well, but I could barely talk to him, as I was the first one he ever had a conversation in English with. He had no idea how to pronounce it.
To some extent this also applies to me: You would pick me out as a non native speaker whe we would have a conversation in English within a minute, but this has nothing to do with vocabulary, it's experience and skill.
For the record: I consider myself fluent reader/writer/speaker in Dutch and English, almost in German and French, and I know enough of Spanish, Italian, Danish, Swedish and Norwegian to understand a newspaper even if I do not know all the words.
I know enough arabian, greek and portuguese to do some shopping or ask for directions.
Re:Does the language matter? (Score:2)
Far too low. It's more like 25,000.
Re:Does the language matter? (Score:2)
Re:Does the language matter? (Score:2)
Last I heard the average human had a vocab of around 2500 words or less.
Like others have said, the number is probably far higher, but certain minimalistic constructed languages are designed to be as complete as possible with very little vocabulary. Many claim to be bel
Re:Does the language matter? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Does the language matter? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Does the language matter? (Score:3, Informative)
Yes, speaking as a professional dog trainer (35 years, and with 11 generations of my own Labs to date) that's exactly right: We have to select for desired behaviour (in your example,
Re:Does the language matter? (Score:3, Funny)
Did you think that statement through at all? Dude... there are probably more than 2500 different words in one slashdot page alone, given probability and the fact that English contains over one hundred thousand words - you mean that most of tis is gibberish to the average human?
Oh, wait...
(Damn, that must have been the stupidest claim I've ever seen, and I've visited some religious sites now and then).
(border) collies are _way_ too smart (Score:5, Interesting)
a current friend of mine also has a border collie. he is trained to turn off the tv, shut the tv cabinet door, and turn the lights off when his owner falls asleep at night.
i think most border collies are smarter than a lot of people i deal with on a daily basis at work.
Re:(border) collies are _way_ too smart (Score:2, Informative)
Re:(border) collies are _way_ too smart (Score:5, Informative)
Border collies are AKC's 139th breed. Because it is a relatively new AKC recognized breed, "AKC will accept accept dogs registered with the American Border Collie Association (ABC), the American International Border Collie (AIBC), and the North American Sheepdog Society (NASD)." (AKC web site) It is currently in open registration (see web site for details-but requires the dog to have a pedigree, submit pictures etc.).
Some more info: Date entered into Regular Classes: October 1, 1995. The Border Collie was recognized by the AKC for inclusion in the Miscellaneous Class in 1955. (AKC web site)
If you scroll down a little more on the same page you will note a breed standard. In short, the breed IS ALREADY STANDARDIZED. Any inbreeding is not the fault of the AKC. It is the fault of clueless and/or idiotic and/or greedy owners generally fueled by the desire to make a quick buck of the popularity of a breed (indirectly aided and abetted by an ignorant public-such as you). Inbreeding is a FAULT. Good (ethical) owners/breeders take great pains to avoid inbreeding as it can permanently damage a breed's genetic diversity and introduce genetic disorders that are extremely difficult to overcome (probably what you think you are referring to...)
Let's start with your own ignorance... (Score:5, Informative)
Furthermore, the best, and indeed the only way to fix a set of alleles within a breed is through inbreeding....
7. The Standard
The existing Border Collie is not a breed without a standard. It has a very specific standard, by which dogs without registration papers and pedigrees can be Registered on Merit if they can demonstrate their herding ability to satisfy this standard. Whatever appearance standard is designed by the AKC and its chosen Breed Club (should it eventually designate one), it will not be the same standard to which the breed currently strives; it will therefore, by definition and unavoidably not be the same breed of dogs.
Even though the initial registration will come from the existing breed, the next generation of "showdogs" will have been bred under a different set of selective rules, and will already be at least philosophically different. After three years, when the AKC closes its books and no longer allows dogs of the original breed to be used for breeding, the AKC breed will have become a separate entity, no matter what its name!
This already happened at least once, when the "Lassie" collie was created. The working sheepdogs used to be called "collies." They became "Border Collies" to distinguish them from the developing show breed. At the time of separation, there was no real distinction; anyone can tell the two breeds apart now.
All of this is quite apart from the possibility of a standard being chosen which is simply inconsistent with the demands of the shepherding life. This may be in the written standard or in the fashions of judges who know nothing about these physical demands. This has already happened to some of the breeds (Labrador retrievers, for instance, are currently too heavy and short-legged to be of much use in the field; Siberian huskies tend to be showring winners with legs too short to run properly and with fluffy coats that cannot shed snow and ice; bearded collies look nothing like their ancestors, and have coats which obscure their vision, and collect burrs and mud). There has been some call for the USBCC to become the breed club so that we could set the standard and thereby avoid the problems of inappropriate physical traits being used. Unfortunately, although the problem will be made worse by the "wrong" standard, it is the existence of a physical appearance standard, and not its details, that is the danger. The currently proposed standard is flexible enough to appear to cover many of our dogs. In practice, however, an appearance standard, however broad it may seem, will subject the breed to all the problems listed above.
Although there is a popular belief that a dog that looks like his father (or mother) will work like his father (or mother) this is simply not necessarily true. Because of recombination of genes, it is no more likely that the pup with his father's markings is going to behave more like his father than the pup with completely different markings. If we were to set the show standard to duplicate in every detail the appearance of the latest International Supreme Champion, this would no more guarantee us a working breed than any other conformation standard. If we don't choose the pups that work like the latest Champion, we are not selecting the right genetic blend from the many possible combinations.
8. What Is A Breed?
As was stated in the USBCC Spring Newsletter:
"To a geneticist, a breed is simply this: a population of animals whose breeding is controlled and outcrossing limited, so that genetic selection can be exercised on it. . . . A population is simply a subgroup of the whole species of dog, Canis familiaris. Controlled breeding and limited outcrossing make it possible to select . . . for whatever genetic traits the organized breeders decide on. Organized breeders is almost a necessary part of the definition; one breeder cannot produce enough dogs to truly create a breed, and a lot of breed
Re:(border) collies are _way_ too smart (Score:3, Interesting)
The problem with inbreeding in humans is actually that as species go, average humans carry a very large number of lethal recessives. The minimum *kno
Re:(border) collies are _way_ too smart (Score:3, Funny)
Re:(border) collies are _way_ too smart (Score:3, Informative)
Maybe he can go work for Takara (Score:2)
As a side note, has anyone ever actually tried this thing out?
no big surprise to Border Collie owners (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:no big surprise to Border Collie owners (Score:5, Funny)
Just saw a Deutsche Welle report on this (Score:4, Informative)
Anyway, I never bought into that whole 'humans are unique' bullcrap - countless reports have proven that several species elicit signs of abstract thinking, verbal communication (whales, dolphins in particular), emotions like sadness (chimpanzees and other primates), anger, tendency for rape (chimpanzees again - why am I not surprised? LOL), etc.. Why are we still so full of ourselves and continue to describe ourselves as the crown of evolution while we decimate other species and commit atrocities unknown to any other species on this planet. I hope this dog doesn't smarten up too much - once he realizes how screwed up his 'masters' are - he's probably reconsidering that whole loyalty issue
Re:Just saw a Deutsche Welle report on this (Score:3, Insightful)
I now have the lovely image of a cheetah trying to cycle - thank you for that!
Seriously though, a race that involves tools is a bit unfair, and do you have any proof that no other land animal can run a marathon? I'm not saying you're wrong, I'm just a bit surprised. I think it's more likely that no other animal is stupid enough to want to run a marathon!
Obligatory Caddyshack quote (Score:2)
But little did you know until now that they really understand your cries of 'you like that, don't you bitch'.
ed
Killer whales and Dolphins (Score:2, Interesting)
The difference between collies and humans. (Score:4, Insightful)
The difference here is that they are HIGHLY motivated. I think we could learn a lot from this lesson.
Collies are able to have such an impact on our lives because they really really REALLY want to make us happy.
I've always wanted to own one but they are a LOT of work. It's almost a full time job. If you don't have work for them they will just go insane. Better to keep them on a farm...
MS Dog (Score:3, Funny)
A cut-down version for non-humans?
So... (Score:2)
Do I see pinky and (Score:2, Funny)
(Karma be damned; I am no better than an AC anyway)
Here is a partial list of words (Score:5, Funny)
Rough
Bow Wow
Grrrr
Whimper
Whine
Howl
Roof
Re:Here is a partial list of words (Score:4, Funny)
"What dogs are really saying:
Hey! Hey! Hi! Hey! Hey!"
Koko (Score:5, Insightful)
koko.org [koko.org]
My dog talks too (Score:5, Funny)
Me: "What's on top of the house?"
Dog: "Roof!"
Me: "Who's the most famous baseball player?"
Dog: "Ruth!"
Me: "How does sand-paper feel?"
Dog: "Rough!"
3 out 3!
Rico for President! (Score:3, Funny)
This is bullshit (Score:4, Informative)
Screw paraphrasing: " The trained object-fetching behavior of Rico, the border collie that this German research is talking about, has nothing at all to do with understanding language. The behavior is comparable to what you would have shown if you demonstrated that you had trained your goldfish to swim to a given object in its tank when you showed it a card with a given letter of the Greek alphabet. By all means attempt that too, if you think it would be interesting science. But don't bring it to me for my approval under a headline saying Research Shows Goldfish Can Read Greek, that's all! Unless you actually enjoy seeing the veins standing out in my neck as I hurl some more defenseless chairs and coffee tables and goldfish tanks around the room. "
His post is available here [upenn.edu]. And for those geeks interested in language, check out the Language Log [languagelog.com].
Pullum is being too harsh. (Score:4, Interesting)
In fact, if you know just a bit about contemporary research in child language you can pick up the hints in the AP article Pullum links about how it ties in:
This is reminiscent of some of the work of Eve Clark-- which Geoff can't be excused not to know.Why not just teach them Java? (Score:5, Funny)
{
if (what == newspaper)
newspaper.ripToShreds();
else
what.drenchWithDrool();
}
public void annoyNeighbour(int nightsPerWeek)
{
if ( nightsPerWeek < 7 )
nightsPerWeek = 7;
self.bark();
self.scratchFence();
self.rattleGate();
self.bark();
}
public void walkOnFootpath(Boolean leashed)
{
if ( ! leashed)
self.chaseChildren();
self.crap();
}
(In case you hadn't noticed, I don't like dogs much! Fido can take his 200 word vocabulary and go play in the traffic.)
Do You Spell Words When Your Dog Is Listening? (Score:3, Insightful)
Come on, be honest.
We all know a cat would just sit there.
Re:Do You Spell Words When Your Dog Is Listening? (Score:4, Funny)
We could spell "s-n-i-f-f t-h-a-t o-t-h-e-r d-o-g'-s a-s-s" or "l-i-c-k y-o-u-r o-w-n b-a-l-l-s" and he would do it every single time without fail!
I, for one... (Score:3, Funny)
No, wait, I just can't wrap my head around that one. Come back to me when they figure out what side of the door they want to be on.
Re:Bzzt. Try again (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Bzzt. Try again (Score:2)
I hope you've got scientific proof to back that statement up, because Quantum Physics would tend to suggest otherwise. According to QP, there's merely a probability that you will or won't do something. (Actually, you do all the things, but the universe you materialize in depends on some other factor forcing the state.)
Keep in mind that we *still* haven't figured out how the human brain works. We
Re:Bzzt. Try again (Score:3, Interesting)
There is no such thing as a sentient non-homosapien. There may be varying levels of intelligence among the animals, but no animal can reason, they can only react to their surroundings as dictated by their instincts.
There are many studies that have demonstrated simple reasoning and problem solving on the part of animals. Language is more
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Bzzt. Try again (Score:5, Interesting)
The dog has a collection of roughly 200 toys, each of which he knows by name. When told a toy's name, he'll go and fetch the toy. That's not really impressive, that's what most dogs do. Now comes the cool part though. They added a new toy - one the dog had never seen before. The toy was added to the collection while the dog wasn't in the room, so he didn't see the toy being added. Then they told him to get this new toy. Simply by telling him the new toy's name, which he had never heard before of course. Now, the dog went to his toy room. He found all the old toys and the new one. Since none of his old toys matched the name he had been told, he figured that they what they meant must have been this new toy he just discovered.
This is really the reasoning part. You don't need to tell the dog what the toy's name is - the dog will figure it out himself. If you tell him to look for something he's never heard of, he will have a look around and if there's something new and unusual, he will guess that's what you meant. Isn't that sort of the way humans learn? At least it's certainly not the way dogs are normally trained.
Re:Bzzt. Try again (Score:5, Insightful)
I didn't know that they did it this way. I am not as impressed as I was before. The dog is going to realize which one is out of place just by the smell of the toy which obviously doesn't fit w/the rest. Trained dogs sniff out stuff that they recognize all the time. What's so different about them picking the one thing that is different?
Re:Bzzt. Try again (Score:3, Informative)
You're talking about two different things there. You (a human) make the mental leap between "unrecognized object" and "unknown sound" very easily. That's one thing. Many ani
Re:Bzzt. Try again (Score:4, Funny)
KFG
Re:Bzzt. Try again (Score:5, Insightful)
Prove it. When's the last time an ape told you he wasn't sentient? There are many ways to determine if an animal is intelligent. One is being self aware. Only larger primates and dolphins can recognize themselves in a mirror. Another aspect is knowing of ones' lifespan. Only humans and a few primates are aware of our own demise. I believe one famous gorilla, Coco, had a sign language vocabulary of a couple thousand words and phrases. She also cried when her pet cat died and began asking about her own death when comforted by her trainer.
And what do you mean by "There may be varying levels of intelligence among the animals, but no animal can reason, they can only react to their surroundings as dictated by their instincts." What do you mean by reason? I've seen competitions between hunting dogs to retrieve a marker at the end of a field full of fallen trees and large puddles. The winner was not always the fastest runner or best swimmer, but the one that could navigate the best route with no help from its' handler.
And many animals can do more than react based on instinct. Many higher order animals are capable of using basic tools (like a long curved stick to get ants out of a nest). Some parrots have been tested by setting a piece of fruit at the top of a clear cylinder and several traps between the fruit and exit. In a matter of minutes they learned how to get the fruit out by sliding, rotating, moving, and removing blocks of wood in the proper order. Surely that goes beyond basic instinct. Does learning and problem solving not indicate some level of intelligence?
By what standard do you judge intelligence? Many people who post on Slashdot would not pass my test, but that gorilla does. Does something have to act like humans do, pursuing a more efficient means to destroy yheir species, before it is recognized? Does it have to communicate through spoken word?
Re:Bzzt. Try again (Score:5, Interesting)
But the most impressive, was a crow that bent wire into a hook, to form a tool. Weird, eh?
As for being self-ware, recognizing yourself in a mirror... how useful is that as an indicator? I mean, pick some insect with compound eyes, a bee perhaps. Magically make it intelligent, could it recognize itself? What about some species that is naturally blind?
Also, I believe you people want to use the word sapient, not sentient. I would guess that there isn't a mammal in existence, that isn't sentient to an extent. Forgive me from borrowing from scifi, but Data (Star Trek) was argued to not be sentient, even though he was clearly intelligent. Sentience would be the ability to love, empathize, and lots of other things that are difficult to define.
Another interesting note on animal intelligence... anyone ever bothered to read up on octopi? These things can also solve problems if the reward is food, and they can learn to do so, simply by watching another octopus solve it. What's more, they have been known to climb out of aquariums entirely, across a floor, and into another to eat fish that they see.
Mostly, various religions have ingrained (maybe reinforced) the human tendency to discount any "lesser" animal as worthwhile. In modern times, that tends to amount to discounting their intelligence. I'm not about to stake my life on my cat scoring 190 on an IQ test, but it just seems right to think of her as a person. That tends to be difficult for those who can only assign value to an animal.
And lastly, in this mostly random rant of mine, I pose this question. If human intelligence can vary so greatly, from the barely more than vegetable, up to the ubergenius... why is it so hard to believe the same might be true of animals. And if they were already close to the lowest end of human intelligence, might not the occassional animal ubergenius be comparable to an average person? We might very well stumble across some dolphin that tells us to go fuck ourselves. (though how it will flip us the accompaning finger will frustrate it to no end).
Mirrors and being self aware. (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't think the mirror-test is an accurate refleciton (no pun intended) of whether an animal is self aware. All a mirror shows is that the animal is aware of its body. And it wouldn't really be too hard to program a robot that could recognise itself in a mirror. Would that make it self aware? Nope. Because your self, your id, is considerably different to your body.
There is no current test for self-awareness. Now, I can tell that I am self aware, because I have a distinct concept of "self". I really can't be sure of anyone else, but I can assume that since others of my species exibit similar behaviour to me, I can reasonably assume that they possess the same trait of self-awareness that I do.
Dolphins and gorillas... Well, I'm not too convinced. They're intelligent, but I don't quite think that they're quite there; the evidence availiable doesn't make a good case, in my opinion. Though I'll admit that this is mainly due to no-one having inventing a convincing self-awareness test, yet.
Problem solving doesn't show an animal is self-aware. Recognising physical objects does not, either. I'm not entirely sure what does, however. Speech helps, of course. It could be that certain language patterns can only arise with self-awareness. It could be that a self-awareness is related to some effect on the quantum level, that cannot be replicated by a Turing Machine. There is some evidence to believe that a Turing Machine cannot represent a self-aware entity.
To be honest, we have such a crude definition of "self", that we'd need to figure out precisely what we mean when we talk about sentience, before we can start to think up tests for it.
Perhaps that will prove to be the greatest scientific challenge of our race.
Re:Mirrors and being self aware. (Score:3, Insightful)
Really? Such a thing appears to be capital-h Hard. If you put a little daub of paint on a chimp, it will rub at the spot in the mirror. I don't know of any robots who go about cleaning themselves off when a little paint has spilled on an arm or a tread. Do you? And that's just for starters. A true chimp-equivalent robot would still have to come recognize "that's me" if it's completely covered with paint, o
Re:Mirrors and being self aware. (Score:3, Interesting)
Allow me to clarify. When I said "it would be too hard", I suppose what I meant, was that "compared to creating a sentient life form, designing a robot to recognise itself in the mirror wouldn't be too hard."
Whilst I admit there would be quite a few proble
Re:Mirrors and being self aware. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Mirrors and being self aware. ie SMOKE AND (Score:3, Interesting)
Essencially, Descartes.
I get so tired of people who think that other creatures are somehow fundamentally different from us, psychically, emotionally, whatever. EVERY theory (because they are all theories) stating this is nothing more than inherited religious bias MASQUERADING as science. Period. It's so unbelievably, ironically arrogant.
There's plenty of reason to hold this belief. Allow
Re:Bzzt. Try again (Score:5, Interesting)
He lived until he was old and sick, and then I went off to college and he chose to commit suicide.
They understand that they can die, and they can choose when they're ready to go.
Look, I lived with border collies for 18 years. They weren't my pets, they were family. After 18 years of watching them, I believe they're not only as smart as people, but that part of the reason some people have problems with their border collies is that the dog is smarter than they are.
The thing is, there are two factors which prevent most people from understanding how smart they really are: one is that they can't talk (although mine tried and startled a few people by croaking out a kind of "hello" they don't really have the right vocal equipment) and the other is that they don't have the same priorities as people do: people worry about going to school and earning money and paying for the next vacation... border collies worry about making sure their family is happy and well, and they see you as their family.
Re:Bzzt. Try again (Score:3, Funny)
After 18 years of watching them, I believe they're not only as smart as people, but that part of the reason some people have problems with their border collies is that the dog is smarter than they are.
Take it from me, gong to job interviews and proudly saying "I'm almost as smart as a dog" is unlikely to get you a job anytime soon!
I hope you don't seriously believe what you wrote?
What your saying is (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Bzzt. Try again (Score:5, Insightful)
This is simply wrong. The higher apes show clear evidence of reason, as do many dogs, elephants, cetaceans, and even some birds - the parrots and corvidae. Many of these animals demonstrate something called 'theory of mind' - they can put themselves in the place of others, figure out what those others are thinking, and practice deception. Its easy to show that apes and dolphins can recognise themselves in mirrors, indicating a sense of self-awareness. Even octopuses and squids can relate to each other in complex ways and communicate.
A good demonstration that things are not instinct is because many of these behaviours can be learned and passed on as a form of culture. This is shown in apes, with food-washing, bathing and tool-making. There is recent evidence that such cultural patterns may be present in birds, with some crows learning how to design and use simple tools to get at food.
Re:some very smart people would disagree with you (Score:4, Insightful)
This is not a useful distinction, as its hard to define 'meaningful sentence'. There are stages in language development in children, and many animals seem to show equivalent word combinations to young humans.
Its a continuum: Human language capacity did not appear suddenly fully-formed. Its likely that humanoids before us had some language ability, perhaps with less complex grammar and vocabulary.
However, language is a highly controversial indication of sentience. It's possible to imagine self-awareness, and the ability to conceive that others exist and they are like you (a theory of mind) without the need for any language at all.
Its also possible that language, like vision, has evolved independently many times. Whale song is complex, and we have no idea yet if it has anything we would understand as words or grammar, but maybe that's just putting our interpretation on things. Its clear that chimps and parrots are able to combine words in innovative ways to form something that seems like a 'proto-sentence'.
because animals can't communicate meaningfully using only single words.
Why not? Humans can do this. It's usually obvious what I mean if I say things like:
'Yes', 'No', 'Stop', 'Hungry', 'Busy', 'Bored', 'Whatever' etc. Some animals show a similar meaningful single-word use.
This argument seems to me to be self-fulfilling: if you defining sentience in terms of human attributes, then you will of course define anything lacking those attributes as non-sentient.
Natural selection (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Its true (Score:2)
Re:3 yr old toddlers? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:3 yr old toddlers? (Score:3, Interesting)
It is also possible that the dogs you have come across are stupid (yes, it may come as a shock to you but animals intelligence varies too).
OK, lets look at it another way. How many 3 year olds would you trust to lead a blind person around safely and successfully, day after day? And that is not something that is based on instinct either. Personally if I was blind I would chose the dog any day.
I would talk to my last dog in basic natural speech when I wanted him to do
Re:3 yr old toddlers? (Score:4, Insightful)
Don't get too excited. I've no idea who Shel is, if it matters, but in my experience, kids laugh when adults laugh; they are always looking for cues for social behaviour. This is the case even with early teenagers. And, in fact, some adults.
If you want to please or get on with someone, you will laugh when they laugh.
Re:What about grammar? (Score:3, Interesting)
As an aside, I consult with producers and trainers of working dogs (guide dogs, sleddogs, etc.),
Re:What about grammar? (Score:3, Interesting)
While I agree that this isn't the claim they're making, I wouldn't be suprised if such a claim did have some merit. If a bratty 3 yr old wants something, they start squalling. A smart dog can be downright sneaky.
A friend had a dog once, that wasn't allowed outside if the neighbor's cat was out. It would see the cat out the window, and start scratching at the door. For several days this went on, with the do
Re:Still a big difference (Score:5, Insightful)
The first dog that teachs another dog a language...I might be impressed...the first dog that teaches words to a human child, I'll be a bit more impressed.
The first dolphin that can solve a linear algebra problem or contemplate the age of the universe...*that* will impress me
this doesn't. just glorified animal tricks
Ten thousand years ago your ancestors hadn't even come up with an idea as simple as the wheel, let alone linear algebra or calculus.
The really scary thing is that those were genetically modern humans, every bit as smart as you or me, except that they didn't have access to the education that we do. If you had had their education -- if you had been raised by cavemen -- the concept of the wheel would likely be completely beyond you. If you had to move a heavy object, it would simply never occur to you that you could do something other than drag or carry it. If it's too big to drag or carry, it stays put.
It took tens of thousands of generations for humans to make those first simple steps -- fire, the wheel, agriculture. So you might want to think about that when considering just how much difference there really is between you and a really smart animal.
Hint: it's probably not as much as you like to think.
Re:Still a big difference (Score:3, Insightful)
Did it take the grandparent poster thousands of years to learn calculus or linear algebra or about the wheel? No, it didn't. Take the same amount of time it took him to learn those things, and try to teach a dog the same things. The dog won't be raised by cavemen. You could even send it to the university of your choice.
The gp has been taught a large part of human civilization in his lifespan, which can't be done with a dog. There's your big difference.