The World's Smartest Chimp Has Died (nytimes.com) 70
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The New York Times, written by philosophy professor Lori Gruen: Sarah, who could have been deemed the world's smartest chimp, was brought to the United States from Africa as an infant to work with David and Ann Premack in a series of experiments designed to find out what chimpanzees might think. In order to determine what, if anything, might be on Sarah's mind, she was one of the first chimpanzees to be taught a human language. The Premacks taught her to use plastic magnetic tokens that varied in size and color to represent words. She formed sentences by placing the tokens in a vertical line. Ann Premack noted that her earliest words named "various interesting fruits," so that Sarah "could both solve her problem and eat it."
Sarah's career established that not only do chimpanzees have complex thoughts, but also distinct personalities with strong preferences and prejudices. But this is just part of her remarkable life story. As she grew older she helped a diabetic chimpanzee named Abby, who she was living with, remember to get her medication. She was a loving, yet stern, aunt-like figure to a pair of young chimpanzees, Harper and Emma, and she helped Henry, a male chimpanzee who came from a situation of terrible abuse, get along with other chimpanzees. Since the time that Sarah was thought to have established that chimpanzees know what others might want or need, a growing number of investigators have tried to figure out if other animals have a theory of mind. Though there have always been skeptics, studies have suggested that crows, jays, ravens, other apes, monkeys, and maybe dogs, may know what others are thinking. In social animals, being able to glean what others might be thinking is a good strategy for getting along. For chimpanzees living in sanctuaries, it can facilitate care.
Sarah's career established that not only do chimpanzees have complex thoughts, but also distinct personalities with strong preferences and prejudices. But this is just part of her remarkable life story. As she grew older she helped a diabetic chimpanzee named Abby, who she was living with, remember to get her medication. She was a loving, yet stern, aunt-like figure to a pair of young chimpanzees, Harper and Emma, and she helped Henry, a male chimpanzee who came from a situation of terrible abuse, get along with other chimpanzees. Since the time that Sarah was thought to have established that chimpanzees know what others might want or need, a growing number of investigators have tried to figure out if other animals have a theory of mind. Though there have always been skeptics, studies have suggested that crows, jays, ravens, other apes, monkeys, and maybe dogs, may know what others are thinking. In social animals, being able to glean what others might be thinking is a good strategy for getting along. For chimpanzees living in sanctuaries, it can facilitate care.
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No. It's nonsense like that and others which is exactly why "we can't have nice things". Just be glad they didn't do what popular science did and turn off comments completely. Besides this isn't the first time they've forced people to have an account. It's why I'm still not an AC.
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They would never turn off comments, since comments are the only original content that slashdot produces, and the main reason why people still keep visiting it. Most of the time, enough of them are better than the articles themselves.
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The amount of AC spam was way out of hand. It's much better this way.
I've never understood the point of "anonymous" posting anyways. The site is recording the IP, browser fingerprint, etc. Either you're hiding that through other means or not. The public facing account name on a post just makes it easier to follow a conversation. A bunch of anons yelling at each other is difficult/impossible to follow and has little if any value.
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We tolerated vile AC spam for many many years. This is almost certainly a new policy triggered by the 8chan stuff. Everyone is shitting themselves about anonymous forums now.
Sorry boys and girls, you'll have to find a new site to be horrible to each other. Slashdot is no longer the cool hang out for expressing your deepest, darkest nerd rage.
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And what's next, after we find out that getting rid of anonymous forums just causes people to open sock puppets, will we force all forums to use some form of a real-life ID per user? Something like India's Aadhar?
While I also tended to ignore most AC posts, I am worried about this trend.
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And what's next,
When you start a sentence off with this phrase, you might want consider the Slippery Slope fallacy [wikipedia.org]
You think this is bad (Score:1)
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AC postings used to be the heart and soul of the board. They harp back to the days before accounts when anyone could post. With AC disabled or gone normally I would bitch about it. Saying something about how they are destroying the board and the /. culture.
Meh. Slashdot culture left with hot grits Natalie and Ogg the caveman. Fuck it.
The future always seems to gets worse (Score:1)
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I've noticed another trend, both online and IRL
It seems that as time goes on, things get more restrictive and sucky in general.
You are correct. In part it's the "Tragedy of the Commons", but it's also because people are behaving more and more badly.
Assholes like APK and the Nazi shitbags ramped up their bullshit until it basically swamped the site. Fuck that. Enough is enough. If they hadn't become over-the-top abusive then this change wouldn't have been necessary.
Look at it this way: you wouldn't tolerate it on your property, would you? If so, feel free to start your own site and invite all the assholes that prompted this cleansin
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it's also because people are behaving more and more badly.
I don't think so. Every generation believes that the world is going to hell, but people haven't changed. The Internet has given a voice to everyone, and plenty of them are jerks, but they were already jerks. In almost every measurable way, the world is getting better, not worse.
Re: The future always seems to gets worse (Score:1)
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Prior to the fall of Alexander the Great's empire, it was noted that young people were behaving badly. More recently, the Weimar Republic led to Nazism led to WWII, and it was widely recognized that many aspects of that culture were degenerating.
The signs are there, but many things including politics make judgement difficult.
People and culture do change. Various cultures can be wildly different, and the results vary accordingly.
Read Plutarch's Lives to get an idea of ethics not uncommon 2 millennia ago, sta
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it's also because people are behaving more and more badly.
I don't think so. Every generation believes that the world is going to hell, but people haven't changed. The Internet has given a voice to everyone, and plenty of them are jerks, but they were already jerks. In almost every measurable way, the world is getting better, not worse.
The world may be getting better, but the internet has gotten worse. I was around in the early days of the web (1996) and BBSes before that. I was also on slashdot in the late 90s (this isn't my original account). Part of what's happened is an influx of general population into what was originally small tech saavy communities. Often oriented around tech, but other communities existed and they were basically islands.
Now with platforms like reddit, twitter, facebook, etc. everything is visible to everyone a
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The "world is going to hell, everything's getting worse" trope is beloved of mass newspapers and always has been, and sells, but is almost always wrong.
I've been seeing more (safely) opened doors and minds and stores of data and of late, indeed people going out of their way to be nice to one another in hot conditions, and so on, so please don't assume that the worst is true.
Life generally gets better in all sorts of ways, even if lots of it could be better!
Rgds
Damon
The future always seems to get confirmed. (Score:2)
Confirmation and Survivorship bias.
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Also known as Evolution. People who insist on acting like rabid werewolves whenever given a chance are slowly but surely being selected out, both from the gene pool and online communities (memetics). The world is getting better because Nazis and their ilk always end up getting themselves killed due to the spirit of their ideology ultimately being that of death.
The thing is, as soon as life emerged it's preferences became a part of the fitness function in Survival of the F
Re: The future always seems to get confirmed. (Score:1)
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Most of the trolls and useless stuff comes from "Anonymous Coward" posters. Why not eliminate anonymous posting?
We've thought about it. We think the ability to post anonymously is important, though. Sometimes people have important information they want to post, but wouldn't do so if they could be linked to it. Anonymous posting will continue for the foreseeable future.
I guess the unforseen future arrived
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You can still post anonymously, but apparently now there's a limit to how much shit will be allowed to be spewed anonymously.
And I, for one, am all for it.
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"I've never understood the point of "anonymous" posting anyways. The site is recording the IP, browser fingerprint, etc. Either you're hiding that through other means or not"
Obviously, you'd use a VPN+the Tor browser and the Starbucks WIFI on an old machine before threatening murder and mayhem, but for making a comment after having distributed 15 Karma points, you have no other choice.
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The amount of AC spam was way out of hand. It's much better this way.
I agree 100%.
I'm sick of all the APK shit and the Nazi shit and the anti-jew shit, it's pointless and in my opinion, nothing more than pollution.
The owners of /. have every right to clean up the site and maintain some semblance of order. No one wants to see that Nazi bullshit, no one. Those racist scumbags and spammers contributed nothing to the site, absolutely nothing.
It's refreshing to browse the site at and view all the posts and not see that shit. I say "good job" to whoever made this decision.
As as fa
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This site was better off with APK than how it is now.
Now all they need to do is correct the moderation issues. Which is much more of a problem than the AC trolls. AC are easy to ignore. Mod abuse isn't.
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Which moderation issues? The only one I can think of is that losing anonymous posting means that you can no longer moderate and contribute with comments.
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No it wasn't. Even the GNAA was less annoying than APK.
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This site was better off with APK than how it is now.
We'll miss you APK - you weren't just the world's smartest chimp, you were our special chimp.
Mirror, mirror, on the wall. (Score:3)
Mirror neurons may account for that "theory of mind".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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Soon, a smarter one (Score:1)
Re:Soon, a smarter one (Score:4, Informative)
once it / he / she says "mammy".
It is not lack of intelligence that prevents apes from talking, but lack of vocal cords.
That is why they learn languages based on hand signs or tokens.
Grey parrots can express the full range of human language phonemes, so they can be taught to interact verbally. Apes cannot.
I thought you were talking about Epstein again (Score:2)
He got off easy
Free (Score:2)
Oh noes (Score:1)
"The World's Smartest Chimp Has Died"
Donald Trump Jr died?
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Thank you. I was looking for that comment.
Again, /. doesn't disappoint.
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Came here for this (Score:2)
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"The World's Smartest Chimp Has Died"
Donald Trump Jr died?
That's an orangutan. I thought it was about W for sure.
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Donald Trump Jr died?
No: they specifically said the chimp in question could form complete sentences.
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I came to say his speech writer, hey was that Jr as well?
Smartest or highest educated? (Score:5, Insightful)
Surely she wasn't the smartest chimp alive - the odds that the chimp they selected for study happened to be the smartest in the world is unlikely. However she may have been the most educated and had the greatest skill set of any chimp alive.
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Surely she wasn't the smartest chimp alive - the odds that the chimp they selected for study happened to be the smartest in the world is unlikely. However she may have been the most educated and had the greatest skill set of any chimp alive.
Greatest skill set as evaluated by humans. Other chimps may not agree. Skills learned / exhibited in captivity may not be relevant to chimps in the wild.
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From the summary it sounds like she was the peace keeper of the group; that's got to be considered a valuable skill or they'd just ignore her.
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Seems a strong matriarch keeping peace in the tribe would be valuable in most circumstances.
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If (Score:2)
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i was going to say, if she was so smart, why was she the one that got caught and imprisoned? The smarter chimps are living like Mrs Frisby and the Rats of Jimh, they have libraries and light bulbs and doors in their sprawling caves underground, and reading about Sarah makes them sad....
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Years ago I had two cats. They were both well-fed and cared for.
I opened the door one time and one cat took off like a shot. I didn't waste one millisecond chasing after him or looking for him- if he didn't like his cushy home and plentiful free food, he was more than welcome to go freeze his ass off and risk being eaten by something bigger and meaner than him.
I thought I heard him crying outside once a few days later, but I can't be sure because I didn't bother to get up from the couch to see if it was him
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So it wasn't curiosity but an asshole who killed the cat.
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So it wasn't curiosity but an asshole who killed the cat.
No, you didn't kill him, no need to feel guilty about it.
Perhaps you'd rather he be imprisoned, as the poster below, nukenerd, seems to indicate he would do.
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You say your indoor cat had a happ
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You say your indoor cat had a happy life, but no imprisoned cat is really happy.
He was happy enough not to dash for the door every time it was opened. He'd go outside but never strayed far. He'd putter around the yard and then come back in after a while. The point is that he could have run off but he didn't.
He wasn't imprisoned, he liked where he was at and had the sense to know it.
The other one? He didn't want to stay and I didn't make him, simple as that. If he'd come back and hung around he could have, but it was his choice not to come back. So be it.
Also (Score:3)
We couldn't have cat flaps because critters like squirrels and raccoons will happily come right in through them, shit all over the place and chew up the house.
The day you find a pissed off raccoon hiding under your bed is the day you'll decide that installing a cat flap was a bad idea.
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i was going to say, if she was so smart, why was she the one that got caught and imprisoned?
Because she was an infant.
The normal way that chimps are captured is that a poacher shoots the mother and then grabs the baby.
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Oh gosh thats terrible, so thank you for jarring me from my flippant attempt at humour. Thats probably true, and really quite sad. Im such a bitch on this site, its my steam valve. Sometimes Im a little inappropriate.
She didn't (Score:2)
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But Elvis went home! I saw him on the flying saucer. He was sitting next to bigfoot.
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Geez, do you even read the Weekly World News? Elvis tragically died in a car crash in the 90s. It was on the front page!
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If she was so smart, how come she died?
Well, many humans are / have been smart, smarter than the chimp, and are / were caught, imprisoned and died.
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Cipher please?
Poor thing (Score:2)
Choose wisely (Score:2)
"For chimpanzees living in sanctuaries, it can facilitate care."
Any objections to modifying that to:
"For hominids living in sanctuaries, it can facilitate care."
Asking for the, ah, permanent record. Please provide your justification as well.
Washoe spoke American Sign language in the 1980s (Score:2)
Regularly communicated in 3 word sentences.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
They did this by raising Washoe in sensible household environment rather than a sterile lab. Which greatly upset the behavioralists.
And in related news... (Score:2)