Newfound brain structure explains why some birds are so smart

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/09/newfound-brain-structure-explains-why-some-birds-are-so-smart-and-maybe-even-self-aware

by jelliclesfarm • 6 years ago

76 61 6 years ago

sciencemag.org

deeblering4• 6 years ago

I find our assumption that other living beings are not self aware fascinating.

Simply because we cannot speak a common language we assume creatures are drones with no intelligence or emotion, until we can somehow prove otherwise.

It almost speaks more to the human psyche than anything else.

JoelMcCracken• 6 years ago

I find this phenomenon very unusual. I think some people think this way because otherwise nature and society inflicts unimaginable horrors on an incomprehensible number of creatures and that is a truly soul-shaking thing to realize.

One thing I think regarding AI is it has shown Is just how complex the behaviors of these “simple” creatures really are.

ddingus2• 6 years ago

Make me realize we do not yet have AI.

We do have interesting sub systems and they do have great utility. Not to crap on what is done.

But my cat can do things nothing we make can.

colincooke• 6 years ago

I think of it more as an efficiency argument. Does being self aware help with survival? For the sea slug, probably not, for other (higher level) organisms maybe.

Is a pareto frontier of awareness? Trading off the increased cognitive ability it likely supplies with the increased energy consumption it requires. Whats interesting about some of these findings is, in addition to of course the pure science of it, that self-awareness may offer more benefits than previously thought.

This could have implications beyond biological understanding, perhaps in building AI agents for example.

ddingus2• 6 years ago

I believe real intelligence, having independent agency is linked to an organism complex enough to be aware of what it is vs everything else.

The self.

A computer in a box lacks this. Everything we make lacks this so far.

Biotech is going to change that, IMHO.

Not sure electro mechanical can get there. At least not yet, though we are getting really good at it.

webwanderings• 6 years ago

Another fascinating thing is human’s perceived comprehension of aliens. Hollywood and popular literature has always conveyed the notion of someone from other planets, so much so that we have forgotten the others among us. The nature on this planet earth is still as unknown to us as any external planet. Come to think of it, humans are not that great in comprehending themselves and the nature that surrounds them. Our ability to be self-aware is technically relative and not absolute.

bhk• 6 years ago

I've found that people tend to attribute human emotions and self-awareness to their pets, far beyond what science (or skilled pet trainers) would hold. And then there are other people that attribute these qualities and even the presence of a "soul" to plants, rocks, etc.. As far as the human "psyche" is concerned, I think it's inclined to animism.

riffraff• 6 years ago

Many years ago someone gave a talk on the ever expanding sphere of "things we recognize rights too".

One of the interesting point was how we tend to humanize "evil" objects which clearly have no intent: being angry at a mouse that does not work, some software that crashes, or feeling the printer hates us.

We do seems to have animism as a built-in mental device.

exo-pla-net4• 6 years ago

It's not an assumption. Self awareness has been scientifically tested in many species, most prominently by using the mirror test: testing if an animal can recognize itself in a mirror by observing if its behavior changes after surreptitiously placing onto its body a mark, which the animal can only see through the mirror. One can argue about the merits of the mirror test, but it's inaccurate to say that scientists are merely making assumptions. They're doing their best to rigorously test self awareness.

dfischer6• 6 years ago

They’re doing it within their frame of definitions which is largely evidence of constrained models leaving options unknown outside the realm of reason thereby excluding outliers of surprising potential.

bigpumpkin• 6 years ago

I think it's likely that social animals are almost all self aware. How can an individual animal manage social relations within its pack without a knowledge of self and of other selves?

root_axis4• 6 years ago

The mirror-test is not even close to exhaustive with respect to conclusions about self-awareness. It is certainly conceivable that a self-aware creature could simply be incapable of understanding a mirror or that they might be otherwise indifferent to what they see in it. For example, dogs fail the mirror test, but they are obviously self-aware creatures.

rbecker3• 6 years ago

The mirror test also gives widely different results in humans. Canadian children pass it at 2 years old, while Kenyans fail at 5: https://www2.psych.ubc.ca/~henrich/pdfs/Journal%20of%20Cross...

Would you conclude from it that Kenyan children are less (or not at all) "self-aware" than Canadian ones? Or that the leap from "recognize reflection" to "self-awareness" is unjustified?

freyr• 6 years ago

Do most people really assume this?

I think it’s more that scientists have tried testing animals for self-awareness for many years, and most animals fail any test they’ve devised. Maybe this is just a failure of testing, but I don’t think it indicates a widespread assumption among the public that animals are emotionless drones.

the84725• 6 years ago

I find our assumption that other living beings are not self aware fascinating.

Sponges lack a CNS. I am quite confident that they have no self-awareness. C. elegans has 302 neurons. I am fairly confident that it has no self-awareness by any useful definition thereof. At some point a brain will be sufficiently complex for the possibility of self-awareness, but that does not guarantee that it arises. And even when it arises it might be weak (e.g. the animal might have to be given many opportunities to realize it) or only true according to some definitions and not others. So since not all animals have self-awareness it is then a matter of default position. Do you assume they're likely to have it until proven otherwise or vice versa? Considering that by raw numbers there are more simple animals than complex ones the latter position isn't all that unreasonable.

mensetmanusman• 6 years ago

We also argue whether others outside of our mind are self-aware.

And most physicists think free will is bunk and therefore we are not self-aware, everything is an illusion.

andrei_says_• 6 years ago

I’m not a physicist bu I’ve been observing my choices for years (Advaita practice) and still haven’t noticed anything I could call free will.

Unless we agree to call “life long conditioning, genetic makeup, trauma responses, habitual responses, present emotional state, thoughts and beliefs, environment, stimuli, any and all cultural influences, present blood sugar, hormonal levels, pulse, all preferences associated with avoidance of pain and striving for pleasure etc.” and a bunch of other factors which factors are absolutely out of our control, “free will”.

Once I started unpacking the phrase it became nonsensical.

amilein7minutes• 6 years ago

Bernd Heinrich is a naturalist and professor who has written plenty of uniquely insightful and highly accessible books on the intelligence of birds, among other species. One of his authoritative books is the "Mind of the raven", which analyzes the question of consciousness in ravens. From the description on Amazon: "Mind of the Raven follows an exotic journey;from New England to Germany, and from Montana to Baffin Island in the high Arctic;offering dazzling accounts of how science works in the field, filtered through the eyes of a passionate observer of nature. Each new discovery and insight into raven behavior is thrilling to read, at once lyrical and scientific."

Another of his books that particularly sheds light on the unimaginably mature navigation skills and the ultraendurance of our avian brethren: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-homing-instinct-bernd-h...

rewq4321• 6 years ago

Somebody posted this video to a previous thread about the intelligence of grows:

https://youtu.be/1WupH8oyrAo

It rides a "sled" down a snowy roof, then carries the sled back up to the top, stands on it, and pecks it get it started.

rtx2• 6 years ago

I always feel a bit disappointed when science catches up to traditional or observational knowledge. It feels like so much opportunity being lost.

clickok• 6 years ago

In the words of John von Neumann, there's a lot more that's known than is proved.

It's often frustratingly difficult to go from the known to the proven; still, just because something's not proved doesn't mean that scientists are ignoring it.

rtx2• 6 years ago

Thanks for sharing this.

Dylan16807• 6 years ago

Also sometimes what we "know" is in fact wrong.

exo-pla-net4• 6 years ago

You're disappointed by the discovery of a new brain structure? This seems like a wonderful discovery to me.

musicale• 6 years ago

some researchers argue that consciousness is uniquely human,”

I'm not entirely sure what consciousness means, but dogs (and other animals) show a wide range of emotions, and monkeys are crafty troublemakers, much like humans.

bausano_michael• 6 years ago

I wonder how the properties that Jeff Hawkings derived from neocortex (and partially hippocampus) in his work "On Intelligence" hold against the structure in question.

Newfound brain structure explains why some birds are so smart

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