Conversation

Notices

1. Embed this notice
   myrmepropagandist (futurebird@sauropods.win)'s status on Tuesday, 14-Jan-2025 20:31:52 JST myrmepropagandist

   When we ask if other creatures are “conscious” what I think we really want to know is this impossible question of what it would feel like to be a cat or a barnacle (or an eagle wheeling on a warm swell of air above our cities.) We can, to some degree, imagine what it might be like to inhabit the bodies of other living things, but to experience their minds? That is another matter.

   • Embed this notice
     Bujold (bujold@dice.camp)'s status on Wednesday, 15-Jan-2025 00:13:07 JST Bujold

     in reply to

     • Ivan Milovanov

     @illumniscate @futurebird 📰 "Humans Fail at Basic Communicative Dance Tasks, are 'Unintelligent', Bee Scientists Find"

   • Embed this notice
     Ivan Milovanov (illumniscate@mastodon.education)'s status on Wednesday, 15-Jan-2025 00:13:10 JST Ivan Milovanov

     in reply to

     @futurebird

     This has been my issue with comparative psychology for a while. It makes limited practical sense to try & measure intelligence through the adaptations of our senses & organs. We don't have wings, whiskers or gills. Conversely, saying that an owl is unintelligent because it wouldn't crack a nut or that "a dog has the IQ of a 5-year old human" shows the immaturity of our scientific thought. If a human was to be magically turned into, say, a bee, they'd likely perish quite quickly.

     Charlie Stross and Rocketman repeated this.
   • Embed this notice
     myrmepropagandist (futurebird@sauropods.win)'s status on Wednesday, 15-Jan-2025 00:13:11 JST myrmepropagandist

     in reply to

     With close cousins we could imagine some process to match neuron to neuron and project some of the patterns of electrical activity from one mind to another. (Although the variation in function of just human minds makes this idea limited.) Perhaps, rather than trying to find analogous structures, we should just expand our minds. Continue to think with our own bodies but then expand our awareness to include the other. (and do we notice that in doing this, their minds incorporate ours?)