Early meditations on Mind

[Payne]

You thought I was flaming you ?? 

Holy shit you better hope I never do.

Anyroad, read my post again, I think I made my stance perfectly clear. What you refer to as "when an animal goes out of its way to avoid doing as it's told" I refer to as "the animal has no idea it's being told to do anything"

Under this pretext the human barking out the orders merely becomes another obstacle which the cat will have to circumvent in order to achieve its immediate goal.

I compared this to a dog, not because I think dogs are in some way better than cats but because a dog will respond differently and it's a good example to use - the reason the dog will attempt to obey orders is because it's hardwired to follow the commands of the pack leader. This is a gross oversimplification but, as a general rule, it works quite nicely.

If you really want to see a cat follow an order then use the "Freeze!" command and pick it up by the scruff of the neck. Cats are programmed to obey this order, although the verbal component is optional.

TITCM.

Especially the first two sentences.

My cat is actually incredibly well behaved in one respect though; I never feed her from my plate or anywhere else except her food bowl. And she never tries to get up into your food while you're eating it. I don't think this is so much training as it is setting her expectations very low from a young age, though.

[Rococo Modem Basilisk]

I meant going out of its way to disobey in terms of using enginuity to avoid doing what would be far easier (obeying). If you tell a cat to get out of the room, and then shoo it out, it won't just go out, it will find a way to avoid going out, or will find a way to open the door and get back in. If you don't shoo it out, it will just open the door and leave by itself. In that context, obeying is easier than disobeying.

But just in general, I think needless rebellion is a force for increased intelligence rather than decreased, since in a pack system wherein the orders come down and should be obeyed, only the head of the pack is doing much actual thinking most of the time. In a context with a natural tendency towards rebellion rather than towards obeying, in order to survive while not obeying, one must be more clever to figure out how to get the desired outcome without doing the desired actions. Is it easier to memorize a document, or design an elaborate rube goldberg device to allow you to cheat and see the document? Which type of intelligence is more useful?

[Payne]

I think you've got that the wrong way round.

In a brain adapted to hunting things down alone (without co-operation from a pack), "Rebellion" is more likely. It's not so much rebellion as it is just individuality though. Cats seriously believe they are the absolute centre of the universe and everything revolves around them. They are driven only by their own instincts and curiosity and their own needs.

For "pack" intelligence, it is indeed much more likely that hierarchical needs will over ride individual ones (within reason) as what is good for the pack is good for the individual.

I don't think we can really expect to gain too much that is useful from this line of enquiry though, our brains are wired for "pack" intelligence, they evolved as tools to make co-operation in a group more efficient. We can change little bits here and there, but to make any REAL change we'd have to transplant our brains.

[P3nT4gR4m]

I have to admit the whole cat thing is a bit of a hobby horse of mine. I've mentioned this before but I'm sure the problem comes because cats will ignore you and it's easier to project wilfulness upon them, whereas a dog will try to work out what you want it to do and give it a go, inevitably fucking it up completely and therefore appearing dumb.

I'm sure this is why cat owners come up with these pathetic fucking stories about what their cat did and make it sound as if the dumb little bastard was hatching a masterplan.

You know how BMW gets when people start spouting pseudoscience? Well I'm like that with animal psychology. I'm not an expert but it is an interest of mine and I know the basics so when I hear someone going on about how "tiddles has a mind of his own" and other such bullshit I'm compelled to smash them in the face until they shut up.

Of course I'm just waiting for the first person to jump on this thread with 'evidence' that their little "Fluffycunt" is the exception to this rule as inevitably happens. Cat hyperintelligence is, at best, an optical illusion and, at worst, the dumbest form of pseudoscience that ever existed. In fact I'm not sure if it even qualifies as pseudoscience, more just a case of living in cloud bloody cuckoo land.

[Rococo Modem Basilisk]

I guess what I'm saying is that taking orders is easier than avoiding them, given the same end result. It provides a greater challenge, and requires a bit more inventive cleverness.

On a mildly related note, some food for thought:

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/04/16/070416fa_fact_colapinto

ne morning last July, in the rain forest of northwestern Brazil, Dan Everett, an American linguistics professor, and I stepped from the pontoon of a Cessna floatplane onto the beach bordering the Maici River, a narrow, sharply meandering tributary of the Amazon. On the bank above us were some thirty people—short, dark-skinned men, women, and children—some clutching bows and arrows, others with infants on their hips. The people, members of a hunter-gatherer tribe called the Pirahã, responded to the sight of Everett—a solidly built man of fifty-five with a red beard and the booming voice of a former evangelical minister—with a greeting that sounded like a profusion of exotic songbirds, a melodic chattering scarcely discernible, to the uninitiated, as human speech. Unrelated to any other extant tongue, and based on just eight consonants and three vowels, Pirahã has one of the simplest sound systems known. Yet it possesses such a complex array of tones, stresses, and syllable lengths that its speakers can dispense with their vowels and consonants altogether and sing, hum, or whistle conversations. It is a language so confounding to non-natives that until Everett and his wife, Keren, arrived among the Pirahã, as Christian missionaries, in the nineteen-seventies, no outsider had succeeded in mastering it. Everett eventually abandoned Christianity, but he and Keren have spent the past thirty years, on and off, living with the tribe, and in that time they have learned Pirahã as no other Westerners have.

"Xaói hi gáísai xigíaihiabisaoaxái ti xabiíhai hiatíihi xigío hoíhi," Everett said in the tongue's choppy staccato, introducing me as someone who would be "staying for a short time" in the village. The men and women answered in an echoing chorus, "Xaói hi goó kaisigíaihí xapagáiso."

Everett turned to me. "They want to know what you're called in 'crooked head.' "

"Crooked head" is the tribe's term for any language that is not Pirahã, and it is a clear pejorative. The Pirahã consider all forms of human discourse other than their own to be laughably inferior, and they are unique among Amazonian peoples in remaining monolingual. They playfully tossed my name back and forth among themselves, altering it slightly with each reiteration, until it became an unrecognizable syllable. They never uttered it again, but instead gave me a lilting Pirahã name: Kaaxáoi, that of a Pirahã man, from a village downriver, whom they thought I resembled. "That's completely consistent with my main thesis about the tribe," Everett told me later. "They reject everything from outside their world. They just don't want it, and it's been that way since the day the Brazilians first found them in this jungle in the seventeen-hundreds."

[Payne]

I have to admit the whole cat thing is a bit of a hobby horse of mine. I've mentioned this before but I'm sure the problem comes because cats will ignore you and it's easier to project wilfulness upon them, whereas a dog will try to work out what you want it to do and give it a go, inevitably fucking it up completely and therefore appearing dumb.

I'm sure this is why cat owners come up with these pathetic fucking stories about what their cat did and make it sound as if the dumb little bastard was hatching a masterplan.

You know how BMW gets when people start spouting pseudoscience? Well I'm like that with animal psychology. I'm not an expert but it is an interest of mine and I know the basics so when I hear someone going on about how "tiddles has a mind of his own" and other such bullshit I'm compelled to smash them in the face until they shut up.

Of course I'm just waiting for the first person to jump on this thread with 'evidence' that their little "Fluffycunt" is the exception to this rule as inevitably happens. Cat hyperintelligence is, at best, an optical illusion and, at worst, the dumbest form of pseudoscience that ever existed. In fact I'm not sure if it even qualifies as pseudoscience, more just a case of living in cloud bloody cuckoo land.

lail.

That's an unexpected button to find.

But seriously. MY CAT CAN FLY! And she can do the TIMES CROSSWORD!

AT THE SAME TIME!!

[Kai]

This thread is great. Also, I agree with everything Pent and Payne are saying about animal psychology in this thread. The reason cats seem so rebellious is because in their ansestoral form they were solitary. Solitary animals have survivals based only on their own merits and do not have social behavior, therefore they seem rebellious, but they aren't really rebelling against anything. Dogs, on the other hand, have an ansestoral form which was (and still is) a pack animal with very hierarchical social behavior. If you DON'T give a dog a pack like situation in which they are the omega and you are the alpha, they will walk all over you. As soon as you assert yourself as their alpha they are easier to train.

[P3nT4gR4m]

This thread is great. Also, I agree with everything Pent and Payne are saying about animal psychology in this thread. The reason cats seem so rebellious is because in their ansestoral form they were solitary. Solitary animals have survivals based only on their own merits and do not have social behavior, therefore they seem rebellious, but they aren't really rebelling against anything. Dogs, on the other hand, have an ansestoral form which was (and still is) a pack animal with very hierarchical social behavior. If you DON'T give a dog a pack like situation in which they are the omega and you are the alpha, they will walk all over you. As soon as you assert yourself as their alpha they are easier to train.

I should point out that it isn't only cat owners who exhibit the attitude/belief system I outlined above. This also applies to owners of "small yappy-type dogs" who treat their beast as some kind of surrogate child. You can spot them a mile off because the animal is usually carried in public and often wearing some form of designer garment to keep it's fur warm. These pet owners annoy the living piss out of me too. And their animals are usually ill tempered and aggressive, right up until I assert my alpha dominance over the little bastards.

The reason the cat owners bug me slightly more is because their canine coddling counterparts are usually, quite evidently, total fuckheads but a lot of people who I would ordinarily have a lot of respect for seem to become gibbering fannypads when presented with the fools gold of feline genius.

While we are on the subject of animal intellect, tho, what's your take on the debate BMW? Do you think it's a clear cut case of only humans possess the higher faculty of "self awareness/abstract thought" or, like me, do you have it on a sliding scale? Has any conclusive evidence been presented either way since I last heard of the "Washo" primate language studies?

[Kai]

I think I don't know enough about it to really make any statements about it, besides knowing there are mammals and birds that are self aware, and apes that are capable of tool making and "simple need" communication through ASL. I don't have a clue if they are capable of the complex abstract thought processes we are or not. I do believe there are less degrees of separation than most people think between great apes such as chimpanzees, orangutans, and gorillas and humans.

[Rococo Modem Basilisk]

I think I don't know enough about it to really make any statements about it, besides knowing there are mammals and birds that are self aware, and apes that are capable of tool making and "simple need" communication through ASL. I don't have a clue if they are capable of the complex abstract thought processes we are or not. I do believe there are less degrees of separation than most people think between great apes such as chimpanzees, orangutans, and gorillas and humans.

I'm pretty sure that cats don't have complex language. It all seems to be variations on "not want", "can has", and "yaaay", along with the ability to point at things. Sort of like music. I don't think dogs do any better, though. I've only heard variations of "give me" and "go away" from them.

[Manta Obscura]

I think I don't know enough about it to really make any statements about it, besides knowing there are mammals and birds that are self aware, and apes that are capable of tool making and "simple need" communication through ASL. I don't have a clue if they are capable of the complex abstract thought processes we are or not. I do believe there are less degrees of separation than most people think between great apes such as chimpanzees, orangutans, and gorillas and humans.

I'm pretty sure that cats don't have complex language. It all seems to be variations on "not want", "can has", and "yaaay", along with the ability to point at things. Sort of like music. I don't think dogs do any better, though. I've only heard variations of "give me" and "go away" from them.

I'm seriously not trying to belittle you or your point or anything here, Enki, but how the hell is that like music?

[P3nT4gR4m]

I think I don't know enough about it to really make any statements about it, besides knowing there are mammals and birds that are self aware, and apes that are capable of tool making and "simple need" communication through ASL. I don't have a clue if they are capable of the complex abstract thought processes we are or not. I do believe there are less degrees of separation than most people think between great apes such as chimpanzees, orangutans, and gorillas and humans.

I'm pretty sure that cats don't have complex language. It all seems to be variations on "not want", "can has", and "yaaay", along with the ability to point at things. Sort of like music. I don't think dogs do any better, though. I've only heard variations of "give me" and "go away" from them.

I'm seriously not trying to belittle you or your point or anything here, Enki, but how the hell is that like music?

You ever hear a noob playing violin? 

[Manta Obscura]

I think I don't know enough about it to really make any statements about it, besides knowing there are mammals and birds that are self aware, and apes that are capable of tool making and "simple need" communication through ASL. I don't have a clue if they are capable of the complex abstract thought processes we are or not. I do believe there are less degrees of separation than most people think between great apes such as chimpanzees, orangutans, and gorillas and humans.

I'm pretty sure that cats don't have complex language. It all seems to be variations on "not want", "can has", and "yaaay", along with the ability to point at things. Sort of like music. I don't think dogs do any better, though. I've only heard variations of "give me" and "go away" from them.

I'm seriously not trying to belittle you or your point or anything here, Enki, but how the hell is that like music?

You ever hear a noob playing violin? 

Unfortunately, yes. *shudder* But that sounded more like a human-sized cicada being tortured to death with a hot knife, rather than 'variations on "not want", "can has", and "yaaay", along with the ability to point at things'.

[Kai]

 

[Rococo Modem Basilisk]

I think I don't know enough about it to really make any statements about it, besides knowing there are mammals and birds that are self aware, and apes that are capable of tool making and "simple need" communication through ASL. I don't have a clue if they are capable of the complex abstract thought processes we are or not. I do believe there are less degrees of separation than most people think between great apes such as chimpanzees, orangutans, and gorillas and humans.

I'm pretty sure that cats don't have complex language. It all seems to be variations on "not want", "can has", and "yaaay", along with the ability to point at things. Sort of like music. I don't think dogs do any better, though. I've only heard variations of "give me" and "go away" from them.

I'm seriously not trying to belittle you or your point or anything here, Enki, but how the hell is that like music?

I consider it to be kind of like how meaning is transferred in baroque music (and moreso in Beethoven's orchestra pieces), except super-simplified -- you have a relatively small number of individual discrete melodies, each with a certain meaning, with slight variations to indicate intensity. It can be syncopated impatiently, the volume can be raised, the frequency can be changed, the whole thing can be warped or made to wobble around on the scale, and you can combine more than one at once. In this case, you have variations on three melodies (not want, can has, and yaay), and the variations include body movements.