Philosophical Question - Amiguing

[Linde]

Yes you will :p I think humans find themselves special, fantastic, and what not.

Oh, sorry. I actually meant the exact opposite of what I wrote

[Mrs Beanbag]

Interesting assertion. Tell me more - which ones? How have we discovered this?

Here's a famous one
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koko_%28gorilla%29

Also Elephants
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elephant_cognition

[ChaosLord]

Interesting assertion. Tell me more - which ones? How have we discovered this?

Chimpanzees which have been taught to understand English and/or sign language are a perfect example.

There's a lot of nice documentaries about it that you could watch like I did.  Or I am sure that there are lots of articles or books written about it.

I am also certain that dolphins, porpoises, killer whales can converse in both abstract and concrete concepts based upon watching their behavior.

I am also certain that lots of animals can think in abstract concepts but they lack the ability to communicate very well so most of their thoughts are trapped inside their brain.

Many animals can look at a problem and decide what tool they need and then they can go make that tool or find the tool and bring it to the problem and solve the problem with the tool.   Thus proving that humans are not the only "intelligent" species.

Humans are not the only species that communicates with sound waves.
Humans are not the only species that uses tools.
Humans are not the only species that farms.
Humans are not the only species that engages in organized warfare.
Humans are not the only species that can navigate from point A to point B using measurements of distance and angles of travel.
Humans are not the only species with Emotions.

I have performed many experiments which show that various animals and plants are more intelligent than 50% of humans.

The main thing that gives humans their advantages is their hands.  If Dolphins had hands then they would rule the world.

Various other animals do have nice hands but humans have larger brains than those other animals.

We also have an interesting mutation in our voicebox that gives us superior communication skills than any of the other animals with hands.  Our hands give us superior writing skills too, which helps us to pass knowledge from one point to another which allows a civilization to develop.

[EDanaII]

Speaking as the person who introduced the point of abstract thought as an ability special only to humans with this statement:

The ability to converse in abstract concepts, such as the above?

I, personally, would welcome Koko, any other gorillas, elephants, dolphins and what have you to join in the conversation to the degree it is being discussed here.

[Mrs Beanbag]

I have performed many experiments which show that various animals and plants are more intelligent than 50% of humans.

Did you get them to leave Youtube comments?

Someone was telling me the other day that one of the most important developments in human physiology is the shoulder. It means that we can throw things.

Crows are very intelligent, too. I'd love to know how a crow's mind works. Obviously their brains are physically quite small but amazingly effective nonetheless. They have been observed bending wires into shapes to solve puzzles, and various other things.

[ChaosLord]

Speaking as the person who introduced the point of abstract thought as an ability special only to humans with this statement:

I, personally, would welcome Koko, any other gorillas, elephants, dolphins and what have you to join in the conversation to the degree it is being discussed here.

Their superior intellect prevents them from doing silly nonsensical things like joining Amiga.org to talk to a bunch of us crazy humans

[commodorejohn]

There's a lot of nice documentaries about it that you could watch like I did.  Or I am sure that there are lots of articles or books written about it.

If you've watched them, you could just tell me the answer and save me the time...

I am also certain that dolphins, porpoises, killer whales can converse in both abstract and concrete concepts based upon watching their behavior.

I am also certain that lots of animals can think in abstract concepts but they lack the ability to communicate very well so most of their thoughts are trapped inside their brain.

I'm curious as to how you're so certain about this. Certainly you can conjecture about the possibility, and I can't say with any degree of certainty that you're wrong, but I'd like to hear your reasons.

Many animals can look at a problem and decide what tool they need and then they can go make that tool or find the tool and bring it to the problem and solve the problem with the tool.   Thus proving that humans are not the only "intelligent" species.

Humans are not the only species that communicates with sound waves.
Humans are not the only species that uses tools.
Humans are not the only species that farms.
Humans are not the only species that engages in organized warfare.
Humans are not the only species that can navigate from point A to point B using measurements of distance and angles of travel.
Humans are not the only species with Emotions.

I'm not disputing that. However, all of those are very concrete concepts, and not evidence of abstract thought.

The main thing that gives humans their advantages is their hands.  If Dolphins had hands then they would rule the world.

The thing is that you don't need hands and you don't need to accomplish world domination to demonstrate a human level of intelligence. Human amputees can do that. Do dolphins demonstrate abstract thought?

We also have an interesting mutation in our voicebox that gives us superior communication skills than any of the other animals with hands.  Our hands give us superior writing skills too, which helps us to pass knowledge from one point to another which allows a civilization to develop.

So you're claiming that certain animals can converse in abstract concepts, yet their communications are too limited to allow them to demonstrate human levels of intelligence? And you don't need writing to pass on a culture; civilization predates the invention of writing by at least 2,000 years, and various pre-literate civilizations have survived pretty much to the present day, or at least to within the last couple centuries. If dolphins were really that advanced, why could they not have developed a civilization using oral tradition? Humans can.

[paul1981]

Here's a famous one
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koko_%28gorilla%29

Also Elephants
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elephant_cognition

"The elephant has one of the most closely knit societies of any living  species. Elephant families can only be separated by death or capture. Cynthia Moss, an ethologist specialising in elephants, recalls an event involving a family of African elephants.  Two members of the family were shot by poachers, who were subsequently  chased off by the remaining elephants. Although one of the elephants  died, the other, named Tina, remained standing, but with knees beginning  to give way. Two family members, Trista and Teresia (Tina's mother),  walked to both sides of Tina and leaned in to hold her up. Eventually,  Tina grew so weak, she fell to the ground and died. However, Trista and  Teresia did not give up but continually tried to lift her. They managed  to get Tina into a sitting position, but her body was lifeless and fell  to the ground again. As the other elephant family members became more  intensely involved in the aid, they tried to put grass into Tina's  mouth. Teresia then put her tusks beneath Tina's head and front quarters  and proceeded to lift her. As she did so, her right tusk broke  completely off, right up to the lip and nerve cavity. The elephants gave  up trying to lift Tina but did not leave her; instead, they began to  bury her in a shallow grave and throw leaves over her body. They stood  over Tina for the night and then began to leave in the morning. The last  to leave was Teresia."

Thanks for sharing that Mrs Beanbag. One hell of a sad story.
Makes me wonder why there can't be a bit more love and respect amongst us Amiga.org members. All this falling out and bickering over (lets face it) irrelavent crap like how intelligent we think we are compared with other animals and why we still use our Amiga's, and which OS is the most customisable or whatever other crappy questions get asked. Why do elephants suck water into their trunks and blow it up in the air like a fountain? They do it for fun! Why do killer whales toss baby seals into the air before they eat them? That maybe for fun as well (we're not intelligent enough to answer that....ooh the irony).

And then here in this thread we're talking about creation and the universe, almost as if one day we'll some how understand the answer to it. Well that's bull, there's just no way we'll ever understand how our universe came about. It's like trying to teach a sparrow long division.... no matter how much tuition the sparrow receives I can assure you it just ISN'T going to happen.
They'll be beings out there though somewhere (in the infinite vastness of space) with intelligence of many orders of magnitude above our own, maybe even millions of times more intelligent. They will get much closer to the answer than we ever will. Lets say for arguments sake, this superior being (or computer even) actually figured it out and told us the answer.... well, the truth is we wouldn't and could never ever understand the answer... we just don't have the mental capactity.

[Yart]

After seeing a lot of posts about "pure nostalgia", I think I'm gonna throw a bit of a twist or spin in this thread.

I'm completely new to the Amiga. I don't even own one. I've simply only recently started emulating it for not even a full year now and I find it incredibly charming. There really is something magical about this machine that's drawing me in.

No nostalgia here. Although I am a C64 guy, so I'm thinking that might contribute a bit to it. Though, the games I've played have something to them that I love. That rough "home made" quality in a time when people were still experimenting and just making things they wanted to make because it was cool to them, or they were young and they just wanted to share those dreams and ideas in some form or another with others from the comfort of their bedrooms. It's very heartwarming indeed.

It's definitely got something special about it, and I could see myself using an Amiga a lot if I got one in this day and age. It was from a time when imagination and wonder was still strong, and seeing the Amiga embrace that and fully encourage it, that is hugely intriguing to me.

[Thorham]

we just don't have the mental capactity.

We don't... now. I don't think we're going to be stuck in these human bodies for all eternity, so that problem is going to get solved, and it's not going to take a million years either. The problem is with knowing everything there is to know: You can never know if there isn't still more to know.

[Linde]

I find it hard to believe that any sentient being could somehow have non-abstract thoughts. Down to the very basics of language and cognition, everything we know is abstract concepts. Nobody has an immediate and intuitive understanding of the underlying processes.

That aside, you have to draw the line somewhere. I have seen a video if a crow picking up a piece of metal and bend it into a hook in order to obtain food. The bird was able to recognize the piece of metal as not only that, but a potential tool. The bird figuring that out on its own is evidence of abstract thought, if anything.

I've seen another video of a pigeon, that in order to grab a fruit out of its reach within an enclosed area too small to gain flight in, pushed a box underneath the fruit and stepped onto it. That way, it was able to eat the fruit. Seeing the fruit and the box, it was able to conceive a solution.

There's another story of an experiment with chimpanzees which I'm not sure is true or not (the description of it usually comes in the form of a badly compressed jpg forwarded by an old person). In the experiment, they put a few chimps in a cage with a banana. If any of them tried to take it, they would all be punished. After having figured that out, they stopped trying. Then a new chimp was let into the cage, not knowing the consequences of trying to take the banana. When it tried, the other chimpanzees beat it up.

This was repeated while the original chimps were replaced one by one. At some point, none of the chimps had experienced the initial punishment, but they would all beat up whatever new chimp would try to take the banana.

I'm not sure what exactly it would prove, but it's interesting.

[commodorejohn]

The chimp experiment (which I've heard before, though like you I don't know exactly how true it is) would only prove that they have the capacity to impart learned behavior to each other - which I don't think anybody was disputing. Plenty of critters can do that.

As for toolmaking...as you say, it depends on where you draw the line, but to my way of thinking that's still a practical, concrete notion. It certainly is impressive that the crow can recognize something's potential as a tool, but I don't think it proves anything about whether they are capable of considering more abstract issues. "Can I use this to get food?" is a lot more of a concrete question than "is what I'm doing right?" or "where do we go when we die?" or what-have-you.

[Linde]

As for toolmaking...as you say, it depends on where you draw the line, but to my way of thinking that's still a practical, concrete notion. It certainly is impressive that the crow can recognize something's potential as a tool, but I don't think it proves anything about whether they are capable of considering more abstract issues. "Can I use this to get food?" is a lot more of a concrete question than "is what I'm doing right?" or "where do we go when we die?" or what-have-you.

It's a practical idea, but abstract in its conception nonetheless in that the bird not only took its exact circumstances into consideration, but was also able to form the idea of itself using the metal piece as a hook in the future, before deliberately realizing it. As far as I know, that's quite a few levels of abstracttion beyond a dog going after a ball, for example, or a cat opening a door after having observed a human doing it. We probably both agree with all of this so far, but as I said, my position is that any thought is abstract, and unless we are talking about a very specific level of abstraction there is nothing to argue about.

[EDanaII]

As I've pointed out, it's a question of degree. As John has pointed out, where do you draw the line? The practical use of a tool as described might be a level of abstraction, but it's only one level removed from the practical.

Now, how many birds can understand the abstract concepts of logic gates and computer buses as a method of communication between devices designed to perform functions not found in the natural world? How many birds can understand the concept of a modem, or envision an array capable of arranging pixels that use photons against a photosensitive surface to display symbols that represent the phonemes emitted by a species to convey the very concepts we are discussing now?

Only one known species has this ability and it comes from their ability to abstract to a level that no other creature can.

For the first time in the history of life, a species now has the ability to not only understand itself, but the ability to control it's destiny unlike any before it.

If that ain't special, I don't know what is.

[SysAdmin]

The chimp experiment (which I've heard before, though like you I don't know exactly how true it is) would only prove that they have the capacity to impart learned behavior to each other - which I don't think anybody was disputing. Plenty of critters can do that.

As for toolmaking...as you say, it depends on where you draw the line, but to my way of thinking that's still a practical, concrete notion. It certainly is impressive that the crow can recognize something's potential as a tool, but I don't think it proves anything about whether they are capable of considering more abstract issues. "Can I use this to get food?" is a lot more of a concrete question than "is what I'm doing right?" or "where do we go when we die?" or what-have-you.

One such chimp experiment ultimately showed that the chimp was a very good mimic of human behavior. As he got older they were not able to teach him not to display aggressive behavior.

http://www.npr.org/2011/07/20/138467156/project-nim-a-chimps-very-human-very-sad-life

[slayer]

Exactly. There's this notion that anybody who prefers older things can only be doing so out of irrational nostalgia, because...blind faith that new is always inherently better than old, I guess. Question society's blind devotion to Progress (and they always confuse mere motion with real progress,) and you're just some stupid romantic who must be afraid of change! Certainly it can't possibly be that you actually, honestly believe that a newer development is a step backwards or anything.

Same reason I don't call my A500-A4000 Amigas Retro machines; I call them older Amiga models.