The setup is transparent plexiglass. I suspect a bit of Clever Hans effect here. The parrot may share its token to appease the researcher (who they've learned controls the food), not the other parrot.
It's quite unfortunate that they didn't test this when both parrots' food holes are open. Nor did the "middleman parrot" appear to share its walnuts back the other way.
Then again, given that these are Ivy League parrots there is a solid chance at least one of them has read Das Kapital (and can repeat it back better than most students!)
I wasn't aware ETH Zürich was considered the Ivy League!
But all jokes aside I think you should give these professionals a little more credit--they also factored that possibility into their experimental design and included tests for "useless" token transfers [0]. While parrots would often transfer tokens to empty compartments (for when they knew their neighbor was missing and lacked tokens), these same parrots did not when there was a completely empty partition [1]. Further even the article notes they didn't just hand out tokens automatically or willy-nilly, but were more or less willing depending on the bond.
Personally I think the most interesting thing about the study is not that non-mammalian animals have the capacity for altruism or prosocial behaviors, but that Blue Headed Macaws (despite being extremely intelligent as well) were not willing and the difference is that their general populations form smaller (though equally cohesive) flocks compared to AGPs.
EDIT: and the reason why they used tokens vs direct walnut transfer is that these birds were trained in a prior experiment (with an equally interesting premise) [2]
I thought the same; to actually prove those birds are willing to give away their tokens and loose out on walnuts in the process, they should have been granted the option to trade their tokens themselves.
The way the experiment was carried out seems to be based on lots of brittle assumptions…
Good link! I'm familiar with Frans de Waal. Perhaps I'm a primate chauvinist, but I'm less skeptical of ascriptions of anthropomorphic social behavior in chimps than in parrots.
Unlike the "altruistic" parrots, chimps are very aware when their neighbor gets a treat and they don't--and they get enraged!
I felt the same way. If they don't share walnuts directly then that's not what they're intending to do. They likely see a local lack of value to the rings, meaning seeing them exchanged satisfies curiousity but perhaps not seen as being socially benevolent (although it might, I don't discount entirely)
We have an African Grey parrot - my daughter said she was in the room and he was busy eating and dropped some food on the ground - he looked at it then vocalized "bye bye".
We say "bye bye" to him whenever we leave the house.
Another one is the phrase "kom kom" (come here) whenever he is outside on his perch and we want him to come inside.
He then started using the phrase "kom kom" with my wife when he wants to be picked up by her.
A fascinating article that once again demonstrates we are just barely scratching the surface when it comes to understanding the intelligence, let alone the lived experience, of other animals.
This reminds me of the recent debate we were having here regarding the conclusion in the UK that lobsters are sentient beings and therefore should be treated with some minimal amount of consideration. A common argument made by those who argued they should not, or should not be placed into a similar category as octopuses, is that lobsters are neuronally less complex than other beings. But here we see that these birds, which also have fewer neurons than other animals we consider to be more “advanced”, are capable of remarkably complex behaviours that hint at an interior life we simply do not understand.
We’ve poured money into SETI to try and answer the anguished question, are we alone? Well, it seems that we aren’t, but we might be too stupid and self-absorbed to notice.
> We’ve poured money into SETI to try and answer the anguished question, are we alone? Well, it seems that we aren’t, but we might be too stupid and self-absorbed to notice.
There was an episode of the second season of the new "Cosmos" where they looked at SETI.
One of the points of the episode was that we might be looking right at intelligent life and not even recognize it. We tend to only see intelligence when it comes from an individual organism with a brain. We tend to dismiss or not even consider other ways there might be intelligence and gave a couple examples from here on Earth.
One example was bees. A bee hive as a group exhibits intelligent-like behavior beyond what an individual bee is capable of.
Another example was forests. Underground in forests there is a vast network of mycelium linking the plants together. When something bad happens to a tree that gets communicated through the mycelium network to other trees and they react making changes to better cope with the threat. It operates very similarly to a nervous system for the whole forest, but much slower than animal nervous systems.
If most intelligence in the universe is hive minds or is big slow brains like planet-spanning mycelium networks we might completely overlook it.
"If most intelligence in the universe is hive minds or is big slow brains like planet-spanning mycelium networks we might completely overlook it."
Or intelligent life made up off entirely other principles(and with very different goals to survive), than what we know. Do we understand what is going on inside of jupiter? Or inside the sun? Maybe there is life, that starts to evolve at certain pressures and temperatures? Well, maybe not likely, but I am glad, that the self centered philosophy, that the sun and the whole universe all are moving around us humans who are on top of it all, fades a bit more. I mean, we clearly are awesome at technology and so far we have not seen much technology from any other species. But maybe very advanced life has no need for our tech anymore, so we would not spot it, by looking for it.
I think when we talk about finding intelligent life, what we really mean is "intelligent life on other planets". We know there's intelligence here on earth in those examples you describe. But what of it? We are already studying those things and trying to understand them. What's groundbreaking is not that there is intelligent life, but that there might be on different planets.
There are two ways to approach such findings. One is to think of birds/lobsters/octopuses as more cognitively complex, intelligent and such. The other is to think of ourselves as less so.
Sometimes the latter probably is more true.
By way of analogy... When I was a pup studying philosophy, we studied the "other minds problem." How do we know what others feel and experience? Are we sure they're not faking it? How well can we understand another's mind? It's an old problem, and the philosophical tradition of questions, answers and arguments are rather old and formulaic.
I think newer thinking, both scientific and philosophical, tends to reverse the "problem." We understand others by forming a mental model of them, narrated with feelings and experiences. This is a lot like we understand ourselves.
We really do understand ourselves much like we understand others. Same mechanisms, more or less, I think. Mental model of a person + constant narratives to explain choices, feelings and such.
You can either think of this as a solution to the "other minds problem" or a further problem.
We tend to not have mental models of others at all. Our brains run "flat" copies of ourselves and any deviation from that model, results in discomfort and categorization as either "inferior" or "superior" depending on visible outcome of actions. The effect of "genius" is, that seemingly stupid choices by others result in perceivable good outcomes, without us having a mental model to fill that gap.
So we do not have mental models for others- at all. We have a world filled with copies of ourselves and at best a zoe of heuristics and anecdata, were the "other" begins and ends.
The closest you get to having a real mental model- is a longterm relationship and getting to know that partner really well. And even then..
Poured money into SETI? Which money is that? SETI hasn't recieved meaningful public funding for a long while, decades. As a species, we spend more on makeup glitter than we do on searching for extraterrestrial intelligence.
The vast majority of seti is about combing through data from other projects. Basically zero telescope time is used for actually looking. Every candidate signal (ie BLC1) is discovered after the event. And zero telescopes are actively listening for repeat signals.
Several people have objected to my use of the phrase "poured money into SETI". To clarify:
1. I agree that "poured" is an overstatement (and I support spending more!)
2. However, by "SETI" I did not mean NASA's SETI program but more broadly, programs and research with the goal of finding extraterrestrial life and then subsequently, extraterrestrial intelligence. Do the Mars rovers, for example, fit into this broader SETI category? It's debatable.
What I was really referring to, however, is our myopia when it comes to seeking evidence that we aren't alone. Imagine we did receive a radio transmission from outer space. How much money would we spend on understanding it, and the beings that sent it? I'd wager the sums would be vast.
Meanwhile, there are apparently only ten vaquitas (a species of porpoise) left in the world. Science was unaware of this species until 1958. We know cetaceans are incredibly intelligent, but what if vaquitas are far more intelligent than we suspect? I expect that what we don't know about them far outweighs what we do. What if they, or some other species we've either destroyed or almost destroyed, are the "aliens" we're looking for?
I know this seems like a stretch, but just how confident are we about this? If you look at what we've learned about animals in the past century, how much more might we learn in the next ten centuries? How much would we have learned had we not killed them?
And plants too, we do not see in this way. I am reading Overstory, from Richard Powers. Apart from bring beautiful stories, it shows how plants are not too different, when looked at a different timescale.
I believe we consider more advanced what looks more like us (dog yes, insect no).
For SETI to be safe, first we must ensure we are safe! And that requires funding, funding into the military, to test, and develop our weaponry, our soldiers, to ensure that when those alien hordes hear our signals, we are ready for them!!
You don't want to destroy us all, to give in to those evil, ungodly alien hordes, do you Mr President?
Another problem is when people argue based off words rather than knowledge of the subject.
The differences between the meager number of neurons and simple layout in a lobster and the extremely large and complex nervous system of an octopus are in no way comparable to the differences in nervous system complexity between a human and a bird. A lobster literally can be understood. It's nervous system is that simple, only ~100,000 neurons in small groups (less than a fruit fly!). There is very little mystery in it's operation. It is feasibly enumberable, developmentally predictable, and it's parts are knowable in function. It is not conscious like a mammal, bird, or octopus is conscious.
Bird and human brains are of a similar order of complexity. Complex enough we can't even begin to hope to understand the functioning yet.
> It is not conscious like a mammal, bird, or octopus is conscious.
I do not see how you could know this, because consciousness and how it forms is exceptionally poorly understood. If in the past two years major breakthroughs have happened on this subject I would love to read about it. Perhaps you can point me in the right direction.
What proof do you have that enumeration of function is equivalent to understanding? If I encounter a building-size device filled with large cogs and two stones, I can’t immediately tell from looking at it whether its purpose is to grind apples or wheat. So I’m not sure you can say that an animal is or isn’t sentient based on the organization of its cells.
there's a certain type of person who are big fans of SETI type projects. They're quick to say that if there's a mars colony, they'd go in an instant. But this type rarely ventures out from the warmth of their computer den. They never go mountain climbing or scuba diving or even camping. They get out of breath from walking from their car to the doritos section at the store. I think this type of person just wants fantasy.
> We’ve poured money into SETI to try and answer the anguished question, are we alone? Well, it seems that we aren’t, but we might be too stupid and self-absorbed to notice.
We seriously underestimate other animals' intelligence, but until some other animal on earth puts a flag on the moon, it's safe to say that no other animal on Earth shares our unique brand of intelligence.
I don't believe that necessarily follows. How much of what we are is a product of what we've built up? Take all that away and revert humanity to its pre-civilization state. To an outside observer, would we obviously be capable of one day going to the moon?
What's so special about the moon? I say no life should be considered intelligent until they can swim down the Marianas Trench and carve their initials in the wall.
I'm going to echo here that this is categorically false. All government funding for SETI was canceled in 1993. So, unless you believe zero dollars is pouring money into SETI, this is misinformation.
I'd say SETI is worth the effort. In the unlikely event we found another civilization, it would be the death blow to any religion who professes we alone were created, and in God's image. In one fell swoop, SETI could've been a Galileo or Copernicus and advanced rationality a century or two against the forces of mythology and religious superstition.
The experiments were done with African grey parrots, reminding me of another member of that species, Alex the Parrot [1]. Alex was taught patiently over many years with very intriguing results showing that Alex could communicate with his human handlers.
Readit News
It's quite unfortunate that they didn't test this when both parrots' food holes are open. Nor did the "middleman parrot" appear to share its walnuts back the other way.
Then again, given that these are Ivy League parrots there is a solid chance at least one of them has read Das Kapital (and can repeat it back better than most students!)
But all jokes aside I think you should give these professionals a little more credit--they also factored that possibility into their experimental design and included tests for "useless" token transfers [0]. While parrots would often transfer tokens to empty compartments (for when they knew their neighbor was missing and lacked tokens), these same parrots did not when there was a completely empty partition [1]. Further even the article notes they didn't just hand out tokens automatically or willy-nilly, but were more or less willing depending on the bond.
Personally I think the most interesting thing about the study is not that non-mammalian animals have the capacity for altruism or prosocial behaviors, but that Blue Headed Macaws (despite being extremely intelligent as well) were not willing and the difference is that their general populations form smaller (though equally cohesive) flocks compared to AGPs.
EDIT: and the reason why they used tokens vs direct walnut transfer is that these birds were trained in a prior experiment (with an equally interesting premise) [2]
[0] https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(19)... [1] https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(19)... [2] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-30933-5
"Useless tokens"... there's another joke about NFTs in there somewhere.
Unlike the "altruistic" parrots, chimps are very aware when their neighbor gets a treat and they don't--and they get enraged!
We say "bye bye" to him whenever we leave the house.
Another one is the phrase "kom kom" (come here) whenever he is outside on his perch and we want him to come inside.
He then started using the phrase "kom kom" with my wife when he wants to be picked up by her.
This reminds me of the recent debate we were having here regarding the conclusion in the UK that lobsters are sentient beings and therefore should be treated with some minimal amount of consideration. A common argument made by those who argued they should not, or should not be placed into a similar category as octopuses, is that lobsters are neuronally less complex than other beings. But here we see that these birds, which also have fewer neurons than other animals we consider to be more “advanced”, are capable of remarkably complex behaviours that hint at an interior life we simply do not understand.
We’ve poured money into SETI to try and answer the anguished question, are we alone? Well, it seems that we aren’t, but we might be too stupid and self-absorbed to notice.
There was an episode of the second season of the new "Cosmos" where they looked at SETI.
One of the points of the episode was that we might be looking right at intelligent life and not even recognize it. We tend to only see intelligence when it comes from an individual organism with a brain. We tend to dismiss or not even consider other ways there might be intelligence and gave a couple examples from here on Earth.
One example was bees. A bee hive as a group exhibits intelligent-like behavior beyond what an individual bee is capable of.
Another example was forests. Underground in forests there is a vast network of mycelium linking the plants together. When something bad happens to a tree that gets communicated through the mycelium network to other trees and they react making changes to better cope with the threat. It operates very similarly to a nervous system for the whole forest, but much slower than animal nervous systems.
If most intelligence in the universe is hive minds or is big slow brains like planet-spanning mycelium networks we might completely overlook it.
Or intelligent life made up off entirely other principles(and with very different goals to survive), than what we know. Do we understand what is going on inside of jupiter? Or inside the sun? Maybe there is life, that starts to evolve at certain pressures and temperatures? Well, maybe not likely, but I am glad, that the self centered philosophy, that the sun and the whole universe all are moving around us humans who are on top of it all, fades a bit more. I mean, we clearly are awesome at technology and so far we have not seen much technology from any other species. But maybe very advanced life has no need for our tech anymore, so we would not spot it, by looking for it.
I suppose an advanced civilization between planets or even stars might have migrated off radio signals though.
Sometimes the latter probably is more true.
By way of analogy... When I was a pup studying philosophy, we studied the "other minds problem." How do we know what others feel and experience? Are we sure they're not faking it? How well can we understand another's mind? It's an old problem, and the philosophical tradition of questions, answers and arguments are rather old and formulaic.
I think newer thinking, both scientific and philosophical, tends to reverse the "problem." We understand others by forming a mental model of them, narrated with feelings and experiences. This is a lot like we understand ourselves.
We really do understand ourselves much like we understand others. Same mechanisms, more or less, I think. Mental model of a person + constant narratives to explain choices, feelings and such.
You can either think of this as a solution to the "other minds problem" or a further problem.
We tend to not have mental models of others at all. Our brains run "flat" copies of ourselves and any deviation from that model, results in discomfort and categorization as either "inferior" or "superior" depending on visible outcome of actions. The effect of "genius" is, that seemingly stupid choices by others result in perceivable good outcomes, without us having a mental model to fill that gap.
So we do not have mental models for others- at all. We have a world filled with copies of ourselves and at best a zoe of heuristics and anecdata, were the "other" begins and ends.
The closest you get to having a real mental model- is a longterm relationship and getting to know that partner really well. And even then..
The vast majority of seti is about combing through data from other projects. Basically zero telescope time is used for actually looking. Every candidate signal (ie BLC1) is discovered after the event. And zero telescopes are actively listening for repeat signals.
1. I agree that "poured" is an overstatement (and I support spending more!)
2. However, by "SETI" I did not mean NASA's SETI program but more broadly, programs and research with the goal of finding extraterrestrial life and then subsequently, extraterrestrial intelligence. Do the Mars rovers, for example, fit into this broader SETI category? It's debatable.
What I was really referring to, however, is our myopia when it comes to seeking evidence that we aren't alone. Imagine we did receive a radio transmission from outer space. How much money would we spend on understanding it, and the beings that sent it? I'd wager the sums would be vast.
Meanwhile, there are apparently only ten vaquitas (a species of porpoise) left in the world. Science was unaware of this species until 1958. We know cetaceans are incredibly intelligent, but what if vaquitas are far more intelligent than we suspect? I expect that what we don't know about them far outweighs what we do. What if they, or some other species we've either destroyed or almost destroyed, are the "aliens" we're looking for?
I know this seems like a stretch, but just how confident are we about this? If you look at what we've learned about animals in the past century, how much more might we learn in the next ten centuries? How much would we have learned had we not killed them?
I believe we consider more advanced what looks more like us (dog yes, insect no).
Poured is a gross overstatement.
For SETI to be safe, first we must ensure we are safe! And that requires funding, funding into the military, to test, and develop our weaponry, our soldiers, to ensure that when those alien hordes hear our signals, we are ready for them!!
You don't want to destroy us all, to give in to those evil, ungodly alien hordes, do you Mr President?
Do you?!
Soon...
Military funding approved!
The differences between the meager number of neurons and simple layout in a lobster and the extremely large and complex nervous system of an octopus are in no way comparable to the differences in nervous system complexity between a human and a bird. A lobster literally can be understood. It's nervous system is that simple, only ~100,000 neurons in small groups (less than a fruit fly!). There is very little mystery in it's operation. It is feasibly enumberable, developmentally predictable, and it's parts are knowable in function. It is not conscious like a mammal, bird, or octopus is conscious.
Bird and human brains are of a similar order of complexity. Complex enough we can't even begin to hope to understand the functioning yet.
I do not see how you could know this, because consciousness and how it forms is exceptionally poorly understood. If in the past two years major breakthroughs have happened on this subject I would love to read about it. Perhaps you can point me in the right direction.
Birds have more neurons than you think
We seriously underestimate other animals' intelligence, but until some other animal on earth puts a flag on the moon, it's safe to say that no other animal on Earth shares our unique brand of intelligence.
I'm going to echo here that this is categorically false. All government funding for SETI was canceled in 1993. So, unless you believe zero dollars is pouring money into SETI, this is misinformation.
Sentient lobsters are sentient lobsters, but another civilization could be anything!
Why, it could even be sentient lobsters.
(Apologies to Family Guy.)
[1]. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alex_(parrot)
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