Humans are Animals; Every day the gap gets narrower
When I was a child (forever ago), there were a number of fallacies purveyed regarding animals, most of which have been proven completely false:
- Animals can't reason (false)
- Humans are the only animals that kill/murder each other (false)
- Animals can't talk (false)
- Animals can't count (false)
- Animals don't have emotions (false)
on and on...
Of course the animals don't have souls argument, but that is irellevant, since no one knows if humans do either.
Arguably, these false assertions were motivated to "elevate" humans, perhaps sometimes to justify human uses for animals such as food.
However, every day tests are conducted demonstrating that animals have practically every cognitive capability humans have, generally to a lesser degree.
Not being a an expert in this field myself, the one area I recall that has not been shown in animals is "episodic memory", the specific recall of previous events. It is distinguished from learned behavior, which is the integral of prior events. I suspect this will be established in animals eventually as well.
I assert no change in our general behavior towards animals as a conclusion, but that our arrogance should be dropped yet another peg.
- Animals can't reason (false)
- Humans are the only animals that kill/murder each other (false)
- Animals can't talk (false)
- Animals can't count (false)
- Animals don't have emotions (false)
on and on...
Of course the animals don't have souls argument, but that is irellevant, since no one knows if humans do either.
Arguably, these false assertions were motivated to "elevate" humans, perhaps sometimes to justify human uses for animals such as food.
However, every day tests are conducted demonstrating that animals have practically every cognitive capability humans have, generally to a lesser degree.
Not being a an expert in this field myself, the one area I recall that has not been shown in animals is "episodic memory", the specific recall of previous events. It is distinguished from learned behavior, which is the integral of prior events. I suspect this will be established in animals eventually as well.
I assert no change in our general behavior towards animals as a conclusion, but that our arrogance should be dropped yet another peg.
I can't even contemplate the idea that humans are somehow "not animals."
(I realize that is a personal opinion, not backed up by any particular scientifc studies, and therefore I can't really defend it. It's just an opinion, but one I use to live by every. single. day.)
People have more RAM and more processing power. But there are pretty stupid people out there too who can hardly get out of their own way. I would say there is a wide variation in brain power. Animals seem to be more controlled by their feelings. But so are a lot of people, to the exclusion of reason !
Animals typically dont have the ability to change their environments like humans do, but they possess a lot of the characterists of humans anyway.
Kidding. Those things can be quite the independent pain, but I had a great one that would fetch.
But seriously and forgive me, the work I read millions of years ago has no link in today's internet because it was pre-internet; I read that it was speculated that animals have a picture brain and along with the other senses is how they deal with their environment on a day to day basis.
It was as good or lacking as the article you have posted here.
As far a memory is concerned, the Maltese puppies that we raise, seem to remember my wife and I no matter how long they are away from home...of course...who could forget my ugly face...I don't call myself: OlduglyCarl for no reason.
PS...if animals could do all those things you and the article espouses then maybe we should elect them to our government instead of parasitical humanoidal liberal progressive criminals. By weight and measure, a raccoon would be more honest and less trouble that what we have there now...
One watches TV and barks at other dogs and anything strange, one night during the news they show Nancy P and Mari went nuts! growling, barking and very very upset...I told her...welcome to our world!
When people come to see their puppies...Daddy Murph is very protective. Those are HIS kids.
I'd argue, we shouldn't, because our interactions are far too complex for socialism to benefit us.
As for the "human" and "animal" connection...seems, perhaps animals have more in common with the creatures in governments that with us value creating Human Beings.
Always said, these governmental creatures weren't human...
Maybe that's what the article is telling us...abet, a bit to generous I'd say.
Humans are letting others do the work. That is the problem.
Do Not Feed the Humans!...nor the animals, is the lesson to learn here.
http://right4yourtype.com
It was well worth it, many aggravating symptoms I've always had went away for good! Haven't had, so much as a cold for 25 years now...if only I knew about this 30 years ago, I would still have my thyroid...doctors were WRONG! all I had to do is change my diet, no more hyperactivity and No more speeding tickets...
Looting or Value for value that is a great analogy !
The idea of teaching animals to behave as we would like (rather than just whipping them) goes back at least to Xenophon and his predecessor Simon. Working with the horse's mind, "travailler la cervelle," in the words of Pluvinel, dates from the age of Louis XIII.
All our understanding of the psychology of animals is of course framed in our understanding of our own minds. The number of dogs or horses who have written about understanding the human mind is exceptionally small.
For example, a dog wants you to be the master, to be in charge and lead. People who attempt peer-friend relationships with pets simply stress the pets, and even endanger themselves and others.
But you show me a dog or cat who can figure out the sum of a an infinite inverse progression of non-prime numbers is 9/4's like my son did in about 15 minutes and you can argue to me that animals and humans are on the same cognitive plane. IE I'm not buying it.
The limit of the sum of the inverse composites (non-primes) is unbounded, i.e., does not converge, but your son did not degenerate to the intellectual level of the lower animals -- which could not understand the problem at all.
What is the sum of 1/4 + 1/6 + 1/8 + 1/9 + 1/10 + 1/12 + 1/14 + 1/15 + 1/16 + 1/18 ...
Because the individual terms as they extend out toward infinity add less and less to the real answer, reaching a point at which the answer does not meaningfully change. That is the purpose of limits and their extrapolation using integrals. A similar problem is:
What is the sum of 1/n^(n-1) where n = 1 -> infinity?
I'll leave the reader to consult a text on calculus for the answers.
I would also point out that the brain functions that maintain life are relegated to a separate part of the brain entirely and do not require ongoing conscious thought to maintain. Indeed, a person may be rendered unconscious by trauma (or even basic sleep) and they do not die nor do their bodily functions shut down, but their cognitive faculties certainly do. The employment of the cognitive faculties - Poirot's "little grey cells" - requires more than either simple animal intelligence or the rote of everyday life. Cognition is the building of new pathways in the brain and requires significant energy and effort towards a specific purpose. It is neither random nor the product of happenstance. The mechanisms of construction are energy-consuming rather than energy-liberating and no known natural process is anything but energy-liberating.
The terms of a series diminishing to zero is a necessary but not sufficient condition for convergence of a monotone series. The series
1/2+1/2+1/4+1/4+1/4+1/4+1/8+1/8+1/8+1/8+1/8+1/8+1/8+1/8+...
= sum(n=1,N){2n(1/2n)}
= sum(n=1,N){1}
= N
diverges as N increases even though 1/2n->0.
The harmonic series
sum{1/n} = 1 + 1/2 + 1/3 +...+ 1/N + ...
diverges as log(N+1) as can be seen by bounding it below with integral{dx/x}. No calculus text says otherwise, contrary to the instruction "I'll leave the reader to consult a text on calculus for the answers".
More generally, the series sum{1/n^r} converges if and only if r>1; for the harmonic series r=1. Most series are more complicated than the simple term 1/n^r.
The series of inverse composites (non-primes)
sum{1/c} = 1/4 + 1/6 + 1/8 + 1/9 + 1/10 + ...
is greater than 1/2 of the harmonic series and therefore diverges:
sum{1/c} > sum{1/2k} = 1/2 sum{1/k}.
Whatever Blarman or his son did to deduce that it converges to 9/4 was wrong.
The divergence of the harmonic series is also seen, without calculus, to diverge by bounding the sequence of partial sums in the form
1+1/2 + (1/3+1/4) + (1/5+...+1/8) +... + [1/(2^(n-1)+1) +... +1/2^n]
> 1/2 + (1/4+1/4) + (1/8+1/8+1/8+1/8) + ... + 2^(n-1)/2^n
= 1/2 + 2(1/4) + 4(1/8) + ... + 2^(n-1)/2^n
= n/2
which is unbounded.
Integrals are not "extrapolation of limits" and the "purpose of limits" is much broader than assessing series. The limiting value of "any infinite progression" cannot generally be "solved by using integrals" (though there are correspondences with the finite difference calculus).
The "integral test" for series from calculus is based on integrals as upper and lower bounds of series (as Riemann sums) that determine convergence of the series, not the value of the series when it does converge. An example is the use of integral(dx/x) to show that the harmonic series diverges logarithmically and the more general criteria for 1/n^r.
Blarman's sum 1/n^(n-1) is evaluated by reformulating it as the telescoping series
sum 1/n^(n-1) = sum{1/(n-1) - 1/n}
= (1-1/2) + (1/2-1/3) + (1/3-1/4) ...
All the terms cancel except the first and last:
sum 1/n^(n-1) = 1 - 1/N
-> 1
There is no such easy way to compute limits of most series, and directly replacing them with integrals does not generally give the sum.
For an alternating series -- one in which the terms successively alternate in sign -- then the series converges if the terms absolutely converge to zero -- for similar reasons of partial cancellation between successive terms. But that is not true in general, including for the harmonic series and the series of reciprocal composite numbers, and turning to a calculus book does not provide the values of limits, where they exist, based on integrals.
- Robin Hood - Men in Tights
Levity aside, simple size holds little if any correlation to intelligence either in the animal world or the human one. Indeed, studies of Alzheimer's patients show a degradation in the brain - a breaking down of previously functioning neural pathways. The patients lose brain density but not overall size. A far better argument than simple size is found in brain density - which is astronomically greater in humans than in other animals.
I discount Alzheimers, Autism and other maladies as part of the argument. Clearly a human or animal can have a large brain that is broken.
I agree. To be precise, neural pathways are the methods by which the brain facilitates the processing of information. The more pathways, the more ways there are to process the information and the more information which can be processed at a time. So brain density is the ability of the brain to process more and more complex information. At a bare minimum, in order to hold that animals and humans have similar cognitive capacities (regardless of whether or not they are actually used), one must show that there are similar neural densities. (I found one such article here: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/... which shows that the neural densities of humans is much higher than other animals.
It seems that human brains are also unique in their concentration and specialization of brain matter to the portion of the brain used for higher functions - especially that normally associated with critical thinking. Without this critical specialization, the equalitative comparison of animal brains to those of humans leaves me decidedly unsatisfied.
I find this subject fascinating. When I started my career, I did work with Neural Networks to manage non-linear control problems. In studying them, I read a lot of brain/mind literature, and found a few interesting behaviors in them.
There is a behavior called "grandmothering", where a neural network essentially memorizes the training set. In this case, it memorizes, but completely fails to generalize. It generally happens when there are far too many neurons for the problem (as represented by the training set).
Reorganizing in sub-nets works very well, particularly to make the data exchanged (via synapses) "canonical". The cochlea is a good example of this. The data from the cochlea to the brain is already heavily processed, long before any speech processing occurs.
The "grandmothering" behavior, makes me wonder if the large numbers of neurons and synapses in elephants and fin whales do not engender higher thought. It is an analogy, nothing more.
I reject the concept that this is unique in humans, beyond the fact that we got here first.
Me dino also knows that captive humans can be trained how to earn treats and more advanced rewards such as an early release.
As a corrections officer, me dino watched state prison inmates earn "good time" by following the rules and staying out of trouble toward a parole.
Some would then come right back due to sticking up a liquor store or something.
Then the be a good boy in prison toward another accelerated release from prison would start all over again.
Fortunately, Alabama has what inmates call "the bitch law." Three felony convictions in Bama bags life without parole.
Some repeat offenders finally learn to go straight because of that.
Two times during my 21-year career did I have to fire a warning shot from a tower to stop an escape attempt. The second time concerned a wannabe escapee who ran from a van containing work release inmates. Glad he stopped when I began to aim at his center mass. I was not to shoot at minimum security inmates but he fled the back gate area of a maximum security prison at a time other vehicles containing inmates were parked there.
I wan't really sure what custody my target had and was not about to have any innocent victims of an escape I allowed on my conscience.
Fortunately, I only picked up a second written commendation for stopping an escape that I have framed and hanging on a wall in my home.
But this makes sense given that the dumb ones got eaten when their species was evolving and the smart ones survived.
Unless the mice are conducting a test to determine 42 is the answer to the universal question to everything there is no serious comparison between man and animals when it comes to adaptability and dominance. We all may be made of the same stuff and share some common abilities but that, I think, is end of the comparison.
I am arguing that man is not really different.
I quickly read your other link, but don't really see the connection.
All this from a sushi test :)
https://www.galtsgulchonline.com/post...
You don't think that is a positive trait, do you? By the "subjugation" humankind did more harm than good. I am sure you have come across many examples, history is full of them.
You did not touch upon human subjugation of humans? That certainly is a huge difference that animals will never do.
I find it hilarious but nothing related to serious commentary on human uniqueness.
However, people argued against evolution some 100x years ago; people argued animals differed from humans because they lacked souls; people tried to set themselves apart (elevate themselves) in almost every way, except the meaningful one you mention.
I assert the meaningful difference you mention is a discrimination, not due to a fundamental, magical difference, but that we simply have far more cognitive ability than other animals, from brain size and brain evolution. If a dog had a 3 lb brain, and was carefully trained, it would be capable of some pretty sophisticated thinking.
We seem to have a difference in our assertions.
I'll restate mine try to get to the difference:
I assert that animals merely lack the capacity we have evolved to, but are otherwise the same, and that our ability to reason is the result of capacity and training.
Are you asserting that our ability to reason is more than capacity and training, perhaps an evolved survival trait?
Man has not evolved through accumulation of knowledge. This is not evolution. I'm arguing the capacity for episodic memory and communication led to the accumulation of knowledge. Then the accumulation of knowledge changed the formula for success to learning from this information, rather than other instinctual survival traits.
How we achieved episodic memory, and to what degree other animals have it (my last reading was that this evidence has not precipitated) is not known to me.
The process of thinking rationally with concepts is much broader than memory. In particular it requires the capacity to conceptualize your own experiences.
I agree, the concept of rational thought is broader than memory, but it can not happen without episodic memory. This is the first step, and animal thought has not achieved it, at least as analyzed by experts (to my knowledge).
Evolve:
to come forth gradually into being; develop; undergo evolution: The whole idea evolved from a casual remark.
to gradually change one's opinions or beliefs: candidates who are still evolving on the issue; an evolved feminist mom.
Biology. to develop by a process of evolution to a different adaptive state or condition: The human species evolved from an ancestor that was probably arboreal.
"The two great values to be gained from social existence are: knowledge and trade. Man is the only species that can transmit and expand his store of knowledge from generation to generation; the knowledge potentially available to man is greater than any one man could begin to acquire in his own life-span; every man gains an incalculable benefit from the knowledge discovered by others. The second great benefit is the division of labor: it enables a man to devote his effort to a particular field of work and to trade with others who specialize in other fields. This form of cooperation allows all men who take part in it to achieve a greater knowledge, skill and productive return on their effort than they could achieve if each had to produce everything he needs, on a desert island or on a self-sustaining farm." -- "The Objectivist Ethics"
The memory you are talking about and concepts go together. You need memory superior to what lower animals seem to have, but conceptual thought allows you to organize what you remember just like it organizes any experiences integrated into concepts. Otherwise you have no way to retain the multitude of particulars and their relations. Remember the "crow epistemology".
I thought most of the resistance would be religious, but you were the most vocal, surprising me.
[Lowbrow humor]Maybe Denis Leary's observations that animals cannot shave their scrotum is a subset of that.[/Lowbrow humor]
[Nit]Isn't it the animal kingdom, not genus. [/Nit]