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Comment by rwc | Hacker News Reader

Why is it a "no-no these days"?

I would even argue it's the opposite. The book by biologist Frans de Waal - Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are?[1] was in a lot of best book lists.

[1] See a review about it that explains his findings. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/05/how-ani...

It's a no-no always because it's poor reasoning. Saying "these days" is a way to paint it as some kind of fashion above which the commenter is. In this specific case, I reckon dolphins have taste buds too, so it isn't really anthropomorphizing. I think it's a good hypothesis.

I am saying "these days" because from what I understand in past times anthropomorphizing animals used to not be as frowned upon in literature. I might well be wrong though of course! If so apologies, I did not mean to imply it as a fashion or as a negative, just that sometimes I feel that the simplest explanation (dolphins like a treat) should win over the more complex one (octopuses must have some great nutritional value)

Actually, it's the "we shouldn't anthropomorphize" which is poor reasoning. Because of course we should, we should just call it something else.

I am not really aware of any mammal behaviour that I cannot somewhat relate to at gut level. You may say I anthropomorphize, or you may say I equate, it doesn't really matter. There isn't a physiological or neurologic feature we don't share, me and all those other mammals. I have some language and some reasoning power to top it all off with, but our sensations, reactions, emotionals, motivators, fears, pains and joys are clearly of very similar nature. Of course they are - they run on the same basic hardware architecture.

And now, if you will excuse me, my dog wants to go for a walk. I know exactly what he means.

[Edit: typo]

This is my line of thinking as well. Physiologically we are extremely similar to other mammals, especially when you take a look at the extreme fringes of life and realize how utterly different from us it can be. It's logical that large portions of our life experiences are the same, too. The differences are mostly fine details.

If you want to find where our perceptions differ from that of a cat or a dog or an elephant, I believe that anything cultural or learned in nature is a better place to start. If every human experiences it, it's likely that other mammals experience it too on some level.

I suspect that if our experiences shared few or no similarities, humans would've had far less success in the way of keeping, training, and befriending animals. The ability to accurately empathize with other creatures has to have jump-started the process in many cases.

We're just a dog that can read a newspaper. We think we're the newer, higher species, but the newspaper is.

I fully concur. We and other mammals inherited many of our behaviors such as emotional attachments, social bonds, play, etc from common ancestors. It seems reasonable to me that our experience of these is similar to that of the common ancestor, and therefore that other Mammals experience of them is also similar to ours. Not the same maybe, but similar.

Neither your example or the start of the thread seem like anthropomorphizing. Both "liking" the taste and "enjoying" outdoors or exercise are well established reactions in numerous animals. Anthropomorphizing is most easily described as the subject using human-like reasoning or rationalization. Sure, the classic definition is broader than that with angry weather. I do agree with your point regarding g mammalian comparisons, but it's not clear to me that was demonstrated.

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