The Person in the Ape | Hacker News Reader

The Person in the Ape

laphamsquarterly.org

37 pointskawera10 comments

> We know that apes remember past events in detail and plan for the future; they are masters of mimicry, learning to use human tools simply by observing; they can understand spoken language and communicate with gestures and abstract symbols; they methodically cooperate to hunt and defend their territory; they maintain unique cultures, passing down particular toolmaking techniques, dialects, and habitat-specific survival skills from one generation to the next; they form lifelong kinships, mourn their dead, and are just as dependent on social intimacy as we are; they can recognize their reflections and have a sense of self. They are, in sum, highly intelligent, self-aware, autonomous individuals.

All of that can be said about many other species -- certainly about dolphins or elephants, for example.

Just because an animal shows intelligence doesn't mean we're cousins, or, more to the point, animals don't have to be closely related to humans to be intelligent.

In just a few years, Youtube has done more to help understand animals than all of Western philosophy, from Aristotle to Descartes.

Some cows can open barn doors with their tongue. Birds play. House cats prepare and implement pranks against fellow cats, or dogs.

Although it's a sign of progress, it's bothering that we are only looking for signs of intelligence into creatures that most ressemble us morphologically.

It doesn't seem to me at all like we're only looking for signs of intelligence in apes. We're looking for it in everything. The article even references advocates for the legal personhood of great apes, dolphins, elephants, and whales.

You give Youtube way too much credit. Science has done more to help understand animals than all of historical philosophy. Youtube has done more to spread that understanding to laypeople.

I disagree. Watching animals doing amazing things on YouTube has completely changed how I see animals. I'm sure I'm not alone. Scientists can't be everywhere to capture amazing behavior, but YouTube can

YouTube is just distribution. It's like crediting heavy trucks for winning WW2, or crediting YCombinator News's CDN for writing this witty and insightful message.

> Scientists can't be everywhere to capture amazing behavior, but YouTube can

You're aware it's not YouTube doing the video capturing right?

I can recommend Frans de Waals' latest book "Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are?". It's an easy read that gives you an overview of the kind of animal intelligence research that is being done and how it evolved over time. It covers a wide variety of species, not only primates.

It's a reasonable reflex to look for intelligence in animals that are closest to us. But I think I can relate with what you are saying. Although it makes sense in the historical scheme of things, we are generally still convinced that humans are superior to animals. While that might be true for some cases, there is a lot of research that has shown us that animals, not only primates, can surpass us when it comes to specific cognitive tasks. We're probably the best all rounders intelligence wise, but we're definitely not the best in absolute terms. The title of de Waals book encapsulates exactly that and much more, but you'll have to read it to figure that out ;)

This debate is called Great Ape Personhood[0]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_ape_personhood

discussion from a couple weeks back: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15916978

I feel it. It's good and perceptual, you might say it breathes, but how is it significant in any way. Off topic?

newb enjoyed only.

There's only one criterion for a good HN post: does it gratify intellectual curiosity? All topics are welcome as long as they do that.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

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