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Comment by debatem1 | Hacker News Reader

I'm not sure what to take from this. It would be surprising if animals' internal lives were simpler than we thought, right? So further study should generally suggest that it is more complex than previously known, but not as complex as human social behavior, which seems pretty obvious. Does this say anything else?

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One thing we've learned in is that surprisingly simple rules and behaviour can produce complex results. We learnt that our intuitions about the necessarily complexity are often quite poor. We see something complex and tend to think it requires that what produces it is of a similar level of complexity.

Even if further research couldn't show things were simpler, that's no evidence for believing they'll be more complex.

I don't necessarily disbelieve that human social behavior is more complicated than gorilla behavior; but should we compare gorilla social behavior to e.g. 21st century American social behavior, or "uncontacted tribe" social behavior?

And, if there is a difference in the relative (perceived!) complexity of social behavior between "modern" and "undeveloped" humans -- Does that imply undeveloped humans are to modern humans what gorillas are to humans? The notion isn't necessarily incorrect, but historically it's been interpreted in service of the ugliest human social behaviors

> but should we compare gorilla social behavior to e.g. 21st century American social behavior, or "uncontacted tribe" social behavior?

The differences between the social behavior of these types of human societies only look big in a vacuum. For example, all human societies use complex verbal language. No other ape society we know of uses anything like it. There is still a huge gulf between human and other apes' individual and social behavior.

> if there is a difference in the relative (perceived!) complexity of social behavior between "modern" and "undeveloped" humans

The fact that over a few short centuries, many "undeveloped" humans have become "21st century humans" suggests that those groups aren't fundamentally different in their inherent ability to operate within a given social context, whether it is described as "simple" or "complex". A key human trait is social adaptability, especially earlier in life.

> Does that imply undeveloped humans are to modern humans what gorillas are to humans

Absolutely not, for all the aforementioned reasons. What would motivate one to believe such an analogy?

> but should we compare gorilla social behavior to e.g. 21st century American social behavior, or "uncontacted tribe" social behavior?

There's a mostly unwarranted assumption that one of those is more complex than the other.

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