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Comment by oceanghost | Hacker News Reader

I am tangentially involved with horses--

We have a guy who is able to to open any stall he wants, and he opens the stalls of other horses that he likes. As evidenced by the fact that he would open his own stall and then let a certain set of horses out.

If that wasn't amazing enough... He got into a conflict with another horse (nipping at each other), and he stopped letting that guy out of his stall.

Livestock is... complicated. Horses collectively are unreasonably stupid. But some individuals are amazing. Before I came into contact with them, I thought they all were "Glassy eyed dinosaurs". It's a weird trick because you see people make declarative statements about them, up to and including they aren't able to recognize people. But, when you work with them its absolutely clear they have preferences. They prefer certain riders and certain activities.

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Intelligence, and animal intelligence in particular, is a very complicated topic. But I definitely suspect a nontrivial percentage of people who assume animals are dumb are doing it because of the mismatch in non-verbal cues. I for example often find myself completely unable to parse the facial expressions and body language of my cat, yet she is very obviously a reasonably intelligent animal.

Worse, they interpret their gestures and expressions as intentional and human -- the cat is smiling/laughing/frowning. Or the cat's failure to smile/laugh/frown (because it lacks the facial muscles to do so) are an indication of its cold, calculating nature. People interpret other people's expressions rapidly and instinctively and they unconsciously misapply this same skill to animals. Perhaps people on the spectrum understand animals better, a la Temple Grandin, not because they are more like animals, but because they aren't misapplying skills which they lack, mind blindness in this case being better than mind hallucinations.

Not just human—like themselves. Not all humans are quite as much like one another as they tend to assume either!

That's a shame -- cat body language is incredibly expressive! The tail gives away so much, as does the line of the body... It's definitely worth finding a quick guide when you have the time.

It's also interesting to note that domestic cat vocalizations are used primarily to communicate with humans! They notice we use speech, so they do too! And while some meows are common, others vary between cats -- it's like their very own language to talk to their owner.

Just going to share a fascinating thing which at least to me explain that at the core, all beings are one – a conscious, eternal entity with self-awareness that experiences pain and pleasure.

If karma theory is to be believed, evolution happens at the level of individual soul (called jivatma) – gradually a soul takes birth starting from the smallest microorganism and traveling all the way through 84m type of species before becoming a human. It's not exactly linear and one can be stuck in the same type of species for more than once or jump to a human being early. The difference between a human being and animal is the development of the intellect sheet of the consciousness; however, depending on what was your prominent animal tendency in past births, some humans act as lion, some as cow, some as folks, observable in their behavior. It's also possible to fall back to animal birth depending on your karma as a human or for other reasons.

Can we validate this theory? Yogic methods are there which requires mastering meditation (many enlightened beings have verified it such as Buddha). Scientifically I don't know. Maybe in future it'd be possible.

I believe in a version of this, what i believe to be the obvious version. And that's that reincarnation happens continually, because we don't have singular souls but rather a great many that act in concert. Through interactions with all the people we have ever had, we are influenced, and their souls (composed of all the people they have been influenced by) flows into ours... And then we, in turn, upload ourselves to others in a continual process. Who we are is distributed across many people. This leads to a karmic concern for the future (where our future souls will be in misery or bliss).

Apply falsifiability - think of how somebody might prove it wrong. If you can't even imagine any way whatsoever, no matter how unlikely, then the "theory" tells you nothing about nature and is about as useful as any fantasy or religious belief.

> Intelligence, and animal intelligence in particular...

As opposed to? I read this the same as "circles, and round circles in particular...." Is there any other kind?

I was using the word "animal" in the sense of "non-human." The point is that non-human intelligence is particularly difficult and complicated for us to discuss, because no member of our species has experienced it and so we can only reason about it through complex experiments and logic. We can't lean on things like personal experience and language in our investigations of it.

"Artificial intelligence" comes to mind even if what I see from that field is more like advanced pre-trained models, incapable of learning the slightest thing from its failures or successes on its own.

edit: ... but it is a very complicated topic even if most of it isn't even close to anything I'd call actual intelligence.

Individual horses can have wonderful personalities. Once I got over how unsettling I find their physical size, I really got to enjoy their character. The ones that like people tend to be very curious and friendly.

Plenty of them don't like people, though. (And many for good reason.)

I used to live on a horse ranch, and honestly, it made me dislike horses in general. There were a few that were enjoyable to be around (the draft horses, despite being the biggest, were genuinely friendly), but the bulk were just plain jerks.

What really surprised me was how friendly and fun the donkeys were. The one that did coyote patrol for the emus always made hilarious happy-donkey sounds whenever he saw me walk the fence line, and it was nice to be able to work in his paddock and have a buddy to hang out with instead of a sneak horse-nip while you're focused on something else.

I've never found a donkey that really liked me before and it bums me out. Donkeys have so much personality.

I sincerely hope you get to meet one some day. When one has a personality you click with, they are a blast to be around.

> As evidenced by the fact that he would open his own stall and then let a certain set of horses out.

Was the set independent of what stalls they were in? Or were they always in the same stalls? If the latter, it could just be that he knows he can open some stalls more readily than others.

> Or were they always in the same stalls? If the latter, it could just be that he knows he can open some stalls more readily than others.

That wouldn't account for it, since he changed who he'd let out based on his personal relationship with the individual in the stall.

i've wondered if the intelligence in animals varies just like the intelligence in humans. I don't see any reason why not.

Maybe you had the DaVinci of horses in your stable?

Also animals go through a lot of traumatic episodes as they are being raised. If like 90% of human males where castrated by other males with a power drill without anesthesia in a stage in life where they are obviously able to learn things and interact with other humans I think in general social intelligence would be lower among humans.

Of course, everything varies.

E.g.: Our neighbor has two cats. One is very needy and craves our attention. The other rarely acknowledges people and spends its free time in stalking mode.

We have a mountian top in my county that was saved from development, and was permently zoned to only allow horses to inhabitate.

There are a few houses that butt up to the area.

The horses have owners, and people stop to pet them.

One night a home owner heard a horse yelllng out his window. He didn't think that much about it, but the horse would stop yelling.

He shined a flash light on him, and decided to call one of the other horse hill owners.

The owner finally arrived, and brought a vet.

The horse's stomach twisted. The vet fixed him.

Whenever that guy goes out on his porch, the horse runs up to him. Almost out of respect?

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