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Comment by krylon | Hacker News Reader

When I was young, we had a cat that would sit down next to me as I was sitting in front of the PC, and start meowing. I would pet her head, and she would move away, a meter or so an continue meowing until I got up and petted her again.

Step by step, she would lure me all the way to the kitchen and give me a look said that, "Now that we are here anyway, how 'bout some of that food?". A bit manipulative, I admit, but kind of clever.

Also, I suspect cats tricked humans into starting agriculture so they (the cats) would have a steady supply of mice.

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So I guess the difference is that humans are good at training dogs, while cats are good at training humans.

As the old joke puts it: dogs have owners, but cats have staff.

A dog looks up to you and a cat looks down on you, but a pig looks upon you as an equal. - Winston Churchill

A reply from cstross! That's it, I'm done for the day. Doesn't get better than that. Thanks for all the great books!

Side note: I think Peter Watts is also a "cat person". Something about cat people must contribute to them being some of my favorite writers. Which is odd, since I'm more of a dog person. Maybe if I wrote fiction I would hate what I wrote. And Amazon should include a "author pet preference" as filterable criteria when searching for books. If Greg Egan likes cats that would make for a trifecta.

I loved Saturn's Children!

Love it.

I know that certain “redditisms” like “username checks out” probably don’t fly here…but seeing someone named “RobWilliams” responding positively to a cat joke just puts a warm smile on my face.

Now that is indeed a profound insight on what is deemed intelligence. If the “Observer” in unable to comprehend the article objectives of the subjects, how will the fulfillment of the objectives ever be recognized as intelligence? Decades ago, I read some article on how people with more than 30 IQ points of separation, effectively were incomprehensible to each other. Whether it is true or not, it also highlights a fallacy that the superior intellect can somehow “emulate/simulate” the lesser, and thereby understand the person.

> Decades ago, I read some article on how people with more than 30 IQ points of separation, effectively were incomprehensible to each other.

It’s more like “fundamentally perceive the world in a different way”, and generally leads to a lack of empathy towards the other group due to this difference of perception.

This is one reason why, at least until recently, US generals were not known for their high IQ.

A lot of marriages are this way and do fine. A diverse but comprehensive worldview is helpful when operating as a singular unit. You can be smart and ignorant at the same time in some ways, and that's okay.

No they are not, most marriages are not between people with that different IQ. Most people are not that different even. What a weird thing to say.

> lack of empathy towards

This should be:

… inability to empathize with…

Poor wording on my part.

If you have a high IQ, you can get high and wasted and lower it temporarily.

No way to do that the other way around.

Temporarily becoming intoxicated doesn't fix this.

If your IQ is very high or very low, you likely have not spent a whole lot of time practicing things and pursuing things that typical people have. So the shared social language and thread of common experience that people depend upon to relate is limited.

Not temporary, but IIRC muy mother's measured IQ went up by twenty points when she learned how ratios work.

Hmm, I think it's possible to raise your IQ by practicing and applying certain thinking strategies. Especially given that IQ is an artificial measure of intelligence.

Like any target, when it becomes a target, ceases to be a good measure. But I remember some of the parts. most where pattern matching. or memory retention.

Most humans cannot get better at this easily at least. You can always try...

On working memory, I think the average is 7, or something like that, Try to remember a number in inversed order and see if you get past that to 9-10 that´s pretty hard to learn too

I remember the day our class was asked about a dice. I was the only know that knew by observation the response to which number was under the dice not being visible.

PS They always add up to seven

YMMV

Except when they don't.

I had dice as a kid that did not follow this rule.

Huh.

I now want to take a standardized IQ test, three times - once with sober, once mildly intoxicated by cannabis, and as intoxicated as possible while still being able to focus on the questions.

I'm very confident that the time it would take me to answer a given question would increase about linearly with my level of intoxication, but I'm not at all confident that I would arrive at a different conclusion.

There's a saying in our house, "All cats are very intelligent when it comes to food".

When I lived in Asia I "adopted" a lost kitten near my house. As I now had cat food in the house, the local streetcats know how to find me!

I had these two little kitten siblings; no idea where their mother was but they hung around the house, because food. If the food was out they would meow and whine for food, so I would get up to bring them food and they would hiss at me for getting too close to the food bowl before I even had a chance to put any food in.

I never thought that was especially intelligent; "biting the hand that feeds you" and all that.

After dealing with many cats for two years I don't rate cats as very high on the intelligence department. They're basically autistic dogs. They are cuter though. And they don't eat poop off the street.

Yet, you kept feeding a neighborhood full of cats in the way they had trained you.

This. Cats seem stupid when convenient and are annoying but in the end they seem to get what they want.

Certainly domesticated cats are much more adept at predicting the behavior and actions of humans.

We had two cats, a tortoise-shell and a tabby. The tortoise-shell would come running when it was time for dinner, and the tabby would take his time. Once, I noticed that the tortoise-shell kept switching back and forth between dishes until the tabby got there, and I wondered why. It was probably so she could eat as much from both plates before having to finally commit to one. Kinda clever for a cat, in my opinion :)

anecdotal corroboration: my cat recognizes and responds to 5-6 different words/phrases for food, even from a visitor, but does not understand a single other word in any language spoken in the house: food, snack, treat, cookie, nom-nom. he responds to each of these uniquely (we use them to refer to different things he can eat).

Alternate hypothesis: your cat has a fluent understanding of the English language, and has a vocabulary as large as yours - but he doesn't deign to care about words that don't relate to your purpose (i.e., providing food).

Just say to yourself “I’m here to serve, stand up and follow your cat”

My cats often want to be fed or to go outside.

My one cat knows she can simply stare at me and I will get up and follow her.

One of my cats, who is going on 13-14 years old (he was a stray, not sure of his exact age) has a specific pitched meow for when he wants me to do something for him.

He'll use that, combined with lifting one paw off of the ground to "ask" me to do something for him.

Once I follow him, he'll nudge his head in the direction of what he wants. The sink? He wants to drink out of the faucet. The counter? He wants treats out of the drawer. The pantry? He wants food. If he just sits there and cries I know he wants to be pet.

My cats often want to be fed or to go outside.

Wheelchair-height handle-style doorknobs mean my cat goes wherever she wants whenever she wants.

Baby-proof door latches are my friend.

even round knobs aren't safe. i had a pair that would work together: one jumping to turn the knob while the other stuck their paw under the door and pulled.

Mine just flings the dinger and looks at me like "your attention will be interrupted until you open this door"

Doyoyoyoyoingggggg

Doyoyoyoyoyoyinnng

OK fine I'll open the door but this is the last time.

My cat would smack the metal blinds when he got stuck in my bedroom with me while I’m sleeping.

I just love how he knew that I was sleeping and found out how to make the loudest possible sound in my house, all while staring at me of course, without even having to raise his voice.

One of my cats observed my partner turning a doorknob on the bedroom door and subsequently started jumping and pawing the doorknob when the door was closed and they wanted in. No question that if it was a handle-type knob he’d have gotten in.

We had to rotate all our handles to vertical because our cat learned in 2 weeks how to operate them.

Omg this is the situation my cat, but instead of food it's for laying down with him and cuddling. He'll jump on the couch or bed, stare and/or meow until I lay with him.

> A bit manipulative

No. That would require a theory of mind, intention to deceive and a lot of cognitive abilities that cats don't have.

The cat simply learned to walk you to the food bowl.

There is no theory of mind, it's a redundant concept. Apes can predict the actions of others as agents of the environment without needing an abstract understanding of what a mind is. Cats are probably able to achieve similar feats. Understanding that other beings and yourself have 'minds' only becomes relevant when the entity in question achieves a certain complexity of language.

Does "manipulative" describe the behavior itself, or certain internal processes (but not others) which can produce said behavior?

https://www.mit.edu/people/dpolicar/writing/prose/text/think...

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