Dogs, but Not Wolves, Use Humans as Tools
blogs.scientificamerican.com
blogs.scientificamerican.com
these researchers had their dogs and wolves treated identically, and concluded that "even after being raised by humans, wolves simply do not see humans as potential social partners."
but my interpretation is that they learned that wolves, after being raised by humans as if they were dogs, do not see humans as potential social partners. and this distinction matters, because my family's pet dog/wolf saw us all as his subordinates, until we learned the different way to act around a wolf.
if you show a wolf tons and tons of affection, like it was a dog, it thinks you're trying to kiss its ass and take a subordinate position to it.
all these researchers really learned here, in my opinion, was that if you communicate to a wolf that you are not to be taken seriously as a partner, it will not take you seriously as a partner.
I think the possibility absolutely remains open that researchers who had bothered to do their homework first might be able to produce results where the wolves looked to the humans for help just as often as the dogs did.
if you baby a wolf in the way that we baby dogs in 2015, you are probably not creating an entirely realistic simulation of the context within which wolves and humans first began collaborating.
This is pretty common with "bad dogs." It turns out we just can't remove all the wolf-aspects from dogs 100% of the time. It took me a while to learn that my dog is always jockeying for position and affection, to her, is submission. She's not half-wolf, but seem seems very wolf-like. (recessive genetic trait?) I have to follow a fairly strict dominance regimen to keep her from asserting dominance and barking or even biting me. When I slack off, she becomes more aggressive. Frankly, its a hassle.
The more I think about domesticated pets, the less I like the idea. So many dogs are put down for behavioral issues and most pets suffer from neglect and even mental illness. I believe there was a study that most dogs are mentally ill, probably from being housebound for so long. There's something really unnatural about the whole thing. I don't think we're going to replace this dog after she dies. As much as I dislike PETA's antics, I think their official (but almost never followed by its members) policies of ending pet ownership makes a lot of sense.
I'm curious, what behaviors did you change? Did you have to be conscious of how much you pet it?
When my dad and I started doing this, the dog/wolf calmed down incredibly. Pretty sure he had thought that he was in charge of our pack, but the responsibility was stressing him out because had no idea how he was supposed to organize our hunting, and couldn't figure out where we went during the day, either.
You also can't let it beg, because it doesn't really understand begging as begging. You have to eat first, then give the dog/wolf their food, the same way that I think you do with a Rottweiller.
At least the study shows a genetic behavioural difference between dogs and wolves.
but yes, you do kind of have to have a tougher attitude.
one day we got a new puppy. puppy ran up to the dog/wolf and barked at him, tried to get him to play with her. bit his tail to get his attention. he turned around, grabbed her head in his jaws, and held her head against the floor for at least 30 seconds. then he just walked away.
my suspicion is that domesticated animals have less adrenaline or something. there's some kind of hardwired seriousness in a wolf, where dogs seem a lot more daffy.
They also learn which member of the family is best for each need. For example, they learned that cuddling-up with my young daughter is always a sure bet, they rarely ask my oldest son for that level of attention.
There's also the empathy. I've seen some amazing things, like a female GSD jumping up on the bed to cuddle-up with my wife when she got a phone call with bad news. It's freaky.
They know they are not allowed in my office and stop and sit or lay down at the door. But they can also read when I am receptive to them coming in for a quick hug. They actually seem to understand when I need a break. It's an amazing relationship that I couldn't do without.
On the other side of the spectrum I remember a friend taking her young lab back into her car because he wasn't behaving right, and that little puppy, right before closing the door, pulled the most saddest face (yet funny) I've ever seen: sad eyes, tilted head, sad sounds, everything in order for an Oscar.
This is the almost-universal behavior of low-status individuals to high-status ones (in a boardroom everyone looks at the boss to know how to react to a joke).
So it could mean, not that dogs "use humans" but rather that they recognize humans (and specifically their trainer) as the leader of their pack, which wolves do not.
It would be interesting to do this experiment again with dogs and a human that they absolutely don't recognize as a leader (a toddler that they have never seen before, for example).
My guess is, if there are two humans in the room, a "recognized leader" and a "recognized non-leader", and if the non-leader knows how to solve the riddle, and the leader does not, then the riddle will never be solved because the dog will never seek the help of the non-leader.
So it could mean, not that dogs "use humans" but
rather that they recognize humans (and specifically
their trainer) as the leader of their pack, which
wolves do not.
Why do you think that? Why not the dog search each available human for cues?
This should be testable and I'm surprised it apparently wasn't.
I say this in jest, but it sort of makes you wonder about who is using whom. Oftentimes, I notice how pets (esp. cats[0]) are looked after 24/7 by their owners, groomed, given food, shelter, etc. and pretty much do nothing but continuously solicit pleasure. Traditionally, we like to think of animals as serving humans, but in a case like this, isn't the opposite true?
[0] I note that cats are not fully domesticated animals. http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2014/11/man-cat-...
I do however think this is a brilliant insight and in hindsight so obvious.
You don't consider that animals provide emotional comfort? And make owners exercise, as well, since you need to go walk with your pets on a daily basis?
Only for a very restricted definition of "pets"; my turtles never asked for such thing :)
If you don't want to go for a walk the pet isn't going to make you. If pet requires walks you're now a bad owner but you aren't forced to exercise with your pet.
As someone who's lived in a household with dogs and a cat, I never saw it that way. After all, most pets do not provide any practical service to their owners. When I threw a stick over and over to have the puppy bring it back to me, I may have been the one running the show, supposedly the master, but I always thought of it as my service to her; sure, it was enjoyable to me to have something to do outside, and to watch her speed and grace, but humans get tired of repetition a lot faster than dogs (and teaching her to do more interesting things than catch would have been quite a lot of work). Inside the house, it might have been nice seeing the older dog around, and to initiate play when I felt like it, but on the many, many occasions she decided to plop a filthy chew toy next to me on the couch (in the hope that I'd throw it - any attempt to remove the toy from the couch counted as a throw, resulting in her fetching it back to the couch!), I'd hardly associate the resulting exasperation with the feeling of having a servant. And I didn't have many actual duties myself - I'm sure this was felt double by the ones who dealt with their food and daily exercise.
But there's no need to be verbose. A pet is simply a lite version of a human child. Physically, the parent does everything for the child; the reward is emotional, and quite high to make up for the former...
Adult humans, specifically. Thus the natural pairing of kids and dogs. Note this goes both ways, if the kids are driving the parents crazy, "go play fetch with the hound".
Cats continually police the household to detect and eliminate vermin and other such pests, as well as acting as a deterrent to keep the pests and some other animals away. This function used to be more relevant in the past than it is today, however.
That said, I agree that cats are certainly in it to live a comfortable life. There's not really enough cognitive ability for there to be an exchange of comfort and labor, so humans just took advantage of cats' inherent nature. They require a pittance of food for performing a valuable service that humans struggle with doing directly.
These days, many households no longer require the services of a cat. In those households cats provide companionship. It might sound silly to compare the companionship of an animal to that with other humans, but unlike all relationships with humans, animals are nonjudgmental and always present and affectionate regardless of the circumstances. This might be the pets' adaptation to gaming the humans, but the humans nevertheless still find it to be a valuable service. There may be health benefits as well. I don't have any studies to reference, and I haven't researched the topic, but I've heard it mentioned a number of times: http://www.webmd.com/hypertension-high-blood-pressure/featur...
Describing cats as semi-domesticated seems accurate. They make eye contact and many cats are clearly interested in having a relationship with you individually (not all of them are aloof). They will come to you and meow for help solving problems. They're smart enough to "ask" you to open doors and perform other actions for them. But they don't really have a dog's attentiveness and perceptiveness toward the person, nor the dog's body language and subtlety of interaction. People like cats in part because they are independent and not needy. Owners don't need to worry about a cat going crazy if left alone in a house for a few days. However, I suspect that cats would score somewhere in between dogs and wolves on the tests mentioned in the article.
The counterpart is that he grew to be extremely dependent on us, even more than a typical dog, including attentiveness and perceptiveness.
The thing is, cats can easily be quite independent (autonomous even if you're leaving by the countryside), so if you don't go towards them, they'll never feel the need to develop any more communication skills towards humans. Contrary to dogs though, they need time alone, just like humans do. Yes, "fuck off, I need to be alone" is definitely part of mine's language (way, way before it includes claws)
For instance, there is no flap to our front door so if she needs to go outside during the day, she comes to us and meows.
But if it happens during the night she has noticed (I think) that I hate being woken up by hard "meoooo" in the middle of the night; and so she doesn't emit a sound -- she jumps on the bed and does a very soft "dance" on my legs until I (gently) wake up; then she meows and goes to the door, waiting for me to open it.
Makes me wonder if cars are in fact domesticated.
> While a machine greatly aids the operator in such tasks, it also disciplines its operator. As the machine might be considered the extended arms and legs of the worker, the worker might be considered an extension of the machine. All machines, and especially very complicated machines, require operators to place themselves in a provided location and to perform functions mechanically adapted to the functions of the machine. To use the machine for control is to be controlled by the machine.
(Apart from cars, the relationship between people and their smartphone comes to my mind)
>[..] We do not purchase an automobile, for example, merely to own some machinery. Indeed, it is not machinery we are buying at all, but what we can have by way of it: a means of rapidly carrying us from one location to another, an object of envy for others, protection from the weather.
> I cannot use machinery without using it with another. I do not talk on the telephone; I talk with someone on the telephone. I listen to someone on the radio, drive to visit a friend, compute business transactions. To the degree that my association with you depends on such machinery, the connecting medium makes each of us an extension of itself. If your business activities cannot translate into data recognizable by my computer, I can have no business with you. If you do not live where I can drive to see you, I will find another friend. In each case your relationship to me does not depend on my needs but on the needs of my machinery. If to operate a machine is to operate like a machine, then we not only operate with each other like machines, we operate each other like machines. And if a machine is most effective when it has no effect, then we operate each other in such a way that we reach the outcome desired-in such a way that nothing happens. [...]
minds that are to our minds as ours are to those of the beasts that perish, intellects vast and cool and unsympathetic, regarded this earth with envious eyes, and slowly and surely drew their plans against us
One of the most fascinating parts of the sport, to me, is how much of the training is "people training" vs "dog training". At the start, there's some pretty simple dog training, e.g. if you walk over the ramp, you get a treat. That quickly turns into teaching the human how to use their body language to steer the running dog; when the dog ends up in the wrong place in the field it's, I'd say 90% of the time, the human's fault.
Anyway, on to the point of this. Me and my dog are getting to pretty good at this, and we're currently focusing on distance work; basically, me being able to run the show from half-way across the field instead of running right next to her. She has me trained so well to get closer to her. If she feels like I'm too far away, she'll steer towards me instead of going straight, and then my natural reaction is to walk towards her to help push her back on course. Unless I'm very very focused on what I'm doing, I'll end up right beside her again, even if we start 30 or 40ft away.
Wife and I have the seemingly dumbest labrador in the world. We adopted him at an old age (8-ish) so we didn't get the chance to raise or train him ourselves.
But after we picked him up, it really only took about two days for him to settle in and learn exactly where everything was that he wanted, and he quickly learned how to signal when something was needed. He knew exactly WHAT we were good for, whether that be feeding, letting him out, play, back scratches that he can't reach, etc.
We were super impressed with his ability to learn a daily routine too. "When they get home, they feed me so I'll stand by my bowl, then after I'm done they play with me so I'll grab my toy, then they take me on a walk so I'll stand by my leash"
Honestly, I know that right now my wife and I can't have a puppy, we just don't have that kind of time. That's where older dogs fit right into our lifestyle, our current old guy just wants his two quick walks a day and a big couch he can sprawl on.
I.e., his side of communication adds up to no more than what in a dog might be a couple of tones of bark, a fast tailwag, and the grabbing of a leash to indicate enthusiasm for the of a walk.
But yeah, definitely way less communicative than dogs.
You mean the lucky few who get to live as pets?
For reference, humans have a population of 7 billion, with a biomass of 105 million tons.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biomass_%28ecology%29#Terrestri...
Living into old age isn't a factor.
There wouldn't be nearly as many cows, chickens or pigs on this planet if they weren't delicious. Especially pigs, humans would kill them on sight due to the tendencies of feral ones to destroy crops.
http://myfwc.com/conservation/you-conserve/assistnuisance-wi...
edit: grammar.
A nanny AI is the more rational outcome considering that if we built a AI mind, we could control its parameters (make it non-violent, etc). Also fears of being enslaved and such are positively archaic. Slavery, as an economic system, makes little sense as its more liabilities than assets. If you were to suddenly conquer the world, keeping the capitalistic system in place would make the most sense. It confers a level of control and civility when done right. No need for a violent peasant or slave uprising when most everyone can find a job, rent/buy a home, start a business, advance their careers, etc.
Sadly, I imagine these high-profile attacks on AI are causing a chilling effect from a funding and research point of view. Its sad that instead of celebrating AI as something that could help humanity, we've instead demonized it and dismissed it. Shame billionaires like Musk can so trivially control public opinion and how so few of us are skeptical of his hysterical claims.
A "mind" and being able to "control its parameters" could very well be mutually exclusive. So far, the minds we know are quite intractable, and can be affected in very crude ways (i.e. things that make you less violent also make reduce cognitive skills).
> If you were to suddenly conquer the world keeping the capitalistic system in place would make the most sense.
There is no "capitalistic system", but many systems, some rather different from others. Besides, why does it matter that keeping the existing order "makes more sense". Who says that an AI will be especially rational? It is quite possible that being intelligent and completely rational are mutually exclusive. And even if it is rational, I'm not sure we can fully predict the interests of intelligent beings so different from ourselves. Much of what makes sense to us is a result of us being accustomed to living in a society, with all its consequences. The society the AI will live amongst might be very different from ours, and so its assessment of what makes sense. I spent some time writing about people living in poor, high-crime neighborhoods. Their society was very different from the one I grew up in, and as a result their behavior was different even when it was rational. For example, turning to violence was often a very rational, sensible choice on their part.
> Sadly, I imagine these high-profile attacks on AI are causing a chilling effect from a funding and research point of view.
I think this is all a PR stunt. We're many, many decades, if not a century or more, away from what people imagine when they say AI. Unfortunately, software can be very dangerous to society even without being considered AI[1], and unfortunately few people talk about that.
[1]: http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/bitwise/2015/01/bla...
Depends on your definition of crude. With a virtual mind, you probably have a good understanding of how things work and be able to edit them trivially. You can have a working mind without complete freedom or with limited capacities. Look at accident victims with brain damage who, say, can no longer do math or some other weird edge case. Its plausible to selectively edit minds but to also have an acceptable range of self-determinism.
>A "mind" and being able to "control its parameters" could very well be mutually exclusive.
Maybe with biological beings but there's no reason to assume that with artificial beings.
>We're many, many decades, if not a century or more, away from what people imagine when they say AI.
Except guys like Musk are helping move that number farther and farther into the future for their own selfish and short-term need (sell rockets to the government) via politically charged anti-AI propaganda. If AI research is chronically underfunded and feared, then it will never happen. Decades aren't too far out. Imagine if there was a big anti-computer backlash in the 1960s. We wouldn't have the toys we have today. Its important to keep a steady head and consider plausible scenarios and stop feeding the anti-AI bullshit of "OMG SLAVERY!!!"
As far as the economic argument goes, I still am very skeptical that AI would instantly run to a discredited and inefficient economic system (slavery). Its laughable to even think it plausible. It just shows how easy it is for guys like Musk to make people scared.
We can't explain the inner workings of deep-learning NNs today (hell, it seems like we can't even explain emergent behavior in a simulation game), so you think we'll be able to understand and edit a mind? All signs point to the contrary.
> but there's no reason to assume that with artificial beings.
But there is. We can't even fine tune complex software that's a far cry from AI.
> Except guys like Musk are helping move that number farther and farther into the future
I seriously doubt that even the venerable Elon Musk could have such a profound effect on the progress of humanity.
> It just shows how easy it is for guys like Musk to make people scared.
Oh, Elon Musk scares me, but that has absolutely nothing to do with AI.
> @K9TrainerTina: they were, actually. however, the 5 month old wolf pups mostly just went to sleep after initially failing to get the food, so they were excluded from the analysis.
I'm not sure if it's this episode or some other documentary, but I remember seeing the food experiment as well. Where wolves would not look to humans for help.
"When the love object is one's child, natural or adopted, one protects it. The protector will risk his life for his dependent, will want only the best for him-her, will assure him-her of his love. To lose the 'child' means great unhappiness. It means to have lost 'the thing I loved most in all the world.'"
And later,
"children (objects of protection) — they have power over their protectors, the men and women who care for them"
http://naturalthinker.net/trl/texts/Vilar,Esther/PolygamousS...?
The whole documentary is worth watching, but the fox domenstication part is especially interesting.
He's a naughty puppy, but dammit if we don't love him unconditionally!
He told me that the main problem with wolves was that they are really aggressive against hunting dogs. If you split up too far from your dogs chances are high that a near wolf-pack will come, kill them in a blitz-action and run away.
Same problem arises in many humans.
And this is exactly why breeds like Chihuahua, Poodles and Labradoodles have done so well.
These types of dogs living in a Darwinist world, have no right to survive, but thanks to their human relationships they are thriving.
The big question, is this the dog wagging the tail or the tail wagging the human?
Also, are humans exempted from a "Darwinist world"?
(And standard poodles are actually very intelligent/capable, it's the teacup sized ones that are worthless).