I went through my bookmarks and found an old hacker news discussion thread where people are going in circles with some quite sincerely insisting that crows are more intelligent or every bit as intelligent as humans and that it’s a kind of specieism and arrogance to suggest humans are more intelligent.

I felt like I was losing my mind reading that thread, which I think is why I bookmarked it.

I get appreciating the remarkable intelligence of animals and understanding their capabilities and the application of different forms of intelligence in different contexts. And the importance of having humility when it comes to understanding human intelligence and how a lot of our productive capacity comes from standing on the shoulder of giants. But take all of those caveats and add them all together and none of them I think at the end of the day amount to the idea that we should be uncertain about whether humans are more intelligent than crows.

I think there’s a trap here of vortex of excessive humility that seems like a virtuous principle, but ends up missing the forest for the trees and putting people in the preposterous position of insisting that there’s nothing special about humans building jumbo jets or being able to run hospitals compared to crows who apparently in the right circumstances could if they wanted to.

So I’m not crazy, right? Can reasonable people agree that humans are more intelligent than crows? And if that question sounds like a crazy question to ask in the first place, I’m glad you agree. But check out the Hacker News thread and try not to lose your mind.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24583981

  • comfy@lemmy.ml
    17·
    4 天前

    Can reasonable people agree that humans are more intelligent than crows?

    Generally. Conditionally.

    There are a rare few people who are, and I mean this without exaggeration or irony, not smarter than a typical crow.

    But if you want a semi-ironic response anyway:

    Back in the 1980s, Yosemite National Park was having a serious problem with bears: They would wander into campgrounds and break into the garbage bins. This put both bears and people at risk. So the Park Service started installing armored garbage cans that were tricky to open—you had to swing a latch, align two bits of handle, that sort of thing. But it turns out it’s actually quite tricky to get the design of these cans just right. Make it too complex and people can’t get them open to put away their garbage in the first place. Said one park ranger, “There is considerable overlap between the intelligence of the smartest bears and the dumbest tourists.”

    • Trashcan@lemmy.world
      12·
      4 天前

      I like that quote, but it fails to take into account the incentives for each group. The bears wants free and easy accessible foods, which means they will spend a great deal of effort to succeed. The humans are weighing “give a shit about environment” Vs “I don’t care enough to spend two seconds here”

      Place a crisp 100 dollar bill inside the trash can and you would have a dramatically different outcome…

      • frozenspinach@lemmy.mlOPEnglish
        3·
        3 天前

        A great way of re-framing it. A lot of how we tease out whatever intelligence an animal has is with some incentive. And sometimes we’re comparing apples and oranges if we’re making a comparison where one side has more of an incentive.