Re: How Robots Will Steal Your Job

How exactly do we /know/ they're not making any physical recordings? Because we haven't seen any? That'd be like my brother saying that he /knows/ I don't own any white shirts (which I do) because he's never seen me wear one (which I don't).

Absense of evidence... ah, you must be sick of hearing that by now. You don't appear to be taking any notice of it anyway.

Regardless of that though, why is it required that they make physical recordings? How many "witch doctors" and "medice (wo)men" (your words elsethread) record their observations?

It isn't even remotely significant. After all, cows (***if*** they are intelligent) can reason in precisely the same way about us. We have never given them any evidence of the fact that we understand about mathematics, at least not in terms that /they/ recognise as valid.

Let's see if I can cut to the chase. It seems to me that all, or almost all, your arguments about self-awareness, intelligence, science, mathematics, and so on assume ***human*** versions of those qualities and disciplines, and ***human*** ways of communicating knowledge of them.

The problem with that assumption, is that it leads to reasoning such as: If cows know maths, why aren't they submitting papers to the journals? Why aren't they teaching university courses? If squirrels know science, why aren't they flying to the moon, or killing themselves and each other in ever more sophisticated ways? And the absence of these "evidences" is taken as evidence of absence - a serious error.

It should hardly be surprising, then, that you fail to recognise the possibility of self-awareness, intelligence, or the pursuit of science or mathematics in non-humans.

I haven't proposed a theory. I have merely questioned some of your assumptions.

You assume that cows have failed in this. A cow could equally easily deduce that man is non-intelligent and possibly not even self-aware, because he is completely unable to understand even the simplest of cowpat-diagrams.

My Web search reveals that Pluto's density is approximately 2000 kg/m^3. I'll let you do the other half of the research, perhaps in your kitchen.

I think that's unlikely, don't you?

What we know about planets vastly outweighs what we know about animal psychology.

Deceiving us? Nonsense. If they are intelligent, then it is we who deceive ourselves by failing to recognise this.

We know almost nothing about them. Example: everything you've said about them has been anecdotal. How many scientific studies have been done on the intelligence of cows? And let's just say, for the sake of argument, that such work /has/ been done and that /somehow/ it has been deduced that cows are not intelligent. What would that prove? That /all/ animals are not intelligent? Think of the implications.

Those are almost mutually contradictory statements.

Universal to you, maybe.

Neep, from the planet Zog, delivers his report on Earth. "I've had a quick drep around the planet. It's oceanic, of course, as are all intelligence-bearing planets, although in this case the ocean isn't quite deep enough to cover the whole ardeta, so I wasn't hopeful, I'm afraid. Nevertheless, there is a species that I thought at first might show some promise of intelligence, which I hereby name the "dolphin", after my auntie Dolp and uncle Hin. After all, it was the right grasno, it possessed an appropriate frevol of fins, and it could breathe oxygen, all of which are essential to intelligence, as you know. But it turned out that this poor creature had no feasian. So it wasn't intelligent after all. It certainly made no attempt to communicate. Well, how could it, without a feasian? It did keep generating vibrations in the water at a bewildering range of frequencies, and I must admit I don't know why, but it can hardly matter. No feasian, no communication. No communication, no intelligence.

What? Oh, if you insist. Be right back..."

Neep investigates the 25% impurity we know as "land".

"Well, what a waste of time /that/ was. The land contains no intelligent life whatsoever. This is self-evident, of course, but I ran a DNA analysis anyway, to compare all the apparently dominant land creatures with the dolphin, and there was a huge overlap! This basically confirms the observation that the dolphins aren't intelligent. After all, if they were, they would hardly share such a large percentage of their DNA with the sticklike bipeds on the land-impurity."

Neep is as much a victim of his preconceptions as you are.

No, I don't think I have to do that at all. All I am doing is questioning your assumptions. I have advanced no theories whatsoever.

Knowing your enemy isn't the same as offering to jump on their lab bench, pointing at your head, and saying "start drilling, fellas, see if you can dig out that ol' widget that shows I'm intelligent".

I haven't proposed a theory.

I snipped a lot of stuff that came after your attempt to push my argument from a moderate position to an extreme one. That was the second time in a few weeks that I have been disappointed by your behaviour. Up until then, we had always managed to disagree politely.

Deception is a strong word. Animals have been using concealment as a defensive technique for millennia. But I don't have to explain this, because I'm only suggesting it as a possibility; I am not advancing it as a theory.

Those assumptions are deeply flawed, IMO.

I no longer feel sufficiently confident of your willingness to reason fairly that I can take this at face value. Show me this observational data (independent data, please, not your own), and show that it supports what you claim.

Citation, please.

I don't /have/ a theory. I am merely questioning your assumptions, which are deeply flawed.

You equate concealment with deception?

Humanocentricity riddles your thinking. Your quip demonstrates that. For a start, you choose cows, which are perhaps not overly likely candidates for intelligence-that-we-would-recognise-as-such. You also ignore the fact that cows tend to be imprisoned (at least, in the UK they are -- I don't know whether you confine cows in your country) and so could not take place in such a protest even if they wanted to, and then you assume that intelligence equates with ability to speak a human language.

Finally, you assume that those who are oppressed, if they only had the capability of speech, would demand an end to that oppression. At the risk of touching on a delicate subject, never forget that millions of good people went to their premature deaths in the gas chambers, in the 1930s and

1940s, and little fuss was raised either by them or by anyone else. I would not dream of suggesting that this was evidence of their non-intelligence, and neither can I imagine any right-thinking person arguing in that way.

Smart animals? I was talking about intelligence, not smartness.

What does /that/ mean?

Do you really think that absence of evidence is evidence of absence? Perhaps, if intelligent animals do exist, they are perfectly happy where they are. Or perhaps they have tried to communicate with us but have failed because we're not listening. Or perhaps a thousand other possibilities.

Or perhaps there is no such thing as an intelligent animal; that remains a possibility, but it really is a very long way from being a certainty.

This is Usenet. Hair-splitting is what we do. And in this case, it matters.

I said that if it could and did persuade someone, then probably nothing would happen (because of unenquiring scepticism), but that even if something did happen, it would be most unlikely to be anything beneficial to the animal.

Woof. That's communication.

Tail-wag. That's communication.

Go make history, dude.

No, they wouldn't. As Belloc says, "Whatever happens, we have got/The Maxim Gun, and they have not."

You keep using the word "smart". We are discussing intelligence, not smartness. To you, "smart" may be synonymous with "intelligent". To me, it more often means "neatly dressed". We are divided by a common language, but let's try to keep the discussion meaningful by using neutral words.

"How did they get there" implies that I am postulating animal intelligence. I am doing no such thing. If you have inferred from what I have said that I am postulating it, think again. I am merely questioning the reasoning that "if animals were intelligent, they'd have said 'hi' by now".

But to answer your question: if some animals have a comparatively high degree of intelligence, and if intelligence confers some evolutionary advantage, it is likely to have evolved over millennia, at a minimum (if you believe the whole evolution-from-scratch thing or are prepared to suspend your disbelief, then of course we would use the word "aeons" rather than "millennia".

I haven't assumed a fast intellectual evolutionary path. (You have, though, because you seem to assume that man instantly gained the ability to recognise intelligence in others.) I haven't even assumed that animals are intelligent. I have merely put forward the possibility.

I think that, /if/ animals are intelligent, they have become so over a period of time. During that time, man has been gaining in intelligence, too. But let's face reality: even if an animal wrote "I know English" in big letters in English, perhaps by spending all night rearranging stones on a sandy beach or something, you can be pretty sure that the message would be erased by holidaymakers in the morning. Mankind does /not/ spend his time looking for intelligence in any animals, save perhaps those that he has managed to domesticate. And even when domesticated animals /do/ show signs of intelligence, it is generally viewed patronisingly (as you have shown yourself, elsethread).

Let's say "intelligent". Maybe they don't want parity. Maybe they just want to live their lives as they are currently living them.

You assume they are able to communicate with us in a way that we are prepared to take the trouble to understand. There is little evidence that this is the case.

Sure, there /are/ people who are prepared to study intelligence in animals. But how do you study intelligence? You can't give an animal an IQ test, after all. We've all heard people saying "a dog has an IQ of 7" or "a dog has an IQ of 30". And of course they have completely misunderstood the concept of IQ, which is a measure for humans, not for dogs. IQ doesn't measure intelligence anyway. It measures a human's ability to react to a particular set of questions in a way pleasing to a human examiner.

You /might/ be able to show that an animal /is/ intelligent. I don't think it's possible to demonstrate that it is not.

Yes, it is.

No, you're not. Nevertheless, I will answer your new question. I have already said that the mechanism is evolution. I have already pointed out upthread that for an animal to communicate (if it can!) its intelligence (if it has any!) to a human being is a losing strategy. Losing strategies don't last long.

I never call Usenet "amUSENET". And I think you're confusing me with Martin Ambuhl, whose sig block used to refer to thick skin being a gift from God.

You're doing it again. I haven't proposed a theory, in the scientific sense of the word. I have merely challenged some very humanocentric assumptions.

This debate was started by some guy wittering on about AI.

Anyway, I did indeed ask you to justify some assumptions. I'm not convinced that you have done so. I am not even convinced that it is possible.

Who has? Please be precise. What percentage of the human population has been investigating animal intelligence on a proper scientific basis, and what percentage of the animal population has been studied?

I think you'll find that the answers, even if you manage to find any, are overwhelmingly likely to be vanishingly small.

It's an unconnected point, though.

Does it? That was not my intent. But the whole Brie thing was an irrelevant distraction about which I really do not care, in the context of this discussion.

I'm concerned that you appear to be using debating tricks to score points, rather than seeking insight through discussion.

Well, I don't suppose any animals that observe human scientists in the human scientist's lab are likely to live long enough to convey that information to their research community (if it exists), so I don't see your point here.

Do we? Perhaps they /do/ make physical recordings which we don't recognise as such. Or perhaps they don't. We don't actually know.

Perhaps they leave their findings in plain view. Perhaps they don't. Perhaps they discuss their findings in their own language. Perhaps they don't. Again, you make unjustifiable assumptions.

I'm perfectly relaxed, thanks.

I wasn't insulting you. I was merely describing what you are pleased to call a "joke". It seemed childish to me. I'm sorry if you find the description offensive. My children behave childishly, and I would be worried if they did not. There is nothing inherently insulting about the word. But the behaviour is appropriate to a child; it is less appropriate to an adult.

It seems to me that you are more interested in points-scoring than in a discussion which attempts to arrive at a better understanding of reality. I hope that is not the case. Please confirm one way or the other.

How do you know that the dog is communicating with you? Answer: you don't

*know*. You can only guess, based on what the dog does when you do , or what the dog does when you do (for suitably complex interpretations of and ).

I didn't want to give the dolphins an unfair advantage.

Sure. That's because we are good at recognising intelligence in humans, but not good at recognising intelligence in non-humans. Is this not self-evident?

Perhaps it's because we're not as intelligent as we like to think.

That is certainly one possible explanation. I don't think it's necessarily the most likely.

I am not sure that I have understood that sentence correctly. If I /have/ understood you correctly, you're wrong, so please explain what you really meant.

I've read that a great deal of the gorilla sign language business turned out to be wishful thinking on the part of trainers with a lot of love and a highly vested interest in the outcome.

Regardless, do you think it means anything that the best we have been able to do with the *smartest* animals we know is achieve this crude level?

(I also wonder, would a gorilla find the trainer to be "pretty"? :-)

Could be. Any of us, under physical attack, might also whine, cry, scream, run away, hide, or attack back. Would we view those as communication or something else? Perhaps. Is it reasonable to suppose that if we had better means of communicating, we would use them?

How do you suppose she learned that bit of slang? Is it an expression you used around her?

Same here. When she was outside, a single bark meant "I want to come in now." If I didn't respond, she'd issue another single bark (at about two/three minute intervals).

Also, same here. My buddy comes over once a week and we go to the movies. If I say, "That GUY is coming over," she barks. One time I swear she knew it was Wednesday--she was hanging out around the door. I *think* she has noticed a slight difference in my pattern on Wednesday nights, though.

I did some surfing about dolphins as a result of this thread, and it's not entirely clear how accurate those stories are or what they mean. One thing though, dolphins *have* attacked humans. Not often, but it has happened.

I agree entirely! They seem like children, at best. My dog *knows* she isn't allowed to eat food off tables. Having owned dogs all my life, I naturally don't put temptation in their way. When I was married, my wife was not "dog trained" and consequently "trained" my dog that sometimes there was tasty stuff 'up high'.

Point is, she knew it was wrong, wouldn't do it when anyone was around, but left to her own devices...*snatch*.

She also knows--from nine years of my highly consistant reaction on the matter--she is not allowed to eat food she finds on the ground outside. Nevertheless, she won't miss a morsel if she can get away with it (and despite knowing I'll yell at her, which she hates).

She's even tried to play it cool. Lagging behind, holding something in her mouth, not chewing, hoping I won't notice. But the behavior alone is a giveaway! "Drop it, Sam!" (-:

I agree with that entirely. I proposed a "critical mass" analogy here a while ago, and the more I think about it, the more I like the analogy.

Radioactive materials--depending on refinement and type--are anything from fairly benign and safe to toxic and "hot". But as you refine the ore, certain types become a lot less benign. At some point, you can use the heat--in a controlled fashion--to generate power. At some point beyond that, KA-BOOM!!!

I compare animals minds to the unrefined ores. Clearly radioactive, but not usefully so. I compare the refining process to the evolution of the brain/mind. And the KA-BOOM is when a mind achieves "True Intelligence."

OUCH! (-:

Never found any evidence of any.

But if he searched your house and found none, would it not be at least reasonable to suspect you owned none? Particularly if he searched your house a couple times to eliminate "at the cleaners" concerns.

We've been watching animals--some of us pretty closely--for a VERY long time. No recognizable science noted.

Because, while it may not be absolute proof, the *consistant* absence is--if nothing else--statistical evidence to--if nothing else--the

*rarity* of something.

If I drive a car one thousand times and the tires don't explode, isn't it reasonable to suppose that tires don't normally explode? How about if I drive a car one hundred thousand times with no explosions?

At what point do *consistant* observations lead to confidence?

Not familiar enough with tribal cultures to answer accurately, but don't some of them have written "documents" of some kind? In any event, there is a training period (sometimes a good chunk of a lifetime) for the successor. I would imagine that cultures that lack writing rely on oral knowledge passing.

It was a joke of my father's. Her whine just sounded like "lemmeout." The point was that she just made this little pleading noise and not a bark -- it being late at night and a bark would wake people. I thought that was nice of her.

Hmmm... we seem to have the same dog.

There was a story of a solider, from a sunk ship off an island in the Pacific that was held by the Japanese trying to swim away from the shore. The damned dolphins kept pushing him toward shore. They didn't understand the geopolitical implications of their actions.

Oh, yes. We must have the same dog. Mine loves to go for walks and when she suddenly turns toward home, as if to say "enough walking, thank you," it is time to check the mouth to see what treasure she is trying to sneak back with. If she were subtle enough to walk for a little while and then turn home she might get away with it. And she knows not to eat from the table. But if no one is there .... It's an old dog riddle: If you eat from the table and no one is there, is it eating?

Ah, but if I sat down in a chair and said "This chair will not fall through the floor." how would I prove it? (I know, come back every year or so and see if it fell through yet!)

Not remotely? If I flip a coin and it lands heads up 50,000 times in a row, don't you think that would be--at the least--significant?

As I asked Corey, how often do I have to drive on tires that don't explode before I can have some level of confidence that they normally don't?

How could you know? The signs of human intelligence seem pretty clear to me (despite your apparent cynicism about the human race).

I've been thinking about this all weekend, and I reject the idea that **human** intelligence is so special and unique that it can't recognize intelligence elsewhere. I in general reject the notion that intelligence is so unique to any species as to be unrecognizable to another intelligent species.

If nothing else, I suspect very strongly that intelligence of any kind creates order from randomness, and I believe any intelligent mind could perceive that order. (Not unlike what SETI is doing.)

In fact, after thinking about it, I believe intelligence *transcends* species. I believe there are some aspects of intelligence that are both generic and highly recognizable.

Science and Technology (tools) History and Art Communication and Language

More importantly, perhaps, is how an intelligent species builds on its previous discoveries and inventions (an element that requires all three topics mentioned above). I suspect we have these things not because we are human, but because we are intelligent.

Nothing I see requires they *act* like humans. It *does* require recognizable signs of intelligence. NONE are evident (at the level we're talking about).

It seems a stretch logically. How do cows learn math? Are they born having naturally mathematical minds? Or do older cows train them in ways we absolutely can't detect? And if older cows do train them, where did it all come from initially? Do all cows know math, or just some herds? If all cows, the problem of communcation becomes formidable. They have no apparent global form of communication.

OUR higher math came from centuries (more!) of progress and building upon previous discoveries. Communication between peoples is a vital part of that process.

Take the other logical branch, that cows are born with high level naturally mathematical minds. So now you have a species that sure looks and acts pretty dumb, chews its cud, walks around in its own feces, and shows little interest in anything but particularly cowish matters (eating and mating mostly), but also just happens to have a mathematical mind?

Yes, no more technically theory than mine. But you have advanced alternate ideas. Let's not get caught up in syntax, okay?

"Could easily"? I don't find that easy to swallow at all. As I said above, man's visible signs of intelligence are quite evident.

Is it possible that YOU are looking at man's actions with a jaundiced eye and, as you've said, seen little commendable intelligence and are interpreting that animals would necessarily agree with your opinion?

Aren't you caught in your own argument when you imagine that animals would react in ways that YOU can imagine? You seem to be suggesting they act in ways we canNOT imagine.

Density calculation is possible ONLY by assuming we know of what it is made. Its mass is clear from its orbit and its volume from observation. But it could be a big hollow ball with a very dense core. Or a big ball of brie with a very dense core.

Until we are *certain* of its composition, we cannot be *certain* of its density.

Yes, that was my point. As unlikely as mathematical cows or squirrel scientists studying humans. And while the lack of supporting evidence in all cases is not *proof*, combined with what we do know about the situation, that *consistant* lack of proof is testimony of *something*.

Oh? We've lived with animals for thousands of years. They've been our companions and servants all that time. Our relationship with some animals predates recorded history. There have been naturalists and behaviorists far longer than there have been astronomers. We've never set human foot upon any planet but this, and we've only very briefly visited one other by proxy.

You've been suggesting an active deception on their part.

And since animal researchers have been *looking* for intelligence for a very long time, there must be more going on than self-deception. Indeed, with regard to sign language and gorillas, the self-deception may have gone the other way!

My personal knowledge may be anecdotal, but as I've said, serious scientists have been studying animals as long as there have been serious scientists. And less serious study has existed as long as humans have had a relationship with animals.

They are a big part of our world, and it is natural that interested parties would study them.

The two statements barely intersect. How are they contradictory?

I think you are leaning too far backwards to accomodate putative alternate intelligence. It's a circular argument: if we can't see any sign of it, it must be so different we cannot see any sign of it. It leads us nowhere useful.

I think the things I named are very likely universal. Most of them come from having a physical existence. Numbers are universal IF a species invents math. 1+1=2 throughout the universe as soon as you invent "1" and "2" and "+" and "=".

Shapes are evident to anything with perception and form.

Color is evident to anything with color vision. And light/dark to anything that sees. Likewise, sound to anything that hears or is able to sense vibration.

So, yes, I think these are very likely universal concepts.

Amusing story, but Neep doesn't sound too bright. One would hope intergalactic explorers have better training! (-:

My views are the result of the information I trust and logical analysis. They are, in fact, *contrary* to some of my preconceptions.

You've proposed alternative scenarios to rebutt my stated views. I'm rebutting back trying to show where your logic leads. If you would support your rebuttal, you need to answer the implicit questions raised by it.

You complain I appear to me mocking your position, and then turn about and do the same. Worse, you trot off down the garden path.

Let's stick to the point. You suggest animal curiosity about humans is not a survival trait. I reply that knowledge about those that threaten you very *likely* is a survival trait.

Nothing about lab benches or head drilling.

Could we just stick to ideas and keep personalities out of it?

But isn't it implicit it is in what you suggest? Your view requires either that, despite the efforts of some very dedicated, devoted and trained people, communication is impossible, even after all this time on earth together, OR that they are actively hiding it from us.

Hiding one self or offspring is rather different than concealing a major behavior characteristic. It would be, it seems to me, not unlike, say, dogs concealing that they bark from us. I just don't think intelligence hides from all observers, particularly the very interested and trained ones.

Why and how? Isn't it intelligence that allows us to transcend our animal nature? Isn't it intelligence that allows us to communicate with other cultures?

Which seems more logical: that we don't see a quality in animals because it simply isn't there, OR that we don't see a quality because it is so incredibly unrecognizable it is *impossible* to see?

My "willingness to reason fairly"? Huh??

Walk into any technical library. Go to the bookshelves that contain books and papers by animal researchers. I personally guarentee that no creditable source will talk about animals doing higher math or animals actively and scientifically studying humans.

It's been implicit in the alternate views you've floated, but: ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ CS> That would suggest they needs be *much* more intelligent than CS> us, since it's manifest that humans can't keep a secret. | RH> Well, being much more intelligent than humans wouldn't be hard, RH> I'm afraid. | CS> What are the chances this intelligence was able to evolve and CS> surpass us without our noticing it? | RH> High. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ CS> Where is their science? Where are their scientists? | RH> Perhaps they're BETTER at unobserved observation THAN WE are. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

You've suggested cows doing integral math without math school or books. You've suggested squirrel scientists (again without any obvious science schools). You've also implied we're dumber than they are.

I keep forgetting your distaste for metaphor from me. The point, in simple, literal black and white, is that animals stand a lot to gain by speaking up in recognizable fashion.

I said they were pretty dumb creatures. You asked me how I didn't know they weren't doing higher math. I replied, you replied, etc.

Consider that cows invariably outnumber farm hands (at least on every farm I've ever been on (a few)). They could *easily* revolt, escape and march off down the road.

They don't. One explanation is that they are gentle, dumb creatures. In light of the evidence, that seems pretty likely.

Metaphor, Richard, metaphor. Give me some credit here, eh?

(No, of communication.)

Seems a reasonable assumuption.

Little fuss? What about the resistance? What about the opposing forces? Do you really think they went willingly and gently? Do you not think that if they had the power in the face of the weapons against them they would not have protested?

Yes, the absense of evidence is *evidence* of absense. What it is not is *proof* of absense. On a purely statistical basis, consistant failure of something to happen is meaningful.

As our slaves, test subjects and food sources?

Name just ten more of those thousand, if you would. (-:

Yes, and I'm saying that's incorrect. Many animal researchers would give up years of their life for such an occurance.

Why "most unlikely"? The PETA folk likely *dream* of something like this happening.

Even if we did act in such an inhumane way--something that I'm not at all convinced would happen--they would be ABLE to protest... up to the moment we--by your view, I guess--would gun them down.

That act alone would be history and would likely precipitate change. Consider what happened when one human stood before one tank.

Do you really think I am talking about well-dressed animals? But, fine, whatever.

It's much more than that. It's, "if animals were intelligent would would have found much more evidence of it than we have."

And--my point--at no time passed through a stage recognizable as intellectual development, and at no time passed through a stage of reaching out to the other intelligences on the planet?

Your suggestion requires that animals achieved intelligence ENOUGH to recognize the value of concealing it from us *before* we achieved enough intelligence to notice they had something worth concealing.

?!?! What exactly are these contrived and fanciful scenarios for? You suggest an animal smart, excuse me, intelligent enough to write words on the beach, but not smart, excuse me, intelligent enough to figure the consequences?

Not such a smart, excuse me, intelligent animal after all!

Some spend a career at it!

To name just one: ability to learn new things.

Consider how much a human learns in a lifetime. Compare that to how much an animal seems to learn.

I don't think so. "Might be" is moderate. "Could easily" suggests a whole different world of probability.

If your doctor told you you "could easily" die today, would you view that as a moderate statement?

You asserted it as an article of belief. You haven't supported it, let alone proved it. It seems just as likely, if not much more so, that communication is more a winning strategy.

Would we really be likely to shoot deer if they communicated with us? Why don't we hunt dolphin? Why doesn't Western culture eat dog or cat? Why do we decry the hunting of elephants?

Is it not, at least in part, because we perceive *rudimentary* intelligence in these beings? If they communicated actively with us, can you imagine what groups like PETA and Greenpeace would do?

No, that--as I think you should know--is me. Are you claiming you have never said a thick skin is important in these here parts?

I'm no longer convinced you'd accept anything I have to say.

Scientists, naturalists and others who make this their life study.

Enough to have found something, I would think. What percentage of the population studies Computer Science or Medicine? Isn't it enough that there are some? There has been quite a bit of research on dolphins and whales, we've heard here about research into elephants and primates. These are the most likely candidates.

You just suggested we know a lot about planets. What percentage of planets have we even set foot on?

I think it's right on target. In both cases there is a fantastic suggestion that appears contrary to common sense, science and all observational history. In both cases, there's no way to really know for sure without "going there". In both cases, all the data seems to suggest a reasonable answer.

Sounds entirely relevant to me.

No, we don't actually know for sure, but it's a pretty reasonable guess they don't. Recordings suggest a symbology, and a symbology should be detectable as non-random.

Hmmm. I say "don't appear" and you say "perhaps". Seems we're both making suggestions rather than assumptions.

Does it not seem fantastic to imagine that their form of writing is *utterly* unrecognizable as such? We have crypto-analysts who can wade through what sure looks like binary gibberish and manage to find patterns. Is it so hard to imagine we could recognize a symbol system as being such JUST from its structure?

Calling me childish isn't insulting?

That's BS and I think you know it. Why is that you again seem to resort to personal attacks in a debate?

Actually, on this one I'd go so far as to stake my life on it.

It's self-evident. She goes, sits by the door and looks directly at me. She wants to go out. When she gets out, she immediately pees. Thus it seems evident she *needed* to go out.

When she positions herself by where the treats are kept, looks at me, looks at the cupboard, looks at me, looks at the cupboard... The message seems unmistakable. (It also helps to know about dogs and similar creatures and role of eyes and eye contact.)

When she comes up to me with a toy and then plays keep away if I reach for the toy. Another message: let's play.

When we walk, she often has clear ideas about which way she'd like to go. She communicates this by (again) looking in the desired direction and tugging on the leash.

Only if one is convinced that intelligence is so different from one species to another as to make it unrecognizable. I see no reason why that should be the case, and I do see reason why it wouldn't.

Possibly. The more reasonable answer--IMO obviously--is that it's just not there. Clearly we see this differently:

What IS "necessarily the most likely" then?

Since you were apparently more interested in telling me I was wrong than explaining what interpretation you got, I have no way to answer your complaint.

I'll try other words to say the same thing: The human mind is capable of vast imagination. Clearly you, not an animal expert (possibly not even a pet owner?) can imagine such things. Do you think you are unique in this ability? If you can postulate alternate intelligence, do you really believe no one else has? And that it was no one else in a better position than you or I to investigate it?

Consider that we all share a planet and common evolutionary line. We are all carbon-based lifeforms. In many cases, we are all mammals. In some cases, we are close evolutionary cousins. We can eat many of the same foods and we inhabit many of the same ecospheres.

I see far more in common with animals than not, so--as I've said many times now--I find it *far-fetched* (not, repeat not, impossible) that their intelligence system is so vastly different from us as to be completely undetectable.

Question Richard: have you ever owned a pet or known an animal more than in passing? I mean like for several years of close contact.

If there are two outcomes with 50% probability of occuring, such as a truely random coin-toss, then it's irrelevant how many times one result has occured in the past. The next toss of the coin will be either heads or tails with equal probability.

Of course if you've done that many samples, all with the same result, there is an extremely high chance that the coin is flawed in some way. To get that many in real life I'd say the coin would have to have two heads :>

It's like trying to predict lottery numbers based on historical evidence. Take all of the past draws in your local lottery. Count the number of times each number has come up, and divide by the number of draws to find the historical draw frequency of each number. Let's say you find that the number 6 has been drawn more than 3 times as frequently as any other number. How does this affect future drawings? Assuming that the lottery is correctly run, so that each ball has an equal probability of being drawn, then there is no effect at all.

Normally, tires do not explode. This is an observed fact. A tyre exploding, or failing in some other fashion, is by definition a non-normal event.

However, driving 5000 miles on a fresh set of tires, and not experiencing a failure, is not evidence that failures /WILL NOT/ happen.

Human intelligence is obvious /TO HUMANS/. Seems fairly self-explanatory, doesn't it?

It is quite likely that we will recognize other intelligence that is similar in degree and nature to our own if/when we meet it. It is slightly less likely that we will fully recognize extremely high intelligence.

It is also very likely that there are forms of intelligence that we would not recognize as such because it is very different in nature to our own. In fact it's quite possible that there are forms of /life/ that we would not recognize as life.

What SETI is doing is attempting to find alien life by scanning for activity on the 'quiet' hydrogen band. Since it is so clear of interference, they believe it would be ideal for communication.

For short-range communication, I agree. But there's a reason why it's so clean... it's the /absorption/ spectra of hydrogen, the most common element in the universe.

Am I the only one that sees the irony?

All of which may very well be in forms we do not recognize.

And take Art out of that list. Producing works of art is not a requirement of intelligence. Nor is appreciation of art. The fact that /we/ produce and appreciate it has no relevance... we are, after all, only a single datum.

The whole mathematic cow thing is getting tired. None of us believe that it is so, but I guess it's a useful hypothetical case. I guess.

There have been several well-documented cases of what these days is called 'savant syndrome' or 'autistic savants.' There have been extreme cases where the savant has a measured IQ (if that means anything) of below 25 ouside of their field, but are capable of prodigious feats of mathematics, art, memory, etc. And with an IQ under 25, you are dependant on others for survival.

Of course it's a rare thing in humans. The current wisdom is that there are fewer than 20 'prodigious savants' alive today. The most extreme cases are, quite literally, drooling idiots... with high genius level ability in one narrow field.

We don't know why, or how, or pretty much anything else about the phenomenon. We've made some guesses, but that's all they are.

So *what if* savant syndrome is a /normal/ condition for, say, cows. Maybe they /do/ stand around all day watching the numbers dance through their heads. Maybe they can't do much of anything else.

As I say, it's not very likely. But it's also not impossible.

The density of a body is it's mass divided by its volume. Regardles of composition. If you're talking about the density of pluto's /core/ vs the density of the brie that makes up the rest of it, then no we /can't/ be sure until we slice the planet up (to feed the masses of course) and look. But the density of the /planet/ is fairly easy to define.

I read your statements as "Some of us might reconize the possibilities, but not me." No contradiction there :>

Ah, good. I was starting to think we were holding completely incompatible views :>

Useful or not, there is a possibility that there is intelligence that we would not recognize. If we don't recognize it, that's our failure in recognition, /not/ its failure to exist.

...to an intelligence which has developed/learned mathematics, has the appropriate senses, etc.

Hiding something we can directly perceive is more difficult than something we can not. Hiding something that we /can't/ is trivial. For example, we now know that some animals are color-blind, because we have a much better understanding of the mechanisms of vision... and we've taken them apart to figure it out.

So much for 'red rag to a bull' huh?

Neither. Logically speaking, we have insufficient data to /prove/ either statement. We can - and do - make assumptions.

Umm... do you see anything contradictory in those two statements of yours quoted above?

To quote Mark Twain: "There are three kinds of lies: lies, damn lies, and statistics."

Key word: /seems/. We don't /know/ how much an animal learns. We can only guess... or more precisely, we can devise tests, collect the data, and hope that our tests were good enough.

At the end of the day, all any of us currently has is a theory. No matter how elegant you or I think our own theory is, the fact is that it will /remain/ a theory. There is no way to prove or disprove it, since to do so would require knowledge about /all/ forms of intelligence. Since we've only got one (that we acknowlege) to work from, there is insufficient data.

Wow, but this has taken forever to reply to :>

A cryptologist has the advantage of knowing - or at least assuming - certain things about what he's looking for. If I took a block of 'text' in a completely alien language (or something I made up which has meaning to me, has structure, etc. but resembles no known language) and encrypted it with a medium encryption algo, you'd be hard-pressed to find someone who could decrypt it.

Of course if it's just 'xor each character with some repeating sequence' or somesuch then they'll crack it in no time. In fact there's a good chance that they'd crack it anyway... and fail to recognize the fact, if the plaintext is unrecognizable as such.

See? I really /should/ check my references. It was, of course, Benjamin Disraeli who said that. Twain quoted him :>

Something else from Disraeli that's particularly apt to this conversation: "Ignorance never settles a question."

sounds like your coin is broken, otherwise, i'll take heads, at 2/1

Yes. Each toss has 50% probability.

Or the universe has gone a little screwy. The point is, SOMETHING is going on. And after 50,000 heads tosses, it would NOT be at all unreasonable to have some level of confidence about the 50,001st.

In part, because they are engineered to be robust, but also in part, because--as you say--it's an observed fact. The combination of science/engineering and observation leads us to a high *confidence* that tires don't explode.

It is not *proof*. It *is* evidence. It's part of that observed fact you mentioned above.

What I'm saying--and believe--is that intelligence transcends species and should be recognizable to another intelligent species. We certainly seem to recognize (rudimentary) intelligence in other species--my dog is quite intelligent, and this is evident in a number of ways. Doesn't that suggest higher intelligence would be even more recognizable?

That is an assertion. What support have you for that assertion? Why wouldn't *any* intelligence be recognizable against a background of random and organic behavior?

Ask yourself what intelligence is and how it could fail to be so utterly unrecognizable. Would it share absolutely NO traits with the various forms of human intelligence?

It would not form societies? It would not form government and law? It would not have language and symbols? It would not communicate? It would have no economy, commerce or trade? It would have no tools?

Seems *very* improbable to me.

Problems of the hydrogen band aside, it's the WAY they are doing it that I was referencing. They are looking for order and pattern in the random noise of space. The idea is that *any* intelligence would

*necessarily* create recognizable order in their environment.

NO OTHER intelligence could fail to recognize the effects of humans on earth: Roads, communications, vehicles, air craft, cities, energy production,... our presense here is unmistakable.

It's possible they might be so advanced as to think us pretty dumb, but I can't see how they could fail to recognize our intelligence.

I assert it is, you assert it isn't. [shrug] Two guesses. :-)

You may well be right, art may be a particularly human endeavor. I just have a gut sense it isn't. (FWIW, I define art as the drive to express ones interpretation of reality, and I just am of the *opinion* this is linked to intelligence. As you say, we only have ourselves as data, but it's interesting that art seems to exist in nearly every human society.)

It's kind of at one extreme. I think we all recognize that. (-:

Agreed! (Although one might question whether they have the "CPU" capacity, so to speak.)

Assuming that volume is consistant.

Yes, exactly.

Absolutely. And I agree it's *possible*. I just *believe* that is unlikely. Extremely unlikely.

I would prefer the term "draw (tentative) conclusions." I'm asking which is the more logical (tentative) conclusion?

Too much quoted, so I'm not sure which two statements you meant. If you mean that cows are unarmed--as were the Jews--the difference is that farm hands tending cows don't typically carry machine guns and don't carry the numbers of an army. Farm hands are also unlikely to murder a cow's family just because a cow steps out of line.

Sure. Do you see any suggestion that an animal learns as much in its lifetime as a human? I see the opposite. I've raised a number of dogs from pups. They learned a fair bit--for a dog.

Of course. So what do we do? Give up or keep investigating?

Absolutely. What I was getting at is *how* crypto-analysts work in decoding a cypher: they look for patterns. And because language

*has* patterns, decryption is often possible. We saw that happen in this group recently, remember?

Presumably you mean that you've never found any evidence that you would /recognise/ as evidence.

It's not a great analogy. Here's a possible improvement: A says that he knows B doesn't have any good books. He's searched B's house, and found no good books. Books, yes. Good books, no. Just a load of meaningless junk piled up on bookshelves. But B might have a very different opinion, which he is unwilling/unable/not bothered enough to explain to A.

Quite so. But maybe - just maybe - that says more about our inability to recognise than it does about animal science. (I'm not maintaining that animals have developed a scientific culture. I'm merely pointing out that, even if they did, we quite possibly wouldn't recognise it when we saw it. I am put in mind of Gary Larson's notorious "cow tools" cartoon, which I thought very funny when I first saw it -- apparently it confused a lot of people, who couldn't work out what the tools were for, and thought they ought to be able to.)

Wear a blindfold, and you will see no evidence of colour. It is possible that we don't see intelligence in animals because we aren't looking properly. Sure, animals don't get drunk on a Saturday night or beat up old ladies; they don't watch football much, if at all; they don't do 65 in a

60; they don't even vote for politicians. AND YET the possibility remains that they might be intelligent.

An exploding tyre is obvious. Signs of animal intelligence (if it exists) are likely not to be quite so obvious. Our inability to recognise it does not constitute its non-existence.

It's a meaningless question in this context, because we cannot *know* that our observations are objective.

How many man-years have been devoted to this, altogether?

On what criteria? Human criteria, presumably.

We don't know all that much about planets, actually. We don't even know whether they are intelligent! If we take Chardin literally (if you haven't read "The Phenomenon of Man", skip this sentence, which isn't vital), and if he is right, then planets might even have an elemental consciousness of their own. To answer your question, we've probably set foot on around 11% of the planets in this Solar System (depending on whether we've discovered them all yet, and what you count as a planet, and so on).

I don't think the concept of animal intelligence is "fantastic". You obviously do. We can easily settle the Pluto Brie question by "going there", but the question of animal intelligence is not so easily settled.

Consider the rather limited semi-permanent marking materials or equipment with which typical animals are equipped. Have residues of such materials ever been studied with a view to analysing possible informational content? You might look and not find out, but you won't find out unless you look.

If you are merely suggesting that animals may not be intelligent, then I wholeheartedly agree with you. They may not be.

Does it not seem terribly human of us to completely fail to recognise the medium for their form of writing (if it exists)?

No, provided that we look in the right place. The problem is that we don't know what the right place is, or even whether that "right place" exists.

No. It's a description, not an insult. You have had several people point out the logical fallacy that you are making, and you appear to have your hands over your ears. This is childish behaviour. That doesn't mean I think any less of you. We are all childish from time to time.

No, it isn't. See above.

Hmmm. I seem to recall that you accused me (wrongly!) of "blowing smoke" - i.e. being deceitful. I haven't accused you of deceit, nor have I accused you of stupidity, and (as far as I can see) those are just about the only two meaningful personal attacks that can exist on Usenet. So I don't think I've attacked you at all. I /have/, however, attacked your arguments. That's called "debate".