If animals were "uplifted" to high intelligence, would they behave like humans?

How would increased intelligence change the behavior of other animals?

  • Higher intelligence will likely lead to selfishness and greed and destruction

    Votes: 4 6.6%
  • Higher intelligence will not change the animals' behaviors significantly

    Votes: 3 4.9%
  • Each species of animal would be affected differently by increased intelligence

    Votes: 42 68.9%
  • They'll end up repeating what humans went though in our civilization's progression

    Votes: 6 9.8%
  • Something else (please explain)

    Votes: 6 9.8%

  • Total voters
    61

Albedo

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You might be interested in the research on the evolution of empathy. It didn't magically start with the evolutionary step of becoming human.
It didn't, but we've definitely made leaps and bounds in the opposite.

Certainly a lot of higher animals have empathy for their conspecifics, and some (crows, dogs) excel at understanding human thought as well. But I'm not convinced that the dolphin battering the porpoise apart really understands its suffering as much as, say, a terrorist lesiurely sawing off a person's head alive understands.
 

Ms.Pencila

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Interesting discussion!

(I think my two cents doesn't quite jive with the discussion currently going, though. We're looking at this from different foundations: if humans are existentially different from animals because we have souls as well as bodies and minds, then--unless intelligence automatically comes with a soul-- the animals shouldn't be that different. They could act superficially like humans, but fundamentally they would be the same, as they aren't being offered the same thing as us: a choice to love our creator freely (or not). Just like we're not angels--or demons-- who chose instantly, rather than through lifetimes like ours where our souls are united to our bodies. Anyways. If anyone would like to discuss other possibilities, though, I'd be interested).
 

cornflake

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It didn't, but we've definitely made leaps and bounds in the opposite.

Certainly a lot of higher animals have empathy for their conspecifics, and some (crows, dogs) excel at understanding human thought as well. But I'm not convinced that the dolphin battering the porpoise apart really understands its suffering as much as, say, a terrorist lesiurely sawing off a person's head alive understands.

Why do you believe a person leisurely sawing someone else apart understands their suffering?
 

Albedo

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Why do you believe a person leisurely sawing someone else apart understands their suffering?
I suppose we can't know for sure, can we? I find it hard to empathise with the person doing the sawing. But if they're doing it on Youtube ... that shows they recognise what it stands for, at least. They hope that enough people will be appalled by their actions that political changes will occur. They may not feel anything for the one they're butchering, but they know full well what they're supposed to be feeling.

Besides, necks are tough. If your main goal wasn't the infliction of exquisite suffering surely you'd give up less than half way through.
 

Albedo

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In summary: find me an animal that, with foreplanning, will sit there at considerable risk to its own survival slowly dismembering one of its own for political purposes and for kicks, and I'll concede that's an animal that's near human in dickitude. Some chimps will kill the children of their rivals and eat them, and I bet they enjoy it too. No surprises they're our closest cousins. Any other examples?
 

cornflake

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In summary: find me an animal that, with foreplanning, will sit there at considerable risk to its own survival slowly dismembering one of its own for political purposes and for kicks, and I'll concede that's an animal that's near human in dickitude. Some chimps will kill the children of their rivals and eat them, and I bet they enjoy it too. No surprises they're our closest cousins. Any other examples?

They have to do stuff slowly now? I mean... it was that we felt suffering, but I don't know how to suggest that's the case. Now it's not only that animals do bad shit, but that they prolong it to some particular?

I'm on the 'we're worse than other animals' side. I know other animals do cruel shit, but I think humans are uniquely uncaring and uniquely unconnected to their own nature. I know plenty of humans who will argue they're not animals, they're *humans* and thus superiour, and that animals have no feelings, emotions, understanding, and are fine to use, kill, etc. That's a species with a fucking problem, if you ask me. Obviously it's not everyone, but I think far too many people have gotten too removed from understanding what they are to see not only that but what other animals are.

Those are the people who can watch a video of N'kisi having the exchange on the previous page and insist he's mimicking language, and has no conscious comprehension, though he initiated and carried on a conversation sounds exactly like one people have with their six-year-olds on the regular.
 

The Otter

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Those are the people who can watch a video of N'kisi having the exchange on the previous page and insist he's mimicking language, and has no conscious comprehension, though he initiated and carried on a conversation sounds exactly like one people have with their six-year-olds on the regular.

Yeah, some people will do mental backflips to rationalize away that stuff. (And that conversation is pretty remarkable). Imagine if people questioned the sentience of human toddlers in the same way. "When your son says he loves you, are you sure he isn't just mimicking your language or responding in a conditioned fashion because he's learned that expressions of love get him praise and food?"

Though some people do talk that way about autistic or intellectually disabled human children (or adults for that matter). There's a tendency to apply reductive clinical labels to everything they say and do.
 

Victor Douglas

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If you don't mind me saying so, I think this thread could benefit from some more precise definitions. For my purposes, I like to consider intelligence to consist of "Problem solving capacity within a given domain." This is pretty specific, and generalizable enough to allow comparisons across different types of entities: humans, animals and computers. As expert systems demonstrate, an entity can be highly intelligent within a narrowly defined domain (chess, flying an aircraft) without possessing sapience or conceptual self-awareness. The same, presumably, is true with animals. Many animals show a remarkable ability to solve certain types of problems, many are better than humans at what they do well. But I am of the impression that no other species (or computer program, for that matter) manifests the same high level of problem solving capacity across as many domains of problem types as we do.

Sapience is something else altogether. I use the term to indicate the ability to consider oneself within a social context. That is to say, an entity is able to form a simplified mental model of themselves, model their relationships to others, and also create simplified models of those other people. Also included is the ability to track dynamic, even recursive, changes in this interconnected system of selves, such that the individual is aware that other people are updating their mental models, even while we are updating ours, most usually in response to each other. I believe that defining ones self-concept is meaningless except in relation to other selves, with whom we share certain similarities, and against whom we possess certain unique differences. That's sapience.

Then there is the qualia of possessing a consciousness, of being "aware of one's awareness" in such a way that we experience a "self identity", which includes a sense of continuity over time, and the subjective experience of being "me". I find that I am unable to offer a precise and objective definition for it, perhaps someone else has an idea.

Obviously, using my (admittedly somewhat ideosyncratic) set of definitions, it's possible to achieve very high intelligence without being sapient, and it may even be possible to achieve sapience without necessarily experiencing a subjective "me". My assertion is that these are different things, and what would happen if you "transcended" an animal depends on which of these qualities you are conferring on them: mere high intelligence isn't that different from the situation we are in with regard to computers, while giving them sapience or self-awareness is something else. I believe that dolphins already possess an extremely high level of sapience, possibly more than us, but I don't think they possess as much general intelligence as we do.

As for the subjective sense of being a "conscious me", that's almost impossible to know, short of telepathy. I would think that if an animal did achieve consciousness, it would still be a very different subjective experience than we have. Until we can define what consciousness is in humans, we are going to have a very hard time identifying it in other species. The human mind may be unique in ways that the human mind itself cannot define.

In my opinion, a transcended animal would be essentially an alien species, in respect to whom human concepts and definitions might have little meaning. They would probably develop an ethics of some kind, just to be able to regulate their social relationships effectively, but their standards of behavior might make little sense to us.

One thing I think we would have in common is a sense of empathy. Pain and happiness are pain and happiness, which I think translates well across species. Anything beyond that, though, is going to be different in ways we cannot even imagine.
 
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cornflake

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If you don't mind me saying so, I think this thread could benefit from some more precise definitions. For my purposes, I like to consider intelligence to consist of "Problem solving capacity within a given domain." This is pretty specific, and generalizable enough to allow comparisons across different types of entities: humans, animals and computers. As expert systems demonstrate, an entity can be highly intelligent within a narrowly defined domain (chess, flying an aircraft) without possessing sapience or conceptual self-awareness. The same, presumably, is true with animals. Many animals show a remarkable ability to solve certain types of problems, many are better than humans at what they do well. But I am of the impression that no other species (or computer program, for that matter) manifests the same high level of problem solving capacity across as many domains of problem types as we do.

Sapience is something else altogether. I use the term to indicate the ability to consider oneself within a social context. That is to say, an entity is able to form a simplified mental model of themselves, model their relationships to others, and also create simplified models of those other people. Also included is the ability to track dynamic, even recursive, changes in this interconnected system of selves, such that the individual is aware that other people are updating their mental models, even while we are updating ours, most usually in response to each other. I believe that defining ones self-concept is meaningless except in relation to other selves, with whom we share certain similarities, and against whom we possess certain unique differences. That's sapience.

Then there is the qualia of possessing a consciousness, of being "aware of one's awareness" in such a way that we experience a "self identity", which includes a sense of continuity over time, and the subjective experience of being "me". I find that I am unable to offer a precise and objective definition for it, perhaps someone else has an idea.

Obviously, using my (admittedly somewhat ideosyncratic) set of definitions, it's possible to achieve very high intelligence without being sapient, and it may even be possible to achieve sapience without necessarily experiencing a subjective "me". My assertion is that these are different things, and what would happen if you "transcended" an animal depends on which of these qualities you are conferring on them: mere high intelligence isn't that different from the situation we are in with regard to computers, while giving them sapience or self-awareness is something else. I believe that dolphins already possess an extremely high level of sapience, possibly more than us, but I don't think they possess as much general intelligence as we do.

As for the subjective sense of being a "conscious me", that's almost impossible to know, short of telepathy. I would think that if an animal did achieve consciousness, it would still be a very different subjective experience than we have. Until we can define what consciousness is in humans, we are going to have a very hard time identifying it in other species. The human mind may be unique in ways that the human mind itself cannot define.

In my opinion, a transcended animal would be essentially an alien species, in respect to whom human concepts and definitions might have little meaning. They would probably develop an ethics of some kind, just to be able to regulate their social relationships effectively, but their standards of behavior might make little sense to us.

One thing I think we would have in common is a sense of empathy. Pain and happiness are pain and happiness, which I think translates well across species. Anything beyond that, though, is going to be different in ways we cannot even imagine.

Putting aside for a moment the ... issues with using your own personal definitions of things like intelligence, I don't know how you're deciding stuff like dolphins don't solve problems across many domains, as we'd have different domain definitions, understandings, etc. How could we possibly quantify that for dolphins, or compare it to humans, when we live in entirely different environments and we don't understand so much of their basic lives.

As for ethics, as we see them, though definitions vary, obviously, other animals have demonstrated that kind of behaviour over and over.

Chimpanzees, who cannot swim, have drowned in zoo moats trying to save others. Given the chance to get food by pulling a chain that would also deliver an electric shock to a companion, rhesus monkeys will starve themselves for several days...

Other primates also have a sense of reciprocity and fairness. They remember who did them favors and who did them wrong. Chimps are more likely to share food with those who have groomed them. Capuchin monkeys show their displeasure if given a smaller reward than a partner receives for performing the same task, like a piece of cucumber instead of a grape.

These four kinds of behavior — empathy, the ability to learn and follow social rules, reciprocity and peacemaking — are the basis of sociality.

Studies involving babies have previously shown that by the age of one, humans are already starting to judge people by how they interact. This has led to suggestions that children have a kind of innate morality that predates their being taught how to behave.

Comparative psychologist James Anderson at Kyoto University and his colleagues wondered whether other species make social evaluations in a similar way.

They began by testing whether capuchin monkeys would show a preference for people who help others. The capuchins watched an actor struggle to open a container with a toy inside.

Then this actor presented the container to a second actor, who would either help or refuse to assist. Afterwards, both actors offered each capuchin food, and the monkey chose which offer to accept.

When the companion was helpful, the monkey showed no preference between accepting the reward from the struggler or the helper. But when the companion refused to help, the monkey more often took food from the struggler...

Finally, the researchers tested whether dogs preferred people who helped their owner. Each owner tried to open a container then presented it to one of two actors.

This actor either helped or refused to do so, while the other actor was passive. Then the two actors offered the dog a reward and it chose between them.

The dogs had no preference when the first actor had helped their owner, but were more likely to choose the passive actor if the first one had refused to help.

Ravens refuse to associate with humans who cheat them, or other ravens who steal.

Ravens, known more for their intelligence, but only slightly less for their love of cheese, were trained by researchers to trade a crust of bread for a morsel of cheese with human partners. When the birds then tried to broker a trade with “fair” and “unfair” partners—some completed the trade as expected, but others took the raven’s bread and kept (and ate) the cheese—the ravens avoided the tricksters in separate trials a month later.
 

neandermagnon

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So let's get back to where we should have been in the first place. Chimps have many aggressive behaviors more closely akin to human behavior and while bonobos may have a few human-shared behaviors like hunting and a little more aggression than previously thought, wouldn't it be nice if we were more like bonobos than chimpanzees? :e2flowers

My comments about the media portrayal of bonobos v common chimps was more directed at the discussion in general rather than you personally or what you said specifically, so I apologise it if came across otherwise. My bad communication skills.

My point is that we already are more like bonobos than common chimpanzees. Humans are the least aggressive of the three species. The circumstances that lead to warfare in humans have never existed in chimp or bonobo society, so saying "humans have wars and apes don't" doesn't mean humans are innately more aggressive. Humans live at much higher population densities and cope with being in close proximity to large numbers of humans they don't know on a daily basis without fighting with each other. Take London. You can't put 100 chimps or bonobos on a London Underground carriage together without them fighting, viciously. Yet humans endure it placidly, day after day, sat next to a strangers without attacking the strangers. There are many other ways humans have evolved to be more placid over the last few million years. Some researchers call it "domesticating ourselves". (Adam Van Arnsdale called it that. I think it was him. It was him or John Hawks. They both are palaeoanthropology professors and bloggers whose blogs I read.)

I agree it would be nice if people didn't go to war n shit, but based on my experience of life (including having been friends with people from places like Gaza and Northern Ireland) I just do not and never will buy into the idea that humans are innately warlike and war happens because humans can't help but fight each other - war happens because people's basic safety and way if life is threatened in ways that other animals just don't ever experience. Not even all human societies experience those circumstances (and therefore don't do war).

There's a saying (I forgot who said it) that all human society is about 3 meals away from anarchy. Of course when your basic survival is threatened to the extent that you think you're going to die you'll fight like an animal to survive. But people forget all the ways in which humans are highly co-operative and non-violent to be able to live in large numbers alongside strangers to begin with. When the shit utterly hits the fan we behave like animals. The rest of the time, we don't. No pun intended... there's a reason why "behave like animals" is used that way in human language.

We judge ourselves and animals by very different criteria.
 
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neandermagnon

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It didn't, but we've definitely made leaps and bounds in the opposite.

Certainly a lot of higher animals have empathy for their conspecifics, and some (crows, dogs) excel at understanding human thought as well. But I'm not convinced that the dolphin battering the porpoise apart really understands its suffering as much as, say, a terrorist lesiurely sawing off a person's head alive understands.

I think the issue here goes back to what Roxxsmom said - human empathy is limited to those humans we see as being "like us" and not those seen as "other". The terrorist doesn't see the person he or she is torturing as human at the time they're doing it. Amnesty International have some interesting (aka terrifying) reading material on how totalitarian dictators train people to become torturers. Torturers are made, not born. Systematic dehumanisation of the victims (like what Hitler did to the Jews and like what various other political leaders try to do to people they don't like) happens before human rights abuses start happening. The dehumanising is the thin end of the wedge.

This difference between treatment of "us" and "them" can be seen in the fossil record. Neandertals ate their dead. Most cases of this, the deceased was eaten (stone tool marks consistent with removing flesh from the bones) then buried carefully in a grave, sometimes with flowers, sometimes with red ochre, sometimes with grave goods. The most similar thing in Homo sapiens society is the funerary rites of a remote tribe in Polynesia where eating the deceased is part of funerary rites and to do so is a sign of respect, and the traditional belief is that you imbibe the good qualities of the person that you eat. The evidence in most Neandertal burials is that something like this was going on, and not that they hunted each other for food.

However, there's an archaeological site, I think in France (I forgot the exact location) where some Neandertals were eaten; their bones smashed to get all the marrow out, then the broken bone fragments tossed aside with the bones of the other prey animals. No careful burial. Very, very different, callous, treatment. There is various speculation a to what led to these particular people being treated exactly like prey animals - maybe a massive food shortage or maybe just one tribe failing to see the other tribe as being human, but it shows the same stark contrast you see in how modern humans treat other modern humans. When humans see others as being human, like them, then there's all the empathy and human niceness and co-operative nature and reciprocal altruism and the like. When humans see others as being other, not human, dehumanised, then all that's gone out of the window. I'm not even going to say that they're treated like an animal (because people have pets and stuff they treat humanely while they do horrific things to other humans) - they become in their mind like objects, and in political situations that lead to this, there's often a strong fear of what this "other" will do to "us" (like the way the modern far right makes people think all Muslims are dangerous terrorists that want to destroy the western way of life) along with the systematic dehumanisation.

This aspect of human nature needs to be kept under constant vigilance (sorry to sound like Alastor Moody but he he put it the best way) because if we allow systematic dehumanisation and demonisation of groups of humans by other humans to go unchecked, it can and does lead to massive human rights abuses, up to and including genocide. I can't think of a single incident of genocide that didn't start that way.

It's a flaw in human empathy. But the fact that we humans can be having this discussion typing peacefully about how horrific it is illustrates the fact that not hurting each other is the default for humans. It's so default we expect it all the time, and when we don't see it, were horrified.
 
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neandermagnon

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Then there is the qualia of possessing a consciousness, of being "aware of one's awareness" in such a way that we experience a "self identity", which includes a sense of continuity over time, and the subjective experience of being "me". I find that I am unable to offer a precise and objective definition for it, perhaps someone else has an idea.

There was a recent New Scientist article on consciousness/awareness/sentience. According to the article it's evolved independently at least 3 times. In vertebrates, in octupus type things and in insects. The signs that an animal is sentient includes sleeping (only sentient things sleep), the amount of anaesthetic it takes to anaesthetise it (apparently it's ten times the amount relative to body mass if you're not sentient) and certain types of decision making that only make sense if the animal making the decision has a sense of its own existence and the impact the decision will have on its continued existence. I don't remember all the details off the top of my head. The most striking thing about it is that fruit flies are sentient.

The sheer number of animals that are sentient is quite scary, seeing as humans have previously believed that only humans are sentient, while others have argued that higher mammals and some birds must be sentient, and this has been a point of debate. I think the article pretty much said all reptiles, birds and mammals are, and so are large numbers of insects, and the octupus and its relatives.

ETA: I think amphibians too and I think it was something about moving onto lad that led to it evolving in our branch of the life family tree

There are so many ways that humans massively underestimate the intelligence and sensitivity of animals. Even if they're not particularly intelligent it doesn't mean they're not sentient. If you have a concept of "don't do x because it will hurt" and "do y because it feels good" - that kind of mental processing requires sentience. In fact the article argued that sentience evolved because avoiding pain and seeking pleasure gives a massive evolutionary advantage over having a pre-programmed/hardwired reflex for every situation.

It was published earlier this year and is probably on the New Scientist website, I think you can read a few articles for free before you have to pay (in case anyone's interested in reading it).
 
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Albedo

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The 'scientific' denial that most of our fellow animals are just as sentient/feeling as we are was one of the absurdest errors of ethology in the 19th/20th century, IMO. Imagine if denial of germ theory lasted that long. That complex emotions are similar in mammals and birds suggests they extend back at least to our common ancestor*, and are far older than what Victor called 'general intelligence' but I'd just call advanced booksmarts, which seems to have evolved independently in several widely separated groups (primates, cetaceans, elephants, parrots, songbirds).


*And also suggests that reptiles are probably more emotional than they're given credit for.
 
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neandermagnon

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The 'scientific' denial that most of our fellow animals are just as sentient/feeling as we are was one of the absurdest errors of ethology in the 19th/20th century, IMO. Imagine if denial of germ theory lasted that long. That complex emotions are similar in mammals and birds suggests they extend back at least to our common ancestor, and are far older than what Victor called 'general intelligence' but I'd just call advanced booksmarts, which seems to have evolved independently in several widely separated groups (primates, cetaceans, elephants, parrots, songbirds).

Yeah it's kind of like if physicists still believed that the sun revolves around the Earth. Flat out denial of the evidence that's plain for all to see because they'd rather believe that they're special and the centre of the universe.
 

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The evidence of higher-level octopus intelligence is vast and somewhat terrifying btw, as is the plethora of anecdotal stories about octopus hijinks.

There's a story about an octopus lived in a university lab, for a couple of years, whose researcher one day went in to the tank room, opened the latch, dropped in lunch, which consisted of some fresh shrimp, and went back to his desk in the other room. A bit later, wet shrimp hit him in the head. He turned to see the octopus headed back toward the tank, which was supposedly secured. The octopus was back in his tank by the time the researcher got in the room. The shrimp he'd thrown was spoiled. He'd never gotten out of the tank before, but apparently could, at will. Just had never had a reason to complain.

The Mind of An Octopus.


A common octopus (Octopus vulgaris) has about 500 million neurons in its body. That is a lot by almost any standard. Human beings have many more—something nearing 100 billion—but the octopus is in the same range as various mammals, close to the range of dogs, and cephalopods have much larger nervous systems than all other invertebrates...

Vertebrate brains all have a common architecture. But when vertebrate brains are compared with octopus brains, all bets—or rather all mappings—are off. Octopuses have not even collected the majority of their neurons inside their brains; most of the neurons are in their arms.

Given all this, the way to work out how smart octopuses are is to look at what they can do. Octopuses have done fairly well on tests of their intelligence in the laboratory, without showing themselves to be Einsteins. They can learn to navigate simple mazes. They can use visual cues to discriminate between two familiar environments and then take the best route toward some reward. They can learn to unscrew jars to obtain the food inside—even from the inside out. But octopuses are slow learners in all these contexts. Against this background of mixed experimental results, however, there are countless anecdotes suggesting that a lot more is going on.

Neuroscientist Shelley Adamo of Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia also had one cuttlefish that reliably squirted streams of water at all new visitors to the lab but not at people who were often around. In 2010 the late biologist Roland C. Anderson and his colleagues at the Seattle Aquarium tested recognition in giant Pacific octopuses in an experiment that involved a “nice” keeper who regularly fed eight animals and a “mean” keeper who touched them with a bristly stick. After two weeks, all the octopuses behaved differently toward the two keepers, confirming that they can distinguish among individual people, even when they wear identical uniforms.
 

Albedo

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The evidence of higher-level octopus intelligence is vast and somewhat terrifying btw, as is the plethora of anecdotal stories about octopus hijinks.

There's a story about an octopus lived in a university lab, for a couple of years, whose researcher one day went in to the tank room, opened the latch, dropped in lunch, which consisted of some fresh shrimp, and went back to his desk in the other room. A bit later, wet shrimp hit him in the head. He turned to see the octopus headed back toward the tank, which was supposedly secured. The octopus was back in his tank by the time the researcher got in the room. The shrimp he'd thrown was spoiled. He'd never gotten out of the tank before, but apparently could, at will. Just had never had a reason to complain.

The Mind of An Octopus.
Someone here had the sig that was something like 'the joy of complaining is the thing that separates us from the animals.' Maybe we're not so different.
 

MaeZe

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... My point is that we already are more like bonobos than common chimpanzees. Humans are the least aggressive of the three species. The circumstances that lead to warfare in humans have never existed in chimp or bonobo society, so saying "humans have wars and apes don't" doesn't mean humans are innately more aggressive. Humans live at much higher population densities and cope with being in close proximity to large numbers of humans they don't know on a daily basis without fighting with each other. Take London. You can't put 100 chimps or bonobos on a London Underground carriage together without them fighting, viciously. Yet humans endure it placidly, day after day, sat next to a strangers without attacking the strangers. There are many other ways humans have evolved to be more placid over the last few million years. Some researchers call it "domesticating ourselves". (Adam Van Arnsdale called it that. I think it was him. It was him or John Hawks. They both are palaeoanthropology professors and bloggers whose blogs I read.)
I can't agree with this at all. But I don't see a lot of value in debating it further.

...I agree it would be nice if people didn't go to war n shit, but based on my experience of life (including having been friends with people from places like Gaza and Northern Ireland) I just do not and never will buy into the idea that humans are innately warlike and war happens because humans can't help but fight each other - war happens because people's basic safety and way if life is threatened in ways that other animals just don't ever experience. Not even all human societies experience those circumstances (and therefore don't do war).
We are very likely defining and applying 'innately warlike' in completely different ways. I certainly don't mean every human is aggressive and warlike. You have to determine if you are looking at the species in general or at the proportion of the species found at various locations on the continuum of behavior.

But dismissing war and aggression as merely based on circumstance is a bit naive, in my opinion.

...There's a saying (I forgot who said it) that all human society is about 3 meals away from anarchy. Of course when your basic survival is threatened to the extent that you think you're going to die you'll fight like an animal to survive. But people forget all the ways in which humans are highly co-operative and non-violent to be able to live in large numbers alongside strangers to begin with. When the shit utterly hits the fan we behave like animals. The rest of the time, we don't. No pun intended... there's a reason why "behave like animals" is used that way in human language.
Did you happen to watch Ken Burns' and Lynn Novik's Vietnam series that just aired on PBS? The reason for that war had little to nothing to do with a shortage of resources.

...We judge ourselves and animals by very different criteria.
I think you are making more false assumptions about who believes what about animal vs human animal behavior. I'll discount myself from your "we" and not worry about it.
 
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The Otter

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Well, the foundation of the question is faulty.

It assumes there's two kinds of behaviors: one of animals, and one of humans. When in fact, the entire animal kingdom is filled with species that act different among itself.

There's no reason why all of them would act like humans if their intelligence rose.
 

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I selected "Something else".

I think it would depend upon the uplift process used, as well as the species.

If you look at chimp behaviour and human behaviour, there are similarities in our emotional reactions, but fewer in our 'System 2' thought.

But what if some species are easier to uplift by, for example, raising them from birth with electrodes in their brains connected to a symbiotic artificial intelligence?

Or by keeping the same skull size, but re-purposing many of the other parts of their brain. (for example, a wolf with no sense of smell).
 

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I haven't read the entire thread, so I hope I'm not too redundant in what I'm saying. My take is that intelligence is utilized to further an individual's desires and objectives. Some animals are social, but others like tigers and bears aren't. They just won't want the company, so will not be constructing cities. Also, other species have different dietary needs and mating habits than us. A race of intelligent felines could find efficient ways to raise animals for meat, but won't care about rice paddies or apple orchards. Marriage wouldn't exist for many species, although some birds, wolves and a few others could have weddings. So, overall, how they'd use their enhanced brain power would indeed be different than us.
 
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mccardey

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Well, the foundation of the question is faulty.

It assumes there's two kinds of behaviors: one of animals, and one of humans. When in fact, the entire animal kingdom is filled with species that act different among itself.

There's no reason why all of them would act like humans if their intelligence rose.

+1 to this.

Also, as regards empathy - my pup has been going to weekly training for the last ten months or so because I'm a hopeless pup-trainer (I haven't moved on much beyond Are you a good pup? Yes you are! Are you the best pup? Why yes you ARE!!) and yes, I expect has learned her trainer's language. But still - they have called her back for visits with nervous, or aggressive, or traumatised dogs who need to be settled before they can start training. Just this pup - no the other ones - and the trainers say it's because she "speaks good dog", and because she has empathy. Which is all very lovely - but the kennel that she stayed at also asked if she could come one day because they had a nervous pup who didn't know how to play, and she was a calming and teaching influence.

I think we don't know as much about animals as we think we do. (Is she a good pup? Why yes she IS!)
 

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I think it depends on how, exactly, we're "uplifting" the animals. If we move some things around to allow a species to evolve into sapience and we're totally hands-off (to their knowledge, we do not exist and this all happened naturally) then they will be as alien to us as we are to any alien intelligence. But if we uplift them by genetically engineering them (like making chakats or the "shipfish" of Pern) then they're going to have some culture/norms based on us, because they were not given the chance to create their own culture without outside influence. We would be teaching them English, not waiting for them to create their own complex language and we learn that. The latter is what I see the most often, since it allows you to have furry characters who do regular human stuff but there's some reason for them to exist.
 

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I know I answered on this thread already a few years ago, but the more I consider the question, the more problems I see with the implication that humans are inherently bad and "animals" are inherently good.

Firstly, we are animals. This distinction between "humans" and "animals" is an artificial one. We are a species of great ape and just as animal as any other animal. We are actually more cooperative and altruistic than the other species of great ape - even bonobos (though bonobos are admittedly a fair bit more peaceful than common chimps). We ARE animals that have been "uplifted" (via evolution by natural selection in environments where there's a selective advantage to higher levels of intelligence) to our level of intelligence. We are what happens if a great ape lineage evolves higher levels of intelligence.

Secondly, many types of violence in humans are the same as what's found in other primate species including chimps and bonobos. This would be various types of interpersonal violence such as bullying (especially the high school types of bullying where a group of kids bully another kid by a combination of social exclusion and systematic small acts of violence). Also, a stronger individual bullying a weaker individual into giving them something. Baboon society is like if you take the most cliquey high school social group and then have violent gang leaders in charge of them. When humans behave in these ways, it's because we're social primates and those behaviours evolved long before our intelligence did. Also, while bonobos are less aggressive than common chimps, they are still known to bully each other in this same high school cliquey kind of a way, so be careful of any assertions that they are totally peaceful, non-violent, etc.

Hostility to those outside the group is another trait that we share with chimpanzees. A male common chimpanzee who wanders into the territory of another group is likely to be beaten to death. Females who come from other groups are accepted because they are potential mates. Humans do this as well - sometimes on a much bigger scale in a more organised manner due to our higher intelligence - but it too comes from being social primates and is not uniquely human. Also, very importantly, there are countless examples of when humans DON'T do this. There are so many examples of human men being among strangers and not being beaten to death. Generally, groups of human men greet unknown human men with friendliness or indifference (depending on the situation). Occasions when they get beaten up are the exception, and in a great many cases, humans who beat up other humans are punished by the majority in their social group (e.g. being arrested, put in jail etc). The human smile is evidence of us evolving to be more friendly to strangers. The smile evolved from the facial expression for fear. At some point in our evolution, groups of humans/hominins recognised that if the stranger was afraid of them, they were not a threat. So displaying a fear grimace to strangers resulted in being treated in a friendly manner. Over enough time, this evolved into the human smile. The fact that we've evolved an entirely new expression (as opposed to merely just a tendency to display a fear grimace to indicate peaceful intentions) suggests this started happening early on in our evolution, though as it doesn't fossilise you can't put a date onto it. But it is an example of humans evolving to be less aggressive and more friendly than other great apes.

Another example of natural selection in favour of less aggressive individuals - in particular less aggressive males - is seen in the current theories about how early hominin (human lineage) ancestors split from early panin (chimp/bonobo lineage) ancestors. The starting point was a system similar to many primate social groups including common chimps where male-male aggression levels were quite high and males competed with males for access to females, doing dominance displays and having large canines to indicate their prowess, and mated with the most fertile-looking females when they were ovulating (females having obvious sexual swellings when they're ovulating) without pair bonding, females only mating when they're fertile - the chimp/bonobo lineage continued in this fashion (though much later on bonobos went down a different trajectory), while the hominin lineage took a different strategy - less aggressive males seeing out less obviously fertile females and forming lasting pair bonds, through the provision of food, friendship and protection, while females sought out less aggressive males with smaller canine teeth, i.e. less aggressive/more co-operative. This explains a number of oddities about the hominin lineage, including the loss of large canines, hidden ovulation in females, breasts that permanently look like they're lactating (i.e. not currently fertile), mating at any time of your menstrual cycle, sex for pair bonding rather than just reproduction, and bipedalism (to carry food to give to your mate). The advantage for males is less competition from other males for his chosen mate - she doesn't look fertile so other males don't try to mate with her - and better chances of the offspring surviving due to greater paternal provision. The advantage for females is the greater paternal provision meaning better chances of the offspring surviving, plus someone to look after her and provide food for her at the vulnerable stages of pregnancy, childbirth and early infancy. In terms of humans evolving to be less aggressive and more co-operative than other great apes, in this scenario, you have selection pressure in favour of lower aggression and greater cooperation. This all happened long before humans started on the trajectory of greater intelligence, as hominins were already fully bipedal and had lost the large canines of other primates long before humans evolved - large cranial capacity is one of the defining features of early humans, so this happened before brains got any bigger than chimp/bonobo brains.

Evidence of humans evolving greater levels of compassion and co-operation along with greater levels of intelligence can be found in the fossil record. The earliest example I'm aware of is from 1.8 million years ago, the skull of a toothless old woman found in Dmanisi, Georgia (in Europe) - the amount of wear on her jaws shows she lived for a couple of years after losing her teeth. Someone looked after her, likely pre-chewing food for her so she could eat (food during the lower palaeolithic era would've been raw and unprocessed and much harder to eat without teeth than cooked/processed food). The fossil record is full of examples of individuals surviving with healed injuries and/or medical conditions such as arthritis, or after losing all their teeth, which would require someone to look after them. The whole evolutionary trajectory humans were on that led to greater levels of intelligence required greater levels of co-operation and sharing, especially sharing of information and teaching each other skills. It comes as a package. There's no selective advantage to higher intelligence and more complex language if you're not working closely with other humans to share knowledge and build a culture that gives you a greater ability to survive.

Next, the implication that all humans are selfish, greedy and destructive is a very ethnocentric one. Spend some time learning about any modern hunter-gatherer population and you'll find that they are not selfish, greedy or destructive. While some level of interpersonal violence is found in all human societies, on the whole they are co-operative, compassionate and place a great emphasis on sharing food, resources etc fairly. Hunter-gatherer populations being like this are more evidence that humans have evolved to be more co-operative, compassionate and caring. In the modern world, hunter-gatherers may appear to be the exceptions on the fringes of other human societies, however when you consider how long humans have existed - the earliest humans lived about 2.3 million years ago - and that agriculture only started 10,000 years ago and industrial society only in the last couple of hundred years or so, and there are human populations who've never been anything other than hunter-gatherers, hunter-gatherer societies should be considered default for humans.

If you remove the ethnocentricity inherent in the question, what you're left with is asking why some agriculturalist and industrialist humans are greedy, selfish and destructive. That is a very complex issue, but the ability to accumulate wealth in agriculturalist and industrialist societies is a major factor, or more specifically, the ability to use accumulated wealth to wield power over others. There are circumstances that can bring out the worst in humans. Recently I watched a documentary about the Roman emperor Caligula. A combination of being given absolute power, the age at which he was given such power (early 20s), plus factors in his childhood (a combination of being a spoilt child and various horrible tragedies like his whole family being murdered by other power hungry people) led to him achieving horrific levels of sadism, debauchery and hunger for power (at least until he was assassinated by the Pretorian guard that were supposed to protect him because they were utterly sick to death of him, along with the Senate and most of Rome's upper classes). If he'd had a normal childhood and not been given that power, would he still have been so horrible? The wrong set of circumstances can make humans do horrifically bad things, but that is not human nature, it's a corruption of human nature. There are factors within larger agricultural societies (late neolithic onwards) and industrial societies that create the conditions where such monstrous people arise. Power corrupts. This is **NOT** the default for humans. There are also factors that can lead to whole populations doing the bidding of such monstrous people, carrying out large scale human rights abuses. This is something that industrialist humans need to examine carefully to prevent the circumstances arising that can result in such things happening.

The fact that people are so horrified by the behaviour of these extremely corrupt and nasty people comes from the fact that such behaviour isn't normal. If it was normal we'd all be like Caligula and be going around doing horrific things to each other on a daily basis, but we don't. On a daily basis, we are co-operative, considerate, kind and are prone to being altruistic. So again, the default for humanity is friendly and co-operative with altruistic tendencies. But there is a necessity for larger societies to keep a close eye on what's going on and preventing circumstances that can result in human rights abuses. This is within our capabilities, and the fact that large numbers of people want this to happen is more evidence that the default mode for humans is nice.

So what would happen if other animals evolve human levels of co-operation? Well, if they didn't evolve from great apes they're not going to behave like great apes. They're going to retain a lot of the wiring from whatever group they're part of. You would have to answer this question separately for each different type of animal. What if wolves evolved to be as intelligent as humans? What if a cat species evolved to be as intelligent as humans? What if chickens evolved to be as intelligent as humans? You'd get a different answer every time. This idea that "humans are bad" and "animals are good" is wrong, because modern humans are one species of animal and every animal species is different. If any other animal evolves to be as intelligent as us, what they are like that the end of the process will be due to a combination of the traits of the animal they evolved from and the traits that were selected for as they evolved higher intelligence. Personally I think it's inevitable that higher levels of co-operation and altruism will evolve alongside intelligence. If their starting point is an animal that's less aggressive than great apes, the result could be a less aggressive animal than humans, but that wouldn't be a foregone conclusion. The question of whether, having evolved that level of intelligence, they are able to build societies that are fair and compassionate is going to depend on them when they get there. They'll be subjected to all the same issues that humans are subject to. Building a fair and compassionate society isn't beyond the capabilities of humans. Once you get to that level of intelligence, you have the capacity to make choices and try to understand the consequences of those choices. Chances are any intelligent species will succeed sometimes and fail at other times. Ultimately I think humans are currently on a trajectory to build a better world, but the biggest barrier is how we deal with very rich people who hoard wealth and refuse to accept responsibility to the damage they do to society, people and the environment. "All that is needed for evil to thrive is for good people to do nothing." Implying that humans are inherently bad is a bit of a cop out to be honest. We aren't inherently bad, but we industrialised humans could be doing a lot better. C- must try harder.
 
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