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Apes Can Guess What Others Are Thinking -- Just Like Humans, Study Finds (theguardian.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: Apes have a human-like ability to guess what others are thinking, even in cases when someone holds a mistaken belief, according to research that supports the view that other primates can empathize and have complex inner lives. The findings, in chimpanzees, bonobos and orangutans, are the first to clearly demonstrate that apes can predict another's beliefs -- even when they know that presumption is false. In a fresh take on a classic psychology experiment, the apes were able to correctly anticipate that someone would look for a hidden item in a specific location, even if the apes knew that the item was no longer there. The ability to predict that someone holds a mistaken belief -- which psychologists refer to as a "theory of mind" -- is seen as a milestone in cognitive development that children normally acquire by the age of five. The findings overturn the view that the ability to place oneself in another's shoes is uniquely human. Krupenye and Fumihiro Kano, a comparative psychologist at Kyoto University who co-led the study, re-examined the question using a creative approach that involved showing the apes videos of a capering actor dressed in a King Kong suit. The video features an actor dressed as King Kong, who hits a man holding a long pole before darting under one of two haystacks while the human looks on. In some scenarios, the King Kong character switches haystack while the human disappears out of view behind a door. The man then reappears and smacks the haystack he thinks his assailant is hidden under -- presumably to get his own back. By using eye-tracking technology, the scientists showed that 17 out of 22 apes tested switched their gaze to show they had correctly anticipated when the man would target the wrong haystack. The findings were published on Thursday in the journal Science.
harambe lives on!
Has anyone ever shot an ape with a pellet gun? I guess it wouldn't be strong enough to cause any damage..
Harambe got shot. Your argument is invalid.
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
...has at least 3 levels of meta here.
"Recognize what is in your sight, and that which is hidden from you will become plain to you. For there is nothing hidden which will not become manifest."
~ Whence do you come, slayer of men, or where are you going, conqueror of space?
Humans are apes....
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
9 out of 10 apes knew I was thinking about bananas and flinging my own shit. Genius!!
Chimps cannot vocalize speech, so Washoe was taught American Sign Language. She could accurately communicate many simple sentences.
One of the many stories is that a lab assistant was absent for a few weeks due to a miscarriage. When Washoe demanded to know why, the assistant signed "my baby die". Washoe was immediately quiet, and signed "cry", even though chimps do not cry. Washoe would also sign more slowly to new assistants that were not good at sign language.
The Gardiners that trained Washoe were not liked by other behavioural psychologists. The latter trained chips in cages with operant conditioning and had poor results, unsurprisingly. The Gardeners lived with Washoe who was treated like a sentient being.
Despite the impressive results, the behaviourists appear to have won, as there seems to have been little follow up research along these lines. The Washoe experiments were totally focused on language. It would be interesting to see more focus on cognition. And in particular, does knowing sign language make chimps smarter. Chimps had been seen signing to themselves, like self talk that seems to be important for human cognition.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
still can't write Shakespeare...
I've seen experiments done with small children that demonstrate the ability to comprehend that their 'world view' might not be the same as that held by someone else as far as the location of a hidden toy. This generally happens at around 18 months to two years of age. But I've seen adults that can't seem to comprehend that the world is made up of various groups of people who have different experience or knowledge sets than their own. So at some point, expanding the simple task (hiding an object, for example) to more complex social interactions breaks down.
Have gnu, will travel.
Modern ape apers know that ONLY apes can ape apes, so if you use an apey ape psychologist instead of a LUDDITE behaviorist, everything will be super apey!
Apes!
'The Economy' is a giant Ponzi scheme whose most pitiable suckers are the youngest among us and the yet-unborn.
But they can write Windows; and they did.
Nah actually many of the problems in Windows are caused by overly *complex* design internally.
Windows tries to make the exposed surface seem simple by having a lot of complexity underneath. Unix is the opposite - the simple upper layer is formed atop another simple layer underneath, which sits atop another simple layer. (Which is one reason that systemd is hated by those who value the Unix approach.)
Oh, the sociopathic Slashdotters didn't, the ones who are incapable of feeling the suffering of others, so have to pretend to 'like' other people, when really it's all a game of pretending to 'care', in order to get something back from other people.
Just look at all the cretinous comments on this article, trying to be 'funny'.
Billions of animals are tortured and killed every year by humans, for no other reason than you can't THINK for yourselves, and you can't FEEL their suffering, and you don't CARE how much pain others go through, as long as you get what you want.
You should sacrifice yourself to save others, not sacrifice others to save yourself.
Oooook!
So that kind of conclusively proves their brains are more advanced than those of Randroids.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
There's no reason to assume the apes are guessing "what others are thinking".
They were shown a sequence of events, including the person hitting a haystack where King Kong first hid. That is all. Of course they expect the person to hit that haystack, that was what they were conditioned to expect. No different than Pavolv's dogs salivating when he walked into the lab wearing a white coat. The experiment was rigged to prove the hypothesis.
One Ape can guess what others are thinking.
One million Apes on typewriters can guess what Shakespeare was thinking.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
a) Strong genetic and behavioral similarity
b) Lower-order mammals are (strongly) observant, particularly pack animals. Understanding behavior prevents harm to self. So if such animals can do this, why not larger-brained species.
They probably guess sex 50% of the time and "get your hands off me you damn dirty human" the other 50%.
Every time I read an article to the effect that researchers have discovered that some non-human creature has a capability previously believed to be unique to humans, I ask myself (and usually those around me) if these researchers have ever had a dog or cat, or closely watched squirrels, crows, goats, or any of a hundred other animal species. There is so much evidence of nonhuman sentience right there in front of us that it very nearly takes a conscious effort not to see it.
I wouldn't call squirrels intellectual giants, but if you assume sentience in, say, every vertebrate unless there's evidence to the contrary, you'll be right more often than not. Of course, this raises an interesting ethical dilemma for those of us who are omnivores, but pretending it isn't there doesn't make it go away. (For my part, I consider this is an argument for humane livestock practices.)
"My strength is as the strength of ten men, for I am wired to the eyeballs on espresso."
My psychic ape friend told me this would come to pass.
Every dog owner knows that a dog knows that you would get angry if it did something bad.
it explains the complicated relationship between blacks and the police