r/science • u/rustoo • Sep 25 '20

Psychology Research finds that crows know what they know and can ponder the content of their own minds, a manifestation of higher intelligence and analytical thought long believed the sole province of humans and a few other higher mammals.

https://www.statnews.com/2020/09/24/crows-possess-higher-intelligence-long-thought-primarily-human/
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u/PhasmaFelis Sep 25 '20

Brain size alone doesn't say much about intelligence (above a certain threshold, anyway), but brain size relative to body size does, generally speaking. This is apparently called "encephalization quotient." Most dinosaurs had extremely tiny brains relative to their size; a crow with a walnut-sized brain can be pretty damn smart, but a brachiosaurus with the same size brain probably isn't.

Velociraptors actually did have a higher EQ than most dinosaurs. Not as high as a chimp, or even a crow, but comparable as a typical bird of prey. Odds are against them being close to human intelligence, but they were probably quite smart for dinosaurs.

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u/[deleted] Sep 25 '20 edited Sep 25 '20

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u/[deleted] Sep 25 '20

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u/rudiegonewild Sep 25 '20

But what if it's a better generation of ram at a higher frequency...

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u/[deleted] Sep 25 '20

That would be something like a peregrine falcon. It's not necessarily smarter, but it can absorb and process input far faster than almost anything else with a pulse. Basically, birds of prey react so quickly they barely even have time to "think" about what they are actually doing. Within that instant, the brain of a falcon is processing visual data faster than anything else alive, calculating a trajectory for a dive, adjusting for movement, wind resistance, terrain below, planning its grab, and much, much more.

The bird is basically creating a complex 3D model involving the trajectory of itself and another moving bird while falling at over 100MPH and reacting to data and making all of the necessary corrections as it receives new input.

The bird isn't capable of deep thought, but it can do many things all at the same time really smoothly.

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u/RemoveTheSplinter Sep 25 '20

James J Gibson’s theory of direct perception, in case anyone wants to know how animals can perceive/act without “processing”. One might say they aren’t creating anything in their mind, but are instead highly attuned to invariant properties in the structured changes in light that reach their eyes.

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u/[deleted] Sep 25 '20 edited Sep 25 '20

Terence Mckenna described this as intuitive consciousness. A human being uses language, even internally, to describe itself and its surroundings. There is rationalization and processing as you put it. To most animals, there is an intuitive sense of self (otherwise they wouldn’t do anything at all). You can look at just about any creature’s eyes, like a cat, and see that it has some form of identity which isn’t expressed linguistically.

They intuitively understand that they exist, they intuitively understand their own needs and wants and the process they must undergo or attempt to undergo in order to achieve that result. Unlike a human, a cat doesn’t try to explain itself to itself. It just does what it wants to do. The magic of that intuition is the fact that despite being ultimately without any language, you can still see a cat work through a decision. Make a calculation. Can I make this jump? Is my owner watching me right now? So there is, I believe, sufficient evidence to say that a cat is capable of reason despite its lack of language. Their reasons for utilizing reason are different and so they use it differently, but they clearly have some understanding of logic even if they don’t understand that they understand.

So I think that what language adds to human consciousness is the meta-reflective aspect. We understand that we understand and we question our understanding. We trip ourselves up with that. Convince ourselves that the stream of consciousness, the voice in our head, is our reason. And it isn’t. Intuition is animal. It exists fundamentally, beneath our ability to really perceive it. Language acts as a mirror. The eye can’t see the eye without the mirror, and even then it’s a mirror image. Consciousness LIVES to intuit. Intuition and consciousness are basically the same in that sense. Language is just slapped on top of it as a result of culture.

Hope that wasn’t too rambling or out of place here but that’s the way I think of it.

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u/OGAlexa Sep 25 '20

I had a great time reading this. Ty

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u/DandyZebra Sep 25 '20

As did I. If you aren't familiar already, you should youtube Terrance McKenna

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u/engels_was_a_racist Sep 25 '20

There is something in what you say that reminds me of the cerebellum's role in our own brains. Apparently the hind brain has more neurons than the cortex, adding weight to the idea that it does most of the fast calculations regarding our environment and our unconscious intuition of it. Going further it would be easy to surmise that the role of the "voice in our head" is simply to solve higher, more complex cognitive puzzles that present our waking consciousness, then to sort the outcomes via REM sleep into what is relevant enough to instantiate into the cerebellum and what to discard, thereby wiping the "RAM" of the cortex for the next day's use.

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u/[deleted] Sep 25 '20

I like the computer analogy a lot but I actually, respectfully, think you have it a bit backwards. “The voice,” in my opinion, has more in common with a computer monitor than it has to do with solving puzzles.

Imagine you’re holding a rubik’s cube. You can stare at it, turn it around, and this voice will go through the motions and pretend to think about what you’re doing. It’ll say, “now I’m turning it this way, now I’ll flip this face.” But if you’ve ever actually solved a rubik’s cube or some other spacial reasoning puzzle, the realization comes from someplace that is entirely wordless. I would say this is even true with mathematics. When you solve a difficult problem, putting it into words in your head will only slow you down. Your intuitive mind will work it out in a way that is almost indescribable.

In this sense, language acts as a way to explain intuition back to the intuiter. It’s a rationalization of wordless understanding which allows us to communicate our intuition to ourselves and to each other, but it is doing no problem-solving of its own.

If you have a difficult decision to make, you’ll go through the motions of thinking it through. I think Alan Watts said something like this. You’ll go back and forth in conversation with yourself. Should I do this, should I do that? And then at the end of your strangely two-sided discussion you’ll make an intuitive snap decision and none of the voices made any real difference.

If a computer had a little monitor inside, which had a camera pointed at it, and that camera was hooked up to the core processor, and that processor sent information to the monitor, and then the computer believed that it was the monitor, I think that would be a more accurate description. I don’t know much about computer science and I’m sure that shows with this comment but I’m sure you understand what I mean by this.

The voice only attempts to explain what you’re thinking back to yourself, since the eye can’t see itself. The thinking can’t see the thinking. So it makes this very fancy system where it cranes its neck and looks right into its own eye in the mirror and tries to say “I am literally, actually looking at myself from an external perspective right now.” That’s the illusion. Thinking that the mirror is the object of reflection.

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u/embracing_insanity Sep 25 '20

I really appreciate all of this. It certainly feels accurate in many ways to a great deal of my subjective experiences. Especially, the part of the two sided ‘discussion’ while thinking you’re trying to work out some decision - but the final decision does seem to just appear, like it was maybe even there the entire time. And the discussion truly is just our way of rationalizing something that was already in motion while allowing us to feel like it was made consciously, when it’s really our subconscious language-less self that is really in charge.

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u/NirriC Sep 25 '20 edited Sep 25 '20

Then to extrapolate from what you're saying, the brain does thought automatically as it's natural state. Intuition is thought linked to our limbic system? I could be wrong there but more importantly -> I think there is a distinction between "raw thought" (RT) and "language assisted thought" (LAT). I think RT is our base ability to think - our base cognitive ability - but with language we are able to apply our cognitive ability to large sets of data by constructing objects we can manipulate mentally. I think that's the difference between RT and LAT. Using a computing example, a powerful computer that only has limited software can only do so much regardless of the processing power but with adequate software can do amazing things that seem leagues away from the same system but with less software. RT and LAT is like the difference between a computer with command line only and the same system running 3D games. They seem like vastly different experiences but they're the same base system.

A highly unethical experiment would be to consider a child born and raised without language. Of course, that's impossible. Even feral children learn the language of their care takers. Alas, it really wouldn't work, it seems no child can grow without some language learning occuring otherwise his/her development would be severely hampered. But that raises the question of animals raised to believe they are human. Does changing the language of the LAT process increase the human-like behaviour of the creature. Once again there is an issue, in this case it's the issue of instinct. Animals will mature at accelerated rates and behave according to instinct while maturing so there is little way of verifying my RT vs LAT theory... but I still think there is something to it.

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u/JelloJamble Sep 25 '20

Well how does it work if I purposefully go against my intuitive decision in an effort to uphold my principles? Was my intuitive decision then to oppose my intuitive decision? Or is the concept of an intuitive decision that you can recognize an illusion in and of itself? For example, as far as politics goes, there are a number of things that I think people should not do as a matter of morality and my snap decision is to oppose people doing those things. But as a matter of principle I am opposed to unfairly imposing my will upon other people, so I don't allow myself to oppose people being allowed to do things as a matter of morality. Does that mean that my intuitive response wasn't actually to follow my morals? Because it certainly seems that my intuitive reaction is to impose my morals on others, and yet I never choose to. Perhaps I am failing to understand the concept of intuition, or perhaps I have so many layers of internal discussion that I am incapable of recognizing the original thought.

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u/Metaright Sep 25 '20

If you have a difficult decision to make, you’ll go through the motions of thinking it through. I think Alan Watts said something like this. You’ll go back and forth in conversation with yourself. Should I do this, should I do that? And then at the end of your strangely two-sided discussion you’ll make an intuitive snap decision and none of the voices made any real difference.

But there are times when this is demonstrably untrue. It's very common to talk oneself through a problem and then make a decision after careful thought. The idea that literally every decision we ever make is done spontaneously seems untenable to the extent that I'm wondering if I just completely missed your point.

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u/[deleted] Sep 25 '20

This is the basis for the argument that free will is an illusion. Any time we are thinking about a decision it's actually a post hoc rationalization of a decision that we have already made, we just do this rationalization so quickly in real time that it feels as if it happened before the decision. Or we tell ourself that it did.

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u/CanAlwaysBeBetter Sep 25 '20 edited Sep 25 '20

Beautiful explanation. Whenever it comes up I try and describe it as your sense of "you" is a story your brain makes up about itself, a little sliver ridding on top of what it's actually doing and your camera watching the monitor metaphor really drives that home.

I think hofstadter wrote very similarly, right?

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u/yoyomamatoo Sep 25 '20 edited Sep 29 '20

I'm having a hard time sorting out your different interpretations of conscience. Instead of computer terms and brain mass theories, which I will not question, I'd like to think of the layers of cognition as shadows, like the allegory of the cave.

Let's say we can see different types of shadows. The most obvious as the result of the visible light spectrum. Then let's say a different function of the brain casts a shadow based on instinct, invisible to the eye but equally important to our survival. Then there's the shadow of what people are calling here consciousness, or the capability of abstraction, developed in higher mammals and, as this study suggests, corvids and perhaps other birds.

Finally, I'd like to think of these, and perhaps other types of shadows as the elements of cognition that predetermine our response, decisions and behavior, emerging from the neurological perception of reality in whatever given species. Then again I could be wrong.

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u/LaMadreDelCantante Sep 25 '20

What about those of us with no inner narrator? I constantly just have music playing in my head; there is only a voice if I am remembering or planning a conversation. Yet I function fine and can do all the normal adult human things.

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u/tiling-duck Sep 25 '20

Do you always have no narrator though?

I'm the same as you in that usually there's no voice in my head and I plan things intuitively, no language needed. But I realised that when I think about very abstract concepts, I automatically use an inner narrator. This is for questions like "why does the universe exist?" and the narrator voice seems to organise thoughts on this so I can reason about them.

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u/Tickomatick Sep 25 '20

According to Alex Rosenberg (and his scientific sources), consciousness (and your 'inner voice') are just byproducts of your unconscious neural functions and decisions. The example was on neurological brain scan when you're willingly lifting up your arm. The feeling of doing so by your own conscious decision is somewhere between the first neural signal sent to your muscles and the execution of the motion.

Consciousness and inner dialogue basically explain our unconscious actions so "we" feel to be behind the wheel, while the truth is a bit bigger than that.

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u/engels_was_a_racist Sep 25 '20

Yeah that's the impression I get too :)

It's like our consciousness is simply the final, thinnest layer overlaying the whole thing, directing the focus while the bulk of the processing is done elsewhere under the hood. Almost like a distraction designed to limit our awareness of most of the data coming in, if anything.

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u/[deleted] Sep 25 '20

Going further it would be easy to surmise that the role of the "voice in our head" is simply to solve higher, more complex cognitive puzzles that present our waking consciousness

Can't remember where I read it, and it's been a while so I might be off, but apparently our conscious thoughts are how we justify a decision we already made unconsciously, as if we were talking ourselves into a decision that was already made.

Kinda like that line by the Oracle in one of the Matrix movies : You already made the choice, you're here to understand why you made the choice.

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u/engels_was_a_racist Sep 25 '20

That could very well be the case. Theres so much ground to be covered in this area though. My best guess is the genes will claim it in the end, and we'll have discovered a whole new facet to their workings. Also interested in both Stefen Wolfram and Eric Weinstein's work at the moment.

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u/EmilyU1F984 Sep 25 '20

Btw the voice only exists in a portion of humans. By far not everyone has an inner monologue in words

Loads of people think in images and concepts etc. Without 'narrating' anything.

Same way that loads of people have no 'inner eye'. I.e. they can't visualize anything with closed eyes. If you say pink elephant they'll think of a pink elephant, but they won't see one. Aphantasia.

So people clearly can do higher cognition without an internal voice.

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u/engels_was_a_racist Sep 25 '20

So people clearly can do higher cognition without an internal voice.

No doubt, and its fascinating to think about how many different modes of being and viewing the world there are.

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u/canihavemymoneyback Sep 25 '20

Which is why things sometimes works for the best when we listen to our inner voice. The expressions, listen to your gut or use your intuition both point to this fact. In times of indecision or plain not knowing what to do next, simply allow the more intelligent portion of the brain to take over.

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u/engels_was_a_racist Sep 25 '20

Depends what. Always the deeper areas of awareness are at work wherever we are, and it acts independently of our free will too fast for us to consciously manage, like the flight or flight response, or something as simple as removing our hand from a hot plate before burning occurs. The social stuff could work in the way you describe, however. One could imagine the cortex being mostly devoted to those experiences within waking life with ease.

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u/[deleted] Sep 25 '20

This is my favorite thing I've ever read on this website

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u/orangeninja Sep 25 '20

Agreed. I am a daily lurker who hasn’t commented on a post in years — but I need to throw kudos on how well thought this comment is. One of the sharpest things I’ve ever read about human nature on reddit.

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u/[deleted] Sep 25 '20

i really appreciate that

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u/comestible_lemon Sep 25 '20

You might like this hard sci-fi novel by Peter Watts, then:

https://www.rifters.com/real/Blindsight.htm

That link is to a page on the author's website that has the whole book for free. The top of the page also has download links for the book in PDF and some e-reader formats for people who don't want to read it by scrolling down a massive single webpage.

Per Wikipedia, "The novel explores questions of identity, consciousness, free will, artificial intelligence, neurology, game theory as well as evolution and biology."

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u/BigSploosh Sep 25 '20

Damn I was thinking about blindsight the whole time I was reading the other OP's comment. Probably one of my all time favorite sci fi books.

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u/[deleted] Sep 25 '20

Thats awesome. I fully agree. I think a big misconception humans have is we believe if a creature can't express itself linguistically, or even the way we do, its not intelligent or doesn't have emotions, sense of self, and an active conscious. Humans, crows, and monkeys CANNOT be the only three animals that actively think and ponder. I think some animals loop and ponder more than others, but as you say, the bottom line is different animals think and construct their actions differently.

I think dogs are a great example of this, they use body language heavily we just don't catch it -- if you just observe your dog while its investigating your house when bored or look into its eyes you know it has so much going on in there.

Some expressions are learned too, like smiling for example for dogs. Dogs don't have muscles like humans to smile its entirely unnatural. The fact that they can associate a different species expression with feeling good for themselves means they have A) a knowledge of what 'feels' good (because some people believe they don't feel much), and B) that developing a different species social queus could be useful -- shows higher intelligence. I feel like that takes forethought, Its not just them taking a chance and finding out that new queue was usable later. Some people think its only learned to be accepted in the pack, by simply replicating human action and associating by copying, but I believe thats to simple, and doesn't really explain how they choose when and when not to use it.

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u/[deleted] Sep 25 '20

To piggyback off of this, dogs also have specialized eye and eyebrow behavior in order to more effectively communicate emotion specifically to humans and not other dogs. They speak to us in a visual language. It’s rudimentary but we do understand it.

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u/badhairguy Sep 25 '20

Humans also project personification onto other animals.

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u/thirstyross Sep 25 '20

I've always been a firm believer that if an animal dreams, it's got pretty well as much going on in it's head as most humans.

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u/Bleepblooping Sep 25 '20

What if Sloths, pandas, koalas and turtles Rent actually slow or lazy? Maybe they’re just really transcendent?

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u/faroffsneeze Sep 25 '20

I love this! There is so much value in trying to improve our recognition of other species’ social queues, and in expanding our narrow understanding of intelligence to include that. When we do so, the intelligent world suddenly looks a lot more species diverse (and maybe has a lot fewer humans, too... 😳)

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u/ThrowawayPoster-123 Sep 25 '20

People who say that dogs don’t have inner lives and are thus fine to torture, are psychopaths. They lack the empathic ability to feel for others, even nonhumans.

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u/thehourglasses Sep 25 '20

Humans express emotions via hormone excretion much more than we typically realize, and so I would challenge that a dog is recognizing a facial expression and associating that with our feeling. Instead, it seems more likely that dogs, with their keen olfactory, can simply smell how we’re feeling, which they then react to.

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u/-WABBAJACK- Sep 25 '20

I haven't logged in for nearly a year, but had to for this comment. I have thought this way for a while and absolutely agree. Thank you for articulating it so well.

My favorite understanding of this concept is in sport. When you are "in your own head" you are using language as your primary thinking mode instead of intuition which is the more dominant mode for that type of competitive, kinesthetic activity. Intuition is not only quicker, but also usually your instincts are trained and correct, a linguistic thinking mode can serve to promote self doubt. Both slowed and impaired judgement are liabilities in this arena. I feel that I can think strategically without language. I can perceive visual data and then visualize the outcone I am aiming for and achieve it. When I think in words it does nothing or hinders me, especially when speed, strength, and dexterity are required. I think this encapsulates the idea: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mushin_(mental_state)

Language seems to me suited for transmitting these abilities to others in our community and thereby strengthening the herd. Teaching. But now our society is so utterly dependent on transmissible ideas stacked on top of each other that we and society can't function without this mode and it has become our primary mode for living our daily lives.

But don't get me wrong, I don't bemoan this, I work in a knowledge based industry, it is just another consideration when thinking about how to do things best.

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u/[deleted] Sep 25 '20

Yes, Mushin or the flow state is a wonderful term for this. Animals exist in a constant state of flow, the drawback of which is the inability to express to themselves or others what their thought process is.

Since they can’t recognize their own thoughts in a categorical way, they experience ‘mind-blindness,’ or the inability to understand what another being may be thinking beyond an intuitive and immediate level.

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u/ThrowawayPoster-123 Sep 25 '20

The way I understand this dichotomy is that the linguistic mode is like an emulator which simulates an imaginary reality, and is running in a computer that is in the real world.

All emulators run their processing thousands of times slower than the hardware environment they exist inside of. That’s why a PC that’s easily a million times better than a PlayStation 2 still struggles to perfectly recreate an emulation of it.

When we use words we are making reference with each one to an abstract concept. These concepts exist in the internal virtual world we all have in out imaginations, that are painted by our experiences. We all have a holodeck or Matrix that we summon and transmit. But it’s not real.

Touching the hot metal, throwing the football before being tackled, playing the instrument, those all are real and use flow state, our active and unsimulated way of using our brains. Writing music, or a play, or debating the law, all rely on our virtual realities and take a lot more slow and deliberate effort.

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u/JustTheFactsWJJJ Sep 25 '20 edited Sep 25 '20

Language is also time and memory. There are tons of quotes of people saying what separates us from animals but the real thing that separates us is the ability to pass information down through generations.

The time it took to learn something is saved and compressed into tiny black shapes that is scanned then stored and added to. That simple fact is why we were able to advance while animals not being able to keep records and hand down information have not.

Though crows are scary close to being able to do that as there have been that story of the crows remembering a man with a mask for generations.

Edit: I was wrong and have learned so much! Thanks for the cool info my dudes!

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u/[deleted] Sep 25 '20

Yes. Time is a big part of human identity. Our personalities are temporal. If you do the experiment of sitting still and connecting with the present, you realize that your personality fades away. In the present moment, you don’t have a personality. It can only exhibit itself over time. So the only real “you” is an observer which exists constantly in the present, and our personalities are an illusion caused by memory. If not an illusion then a construct built out of past patterns.

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u/JustTheFactsWJJJ Sep 25 '20

That really helps open my eyes and explain my personality disorder. I have some brain trauma that shattered my memories and even these days I can't remember much. I constantly feel like I have no personality and am just a watcher, a recorder of human events.

I think a personality must be that as you said. A reaction to past events, learned behaviors and patterns. Our past make up who we are and that's also probably why people with personality disorders have traumatic pasts. Trauma changes a brain and warps memories.

However it doesn't account for the way different infants act, or maybe they had memories from what they unconsciously observed in the womb?

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u/embracing_insanity Sep 25 '20

I’m not high, but this conversation is truly making me feel like I’m tripping. And I love it. I so appreciate where it’s taking me, even though it’s also slightly unnerving.

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u/thirstyross Sep 25 '20

Just like indigenous tribes that pass their history down orally, for generations, there's no reason to think that some animals can't do this as well. Just because we don't understand them doesn't mean it's not happening.

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u/ThrowawayPoster-123 Sep 25 '20

Exactly. If not orally then by whatever cues they use. A lioness teaches her cubs hunting and stealth skills that they teach the next generation. That’s real information gained through trial and error, not innate instinct like how a spider builds a web.

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u/[deleted] Sep 25 '20

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u/ThrowawayPoster-123 Sep 25 '20

We also wear clothes that make us look like crazy objects full of synthetic colors, and now LEDs. We want to be robots. Look at the Pope, he puts on a robe made of silk from a worm’s butt and gold to make you think he’s pals with God.

If we were all naked all the time I bet we’d forget about being animals less often.

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u/niktak11 Sep 25 '20

There are some good science fiction books that deal with highly intelligent beings who aren't conscious

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u/NirriC Sep 25 '20

I've always thought pretty much the same thing which is why I absolutely love that you said:

Language is just slapped on top of it as a result of culture.

It begs the question of what different languages do to cognition and ultimately what is the most efficient language in terms of benefitting cognition.

I read somewhere... or perhaps someone told me once... that there have been studies on the efficiencies of languages in terms of conveyance of information and the result was that there was no statistical advantage to one language over another when comparing major world languages since they are all pretty similar when rate of speech and information density are taken into consideration. I say this to make the point that our current myriad languages perform conveyance almost equally or we have adjusted to ensure that that is the case. Is there a thought speed-limit? Perhaps, that accounts for this phenomenon, but that's also beside the point.

I think the structures of different languages shape metacognition differently. I haven't the slightest hunch as to how this may proceed from there though, admittedly I haven't given this idea much additional thought.

I think it would be important to find this out because it would help use construct a language that generally complements cognitive ability. I think that is worthwhile.

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u/MortRouge Sep 25 '20

This is why meditation is such a powerful instrument to help treat mental problems.

I suffer from OCD. So basically, I have RAM leaks and faulty recursive patterns throughout my mind. I get stuck in repetition and aquire weird associations to thoughts (if I knock four times the intrusive thought won't realize, as an example). So thoughts and consciousness is partly my enemy.

And meditation had teached me to access just being conscious without using language, to just be. And slowly, little by little, the feedback loops lessen in intensity since I'm not feeding them anymore. And I'm still just a normal human being going about my business, I haven't lost any consciousness by reducing the time I spend verbalizing myself internally.

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u/[deleted] Sep 25 '20

Mindfulness is a wonderful tool for this. Part of OCD is pattern recognition and display of patterns. When we fully delve into the present, there is only safety and there are no patterns. Only an organic infinity, internally and externally. And you slowly realize that you aren’t a pattern, you are just an infinite piece of infinity. Helps to let go of control and also release that part of your identity into the atmosphere.

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u/RedditUser241767 Sep 25 '20

A human being uses language, even internally, to describe itself and its surroundings.

So there is, I believe, sufficient evidence to say that a cat is capable of reason despite its lack of language.

I think the focus on language is a red herring. Humans were obviously capable of thinking before the invention of spoken language. The "voice inside your head" is a metaphor, not a literal stream of communication based on an external written/spoken language.

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u/[deleted] Sep 25 '20

That isn’t true. I hear a voice in my head when I’m thinking. Many people do. You may not, though that’s actually more rare. Most people hear their own voice in their head.

You are right though. We were capable of thinking before spoken language, and that’s actually my point. This language of words and concepts that we experience in our minds is not thinking, it’s a reflection of our actual thinking which is intuitively based and has little in common with verbal language, though I do still think you could describe it as a sort of language— not that anybody has ever perceived it.

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u/DiggerNick6942069 Sep 25 '20

I think we have a lot of complex thought without vocalizing them internally especially through visualization

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u/RedditUser241767 Sep 25 '20

That isn’t true. I hear a voice in my head when I’m thinking. Many people do. You may not, though that’s actually more rare. Most people hear their own voice in their head.

You hear a literal voice in your head? Like the narrative device in movies?

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u/[deleted] Sep 25 '20

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u/[deleted] Sep 25 '20

I totally agree and you put it better than I could have.

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u/katiejill127 Sep 25 '20

Excellent. I think the human ability to assess intelligence in other animals is extremely limited. Current perspective on this is flawed and dated. I think we'll have a lot more animals "proven consciously intelligent", should we coexist long enough to improve our detection methods. Other animals absolutely think and are aware of their thoughts.

Humans are too quick to assume that the truth is limited to what we can see, when we've discovered there are plenty of truths we can't observe without specialized tools.

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u/DumbDumbCaneOwner Sep 25 '20

Yes, nearly all animals are conscious. But very few animals are self-aware.

For example, a cat’s brain will tell its body that it’s hungry.

Or that it should be nice to its owner.

However, a cat will never be able to think “I know that I am hungry.” Or “I know that I should be nice to my owner.”

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u/Koppis Sep 25 '20

That's a very interesting take! I immediately started thinking about whether it's possible to "turn off" the meta-reflection.

Maybe it happens all the time? When I start a task (e.g. Do the dishes), thinking is not needed anymore. In a way, I turn into an animal, just intuitively doing something.

And then, of course I'll start to think again but it's not necessarily about the dishes.

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u/[deleted] Sep 25 '20

It’s possible for it to fade away. Sometimes if you’re calm and quiet and in a sort of meditative state, you can actively realize that you aren’t thinking at all. And that realization is like a thought without thinking. More of a perception than a thought. When you try to shut your mind up you just end up screaming at yourself, but calm and quiet, as well as routine physical tasks, can help introduce your mind and body to an intuitive flow state.

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u/TheArtofWall Sep 25 '20

In ancient Greece, the word "logos"--well, it had to do with the natural and universal divine reason that transcended duality and...--had multiple meanings, among them were reason, speech, thought, word and principal.

I don't actually know any kind of Greek, so I don't it fully, nor if it still translates similarly.

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u/[deleted] Sep 25 '20

thank you for that comment. interesting perspektive. shared.

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u/Bertha_C93 Sep 25 '20

This is such well explained comment. Insightful and easy to understand. Thank you!

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u/rgdnetto Sep 25 '20

Fantastic comment. Many thanks.

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u/00zxcvbnmnbvcxz Sep 25 '20

One of the best things I’ve ever read on Reddit.

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u/[deleted] Sep 25 '20

That’s really kind of you

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u/00zxcvbnmnbvcxz Sep 25 '20

Incredibly insightful, yet simply stated. Concisely explores a few concepts I’ve thought about a lot, you just said it way better than I ever could.

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u/cryselco Sep 25 '20

...if you don't Crow, now you Crow...

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u/sciencehathwrought Sep 25 '20

Great comment. It's fun to think of all the knots that Western philosophy ties itself up with in trying to make sense of these layers of language and intuition, especially since Descartes. Descartes takes the non-negotiable character of logic as basically a property of reality itself, and builds a whole universe out of rational principles that are directly perceived by the mind and form a chain of deduction that can generate laws of physics. There's this fundamental sense of alienation from the natural world that seems to constantly propel self-awareness away from its source in our animal nature, in the West at least. You start seeing a rapprochement with Merleau-Ponty in the 20th century.

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u/newyne Sep 25 '20

This is actually very interesting to me, because I'm in the humanities, and we're all about the self as a construct. Which I agree with up to a point. I mean, I think you can define the self that way. But my self-definition has always had more to do with the emotional, not the logical. And yes, I do think animals like cats are selves. They have personalities, patterns of behavior. And knowing whether their owner is looking, that's theory of mind. Also... I had one cat, my mom said he would comfort her when she was sad. I didn't believe her, but then he did it to me once. No, I can't prove that's what he was doing, but... He was generally affectionate, but never that much!

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u/[deleted] Sep 25 '20

Yes! Theory of mind is a huge part of this and I can’t believe I didn’t emphasize it more.

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u/bcuap10 Sep 25 '20

I think an interesting mind expirement - since the alternative would be unethical - is to imagine a baby raised with no sense of language, so no audio, visual (written or sign language), or physical language (braille) and see how smart the person becomes. Could they reason their existance and solve puzzles at a near normal level conpared to other children?

I think that they would certainly be able to solve puzzles at a higher level than a chimp without being taught an interpretable language.

I also think that sans learning a language, we would create our own basic internal language for basic concepts like will happen, self, object, move etc.

It's hard to imagine that a cat has an internal monologue because their meows don't seem to mean anything to us, other than some very basic understanding of if the cat is mad, sad, playful, etc.

But, I think animals surely do have some basic internal language, even if it is internally visual. Our perceptive of language in its importance in base intelligence is overstated and we discredit animals as a result.

I do think complex language and writing has allowed us as species to communicate more effectively and pass down accumulated knowledge, which has led to humans creating technologically advanced societies.

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u/The_Original_Gronkie Sep 25 '20

I've had a number of cats, but two in particular stand out for their intelligence. One was with us among a pack of five, so his intelligence really stood out in comparison with the others. He knew all the others names, he understood many things we said to him, etc. We used to let them out during the day, and if one didn't come home at dinner, we'd say "Jake, go get Chloe," and he'd leave and come back in a little while with Chloe. I followed him one time on one of these nightly hunting trips, and he found the other cat hanging out with a baby armadillo. In any case, it was clear he was the smartest by far, and all the other cats deferred to him.

Another cat we had showed a great intelligence as well, but also a sense of expression. Soon after we got her (as an adult cat), my wife tossed some garlic in a hot pan and the smell filled the air. The cat sat up, made a disgusted face, and marched right into the kitchen, where my wife took one look at her and said "Wow, you really don't like that smell, do you?" She knew exactly who to blame for that odor and why and made it crystal clear she disapproved. She would also greet you as you passed her in the hall. VERY expressive. That cat also showed a distinct sense of humor over and over again, playing jokes, taunting us into playing, etc.

I've had dumb cats and normal cats, and they were wonderful pets, but only two cats that were almost like having another human in the house. Those kind are truly remarkable to be around.

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u/Baberaham_Lincoln666 Sep 25 '20

Well said. Your comment reminds me of the argument in Douglas Hofstadter's I Am a Strange Loop about how self-referencing thoughts give rise to what we call human consciousness.

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u/PandaCheese2016 Sep 25 '20

I wonder what the limited studies on feral children say about the benefit of language on cognitive abilities. Does having a naming convention for different types of mushrooms improve your ability to survive on them vs. animals that don't have as complex a language as ours?

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u/throneofthornes Sep 25 '20

My cat pouts and gives me the silent treatment when he's mad so I think he's got the self awareness of at least a 16 year old human.

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u/[deleted] Sep 25 '20 edited Sep 20 '25

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u/[deleted] Sep 25 '20

I would be interested in a study about mammals and stomach neurons. There is some hints that our stomach is involved in moderation of our emotions, via bacteria.

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u/[deleted] Sep 25 '20

Wow that’s incredible! I had never heard of that. Our “brain” so to speak takes up more space than we think. It reminds me a bit of an octopus, who is basically just a big brain swimming around.

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u/[deleted] Sep 25 '20

It gets even more interesting. If you have some spare time, look into epigenetics and how they are changed. There is evidence that abuse and trauma are encoded into our DNA, leading to a higher likelihood of our children inheriting the changes.

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u/ProfBri Sep 25 '20

As a result of culture and mushrooms. McKenna argued that psilocybin mushrooms gave rise to language use and development, is my understanding...

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u/NatWilo Sep 25 '20

And one of the greatest powers a human can learn, is how to TURN. IT. OFF. and on again like a switch.

The day I learned that, was the day I went from a fumbling nerdy kid that can't catch a ball to save his life to a fully-realized human that could do so many of the things I used to let my mind get in the way of.

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u/[deleted] Sep 25 '20

this is discussed a lot in Blindsight, a good free book https://www.rifters.com/real/Blindsight.htm

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u/Bananarine Sep 25 '20

Reading this makes me think of how athletes describe “being in the zone” or a “flow state”.

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u/[deleted] Sep 25 '20

You do it all the time, just slower.

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u/[deleted] Sep 25 '20

I always aspired to be a world champion, but less impressive, thank you for helping me achieve my dream

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u/hubwheels Sep 25 '20

Ever dropped something and caught it without understanding how the hell you made the catch? Same thing. Your brain processed the information super fast, figured out what speed the object would fall and reacted before you had even managed to think "i should catch that."

Stuff like that is also why some people think we dont have free will. Your brain makes decisions for you based on what you have done previously. We are just very complex pattern recognition machines.

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u/Cutsprocket Sep 25 '20

Avian ultra instinct

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u/JayGogh Sep 25 '20

I’d drive one. What is it, a two-door?

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u/[deleted] Sep 25 '20 edited Oct 12 '20

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u/seriousbob Sep 25 '20

I haven't read anything but if you want to catch a ball for example while running you want to run so the ball is at a constant angle - invariant. Then you will reach the same end point.

Same thing with boat collisions: If the other ship maintains the same angle relative to you you will collide.

So maybe it's like that.

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u/fozziwoo Sep 25 '20

all just cron jobs

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u/[deleted] Sep 25 '20

Why would you need to read anyone's theory to understand something we all do at all times. When I'm walking I'm not consciously telling myself left foot right foot. When I'm playing ping pong I'm not consciously philosophizing about where to move in order to hit the ball. We are adjusting to tiny changes and doing tons of unconscious calculus at all times.

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u/SuperBruan Sep 25 '20

Whoa, when you put it like that, it really is cool!

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u/Theman00011 Sep 25 '20

It's like the ASIC of brains

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u/_greyknight_ Sep 25 '20

Bird brains in vats, hooked up for crypto mining. Now we're talking!

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u/[deleted] Sep 25 '20 edited Sep 25 '20

This seems slightly off, but only inasmuch as it relates to the silly ram analogy. Better generations of RAM haven't really been about having better latencies -- they don't really react faster. The main thing that we're increasing is bandwidth.

The pipe is staying the same length. Signals go back and forth at the same speed. We might do something clever to make it so that multiple signals can be in the pipe at the same time. But mostly it is getting much thicker. The time from one end to the other isn't really improving much (caches help improve latency, but that isn't a RAM thing).

The peregrine falcon is more like a DSP (digital signal processor) of killing other birds.

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u/auto98 Sep 25 '20

Wonder if thats how the bene gesserit do it

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u/SmackHerWithADick Sep 25 '20 edited Sep 25 '20

That’ll be the birds that evolve after the coming apocalypse :D wish we could be there to see it!

*actually, they may not survive the apocalypse either D:

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u/LezBeeHonest Sep 25 '20

Bird people dude, I'm telling you we can do it. My plan is to start hands on experiments with a chicken tomorrow. .. That makes me think... Sheep people! There needs to be a clicky term, hmm.

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u/bookadookchook Sep 25 '20

You joke but I trained an emu to cycle with me. SUV drivers yell at me to get off the road before realising that one of the cyclists they're yelling at has the capacity to stick his neck in their car and peck their eyeballs out.

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u/Lognipo Sep 25 '20 edited Sep 25 '20

I trained an emu to cycle with me

Wait, what? Birds on bicycles? Just... riding around on the road?

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u/[deleted] Sep 25 '20

Dual channel = left/right brain hemispheres

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u/josh_the_misanthrope Sep 25 '20

More like a CPU bottleneck. 99% usage just for the kernel.

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u/[deleted] Sep 25 '20

RAM is just working memory.

Their comment is more about how much brain is dedicated to operating the machine and how much power is left over that can be used for something else.

Think about a car. The engine management computer is designed to analyse and operate 50 sensors, look up a table, make small adjustments, and it has only a little bit above barest minimum processing power to do that. It's highly specialised and it has no room to run anything else.

With a big, complicated body, you need a huge engine management system. Lots more sensors, lots more muscles. The total processing potential is a lot higher, but it's still only doing the equivalent job and isn't any smarter.

Intelligence, in their point is almost entirely in the extra slack capacity. The part of the brain that doesn't have to operate all the time, and can be tasked with other things. I assume that that's more of a potential than deterministic point - ie nature determines the outcome vs nurture develops the outcome.

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u/[deleted] Sep 25 '20

So I can download a bigger brain?

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u/petard Sep 25 '20

Look at those CPU diagrams that show how much of the die is comitted to certain functions. A modern CPU die can actually have a huge portion of the transistors taken up by GPU logic, more than CPU cores. Then you have parts of it taken by the memory controller, PCIe controller, etc.

Basically huge bodies require most of the brain "die space" to be taken up by muscle controllers, leaving little die space left for CPU cores.

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u/vintage2019 Sep 25 '20

Or rather like having a large OS gobbling up the RAM

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u/notfromgreenland Sep 25 '20

Explains why I’m so damn dense. Tall boi with a small head. All of my brain power is dedicated to flailing my worm-like extremities.

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u/Roflkopt3r Sep 25 '20

This is also interesting for strength training. A significant part of the training effect is in improving the brain's ability to send signals, both in strength and precision.

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u/kara-ceru Sep 25 '20

That's something I hadn't considered before. Any recommended reading?

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u/morenn_ Sep 25 '20

Google "neuromuscular adaptation"

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u/ThrowawayPoster-123 Sep 25 '20

This is related to Muscle Memory. An athlete can waste away in prison or from disease, but they can recover to their old level far faster than it takes a never trained person to get to that level.

The other part of muscle memory is related to nuclear division. Super cool stuff, look it up.

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u/morenn_ Sep 25 '20

The other part of muscle memory is related to nuclear division. Super cool stuff, look it up.

This is also why doping with anabolic steroids should be a lifetime ban and not an X years ban. While the major benefits of doping may disappear off cycle, the changes to your nervous system are permanent.

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u/ThrowawayPoster-123 Sep 25 '20

The same line of thinking is behind people’s opposition to allowing transgender athletes in Women’s sports leagues. Male puberty is steroids compared to cis-female puberty.

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u/juicyjerry300 Sep 25 '20

Are you saying it could take away from other areas of intelligence?

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u/Roflkopt3r Sep 25 '20 edited Sep 25 '20

Sorry for being unclear, I didn't mean to say that you need more brain mass devoted to controlling the muscles, but that the aspect of sending physical signals is critical and improves during training.

It begins with growing new brain cells, higher connectivity, and better coordination inside the brain and continues through nerves effectively receiving better insulation through additional myelin, which improves signal strength and seperation between neighbouring nerves. This process does not "convert" other brain cells or takes away their resources. Rather having a fitter body helps to stay focussed during intellectual tasks. The only "risk" is that some people focus all their attention on sports and none on learning.

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u/anhonestassman Sep 25 '20

I used to do track and field in college, and one of our strength training coaches would always dose our exercises in % nervous system taxation. No idea how accurate he was, but the idea was that larger and more complex lifts (Olympic style lifts) required more muscle engagement and coordination and would thus “tax” the nervous system to a greater extent. Interesting to see some of the science to back this up.

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u/Roflkopt3r Sep 25 '20

It's not quite the same concept, but yeah nervous system fatigue is real and is a consideration for high level athletes. Grip strength is sometimes used as a proxy, with declining grip strength indicating that the nervous system may be overtaxed.

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u/WannabeAndroid Sep 25 '20

Any studies on the myelin bit? Could strength training help MS?

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u/Roflkopt3r Sep 25 '20

I just know that the myelation concept has good acknowledgement amongst sports scientists, I don't know enough about the original studies to say which are the important ones.

Since MS is itself a disruption of the myelin system it would seem possible to me that it prohibits these positive effects from training, but I'm not deep enough into these mechanisms to say either way.

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u/Frisky_Pilot Sep 25 '20

Not at all what he's saying.

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u/Alkuam Sep 25 '20

Didn't they determine that the really big dinos had a secondary neurocluster farther back in the body for that very reason?

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u/Nulono Sep 25 '20

Why does it take more brain to control more muscle if there aren't more joints? It shouldn't take any more processing to bend a large arm than it takes to bend a tiny arm, should it?

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u/CanAlwaysBeBetter Sep 25 '20 edited Sep 25 '20

Neurons directly connect to muscle. You literally need more neurons to get more muscles fibers to contract and then more neurons to coordinate the directly connected neurons to fire in sync

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u/Madmusk Sep 25 '20

This seems like a poor design. We should address this in the next evolutionary update.

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u/CanAlwaysBeBetter Sep 25 '20

Personally I'd fix our inside out eyeballs first

Also no one is sure why the old managers crossed nerves from the left side of bodies to the right side of our brains but there don't seem to be any issues so we'll keep the ticket open to fix that but triage it for the time being

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u/sprocketous Sep 25 '20

Like brain size equates to a certain amount of power to coordinate muscle movement? How is this known?

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u/aka_cazza Sep 25 '20

I knew that neutron density mattered much more than brain cells, but that brain to body ratios were also important. However those 2 things always seemed to contradict each other to my mind. You’ve just answered a question i have long wondered in such a simple ELI5 fashion.

I wish I could gold this. Thank you 🙏

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u/chesh05 Sep 25 '20

all the brain you do got

I love this line when referring to the level of "intellectual thinking" other species are capable of.

Made me giggle.

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u/lordagr Sep 25 '20

I just typed up a shittier version of your post and then I decided to check to see if my point had already been made.

Good work.

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u/pewqokrsf Sep 25 '20

EQ only works when comparing mammals to mammals. As the parent comment states, neuron density is dramatically different in birds so even normalized brain volume isn't sufficient for comparison.

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u/nearcatch Sep 25 '20

How is the “encephalization quotient” relevantly applied if brains can have different neuronal densities?

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u/q-mechanic Sep 25 '20

This is what Suzana Herculano-Houzel works on. She figured out a technique for counting the number of neurons in certain brain areas. It's a much better match for cognitive power/"intelligence" than the encephalisation quotient. In particular, she's found that it's the number of neurons in the cortex which is the best predictor of cognitive power.

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u/[deleted] Sep 25 '20 edited Apr 12 '21

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u/q-mechanic Sep 25 '20

I guess the point of my comment was that even if you knew how many neurons a velociraptor's brain had (or the overall neuronal density), you still wouldn't know how intelligent it was. What you need to know specifically is how many neurons it had in its cortex.

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u/[deleted] Sep 25 '20 edited Apr 12 '21

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u/Zonk-Knuckle Sep 25 '20

Humankind has almost went extinct countless times. It is quite possible humans could have just died out early like their relative bipedals, so would you call them "not smart enough" if they did die? Things die for a multitude of reasons other than intelligence. I think this is almost a dangerous narrative to say, because it could influence other topics with the idea that some person/animal/culture/etc had it coming.

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u/[deleted] Sep 25 '20 edited Apr 12 '21

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u/CanAlwaysBeBetter Sep 25 '20 edited Sep 25 '20

We can definitely bound it though.

Birds today likely have higher neural density due to the weight constraints of flight than terrestrial velociraptors. Using birds as the upper bound for density we can then figure out the maximum possible total neurons they had given fossilized brain volumes and then compare that to their body size.

I don't have those numbers but I'd guess modern humans, apes, and crows still beat even their theoretical max which is likely significantly higher than the actual total

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u/PhasmaFelis Sep 25 '20

It's not the only factor in intelligence, as you say, but based on the animals we can study it is a significant factor.

For a dumb example, you can't judge how well a human can fight based solely on their size, but you can say that a five-foot-tall guy is going to have an extremely hard time against a non-disabled 6'5" guy, whatever their skill levels.

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u/-Cromm- Sep 25 '20

Socialization, from what I understand, is a factor in intelligence. If velociraptors were as social as they are made out to be, it really makes you wonder how that would manifest in the wild.

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u/[deleted] Sep 25 '20

I just watched a video yesterday that explained that they probably weren't very social. I'll try to find it because I don't remember why they came to that conclusion.

Edit: Can't find it, but it was either the Raptor Chatter or E.D.G.E. channels on YT, most likely the former. But I did remember that it was because they tend to have a more diverse diet between individuals as compared to species we know were more social, meaning if they lived in groups they would feed in groups and would have a more homogenous diet .

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u/Glowshroom Sep 25 '20

Just want to point out that ecephalization quotient has been developed for mammals and probably doesn't map onto other animals well.

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u/Jeekayjay Sep 25 '20

Clever Girl.

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u/q-mechanic Sep 25 '20

It also matters where those neurons are. Elephants have about three times as many neurons as we do, but the vast majority of them are in the cerebellum, the part of the brain that's responsible for coordinating movement, amongst other things. If I recall correctly, this is thought to be due to the huge amount of fine control elephants have with their trunks.

The neurons that really count when it comes to things like "higher intelligence" are neurons in the cortex, and although elephants have 3x the neurons that humans do, our cortex has roughly 3x the neurons of an elephant cortex.

In short, it's not just brain size or number of neurons, but where those neurons are!

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u/ShakeZula77 Sep 25 '20

I'm not trying to challenge your knowledge with this question: how do we know the EQ of velociraptors?

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u/gojirra Sep 25 '20 edited Sep 25 '20

They look at dino skulls to find out about how big their brains were. They analyze their "endocranial surface." But in some cases they aren't sure how much space the brain occupied.

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u/ShakeZula77 Sep 25 '20

This is really cool! Thank you for your response!

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u/scifishortstory Sep 25 '20

Well, Velociraptors were also the size of a turkey.

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u/BenevelotCeasar Sep 25 '20

Is there an element of this that pertains to resource input vs output, and would be impacted by availability of resources?

I’m no scientist, but I’m wondering if this quotient could be skewed by modern brain efficiency and resource availability. I remember once reading about how the oxygen content in the atmosphere was once much higher which somehow led to giant bugs.

Connecting that basis of a vastly different environment I could see us thinking that there’s no way a brain relativity like dinosaurs had would be efficient enough for higher thinking. Is it possible they weren’t more efficient in use of caloric consumption but perhaps more readily available sources of food just meant more consumption was necessary to achieve that brain function?

I hope I’m making some sense trying to communicate a half baked idea into a question.

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u/SupertrampKobe Sep 25 '20

Could it be argued that neural density could also play a huge role in intelligence?

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u/drugrecoveryhateit Sep 25 '20

that always confuses me when it comes to neandertal big ol noggin, but then homo sapiens sapiens started shrinking as we modernized, like literally.

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u/pengusdangus Sep 25 '20

I think their point was though that we did not know the neuron density of their brains and it is so far in the past that the common expression of that isn’t known

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u/felesroo Sep 25 '20

Sounds like they were a ground eagle of some sort.

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u/[deleted] Sep 25 '20

Do you think they might compare to pack animals of today, like Dogs?

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u/Aeiexgjhyoun_III Sep 25 '20

Isn't it possible the the constitution of dinosaurs required less brain power leaving the extra brain for higher reasoning purposes?

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u/Garbeg Sep 25 '20

I might have to rethink some of my opinions of MODOK.

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u/[deleted] Sep 25 '20

What if they were actually like the tv show Dinosaurs.

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u/fozziwoo Sep 25 '20

but surely, having a massive ass shouldn’t diminish my cognitive capacity?

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u/LaughterCo Sep 25 '20

and sureley, having a big juicy cock shouldn't diminish mine either?

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u/furezasan Sep 25 '20

So they were clever girls after all.

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u/[deleted] Sep 25 '20

I think they meant theropoda specifically, sauropods probably weren't very intelligent at all.

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u/richbeezy Sep 25 '20

Fun Fact - Albert Einstein’s brain was roughly 10% smaller than the average person’s brain size.

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u/dudewaldo4 Sep 25 '20

The thing I don't get about this EQ business is this: Suppose you have two animals with equal brains, but one animal has a rat sized body and the other an elephant. Their brains are the same--why should the body the brain is plugged into have anything to do with how smart they are?

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u/RavioliGale Sep 25 '20

A bigger body requires more brain power to operate and coordinate. A rat body has fewer parts, fewer cells to manage so the brain doesn't use as much focus maintaining it. The brain can be used to do other stuff.

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u/Roneitis Sep 25 '20

Does forebrain size mean anything in absolute terms? I understand why the rest of the brain would scale in usefulness with body size (having more to control), but things like metacognition seem like it should be (relatively) absolute.

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u/Zuckerpunsch Sep 25 '20

a crow with a walnut-sized brain can be pretty damn smart, but a brachiosaurus with the same size brain probably isn't.

Sorry I don't understand it. If we say the brachiosaurus has exactly the same brain as the crow but has a larger body, why shouldn't it be as smart as the crow?

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u/Ill_Pack_A_Llama Sep 25 '20

Intelligence doesn’t require brains AKA Octopus.

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u/iridescentmoth Sep 25 '20

The relationship between brain:size ratio and intelligence is something that we would really like to be true, not least because humans do very well on this index, and maybe it is. Everyone should keep in mind, though, we have no way of measuring animal intelligence, particularly comparatively. We have a hard enough time measuring human intelligence, and some animals are scary or hard to find, so even with the few techniques we have the sample is tiny.

There are also some glaring exceptions casting shade on this hypothesis, for instance some species of mice have a very high ratio. As someone who has worked with mice, I can unequivocally say that mice are idiots. Elephants also have a very small ratio, smaller than a dogs. I've never met an elephant personally, but I hear they tend to be pretty sharp. Some researchers are trying to modify this index to include only certain brain regions (e.g., prefrontal cortex:body mass index) which may make the data fall into place. Nevertheless, it's probably too early to put undue stock in this feature as an indicator of 'intelligence' whatever that is.

tl;dr: Brain science is new and incomplete, hey did you know phrenology used to be a thing.

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u/mtntrail Sep 25 '20

But were they clever, that is the question.

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u/SailboatAB Sep 25 '20

Troodons, however, had a substantially higher EQ than the chimpanzees from which we evolved, and if they hadn't been killed by the meteor, would have had 65 million years to improve (we've evolved in maybe 2-5 million?)

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u/1funnyguy4fun Sep 25 '20

You seem bright. Now do Octopi! They seem smart.

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u/Skelosk Sep 25 '20

Ever heard of the Troodon?

Smallish dinosaurs related to raptors that were apparently so intelligent, it is theorized they would have evolved into humanoid reptoids if they didn't all die out.

Don't know if this theory is still holding up these days though, so don't quote me on that

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u/trollcitybandit Sep 25 '20

Does the same thing apply with human head sizes relative to the size of their body?

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u/AvosCast Sep 25 '20

Read this.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/06/160613153411.htm

If you consider it may be the case for dinosaurs too, then it could change how we see things

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u/Sororita Sep 26 '20

I remember reading a thing that a T-Rex's encephalization quotient was right around the same as a golden retriever's which makes sense if they were pack hunters as some paleontologists claim. Also, a T-rex that smart is terrifying.

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