I have no idea if they’re curious about the world around them. But that’s also not the question at hand.
Comment on We wouldn't listen, anyway.
theneverfox@pawb.social 1 day agoThat’s crazy. You think monkeys aren’t curious about the world around them?
They just don’t look to humans for answers, they look to humans for treats
treadful@lemmy.zip 1 day ago
theneverfox@pawb.social 1 day ago
It is the question at hand. It’s a question about the mental process of animals
The question isn’t are they curious - we know they are. The question is why they don’t ask humans questions when you teach them how to speak
The answer is - it’s because you’re not speaking gorilla, the gorilla is learning a foreign language, which it learned by being motivated by food.
Animal languages have a different grammar to human languages. When they ask questions, they often do it by making statements to be agreed with or corrected. They might even disagree, and assert the statement again in reply
You have to meet animals halfway… Well, really like 10% of the way since they’re the ones learning to speak to us in our languages
Clent@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 day ago
These people aruginf against the intelligence of animals would fit right in with people who encounter savages on their voyages.
That label was based on cultural differences and these fools are too ignorant to see they are making the same mistake across the difference in species.
It’s quite fascinating. Maybe if we give them treats they can be trained to recognize their superiority only exists in their mushy little brains.
theneverfox@pawb.social 18 hours ago
Lol right? It’s crazy how far on a limb they go, despite interacting with dogs
How often do we talk about how dogs want this or that, how they’re thinking of doing something “bad”, how they look so guilty they tell on themselves
But yeah, nothing going on up there. It’s all projection, they’re just dumb animals and humans are super extra special
yeahiknow3@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 day ago
Well, curiosity comes in different stripes. Investigating your environment is one thing. Asking second-order questions is quite another.
“Can I have food?” vs “What is food?” or “Why am I hungry?”
Kolanaki@pawb.social 1 day ago
“Why are we here?”
“One of life’s great mysteries isn’t it? Why are we here? I mean, are we the product of some cosmic coincidence? Or is there really a God, watching everything. You know, with a plan for us and stuff. I don’t know man, but it keeps me up at night.”
“What? I mean why are we here, in this box canyon in the middle of nowhere?”
yeahiknow3@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 day ago
if you wake up in a compound, catered to your every need by weird alien captors, “why am I here?” is a pretty obvious question.
Kolanaki@pawb.social 1 day ago
You ask the aliens why you are there, meaning the cell they imprisoned you, and they tell you how their species created humans and what humans purpose is. You immediately go catatonic by the revelation.
Doc_Crankenstein@slrpnk.net 1 day ago
Oh man, RvB reference in the wild after all these years. Warms my heart.
Tonava@sopuli.xyz 1 day ago
To be fair a lot of people don’t ask the latter questions either
theneverfox@pawb.social 1 day ago
They already understand the second order questions though. Why would they ask the humans?
They know what’s outside their enclosures, they know they’re there because the humans want them there, they know strange humans like to see and interact with them through the glass. They just don’t care, so long as they have their tribe around with things to do and they get tasty food
Animals understand existence better than humans do. They understand life and death better than we to. Our higher intelligence makes second order questions complicated because we put ourselves through mental gymnastics
We should be asking apes about the meaning of life, not the other way around
yeahiknow3@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 day ago
No, they don’t. Second-order questions aren’t just the prosaic things any intelligent creature would ask, such as “why am I here?” or “what do you want from me?”
but also the more esoteric, “what sort of creature are you?” And “what sort of creature am I?”
Animals (and, indeed, most humans) don’t ask second-order questions at all because that requires abstraction, which is the sort of reasoning that requires enormous amounts of education and curiosity.
theneverfox@pawb.social 1 day ago
I agree, but that is the kind of question they do think about. Koko was “a wonderful gorilla person” in her own words
There’s a dog that uses one of those word button mats that thinks small dogs are cats, dogs are dogs, and that she’s a human (or that her owner is also a dog, she’s convinced she’s the same as her owner and always gets confused when it’s explained otherwise)
They don’t ask, because they already know what they think. They aren’t confused about where they stand in the world, it’s learning human categorization that confuses them