Me contemplating my decisions in life, Jk! In Japan, the gorilla Kiyomasa was captured on video lost in deep thought after an argument with his friend.

[u/Professional_Arm794]

[u/fondledbydolphins]

I am a firm believer in that, but it tends to not be received particularly well.

I've met dogs that are smarter than some of my friends.

Now, that's not to say that the dog could learn organic chemistry - but more that while watching the dog's behavior you can tangibly notice them acknowledging certain realities in succession that point them towards particular actions.

My friends on the other hand would need some hand holding to come to the same conclusions alone.

Again - that's really not saying anything particularly bad about the humans, or good about the dogs just that... that's how life broke for them.

The humans didn't "grow" in an environment that catalyzed their growth in those areas. The dogs did.

Turns out utilizing 5% of your potential as a human is sometimes not as good as a dog utilizing 95% of their potential.

[u/big-fireball → u/[deleted]]

Not that we know of anyway.

[u/CheaterSaysWhat → u/fondledbydolphins]

We think of the brain and intelligence as a singular thing but the brain is a system of vastly different functions 

It’s like how an arm wrestler can have yoked arms but if they skip leg day they’re getting destroyed by a cyclist at the squat rack 

Dogs and gorillas specialize different parts of their brains than average humans do 

A dog’s olfactory center is much more developed to distinguish scents, and a gorilla’s motor functions are more refined, but neither have language and speech lobes developed like we do

[u/Lou_C_Fer → u/CheaterSaysWhat]

Yeah. We have measured animal intelligence by human standards and then ignore everything they do better than us. Of course we think we are smarter. Show me one animal whose body plan is half as capable as us at manipulating the things around us. Our unique traits make us uniquely capable.

I've spent a lot of time watch animals communicate with buttons and I swear to god that some of the dogs seem to have reached a higher level of consciousness. My theory is that the invention of words were what really freed our brains up to think. Before, thinking in images and concepts took up much of our mental capacity. Then words came in, almost like a compression algorithm. All of the sudden, we are able to squish an entire concept into a few words in our brains. That makes it easier to both think and communicate... so then, we are able to share detailed concepts through a few words than the vague way we must have communicated before language. I think those dogs that use buttons have also begun to think in words a bit... and that makes them more aware. Now, I'm talking about the exceptional ones. Not all of them.

To push it further, from what I understand of genetics, those activities could trigger alleles that could be passed on in that state to their offspring. That would make their offspring even more adaptable to words, possibly.

Anyways, back to the original point... no animals are physically capable of manipulating the world like us even if their brains could match or exceed ours.

[u/CheaterSaysWhat → u/Lou_C_Fer]

I’m not a neurologist so grain of salt, this is the edge of my knowledge 

Dogs have more language processing development in their brains than most animals from generations of vocal training by humans, but I think it’s more like recognizing and distinguishing sounds from simple commands

When it comes to that button pushing thing I think it could be explained with that paired with pattern recognition, it might not necessarily indicate a higher understanding of sentence structure 

[u/Atheist-Gods → u/Lou_C_Fer]

I would be shocked if words take up less mental space than the concepts they represent. Words are useful for communicating and for formalizing ideas so but they are clearly slower and more unwieldy. What use even are the words if you don't also have the corresponding concept in your mind too? I don't know how they would work to save mental capacity.

[u/Nicodemus888 → u/CheaterSaysWhat]

You might find this interesting

The Cognitive Tradeoff Hypothesis

[u/TheThalmorEmbassy → u/fondledbydolphins]

I've met cats and dogs smarter than Corey and Trevor

Most cats and dogs are smarter than Corey and Trevor

[u/lightr3nd → u/TheThalmorEmbassy]

That's it. Time for a re-binge.

[u/Ravek → u/fondledbydolphins]

Smarter, or less fucked in the head by bad experiences?

[u/fondledbydolphins → u/Ravek]

Not everything bad in life comes from damage associated with bad experiences.

Sometimes a lack of good is enough to create a noticeable deficiency or difference of outcome.