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Comment by lagilogi | Hacker News Reader

I keep getting surprised at the inability (refusal) of humans that we are not the only intelligent (and emotional) life form on this planet. It is extremely annoying.

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I think it's a subconscious act of self-preservation. Truly accepting the sentience of animals would be conferring upon them a much more expansive (and expensive) set of rights, which in turn would make the our society seem all the more immoral through how we treat other species. Too much cognitive dissonance.

They are sentient, alright. But quite dumb. So we grow and eat them.

Define: dumb.

We have been able to teach them to do trivial tricks on demand, but we can't teach them to be productive members of society. We haven't even been able to teach a single other species to do factory work, which is the simplest work imaginable for humans.

Dogsledding? Horse riding? People routinely being carried by their horse to help after being incapacitated. Dogs herding all sorts of livestock. I read recently of tool use outside of the apes. I’ve seen blue jays bury and hide things and later recollect. The list goes on and with better examples. Service dogs definitely add value to society.

Animals works well as tools, but they don't work independently. In all of the situations you described there are humans present to direct the work and life of the animal, something you don't need with humans. I'm not sure why we can't get them to work independently, I guess they lack the attention span or the ability to associate the work with the rewards.

I suppose the one sort of exception to this would be barn cats who sort of self domesticated themselves and became valued members of households by keeping rodents at bay.

Cats also seem pretty intelligent to me.

You’re going to have a hard time finding a job without a supervisor or boss that isn’t CEO/entrepreneur/similar.

Nobody should expect another species to share our concept of a capitalistic market, for that matter.

Does this count?

The Baboon That Controlled a Railway for 9 Years - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OpoLkMcQh24

Although not factory work this Baboon was a productive member of society being paid in alcohol and a small wage.

It wasn't clear but did the Baboon ever do the work without James being there? I agree it is impressive, but if the monkey couldn't man the position on its own, like doing the work and only getting the beer and pay once a week and no other rewards, then I don't think it counts.

I'm not sure it matters if whether James was there or not so long as the Baboon was capable of performing the tasks without instruction from James which multiple sources appear to imply.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_(baboon)

https://web.archive.org/web/20160125001616/http://www.earthf...

I think this is a pretty generous interpretation given how old and random the sources are.

Definitely. That's why there's no such thing as a working animal.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Working_animal

I seriously disagree that being able to take part in the human production chain or being a member of human society is the only way to determine if a creature is smart.

Will never read and understand anything as complex as Humpty-Dumpty.

Please keep this sort of flamebait off this site.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

We have a tendency to measure intelligence as the ability to communicate well with humans. Our pets are "smart" because they have been practicing for millennia. Our children are smart when they show empathy and strong verbal skills. I'm not sure that we are equipped to measure intelligence in other animals, and I doubt we would even recognize intelligent alien life.

It isn't that we don't believe animals are intelligent. It is that that doesn't define our behavior in the way you apparently to expect it to.

Humans (on the whole) aren't even particularly good to other humans, yet some people seem to have the expectation that humans be particularly good to animals.

Intelligence is a sliding scale and, until someone proves us wrong, we are the most intelligent life form on this planet.

Emotional... well that's something else.

You're assuming it (edit: non-emotional intelligence) is one single unified thing. I'd say there are many kinds of intelligence, and many things that feed into intelligence that, if modified, could affect it (very simple example, anxious people may freeze up during exams which makes them look less good).

I'm more intelligent than someone with Downs Syndrome, but that doesn't mean their life is less valuable does it? Let me guess: they get a pass because they are human. That's what it comes down to really: things that are like me deserve rights and respect and things that aren't don't. That all humans happen to fit into the "like me" category is a relatively recent concept.

They get a pass because it makes our rules simpler and they are so few. You'd see us quickly value their lives less if there were billions of people with Downs Syndrome, but currently they aren't a problem so it is fine.

>I'd see us quickly value their lives less if there were billions of people with Downs Syndrome, but currently they aren't a problem so it is fine.

Oh you mean like many of those who are homeless, who also happen to have mental health issues, yet we don't provide shelter, health care or food for?

Valuable in what sense? People talk about value like there is some absolute objective value. There's not. Things hold different values to different people and even the same people in different circumstances.

> I'm more intelligent than someone with Downs Syndrome, but that doesn't mean their life is less valuable does it?

Doesn’t it? It’s something we don’t say, because it’s horrendously impolite, and I wouldn’t say it myself outside the context of this conversation, but yes, the life of an intelligent person is worth less than that of a person with Down’s syndrome.

Don’t take my word for it though, look at revealed preferences. How many parents abort their unborn Down’s Syndrome babies?

>It’s something we don’t say, because it’s horrendously impolite, and I wouldn’t say it myself outside the context of this conversation, but yes, the life of an intelligent person is worth less than that of a person with Down’s syndrome.

That is controversial but probably not in the way that you originally meant.

You've really got to define "intelligence" here. I imagine one may point to all the technology we have developed and say "Look how intelligent humans are". At the same time, that very technology is causing a climate crisis that threatens our species. So, how smart are we really?

You want to look at smart, look at house cats. They've got it figured out.

I think it has to do with religion.

Wouldn't surprise me if this comment gets shadow-banned (i.e. grayed out or whatever its called) or lots of downvotes given how contentious this topic can be, but I think this is actually an important, non-negligible social factor in human decision making for a large portion of the globe. A central tenant of many organized religions is that humans were somehow "created" differently from animals - e.g. in the "image of god" or similar. It helps eschew that cognitive bias and assure the practitioners that they're in the right, given their (clearly limited) understanding of the situation.

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