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Comment by machina_ex_deus | Hacker News Reader

The sceptic in me feels this research is extremely fishy. This was done on fish. How much of the observed external characteristics of fish can be attributed to behavior?

They are looking at median swimming speed and how fish swim. Calling this "behavior" is misleading. It could just as likely be developmental physical differences.

They watched fish swim and saw that they are more correlated with themselves than others. Everything else is a very fishy narrative. Many people in this thread judge it by empathy with the story instead of what can be reasonably done.

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I hear and share your skepticism, but I'm also skeptical of pushbacks to the ever-growing research and literature on the uniqueness and, well, "personhood" of animals.

The more we learn about animals (see the article on HN ~2 days ago that bees engage in play) the more it seems like they're a lot more like us than we'd like to think. We're smart, and we can try to explain every thing away (like you do in your comment), but there's a pattern that's emerging. It's an uncomfortable pattern and I get why we try to convince ourselves that animals are fundamentally different than we are, but I'm more and more believing that we're all actually a lot more similar than we'd like to think.

A lot of my current thinking is from the book How to be Animal by Melanie Challenger. I recommend it!

I don't judge scientific letter literature with empathy. I can definitely empathize with animals, and I would even say my own cat has shown some behaviors as a kitten that stayed later on (like being easily scared).

Netflix's cat movie that was extremely narrativistic and meant for cat loving audience had more sound basis and plausible methodology to study actual behavior. (Like attachment tests).

This is simply not it. I don't care if it supports my preconceptions - I try to judge objectively. As should more people. This isn't "pushback against personhood of animals". This is pushback against an increasingly narrativistic science, and the inability of so many people to recognize it.

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