

Self-Doubting Monkeys Know What They Don’t Know - kgarten
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/discoblog/2011/02/22/self-doubting-monkeys-know-what-they-dont-know/

======
BasDirks
Findings like this surprise us because in us still lingers the superstition
that we are somehow the "chosen" species.

~~~
ars
So you think humans are not smarter than animals?

~~~
JanezStupar
We might get "more" of everything - but not get to be distinct in any way.

At the core of humanism and before in theism is the idea that human is
special. That human is crown jewel of creation. That everything that is was
created to serve human. However for that to be true - human needs to be
distinct, special, better - else we are just greedy and are thus not
fulfilling our role in the cosmos.

Whats inconvenient is that more that we find out about the world - the more it
seems that we are indeed nothing special, that we might have taken some traits
to a whole new level, but more in a way like cows bear more milk, or some
birds master flying better. So that puts our self serving acts under a big
question.

~~~
ars
"human needs to be distinct, special, better"

Mission accomplished. Humans are the only ones who actually care about such
things, therefor they are distinct and unique. We can change things, animals
can not.

To me animals are basically biological robots - no free will, all actions pre-
programmed. Yah, some of the smarter animals edge toward non pre-programmed,
but just barely. Humans however are in an entirely different category.

Humans can reflect on behavior and decide to change it - but more importantly
humans can realize that it may be desirable to change a behavior. Animals can
not do this. What they do is what they do, not only can they not change it,
they can't even recognize the concept of wanting to change any of their
behaviors. (And forcing them to change externally by training doesn't count.)

~~~
bobds
> humans can realize that it may be desirable to change a behavior. Animals
> can not do this.

Are you sure about that?

------
zeteo
An interesting idea, but the experiment as described in the article doesn't
prove it. If I played this game without knowing what "S", "D" and "?" stand
for, I'd just assume that "S" means "few", "D" means "a lot" and "?" means "a
moderate amount". No meta-cognitive reasoning seems necessary.

~~~
giberson
I definitely agree. If given a control panel in a foreign language with three
symbols from left to right and then shown a series of graphics representing
sparse/denseness I would certainly see identifying the three options as low,
middle, high rather than low, unknown, high. So for identifying a conscious
uncertainty in primates this experiment is lacking.

------
deadmansshoes
So monkeys are shown high density images and low density images and they can
press the correct button for a treat. For medium denisty images they can
either make an incorrect choice, or press a skip button.

If I wrote a computer program to do the exact same thing it would not prove
computers had self-doubt, just that they had a programmed intelligence.
Pressing the centre button gets you to a sure treat quicker.

------
bluekeybox
But are they aware that there are things they don't know they don't know?

