6 ms·

It does have the title going for it.

technothrasher 2mo ago
The title doesn't match the paper though. People had already decoded the bird calls. What the paper was giving evidence to was that the birds themselves are cognitively decoding the calls.
- t-writescode 2mo ago
  I’m glad we’re doing this research. It makes me wonder how much time and potential we’ve wasted over the years actively assuming non-human animals were just rote automatons. It seems like a meaningful amount of science has been spent on systematically dismantling pre-existing prejudice over the last hundreds of years (and thousands in some cases and cultures). All humans are human. Babies can feel pain. Plants feel. Animals think. Just … So much wasted time on what should have always been seen as true. I get that some cultures already thought some of these things, but many of these were sadly not prevailing.
  - adjejmxbdjdn 2mo ago
    I don’t believe there’s any evidence behind plant’s feeling or thinking. Other than that you’re right.
    - why_at 2mo ago
      Yeah I think there's a lot of science news about how plants are capable of more than the average person thinks, but people tend to conflate that with some kind of conscious experience.
      - deleted 2mo ago
        [deleted]
      - SapporoChris 2mo ago
        What the average person thinks is a very low barrier but I do not think plants have crossed that yet.
        t-writescode 2mo ago
        Some variety of learnings over the last several years. Many of them are sensationalized; but my simple statement was "plants feel"; and many of these values imply some level of "feeling": Plants scream when harmed: [0] https://www.sciencealert.com/plants-really-do-scream-out-loud-we-just-never-heard-it-until-now https://www.sciencealert.com/plants-really-do-scream-out-lou... [1] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/stressed-plants-cry-and-some-animals-can-probably-hear-them/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/stressed-plants-c... Plants release VOCs when harmed: [2] https://www.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/comments/1lzg4x9/when_a_plant_is_attacked_by_herbivores_it_can/ https://www.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/comments/1lzg4x9/... (OP's main comment has several sources) Plants respond to audio stimuli (hearing, sorta): [3] https://loe.org/shows/segments.html?programID=24-P13-00035&segmentID=4 https://loe.org/shows/segments.html?programID=24-P13-00035&s... [4] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4102826/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4102826/ A quick search reveals several other incidences of other "huh"-worthy thoughts; but my goal was "plants feel" and I would argue these are close enough to shorthand to "feel"
        glenstein 2mo ago
        I think this is a huge error which collapses the most urgently important distinction at the heart of the entire issue. Plants do complex, interesting things, and we borrow from an already existing vocabulary to make analogies. So people will say plants "feel" or "communicate" or "see". But those are automatic biological reflexes, and using words with connotations to conscious awareness to describe them makes people think they're the same thing. But a plant "feeling pain" is repurposing words about consciousness to mean new and different things. And I think people are seduced by it because it feels like being open-minded to new possibilities.
        t-writescode 2mo ago
    - forlorn_mammoth 2mo ago
      fortunately, there is a lot of evidence behind plant's feeling and thinking; enough so that if you were to expose yourself to it, and if you were willing to update your beliefs based on strong scientific evidence, I believe you'd change your view.
      - glenstein 2mo ago
        There's evidence for stunningly intricate, marvelously impressive biological function, but there's no evidence whatsoever for internal mental states. What's happening is we borrow from a pre-existing vocabulary with connotations to conscious activity and we use it to describe automatic biological reflexes, and then some people lose track of whether it was an analogy or whether it was literal and start claiming plants can "feel."
        t-writescode 2mo ago
        It's funny you bring up "have no mental state", because there is a plant that scientists find seems to have some sort of memory: https://www.sci.news/biology/science-mimosa-plants-memory-01695.html https://www.sci.news/biology/science-mimosa-plants-memory-01... > The scientists show how Mimosa plants stopped closing their leaves when they learnt that the repeated disturbance had no real damaging consequence. ... > Astonishingly, Mimosa can display the learned response even when left undisturbed in a more favorable environment for a month.
  - mcswell 2mo ago
    11 distinct calls is something a rote automaton could easily cope with. So I don't think this study proves much of anything about birds' cognitive abilities.
  - chickensong 2mo ago
    > It makes me wonder how much time and potential we’ve wasted over the years actively assuming non-human animals were just rote automatons. It's pretty easy to see that most things above plankton aren't rote automatons. Anyone claiming otherwise just has an agenda to sell.

The title doesn't match the paper though. People had already decoded the bird calls. What the paper was giving evidence to was that the birds themselves are cognitively decoding the calls.

t-writescode 2mo ago
I’m glad we’re doing this research. It makes me wonder how much time and potential we’ve wasted over the years actively assuming non-human animals were just rote automatons. It seems like a meaningful amount of science has been spent on systematically dismantling pre-existing prejudice over the last hundreds of years (and thousands in some cases and cultures). All humans are human. Babies can feel pain. Plants feel. Animals think. Just … So much wasted time on what should have always been seen as true. I get that some cultures already thought some of these things, but many of these were sadly not prevailing.
- adjejmxbdjdn 2mo ago
  I don’t believe there’s any evidence behind plant’s feeling or thinking. Other than that you’re right.
  - why_at 2mo ago
    Yeah I think there's a lot of science news about how plants are capable of more than the average person thinks, but people tend to conflate that with some kind of conscious experience.
    - deleted 2mo ago
      [deleted]
    - SapporoChris 2mo ago
      What the average person thinks is a very low barrier but I do not think plants have crossed that yet.
      - t-writescode 2mo ago
        Some variety of learnings over the last several years. Many of them are sensationalized; but my simple statement was "plants feel"; and many of these values imply some level of "feeling": Plants scream when harmed: [0] https://www.sciencealert.com/plants-really-do-scream-out-loud-we-just-never-heard-it-until-now https://www.sciencealert.com/plants-really-do-scream-out-lou... [1] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/stressed-plants-cry-and-some-animals-can-probably-hear-them/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/stressed-plants-c... Plants release VOCs when harmed: [2] https://www.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/comments/1lzg4x9/when_a_plant_is_attacked_by_herbivores_it_can/ https://www.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/comments/1lzg4x9/... (OP's main comment has several sources) Plants respond to audio stimuli (hearing, sorta): [3] https://loe.org/shows/segments.html?programID=24-P13-00035&segmentID=4 https://loe.org/shows/segments.html?programID=24-P13-00035&s... [4] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4102826/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4102826/ A quick search reveals several other incidences of other "huh"-worthy thoughts; but my goal was "plants feel" and I would argue these are close enough to shorthand to "feel"
        glenstein 2mo ago
        I think this is a huge error which collapses the most urgently important distinction at the heart of the entire issue. Plants do complex, interesting things, and we borrow from an already existing vocabulary to make analogies. So people will say plants "feel" or "communicate" or "see". But those are automatic biological reflexes, and using words with connotations to conscious awareness to describe them makes people think they're the same thing. But a plant "feeling pain" is repurposing words about consciousness to mean new and different things. And I think people are seduced by it because it feels like being open-minded to new possibilities.
        t-writescode 2mo ago
  - forlorn_mammoth 2mo ago
    fortunately, there is a lot of evidence behind plant's feeling and thinking; enough so that if you were to expose yourself to it, and if you were willing to update your beliefs based on strong scientific evidence, I believe you'd change your view.
    - glenstein 2mo ago
      There's evidence for stunningly intricate, marvelously impressive biological function, but there's no evidence whatsoever for internal mental states. What's happening is we borrow from a pre-existing vocabulary with connotations to conscious activity and we use it to describe automatic biological reflexes, and then some people lose track of whether it was an analogy or whether it was literal and start claiming plants can "feel."
      - t-writescode 2mo ago
        It's funny you bring up "have no mental state", because there is a plant that scientists find seems to have some sort of memory: https://www.sci.news/biology/science-mimosa-plants-memory-01695.html https://www.sci.news/biology/science-mimosa-plants-memory-01... > The scientists show how Mimosa plants stopped closing their leaves when they learnt that the repeated disturbance had no real damaging consequence. ... > Astonishingly, Mimosa can display the learned response even when left undisturbed in a more favorable environment for a month.
- mcswell 2mo ago
  11 distinct calls is something a rote automaton could easily cope with. So I don't think this study proves much of anything about birds' cognitive abilities.
- chickensong 2mo ago
  > It makes me wonder how much time and potential we’ve wasted over the years actively assuming non-human animals were just rote automatons. It's pretty easy to see that most things above plankton aren't rote automatons. Anyone claiming otherwise just has an agenda to sell.