[hyperpallium]

I thought corvids a strong candidate, but if they've been around for 25 million years without getting human-level intelligence, they mightn't ever get it, like the dinosaurs.

General commemt: we can have increasing complexity, without a specific trend towards it, by positing evolution in all directions. We'd get mostly simple life, and fewer instances as complexity increases - which is what we do see. Most life is unicellular; there are more insect species than mammals etc.

I like that paper applying Moore's Law to biocomplexity, showing an exponential increase of the most complex life existing over time.

- It seems complexity increase is inevitable (but there could be barriers, as there seemed to be for dinosaurs).

- intelligence seems to increase with complexity.

Would mammals have expanded to today's diversity if the dinosaurs had survived? Would the ur-mammal instead have remained just one minor species or family, without those niches available?

And what caused the sudden increase in brain size of our own ape-like ancestors? (Surely, some killer application of intelligence, perhaps trade, that gave it incredible survival value, far above the value it already had).

[Swizec]

Well, birds are dinosaurs. Avian theropods to be precise.

So maybe dinosaurs are still working towards their limit. We know that their brains produce more pound per pound intelligence than mammalian brains. It's like they're more efficient.

But maybe something about that efficiency is Good Enough so they don't progress further.

Although watching my parrot at home is quite something. He's definitely on par with a young human in terms of coercing cooperation and puzzle solving.

[hyperpallium]

Spiders also produce more pound per pound intelligence. They are solitary. What if they became social? Brain-body ratio is provocative, but not the whole story.

Seeing galahs (Australian corvid https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Galah) socialize in trees in monkey troop-like fashion, dextrous in tooth and claw, makes me believe they are on the way. Though maybe raccons are next.

> efficiency is Good Enough

I was thinking that, now I think it may be the niche environment, which we somehow happened to stumble into, giving a more rewarding gradient for intelligence. OTOH, it could have been some neuroanatomy trick, eg faciliating abstraction/hypothesis. IDK. I think it's one of the more fascinating questions of our intelligence, and will be telling.

I don't want to harp on this point, but the birds-are-dinosaurs seems a meaningless semantic classification to me, more about our definitions than reality. Like "Pluto, planet?" I mean, why not call mammals a subgroup of reptiles, since we evolved from them? Anyway, I'm sure this debate has raged hotly across the centuries amoungst taxonomic philosophers, and carefully taking into account all the perspectives, they've collectively come up with... something.

[Swizec]

> I don't want to harp on this point, but the birds-are-dinosaurs seems a meaningless semantic classification to me, more about our definitions than reality.

It's a lot more direct than "mammals are a type of reptile".

Particularly because late stage dinosaurs, the theropods, had feathers and generally looked like birds with teeth that can't fly. Some later models could in fact fly.

If you look at this Wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feathered_dinosaur

You'll see that there is a single step from Velociraptor to Birds.

> The scientific consensus is that birds are a group of theropod dinosaurs that evolved during the Mesozoic Era. A close relationship between birds and dinosaurs was first proposed in the nineteenth century after the discovery of the primitive bird Archaeopteryx in Germany.

It took a lot of steps to go from reptiles to mammals.

[Pyxl101]

Here's a crazy idea:

What if we picked a domesticated animal such as a pig or dog, and began to breed the species for intelligence? Or any other suitable animal. Only intelligence (and general health), over an extended period.

It's believed that all of the modern dog breeds came about in the last hundred or so years. Modern domesticated dogs are definitely intelligent, especially socially intelligent. They understand words, they look you in the eye to get your attention, they understand their name, they seem to have simple emotions. How fast would they evolve if directed scientifically by humans?

... and at what point would we have to stop, because they're approaching human intelligence, making the program unethical?

[Swizec]

> Modern domesticated dogs are definitely intelligent, especially socially intelligent. They understand words, they look you in the eye to get your attention, they understand their name, they seem to have simple emotions. How fast would they evolve if directed scientifically by humans?

The crazy thing about birds, parrots especially, is that they do all that without humans directing it.

I have a bird at home. The biggest difference I've noticed between having a bird and having a dog or a cat is that birds have moods. Dog/cat emotions always seem to directly correspond to what is happening right now.

Bird emotions seem to correspond to whatever has been happening for a while. Like, if you upset the bird in the morning, he acts towards you with resentment 12 hours later when you come home. It's hard to explain, but acting the same way towards my bird definitely produces different results based on his mood.

And he's very adept at getting attention and asking for help. For example, he's used to drinking water from human cups. If he's thirsty and there are no cups around, he's able to communicate that he needs me to go fetch a cup and fill it with water.

When he needs help with getting some food item, he's able to get my attention, then fly away to where he's having trouble, and signal that he needs help. He's even figured out, from observation, how to open some of the drawers in our apartment so that he can get treats.

Currently he's figuring out how to open cage doors. Luckily his main appendage is the beak so while he can open the cage physically, he can't hold the door open while he gets out. So it slams shut (by gravity) when he tries to walk through the opening. Fingers crossed he doesn't figure it out :D

It's really quite fascinating to observe.

[logfromblammo]

Birds will also play jokes.

Example: A bird may call your attention to a near-empty water dish. You fill it up. The bird uses bathing behavior to splash you with the water, and then mimics human laughter.

Source: a caique with whom I am acquainted.

But birds are also not very sophisticated as comedians. Sometimes their funny prank is indistinguishably similar to a nasty trick. But really, if the bird wanted to be mean, he'd just pretend to be chill, and then bite you in the webbing between your fingers. They do that sometimes, too.

[pavel_lishin]

Reminds me of Larry Niven's descriptions of Dolphin jokes in his Known Space series.

[SAI_Peregrinus]

I used to work at a parrot sanctuary[1] and one of the cockatoos had learned the combination to the luggage lock we used to keep his cage shut. Parrots can be very smart.

[1]https://www.freeflightbirds.org/

[vidarh]

Clifford D. Simak's "City" (1952) consists of a series of bridges between a number of short stories described as legends of "Man" tolds by intelligent dogs to their puppies. The dogs in the stories were able to start communicating with humans thanks to the work of one of the human protagonists, getting intelligent enough to form a civiliation of their own once humans gradually disappear.

It's one of the weirdest apocalyptic sci-fi novels around, in that it describes the end of the human race by isolation and loneliness and resulting escape into an alien world, while at the same time describing dogs creating a thriving replacement.

[lordelph]

For a book which explores this, and similar ideas, try "Oryx and Crake" by Margaret Atwood.