[lordnacho]

But Lions don't appear to have any abstraction ability, or reflective thought. By that I mean you as a human can imagine yourself thinking about some hypothetical situation, as well as consider what kind of evidence would support a given hypothesis.

I think this might have actually happened (apocryphal?), but just imagine if you took humans from another country and put them in a zoo. They would surely figure it out, based on the evidence at hand.

[bmdavi3]

Definitely agree.

Just like how a lion or a chimpanzee wouldn't make a convincing zoo for another lion or chimp, a human could figure out they're in a zoo made by another human.

But when you make a zoo for an animal that isn't on your level, you can figure out what's needed to satisfy it (even if it's really crappy compared to their normal environment).

So if something smarter than us by an order of magnitude or more made a zoo for us, it would be a much more elaborate and convincing zoo, and I'm not sure we'd figure it out.

[hnick]

If we are talking super-advanced, it wouldn't even need to be a physical zoo. Just mess with enough of our brains enough to make us not want to do certain things and we'll stay on this rock forever.

[pretendscholar]

How exactly do we know they dont have reflective thought? Or at least any less reflective thought than your average human. Not really sure how to test that. I know there is the mirror test but what if there are different types of reflective thought and they just missed the boat on that by a little but have other kinds of thoughts?