[helterskelter]

Crows in country will wait for a newborn deer to be left alone in a field by their mothers shortly after birth to peck the baby's eyes out so it dies and the crow can eat it later. My neighbor had told me about this happening, and maybe a month later I saw a fawn with its eyes pecked out shortly after it had died. The doe just sat at the edge of the field by it all night. So sad, but really smart of the crows.

Crows have also been known to alert predators like wolves to easy prey so they can pick the remains.

[emmelaich]

I thought what was a myth. My wife is terrified of crows, always thinking they're abut to peck her eyes out.

[Ntrails]

A goose was protecting its young as some (crows/ravens/idk) hopped around close on the ground. Mama hissed and flapped a little. Crows back off a bit.

Meanwhile another crow flies in, picks up a gosling by the neck (i swear there wasn't much difference in size, unreal to see) and flies off with it.

I could see the whole thing coming, was remarkable.

[ifwinterco]

They also do this to lambs, they're smart but evil

[kibwen]

> smart but evil

Sadly I have yet to see evidence that something can be smart without being evil.

[bryanrasmussen]

the evil here seems to be being a predator, which for the doe it would be reasonable to say the predator is evil, but examining the natural order of things from outside, as a human observing the doe, the fawn, and the crows, that is a pretty weird judgement to make. The predator has evolved to eat the prey, if that is evil then nature is evil or if you like, whatever created nature.

[tialaramex]

I suspect the corvids aren't obligate carnivores and so they could choose not to eat animals but they do it anyway.

Given that humans aren't obligate carnivores and further more, are capable of advanced chemistry so that even if they were obliged to eat other animals biologically they could just work around this without needing to kill anything - it seems much more compelling to judge us by such a metric than them. We decided that we liked steak so much we would deliberately raise cows just to eat them, the crow can't be anywhere near that "evil" if that's how we're characterising this outcome.

[JohnMakin]

They're scavengers, I think scavengers are wired to eat whatever is available at the least expenditure of energy.

[tormeh]

I'd say the evil lies in the infliction of suffering, not the killing or eating.

[verisimi]

'Evil' is a human characterisation, and is not applicable to animals imo; to apply it is to anthropomorphise the animal.

An applicable use of 'evil' for an animal, would be if you believe the animal 'knows better', eg a dog that knows right or wrong (in its way) but does something it thinks it shouldn't.

[conartist6]

The longer I live the more evidence I see the barrier between humans and other animals is thinner than we would like to imagine.

So I counter you with a practical question: can a crow commit a social transgression that will result in punishment by other crows? My strong suspicion is that the answer is yes, though I would love documentation as it would suggest a crow-cultural definition of morality

[verisimi]

I agree. But I don't think pecking the eyes of a deer, thereby providing all the crows food, would be considered 'evil'/'bad' by other crows. I think crows would acclaim the action as 'good'/'right'.

[srean]

We have rescue dog (abandoned on the street) and it seems to have a notion that violence within family is bad.

I was quite surprised to see that when I mock threatened my wife with a broom in his presence he jumped in to block. Not only that, he took the broom away from me and secured it away. I initially thought it was play, that he wanted to play with the broom. Seems he was just interested in separating me from the broom. He is our household saint.

We have a much younger dog (another rescue) who is not very nice at all to our saint. However, if my body language has even a hint of a threat to our little devil, he sure gets perked up and ready to protect.

This probably comes from pack behavior instinct. Fights inside a pack is bad.

[verisimi]

Nice story. I believe that dogs are capable of moral judgements too. The idea of 'evil' is a human idea though.

[jamiek88]

I glanced at this and moved on but then my brain did a kind of record scratch on this comment.

Great question does intelligence require selfishness / evil?

I’m gonna think about this a bit, but my knee jerk was to (violently) disagree with this but I don’t know why.

[harrall]

I think evil is an an artificial and subjective construct and therefore intelligence will somehow do something “evil” by someone’s or something’s standard.

But at the same time, I think it is an important construct because it prevents groups from descending into absolute chaos, which encourages the survival of the species.

As a construct, I see the concept of evil as the way that humans classify activities that cause psychological harm and those triggers are somewhat biologically and culturally shared.

And there seem to be people that don’t seem to “see” evil (e.g. serial killers), but once again I think it’s just they don’t share some biological trait with the rest of us (which doesn’t justify their actions either).

So despite having the opinion that evil may just be a construct, I still find it important because (1) I am selfish and don’t want to be psychologically harmed and (2) I am not selfish and am vaguely interested in the survival of the species.

[jancsika]

> Great question does intelligence require selfishness / evil?

No.

E.g., a bunch of chimps who come upon food will probably become aggressive, whereas a bunch of bonobos will probably get frisky with each other.

They are closely related primates, and their level of intelligence is at least comparable. So it's quite unlikely that the chimps higher level of social aggression is a hard dependency of their level of intelligence.

[LargoLasskhyfv]

Bonobos commit strategic infanticide amongst competing tribes.

[thatguy0900]

I wonder if it's not more accurate to say predators tend to be evil, and predators are typically the ones who have to be more visably clever to get their food. Even a incredibly intelligent sheep will still just be eating plants. A incredibly intelligent crow though will be able to eat deer instead of insects.

[verisimi]

> Great question does intelligence require selfishness / evil?

You think 'selfishness' and 'evil' are equivalent?

[jamiek88]

Matters of degree, no?

But that was poorly punctuated I meant selfishness or even evil not that they were equivalent.

[verisimi]

Thanks for clarifying.

Re matters of degree, I would disagree. The opposite of selfishness would be selflessness. This sounds like a good thing, eg being altruistic is assumed to be 'good', but then, it could also be about imposing one's values on someone, and devaluing the self. It could be a means of control (was forced altruism in communist countries 'good', for example). It seems that 'selflessness' - selfishness's opposite - can also be characterised as 'evil'. If it's not clear whether selfishness or selflessness is evil, it's not clear that it's a matter of degrees.

Ayn Rand argues in the "The Virtue of Selfishness" that selfishness is a good thing, if you want to see a lovely alternative argument.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3URpIKFoyW0

[dullcrisp]

Speak for yourself.

[bryanrasmussen]

I don't think they said you hadn't seen any such evidence.

[dullcrisp]

I meant about being either evil or stupid. Never mind.

[dash2]

I wonder how much of this is truly smart as in planned/intentional behaviour. Couldn’t it just evolve? Suppose you hang around something that you want to eat . And you make a lot of noise. So now predators show up. none of this was planned, but now you have a fitness advantage.

[Kim_Bruning]

A) I am allergic to the word Just ;-) It means you stop being curious. How about one or more of the following?

B) Say you have a slow optimizer in a fast world: a lot of the time the optimal solution is going to be some form of computational generalization. Now you have meta-optimization. Life seems to enjoy doing this recursively.

C) Crow intelligence is clearly highly evolved, so you're technically correct, best kind of correct. Though here I'd argue that a very parsimonious answer is single-lifespan learned behavior. You're applying an existing learning system, no new mechanisms needed. (As opposed to positing some new evolved fixed action pattern).

D) There's not even anything stopping it from being planned behavior. Searle is struck out because it is biological; and no one can accuse us of anthropomorphism HERE!

E) Actually, for sparse events, planning using a world model can be more parsimonious. Apply existing model to new problem, again no extra mechanism needed. Which one works better for a particular entity in a particular situation depends on tradeoffs. (For a human example: see eg Memory items vs checklists vs airmanship in eg aviation)

F) That said, I'd even count evolution as a form of intelligence (well... it's an optimizer at least). I will literally die on this hill, and so will you O:-) (unless you represent optimums as valleys) ---> Plot evolution as a dynamic system in phase space, or with your typical hill-climber/gradient descent representations. How much does the trajectory differ from other optimizers? What happens if the 'terrain' is very bumpy with many local optimums? What if it deforms as you cross it?

[agumonkey]

second degree planning involving third party means very high social modeling, fascinating