A Japanese study found that simply looking at a dog can increase levels of oxytocin, a chemical released by the pituitary gland that’s associated with human bonding and affection.
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But webs aside, consider the other strange, sometimes ingenious, tiny creatures/organisms, like a colony of termites, that produce astonishing land structures.
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Some feats of apparent intelligence point to information sources that did not likely just evolve over time among the life forms.
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While Goodall believed that there is no sharp line dividing humans and chimpanzees, she herself was one of many who embodied the sharp line.
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The Arrogant Ape points its finger at humanity. But in truth, the arrogance lies in denying the obvious — and nearly universal — judgment of humanity.
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The findings from experiments with polycephalum have been “contentious,” probably because they raise issues about how these traits actually work.
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Human intelligence is different. For one thing, we think about what we are thinking about — the ultimate abstract process because both elements are immaterial.
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That makes sense if we recall that fish can’t relay a history or write things down so they were depending on older fish to know the way.
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There seems no sense of embarrassment over claims that defy evidence — so long as the reality of human exceptionalism is trashed.
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15%? Whew. Genetics makes a difference in how life forms look and act… So Crick and Watson, Collins and Venter and all the rest were onto something after all…
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Harris is the wife of well-known New Atheist neuroscientist Sam Harris, at one time one of the Four Horsemen of the New Atheist apocalypse.
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Now that we better appreciate the clever ways fish find food, we should not lurch into a relentless search for human mental and emotional qualities in them.
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Nobody knows how instinctive information develops in a dog, or where it is stored, or how it is fetched, decoded, or executed.
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Whether they continue to push the boundary, or someone else does, they can only bring up so many unaccounted-for facts before it’s time for a revolution.
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Maybe if we are looking for general principles underlying the development of intelligence, we would be wise to leave evolution out of it for a bit.
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It is ironic that otherwise intelligent people must play the “we’re just another animal” game while demanding attention for ideas that only humans can give.
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Real intelligence is embodied. It exists within a living system, interacting dynamically with an environment. AI, on the other hand, is an abstraction.
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Researchers have used the usually avoided term “directed evolution” — which may suggest design — to account for the worm’s tiny, complex brain.
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The worm C. elegans can learn, using both associative and non-associative learning, despite having a brain of less than 400 neurons.
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The researchers have set out to show that bonobos have a theory of mind. Are they willing to consider that dogs might have a similar theory of mind?
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