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EbfromBoston comments on Bloggingheads: Robert Wright and Eliezer Yudkowsky - Less Wrong
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That's the same source I found for the quotation when I hit up the search engines, but I was rather hoping for a naturalist of some description to back up the theory. I don't see that you could be confident of that explanation without some amount of field work. Who put in the eye-hours to develop and confirm this hypothesis?
Edit: I mean, if Eb the author did, that's fine, but he doesn't even mention growing up in the country.
O, btw, I grew up in the country. Spent several years on the sheep farm. Interestingly, the herd dogs use the same "signal" mechanism to move sheep. Rather than run around and bark, they get in "predator" pose and the sheep move accordingly.
Interesting to watch low-power energy, i.e. "signals", accomplish work.
Now this is a completely irrelevant aside, but I remember hearing about a party at a house with three dogs, mostly in one room. A guest left to use the bathroom, and when she came back, she could see that everyone was packed in a neat group in the center of the room with the dogs patrolling and nudging the strays back in.
That is a neat story about the dogs using the predator pose. Thanks.
Would you know whether the dogs were border collies?
One of my friends had a border collie when she was a kid, and she told me that the dog was only really happy when the whole family was seated around the dining table.
I finally got around to asking - they were indeed border collies. +1 for a correct prediction!
Yes, border collies. The good border collies complete the work loop (move sheep) with minimal expenditure of energy. One would merely raise an eyebrow and the sheep got the message, and moved. Very impressive.
May well have been - I got the story secondhand myself, and I have a terrible recall for details.