gwern comments on Is Kiryas Joel an Unhappy Place? - Less Wrong

20 Post author: gwern 23 April 2011 12:08AM

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Comment author: gwern 24 April 2011 10:26:35PM -2 points [-]

a close relative of Homo sapiens sapiens is described as not consciously sentient but able to intelligently interact socially with humans. This seems unlikely.

Why? Already non-conscious animals like dogs, chimpanzees, and parrots are capable of some fairly sophisticated social interaction; dogs even understand gestures like pointing.

Comment author: [deleted] 24 April 2011 10:45:12PM 7 points [-]

Already non-conscious animals like dogs, chimpanzees, and parrots

They're not conscious? I must have been in bed with the flu when this was explained to the class.

Comment author: Sniffnoy 24 April 2011 10:56:33PM 2 points [-]

Yeah this looks like the old conscious/sentient/intelligent conflation (where the middle word seems to serve no purpose but to enable confusing the two on either sides of it...)

Comment author: gwern 25 April 2011 12:19:28AM 0 points [-]

I plead guilty to perpetuating the confusion. If I try to be more correct and say something like 'Already non-self-conscious animals like...', then it looks like I have some complex idiosyncratic classification in mind and I mean something more sophisticated than what I do. There's no real good solution here.

Comment author: hwc 24 April 2011 10:36:36PM *  0 points [-]

I wonder when consciousness evolved in our ancestors? 4 Mya? 2Mya? 500 kya?

Comment author: gwern 24 April 2011 10:44:20PM 2 points [-]

An excellent question. I've always enjoyed Julian Jaynes's theory of bicameralism where consciousness only truly developed ~3kya or so.

Comment author: hwc 24 April 2011 10:46:30PM *  0 points [-]

It makes for a good story, but I really doubt that's the case.