orthonormal comments on How minimal is our intelligence? - Less Wrong

55 Post author: Douglas_Reay 25 November 2012 11:34PM

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Comment author: orthonormal 22 November 2012 06:17:37AM 4 points [-]

Chimps can suss out recursive puzzles where you have color-coded keys and locks, and you need to unlock Box A to get Key B to unlock Box B to get Key C to unlock Box C which contains food. They even choose the right box to unlock when one chain leads to the food and the other doesn't.

Sorry, there's not a difference of kind to be found here.

Comment author: jsteinhardt 22 November 2012 08:21:21PM 1 point [-]

How much training is necessary for them to do this? Humans can reason this out without any training, if the chimps had to be trained substantially (e.g. first starting with one box, being rewarded with food, then starting with two boxes, etc.) then I think this would constitute a difference.

Comment author: [deleted] 22 November 2012 08:27:22PM 4 points [-]

Well, one could argue that humans "train" for similar problems throughout their lives... Would you expect a feral child to figure that out straight away?

Comment author: MugaSofer 22 November 2012 06:28:14AM 0 points [-]

But then, there are plenty of examples of chimps exhibiting behavior that implies intelligence.