CCC comments on Humans in Funny Suits - Less Wrong

22 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 30 July 2008 11:54PM

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Comment author: CellBioGuy 30 January 2013 07:40:10AM *  1 point [-]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washoe_(chimpanzee) "Washoe was raised in an environment as close as possible to that of a human child, in an attempt to satisfy her psychological need for companionship."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nim_Chimpsky "Nim at 2 weeks old was raised by a family in a home environment by human surrogate parents"

The consensus on the results seems to be that they learned hundreds of words of ASL, but do not seem to be able to learn to combine them with any sort of grammar other than grouping situationally-related words close together in time. More a series of single-gesture associations and exclamations than sentences. Our language and communication faculties don't have much of a counterpart in there.

As they matured they also appeared to become aggressive and uncontrollable. Though perhaps that has something to do with being fully physically mature by age 11 after entering puberty at age 7...

Comment author: CCC 30 January 2013 08:16:55AM 0 points [-]

It may be that a particularly intelligent bonobo can transcend the expected limitations of his species; consider, for example, Kanzi (whose wikipedia article I have just now come across - I have no idea how much of that is exaggeration).