[ExI] genetics

William Flynn Wallace foozler83 at gmail.com
Tue Mar 1 17:49:26 UTC 2022


It is called 'prepared learning'.  A retriever will be easy to teach to
fetch.  A shepherd will herd your children, you, your cats - whatever it
can find.  Some call it instinct but that word has too many connotations.
Genetically prone to learn some things and not others.  Like us.  We are
prepared to learn things like language, they say.  People are easy to teach
to fear spiders and snakes but not doorknobs  no matter how you try.

Sure, I've had really dumb dogs.  Gave away some puppies and some wanted to
return them.  The two I had roamed everywhere and would casually walk
through an electronic fence.  One day they didn't come back, and I did not
search for them!

Surely we can tell variability in animals with simple DNA tests, no?  bill w

On Tue, Mar 1, 2022 at 10:42 AM spike jones via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: extropy-chat <extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org> On Behalf Of
> BillK via extropy-chat
> Subject: Re: [ExI] genetics
>
> On Tue, 1 Mar 2022 at 15:05, William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat
> <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
> >
> > How come Mother Nature created the immense amount of differences among
> people?  People have IQs as low as 60 and as high as 220 or so with no
> discoverable physical reasons.  Other skills similar.
> >
> > But mainly I want to know:  is there this amount of diversity among any
> animal groups?  I, and probably most people, think of animals like bears or
> chimps as being much the same, but it would seem that they aren't, but I
> have no data.   bill w
> > _______________________________________________
>
>
> >...Any dog owner will tell you that some dogs are smart and some really
> stupid.
> Border collies and poodles are *really* smart.
> Cats also have a range of IQ. Siamese cats are about the smartest.
> Hard to tell though, as cats are smart enough to not co-operate with
> researchers' games trying to test them.  :)
>
>
> BillK
> _______________________________________________
>
>
> I had three pure-bred Dobermans.  One was smart enough to catch and kill a
> rattlesnake without getting bit.  One was smart enough to open a sliding
> door (she watched us do it and did likewise (she also learned to open a
> door
> with a lever handle (one paw on the wall, the other on the handle, push
> down
> and pull (oh that was most impressive to see.))  One could *almost* catch a
> frisbee out of the air (after which he would shred the thing.)
>
> None of the three Dobermans would fetch a stick.  If you threw it, they
> would sit there.  If you pointed, they would look at your hand.  You would
> tell them to fetch the stick, they would just look at you with a puzzled
> whaaaaat expression.  The neighbor's retriever knew to fetch a stick when
> he
> was 4 months old, no prompting required.  My dogs would watch him do it and
> get good-boys, but mine never did figure out to do likewise.  (Perhaps they
> were puzzled by the retriever, reasoning: the tall one threw it away, so
> apparently he doesn't want it, why do you keep bringing it back you silly
> dog?)
>
> With animals, including the human kind, it depends on the IQ test Billw.
>
> spike
>
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