[ExI] puzzle - animal consciousness

spike spike66 at att.net
Tue May 20 20:20:01 UTC 2014


 

 

From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of William Flynn Wallace
Sent: Tuesday, May 20, 2014 1:09 PM
To: ExI chat list
Subject: Re: [ExI] puzzle - animal consciousness

 

>…Well, Hell!  What is sequence but the order in which the trained dogs run an obstacle course? Perhaps the owners are shouting commands?

 

Ja, the trainer goes thru and gives both auditory and visual cues.  My notion is that dogs can do sequences, but not as effectively as humans.  I don’t really know of demonstrations of a dog’s ability to do a sequence of tasks, but I know rats do: they are trained to run mazes.  It would be interesting to see a dog vs a rat in learning similar but scaled mazes.

 

 >… But the dogs aren't stopping at each one to wait for directions…

 

Part of the criteria for judging is in how seamless the dog transitions from one task to the next.

 

>… I'll have to bet that 'no dogs can sequence' is very wrong…

 

Agreed, as stated is wrong.  So how good can dogs get at sequencing?  Can you get a dog to do a task every third day, for instance?  Or two tasks on alternate days?  Or train a dog to hit a lever every hour on a chime, a red lever then two blue levers, in that repeating pattern?

 

>…  Dogs are smarter than rats and lab rats can learn very complicated sequences of tasks…

 

Cool, have you examples please?

 

spike

 

 

 

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