General > Biology
Crows are pretty damn smart
Numsgil:
--- Quote from: Testlund ---Just think about this for a minute: The reason why some scientists claim the universe is 15 billion years old is because that's the longest distance they've been able to see out in the universe, meaning then that our planet is in the center of the universe. How likely is that? It's as silly as when they believed the earth was the center of our solar system!
In the video I posted the link to the guy says that the longer the telescope stare out the older the universe seems. It could as well be that the universe has no beginning or end, it just goes on forever. I don't like it when things are taken for granted at the limits of our understanding.
--- End quote ---
You're very close to understanding this. Indeed, if we look out in every direction, we seem to be at the center of the universe. Far away things are moving away from us (they are all red shifted), as if we were at the center of an explosion (big bang). This motion does not allow for a steady state universe. If we extrapolate the motion, at some point in the distant past, the Earth was at the center of a large explosion (big bang).
That would be quite a coincidence if the Earth was the center of the universe (even an absurd statement to make). So instead of make that conclusion, scientists assume that every point in the universe is the center of the universe. That is, that the actual space that we're familiar with (meaning the distance between two arbitrarily chosen points) is expanding. From any point in the universe, if you were to look out, it would look like you were at the center of an explosion, because you are at the center of an explosion. At the beginning with the singularity, all points in space were infinitely close to each other. As the big bang occurred, it wasn't the matter that exploded out, but the space upon which matter sits. And this space is still expanding.
And it's not just a clever idea. It explains why background radiation has "cooled" since the time of the big bang. It's not that it's exchanging heat with an outside universe (as your video claims is obvious), but that the density per unit volume is decreasing, because space itself is expanding. An expanding universe decreases the pressure of that background radiation, "cooling" it.
That's something of a simplification, but that's the best way to approach the idea.
asterixx:
I am really not too sure how this thread progressed to this point , but if I may just make a comment about the original point, I'd like to say that it is not surprising that a crow would be capable of such a behaviour. A friend of mine has a pet crow and it is capable of opening doors, and it has never (I think), seen another crow, the only 'social structure' it could possibly observe was the human interractions of the family. Can we at least agree that the crow has DNA that codes for the capacity to achieve such a task?
Thanks for this thread, truly amazing. As for the physics, I really do not know enough to speculate objectively as to the nature of the relationship between the structure of energy and its connection to gene expression? I appreciate the divergence
Nice to post again, it feels like its been ages. And this zerobot sim is closing in on 1000 hours, there has clearly been evolution (I thought I'd never see changes) but, nothing as spectacular as I was hoping.
Testlund:
--- Quote from: asterixx ---Can we at least agree that the crow has DNA that codes for the capacity to achieve such a task?
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I agree with that. I also think that as long as humans rule the world, intelligence will have an evolutionary advantage, which could eventually lead to even smarter animals, that might even be able to compete with us and cause us troubles. But I don't think we'll get that far. I think evolution will start over within a period of 100 years from now when most life has been exterminated including our selves.
Numsgil:
--- Quote ---am really not too sure how this thread progressed to this point laugh.gif ,
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me neither
--- Quote ---I also think that as long as humans rule the world, intelligence will have an evolutionary advantage, which could eventually lead to even smarter animals
--- End quote ---
That would be interesting to determine if city crows are smarter than forest crows. Or if there's been an increase in intelligence over time. Humans tend to think that intelligence is a good thing, but maybe in a relatively predator-less city it's better to be stupid and breed prolifically? Reminds me of a scifi book called "The Mote in God's Eye" about an alien species (their planet is in a nebula called "God's Eye") who haven't been able to leave their solar system, after potentially millions of years, so their civilization keeps collapsing every couple hundred years due to overpopulation. With so long under the rule of sentience, the planet's biosphere has permanently adapted to the aliens. There are little critters called Watchmakers, for instance, that can dismantle and put back together almost any technology. It's also a neat study in sentient evolution, since the aliens are divided in to different subspecies with vastly different intellectual levels and physical strengths, depending on what they do. Overall it's a relatively neat book.
EricL:
--- Quote from: Numsgil ---Reminds me of a scifi book called "The Mote in God's Eye"
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Larry Niven is God, especially when he gets together with Pournelle. My all time favorate author. The sequel 'The Gripping Hand' is almost as good as Mote and if you haven't read Footfall and Lucifer's Hammer, you're missing out. Even 31 years after publication, Hammer still rocks.
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