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How did intelligence arise? · Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe

• 0:06
  Speaker 1: Why are some animals so much smarter than others? And
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: in particular, what is it that makes humans so incredibly smart? Now?
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: I love animals as much as anyone else, and yes,
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: other animals do do things like use tools and communicate
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: with each other, But humans are the only species we
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: know of that uncomplicated research programs to try to understand
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: at a deep level why some animal species are more
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: intelligent than others and how would these differences come about.
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: We humans ask questions like why is it that crows
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: have learned how to fashion sticks into tools that they
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: can use to grab tasty bugs out of the nooks
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: and crannies of trees, But I can't get my dumb
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: chickens to stop eating the paints on the side of
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: the chicken coop? And what kind of conditions would you
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: need to have on another planet in order to produce
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: highly intelligent aliens? These kinds of questions keep me up
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: and also seem to be keeping many of you up
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: at night as well. Today, we're going to tackle three
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: wonderful listener questions that we've received related to intelligence. Welcome
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: to Daniel and Kelly's Extraordinary Universe.
• 1:28
  Speaker 2: I'm Daniel, I'm a particle physicist, and I hope that
• 1:31
  Speaker 2: humans are not the smartest folks in the galaxy.
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: Hello, I'm Kelly Wiener Smith. I study parasites and space,
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: and yeah, I guess I hope we're not the smartest.
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: As long as they're nice and smart, that would be great.
• 1:45
  Speaker 2: I don't even really need to put that caveat on it,
• 1:47
  Speaker 2: Like if they're mean and smart, like, I'll take a
• 1:50
  Speaker 2: little bit of meanness for some secrets of the universe.
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: What if they think we're delicious and they're smart, I
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: think that's a bad combo.
• 1:57
  Speaker 2: I think I don't think I'm certainly very tasty, so
• 2:01
  Speaker 2: I'm not worried that I'd be going to be like
• 2:03
  Speaker 2: high on the list of humans to be consumed.
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: What would make you less tasty than other humans?
• 2:10
  Speaker 2: This is getting personal now?
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: Is us this sprinkled with stinky sauce or something.
• 2:16
  Speaker 2: I actually kind of am marbled through with the ribbons
• 2:19
  Speaker 2: of fats, So maybe I would be quite tasty. I
• 2:21
  Speaker 2: don't know. I try to stay fit.
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: You know, Marbling is a delicacy.
• 2:25
  Speaker 2: I think we just set a record for how quickly
• 2:27
  Speaker 2: we started talking about aliens and consumption of human flesh.
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: Glad to see if by the end of the episode
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: we hit poop and then we'll have the trifecta. But
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: we'll probably get there, all right.
• 2:37
  Speaker 2: So my question for you today, Kelly, is do you
• 2:41
  Speaker 2: think that we will ever crack the barrier to communicating
• 2:46
  Speaker 2: with our fellow intelligent earthlings, Like somehow as AI or
• 2:52
  Speaker 2: future linguistics can help us understand the chirpings of prairie
• 2:57
  Speaker 2: dogs and the whistling of whales.
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: Wow, all right, So I've recently read this really great
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: book called Do Aliens Speak Physics?
• 3:06
  Speaker 3: Ed?
• 3:10
  Speaker 2: That is a great book.
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: It's a fantastic book, and it kind of convinced me
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: that unless you can have two way communication, it's really
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: hard to get on the same page regarding language. You can,
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: like work with dolphins to try to figure stuff out.
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: Maybe we could get some very preliminary like you know,
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: I say hello to you, you say hello to me.
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: We're on the same page there, But like I guess
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: I'm not super optimistic. What kind of communication do you need? Like, so,
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: my dog is really cute but about as smart as
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: a ton of bricks, and so I can't communicate too
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: many complicated ideas to her. But you know, there are
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: some border colligues that are brilliant. So how much communication
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: do you feel like you need?
• 3:50
  Speaker 2: I just kind of want to know what's going on
• 3:52
  Speaker 2: in there. Like the whales are definitely talking to each other.
• 3:55
  Speaker 2: What are they saying? The honeybees are wiggling to each other.
• 3:58
  Speaker 2: This definitely in for me. I just want to translate
• 4:01
  Speaker 2: that information somehow, to know what they think is interesting
• 4:04
  Speaker 2: to talk about. And like you, I know that my
• 4:07
  Speaker 2: dog understands a lot of stuff, Like he picks up
• 4:09
  Speaker 2: on pretty subtle patterns, so he knows when he's getting
• 4:12
  Speaker 2: a walk. You know, shoes on plus the leash means
• 4:15
  Speaker 2: a walk, shoes on plus the backpack I means Daniel's
• 4:17
  Speaker 2: going to work this kind of stuff. And he notices
• 4:20
  Speaker 2: patterns through the day, like he's definitely paying attention to
• 4:23
  Speaker 2: patterns and understanding stuff. But I wish we could talk.
• 4:26
  Speaker 2: I wish we could commun in the game more. I
• 4:27
  Speaker 2: wish I could tell him like, Hey, we're getting in
• 4:29
  Speaker 2: the car and we're going to this thing, or we're
• 4:31
  Speaker 2: not going to the vet. You know this information I
• 4:33
  Speaker 2: wish we could share with him, Like my dog when
• 4:35
  Speaker 2: we leave, he has no idea are we going on
• 4:37
  Speaker 2: a three week trip? Are we going to be back
• 4:40
  Speaker 2: in an hour? He's cool, and if I could talk
• 4:42
  Speaker 2: to him, I could share that with him.
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: So, first of all, I think it's very nice that
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: you're worried about how your dog's going to feel about
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: how long you're gone. I think that's very sweet. So
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: bees do this waggle dance, and you can tell by
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: the way that they're dancing, sort of like the direction
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: and the distance that they're telling their nest mats. We're
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: the great source of pollen or nectar is and so
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: we can decipher that. But you know, I don't think
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: that I could like dress up in a bee suit
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: and shake my butt the right way and tell them like, hey,
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: I just planted some flowers in the southern corner of
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: the property. I mean, I think we can decode a
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: lot of what animals say, but we have not yet
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: figured out how to communicate back with them.
• 5:19
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, part of that depends on what's going on
• 5:22
  Speaker 2: inside those animals' minds and what intelligence really means and
• 5:26
  Speaker 2: where it comes from. So let's dig into the episode today.
• 5:28
  Speaker 2: I'm dying here what you had to tell us.
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: I'm super excited about today's episode. But now I've got
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: myself wondering, like, could you make a little electronic bee
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: that was like a bee size and like do the
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: waggle dance and maybe get the bees to go to
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: like your source of nectar. Anyway, surely there's got to
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: be funding for that. That sounds awesome. I find questions
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: about animal intelligence to be absolutely fascinating, and this is
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: actually a topic that we get a lot of questions
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: from y'all about, And if you want to send us
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: your questions, you can send us questions at questions at
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: danieland Kelly dot org. So today we're going to tackle
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: three of the questions that we've gotten from listeners about
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: animal intelligence and they sort of build on one another,
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: and so we're gonna, you know, do a bit of
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: an overview on animal intelligence today.
• 6:11
  Speaker 2: This is super cool. Second new kind of episode is
• 6:13
  Speaker 2: like a listener questions themes episode, almost like these listeners
• 6:17
  Speaker 2: are working together to send us questions that click together
• 6:19
  Speaker 2: so nicely.
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: That's right, Yeah, and these three click together very nicely.
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: You know, we could have done something similar with our
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: consciousness episode, but I think we got twenty questions about
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: consciousness before we were like, all right, we get it,
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: We're going to get an expert. Hopefully we answered everyone's
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: questions with that one. But today we are going to
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: start with a question from Tom. So let's go ahead
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: and hear Tom's question.
• 6:41
  Speaker 4: I'm reasonably confident that humans are the only Earth species
• 6:45
  Speaker 4: that has ever built rockets and such. So why is
• 6:48
  Speaker 4: this level of intelligence so rare? Life on Earth is
• 6:52
  Speaker 4: incredibly diverse and the Earth has been teeming with it
• 6:55
  Speaker 4: for billions of years? How does the species even develop
• 6:59
  Speaker 4: rocket level intelligence? Is intelligence a biologically selectable property that
• 7:04
  Speaker 4: improves the chances for a population to survive? Or is
• 7:08
  Speaker 4: rocket level intelligence just dumb luck? After all, the fact
• 7:12
  Speaker 4: that rocket level intelligence emerged on Earth has proved to
• 7:15
  Speaker 4: be quite unlucky for many coexisting species and may yet
• 7:19
  Speaker 4: still be unlucky for humans. Thanks.
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: Wow. Okay, so that is a great question, but it's
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: a very specific question. So why is a rocket level
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: intelligence so rare? So we have an end of one.
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: We know of one species that is able to build rockets,
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: and with such a small sample size it can be
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: really hard to know for sure. A bit of a
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: spoiler here, we don't know. In general, science does not
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: know exactly what it was that put humans on the
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: trajectory that we went on to be able to build
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: rockets and all the other amazing things that we can do.
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: We will talk about some of the hypotheses today that
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: we think were important, but first let's back up and
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: ask the question why can't all species build rockets? Why
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: is this kind of intelligence so rare?
• 8:06
  Speaker 2: I mean, ants and termites can build impressive stuff, right,
• 8:09
  Speaker 2: they definitely work together, and we see other species doing
• 8:13
  Speaker 2: cool stuff. So why aren't they building rockets and getting
• 8:15
  Speaker 2: off planet? What does that really require?
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: So again, the rocket thing is very specific, and part
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: of it is, you know, ants just might not have
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: the right appendages to build a rocket. You know, maybe
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: they've got rocket plans and if they just had hands,
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: they'd be building rockets, but probably not.
• 8:30
  Speaker 2: That's the kind of thing we could learn if we
• 8:32
  Speaker 2: learned to speak ant and be you know, maybe they're
• 8:35
  Speaker 2: desperate to fly into space and frustrated about their limitations.
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: We should be bringing them with us just you know,
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: they might.
• 8:42
  Speaker 2: Appreciate that, or we should just have them on the
• 8:44
  Speaker 2: podcast and ask them directly.
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: Maybe in five or ten years. So if you ask yourself,
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: why can't all species build rockets. You're essentially asking, well,
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: why aren't all animals intelligent? What holds you back? And
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: we think the answer has to do with how much
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: energy it takes to be super smart. So our adult
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: brains weigh about three pounds, so for a person who
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: weighs one hundred and eighty pounds, that's about two percent
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: of your body weight. But by measuring oxygen consumption rates
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: in different parts of our body, we estimate that our
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: brain uses about twenty percent of all of the energy
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: that we burn every single day. So this very small
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: organ is using an outsized amount of energy. So brains
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: are just energetically expensive. So if you are a species
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: that doesn't need a super big, smart brain, then there's
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: probably not great selection pressure for you to be expending
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: a bunch of energy on an energetically expensive organ that
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: you are not using.
• 9:41
  Speaker 2: So you're saying that this thing is expensive, right, that
• 9:44
  Speaker 2: it costs us something, and then so if it doesn't
• 9:46
  Speaker 2: pay for itself, it's definitely not going to survive because
• 9:49
  Speaker 2: I've hung around and used up a bunch of energy
• 9:51
  Speaker 2: and didn't provide tangible benefits. Then folks with big brains
• 9:55
  Speaker 2: would die more often during famines and cold winters and
• 9:58
  Speaker 2: stuff like that. That's the idea.
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so this is more of a species level argument.
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: But yeah, so species with big brains that didn't need
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: them would have to spend more time foraging or get better,
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: higher quality food because of their big brains. And if
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: that's not happening, it's not worth having.
• 10:12
  Speaker 2: I guess you could also imagine a population, right of
• 10:14
  Speaker 2: a single species with smaller brains and bigger brains, And
• 10:17
  Speaker 2: if the bigger brains aren't providing a benefit and they
• 10:19
  Speaker 2: are providing a cost, then those big brain folks among
• 10:23
  Speaker 2: us are not going to survive. There is a population
• 10:26
  Speaker 2: level argument there also, right.
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: Yeah, there's a population level argument. There's often more variables
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: at play when you start thinking about a specific species. So,
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: for example, when human brains, if they were to get
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: too big, you would start to have trouble getting those
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: giant heads through the birth canal. And so there's limits
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: on how big brains can be. And in general, there's
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: not a ton of variability between the sizes of brains
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: of adults. And now we can get into this whole
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: different debate about is it really about how big the
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: brain is? So like blue whales have much bigger brains
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: than we do, but they haven't created rockets to get
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: them out of space. Maybe that's because it's just too
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: expensive to send a giant blue whale to space. But yeah,
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: so trying to figure out exactly what feature of the
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: brain we should measure is difficult. But we know that
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: brains are expensive energetically, right, And.
• 11:10
  Speaker 2: I was actually reading a study about the size of
• 11:12
  Speaker 2: the human brain that suggested that if you packed in
• 11:15
  Speaker 2: the neurons more densely, you would add more noise. So
• 11:18
  Speaker 2: making the neurons smaller and denser wouldn't actually improve your
• 11:22
  Speaker 2: cognition because you'd be ending up adding noise. And so like,
• 11:24
  Speaker 2: human brains are sort of at this sweet spot for
• 11:27
  Speaker 2: how much you can squeeze them down to get cognition.
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: I think maybe one of these days we should have
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: a whole separate episode on exactly how you should measure
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: brains to correlate it with intelligence, because I read a
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: paper that was arguing that actually, the reason we're so
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: great is because we have denser neurons, and that it's
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: not brain size, it's neuron density that really unlocks intelligence.
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: I think in general, the field has not figured out
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: exactly what we need to be measuring.
• 11:55
  Speaker 2: That's such a nice way of saying that these folks
• 11:57
  Speaker 2: don't know what they're doing. Well, you gotta start is immature, Yes, well.
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: Yes, brains are complicated man, Yes they are.
• 12:05
  Speaker 2: No, you're totally right in great respect to folks who
• 12:07
  Speaker 2: are studying the brain, because obviously it's important. And just
• 12:10
  Speaker 2: because we don't understand everything doesn't mean that early studies
• 12:13
  Speaker 2: are not valuable. They're the ones that lay the foundation
• 12:15
  Speaker 2: for future progress. Yes, absolutely, and so we shouldn't mock them.
• 12:18
  Speaker 2: We're grateful for their pioneering work.
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: Yes, I studied a brain infecting parasite of fish and
• 12:24
  Speaker 1: I started getting into neuroanatomy and neurochemistry and I was like, no,
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: I'm sticking with parasitology. Brains are complicated, so anyway, but
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: here we're jumping in anyway.
• 12:34
  Speaker 2: I think also Tom's question has this fascinating flavor to it,
• 12:36
  Speaker 2: which is like, you can make the evolutionary argument, and
• 12:39
  Speaker 2: I think you're going to get into this later for
• 12:41
  Speaker 2: why intelligence might be beneficial, right, it might even overcome
• 12:45
  Speaker 2: the expense of the brain. But it's hard to understand
• 12:49
  Speaker 2: why evolution would give us a brain that's capable of
• 12:51
  Speaker 2: doing things that you didn't need to survive on the savannah, Right,
• 12:54
  Speaker 2: You didn't need to be able to think about eleven
• 12:56
  Speaker 2: dimensional mathematics and build rockets and all sorts of other
• 13:00
  Speaker 2: easy stuff in order to survive evolutionarily. So why is
• 13:04
  Speaker 2: it that evolution provided this tool which has this crazy
• 13:07
  Speaker 2: capability clearly outstripping our needs.
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: Yeah, well, you could ask a similar question like why
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: do peacocks have such big, showy tales? And I think
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: that you know, natural selection doesn't just select for things
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: that help us run faster to catch our food or
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: help us garden more efficiently. It also selects for traits
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: that make us more attractive mates in one way or another.
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: So sometimes it makes you know, you bigger and more
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: muscly if that's what the females want. But you know,
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: there's also variability in what females of a species want,
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: And some of us want super smart partners, our partners
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: with musical abilities. And I think humans are kind of
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: weird in this respect, that we really are interested in
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: intellectual characteristics in addition to just physical characteristics. And I
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: don't know exactly how that played into our evolution and
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: made us unique. But you know, if you can do
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: nine dimensional math, there's got to be a group of
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: people who are into that.
• 14:00
  Speaker 2: Since both of us are married to nerds, I think
• 14:02
  Speaker 2: we may be an unrepresentative subset of humanity. But I
• 14:06
  Speaker 2: totally agree with you. Big brains are hot.
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: Yes, it's super hot, way more hot than muscles and
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: being in good shape, I think. But could be biased. Okay,
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: So the question was essentially about how do we get
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: humans in particular, and the answer is, we don't know
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: about how you get humans in particular, but we can
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: get some hints by looking at other kinds of animals
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: and trying to figure out what things selected for intelligence
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: in other animals, and that might give us some insights
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: into like maybe you know, we maxed out a particular
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: you know, trait, or there was a particularly strong selective
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: pressure for us. So we're going to start this conversation
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: by talking about how we define intelligence outside of the
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: ability to build rockets, and then some difficulties with measuring it,
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: and towards the end of the episode, when we're answering
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: other questions from other listeners, we'll talk about some of
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: the leading hypotheses. So we're going to get to.
• 14:57
  Speaker 2: Them, all right. I love when we start a hard
• 15:00
  Speaker 2: conversation with let's define what we're talking about, because it
• 15:03
  Speaker 2: makes me feel all philosophical and nerdy. But also it's
• 15:06
  Speaker 2: really important. If somebody doesn't do that, then I feel
• 15:08
  Speaker 2: like they're going to be sloppy with their arguments because
• 15:11
  Speaker 2: they're not being precise with their words.
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: Well, and I should say that while I was researching
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: this topic, I came across a lot of different definitions,
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: and I decided to try to go with something a
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: little bit more general that feels pretty good to all
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: of us. So here's what I came up with. It's
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: just the ability to solve lots of different kinds of problems,
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: because that's what they all seemed to narrow down to.
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: But what do you think how would you define intelligence?
• 15:36
  Speaker 2: I definitely think the ability to solve problems is a
• 15:38
  Speaker 2: component of it. It feels to me like also there
• 15:41
  Speaker 2: should be a learning aspect, right, discovering patterns generalizing from them,
• 15:47
  Speaker 2: you know, in machine learning, that's a big factor. We
• 15:49
  Speaker 2: want to develop networks that are not just capable of
• 15:52
  Speaker 2: solving the problems we've taught them, but solving a general
• 15:56
  Speaker 2: class of problems, including examples they haven't seen before, bringing
• 16:00
  Speaker 2: together ideas, coming up with bigger picture solutions. So something
• 16:04
  Speaker 2: about generalizing from the examples that you've learned feels to
• 16:08
  Speaker 2: me like an important part of intelligence.
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and I think that having the ability to solve
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: lots of different kinds of problems does, to some extent
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: imply the ability to learn, Okay, yeah, or at least
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: to experiment with your environment to try new things, which
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: I think is like learning. So I think we're pretty
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: much on the same page. What do you think.
• 16:26
  Speaker 2: I think that's a good working definition. Okay, So then
• 16:28
  Speaker 2: how do we measure this? Are we like giving tests
• 16:31
  Speaker 2: to cats and dogs to see can you do eleven
• 16:34
  Speaker 2: dimensional string theory?
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: We're not asking them about eleven dimensional string theory. We
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: will talk about some experiments that we do, but first
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: I wanted to tell a couple of stories about how
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: we've thought we were measuring something but it turns out
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: we're measuring something different. Just to highlight how difficult it is.
• 16:50
  Speaker 2: Here comes wet Blanket Kelly.
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: Come on, of course, we were going to get to
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: wet Blanka Kelly. Okay, So clever Hans is horse in
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: Germany at the end of the nineteenth century, and this
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: horse became super famous because you could ask him questions
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: about addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, including questions that involved fractions wow,
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: and he would stomp out answers, so he would like
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: stomp and then when he was done answering the question,
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: so for the right numbers, like if the answer was five,
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: he'd stop five times and then he'd sort of do
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: like a little circle thing with his hoof to be
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: like okay, I'm done.
• 17:27
  Speaker 2: Wow.
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: And then you could also ask Clever Hans questions like
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: what is that woman holding in her hand? And using
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: an alphabet that was on a board, each letter was
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: separated into columns and rows, he could clamp out what
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: letters he wanted to say, you know, umbrella or hot
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: dog or something like that.
• 17:47
  Speaker 2: That implies some ability to read, right, yeah.
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah right. Some experts came in and they were like,
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: oh my gosh, we totally agree because we can do
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: the trick with Clever Hans too. We can ask clever
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: Hans the same question, it's not just his owner, and
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: he can answer it. So they decided that Clever Hans
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: had the intelligence that was equivalent to about a thirteen
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: year old child. But then another set of experimenters came
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: in and they started walling clever Hans off from the
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: room where the questioner was asking.
• 18:19
  Speaker 2: Oh, yeah, that's right.
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: It turns out that clever Hans could only answer questions
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: correctly if the experimenter knew the answer ahead of time,
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: and if Hans could see the experimenter.
• 18:35
  Speaker 2: Oh, man, this is just like those experiments with the
• 18:38
  Speaker 2: wiki boards, right, uh right.
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: Like something else is sort of happening behind the scenes
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: that's unintended. So it turned out clever Hans isn't smart
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: in terms of the ability to do like division, but
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: clever Hans was very smart at reading human body language.
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: So even if you put a new person in that
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: clever Hans had never encountered before, Clever Hans could tell
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: that they were like holding their breath until he got
• 19:02
  Speaker 1: to like the right number of stomps, and that then
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: something about their body would change and then he'd know, okay,
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: that was it. And so clever Hans was actually just
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: queuing it on body language.
• 19:12
  Speaker 2: Wow, So clever Hans could really read human emotion and
• 19:15
  Speaker 2: like understand what humans wanted him to do and then
• 19:18
  Speaker 2: would do it.
• 19:19
  Speaker 1: Yes, right. But this points out one of the first
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: difficult things about studying animals is that sometimes it can
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: be really hard to figure out what you're measuring or
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: what it is that they're actually learning, and it's not
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: always what you think that they're learning. So you have
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: to be very careful about how you design experiments, and
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: you need to keep in mind that animals sense the
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: world in different ways. So you know, some animals echo locate,
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: some can see polarized light, some explore their universe using electricity,
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: and so you need to make sure that you're asking
• 19:47
  Speaker 1: questions that make sense with their sensory systems.
• 19:49
  Speaker 2: And not just for animals, right, like humans. Also, it's
• 19:52
  Speaker 2: very hard to measure intelligence among humans. A lot of
• 19:54
  Speaker 2: these tests have cultural biases in them.
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: For example, yep, yeah, absolutely, this is just really hard stuff.
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: And then how do you compare you know, intelligence and
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: a pigeon where maybe the amazing thing is their ability
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: to like orient and travel great distances in their great
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: spatial memory. And then compare that to you know, like
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: a really smart crow that can whittle ass stick so
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: that it can get at bugs in a tree, or like,
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: how do you compare intelligence between those two different organisms.
• 20:21
  Speaker 2: Right, it seems like it's obviously not a single number.
• 20:23
  Speaker 2: It's a multi dimensional right, And anytime you try to
• 20:26
  Speaker 2: boil something complex down to a single number, and you're
• 20:29
  Speaker 2: going to lose a lot of nuance.
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: Yes you are. And I want to tell one more
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: quick story about when we thought that we had taught
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: animals something and we had taught them something else. So
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: there's this thing called perceptual categories, where essentially you're trying
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: to figure out if animals can categorize things in ways
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: similar to how humans can. So people showed pigeons a
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: bunch of different pictures of things, and they trained the
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: pigeons to peck a key and get a reward whenever
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: a person was in the image, and so they actually
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: got pretty good at this. Over time. They would pay
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: the images, even if it was an image they had
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: never seen before, if there was a person in it.
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: And eventually they were able to get these pigeons to
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: pick out pictures with bodies of water, pictures with trees,
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: pictures with fish. So it turns out they were actually
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: really good at coming up with these categories if you
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: trained them. And then we did it with capuchin monkeys
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: and we trained them on a bunch of different photos
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: of people, and they were doing pretty well. But the
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: experimenters did something really clever. They looked at the mistakes
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: the monkeys were making and tried to see if there
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: was anything informative in those mistakes. And one mistake the
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: monkeys made was they did not count as a picture
• 21:36
  Speaker 1: of a human anything that was torso and higher. So
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: like you know, you think of your school pictures from
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: when you were a kid, and it's like your torso
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: and higher. The monkeys did not think that was a person.
• 21:49
  Speaker 2: They're counting legs only or what.
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: They didn't know exactly what they were counting, but they
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: hadn't generalized a person. There was like a very particular
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: all has to be there, So they hadn't learned exactly
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: the category we had in mind. And they counted as
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: a person an image of a jackal that was carrying
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: a dead flamingo. And the reason they ended up thinking
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: that the monkeys were categorizing that as a person is
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: because that image had read in it, and the only
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: other images in the training set that had read were
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: three of the pictures of people, and so maybe they
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: hadn't actually learned what humans were, but they had learned
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: something about the image set, and we have problems with
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: this with AI training sets.
• 22:29
  Speaker 2: Also, Yeah, there's a famous example of trying to teach
• 22:32
  Speaker 2: an AI to tell the difference between wolves and dogs,
• 22:35
  Speaker 2: and it was doing really, really well, and then they
• 22:37
  Speaker 2: discovered that the pictures of wolves have snow in the background,
• 22:40
  Speaker 2: pictures of dogs don't. As it was like learning to
• 22:43
  Speaker 2: tell the difference between grass and snow, which is not
• 22:45
  Speaker 2: that hard.
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: Right, right, And this was an experiment that was designed
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: by humans who apparently had tried to think this stuff through.
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: It's just really hard. So now that we have a
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: sense of how difficult it is to ask these kinds
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: of questions, let's take a break and when we come back,
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: we'll move on to the next question, which will bring
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: us to some of the hypotheses for what selects for intelligence.
• 23:22
  Speaker 2: Okay, we're back, and we are tackling some very difficult
• 23:24
  Speaker 2: but fascinating questions from listeners today about the nature of
• 23:28
  Speaker 2: intelligence and YBS have not yet gone off planet, and
• 23:32
  Speaker 2: we started with a really fun question from Tom about
• 23:34
  Speaker 2: how you end up with rocket level intelligence, and Kelly
• 23:38
  Speaker 2: shed some light on how hard it is to even
• 23:40
  Speaker 2: define and measure intelligence and through a wet blanket. I'm
• 23:43
  Speaker 2: basically the whole history of that field my day, and
• 23:48
  Speaker 2: so slightly unusually, we're not going to give a complete
• 23:50
  Speaker 2: and definite answer to Tom's question right now. We're going
• 23:53
  Speaker 2: to keep digging into this by answering more questions from
• 23:56
  Speaker 2: listeners and then hope at the end to come back
• 23:58
  Speaker 2: and give you our best answer to all of your queries.
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: All right, So let's go ahead then and jump into
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: question two from.
• 24:05
  Speaker 3: Mark, Hi, Daniel, and Kelly. My question has to do
• 24:09
  Speaker 3: with evolution and predation. Do you think it's possible for
• 24:13
  Speaker 3: complex intelligent life to evolve without predation? Or do we
• 24:18
  Speaker 3: think that predation is necessary for beings with human level
• 24:22
  Speaker 3: intelligence or higher intelligence to exist? If there are aliens
• 24:27
  Speaker 3: capable of interstellar travel that have never known predation, I imagine
• 24:32
  Speaker 3: they would find Earth to be a nightmare with billions
• 24:36
  Speaker 3: of organisms being murdered and consumed by other organisms every day.
• 24:41
  Speaker 3: Interested to know your thoughts.
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: Thanks, okay, wow, all right? So when I first listened
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: to this question, I was confused because I hadn't heard
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: this hypothesis that predation is important for producing intelligent life.
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: Had you heard this idea before Daniel.
• 24:57
  Speaker 2: I hadn't thought about in terms of predation. I thought
• 25:00
  Speaker 2: about in terms of like society and culture, that maybe
• 25:04
  Speaker 2: an important component of intelligence is having a complex interaction
• 25:08
  Speaker 2: between the individuals in the species more than just like
• 25:10
  Speaker 2: solitary folks. So I'm not sure how that connects to
• 25:13
  Speaker 2: predation or being preyed on, or preying on people, like
• 25:17
  Speaker 2: how taking down a mammoth requires like ten to fifteen people.
• 25:21
  Speaker 2: Is that the same sort of thing.
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: So that's the social intelligence hypothesis, which we're going to
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: get to next. But so the idea behind this predation
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: hypothesis is that you end up with an arms race
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: between predators in prey. So what happens here, So you've
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: got a predator that needs to be able to see
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: the prey so that it can find it in a
• 25:39
  Speaker 1: tree or something. You know, if it's hiding in a tree,
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: it kind of blends in, and so that selects for
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: them to have better vision or a better memory for
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: the kinds of behaviors that their prey typically engages in. So,
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: for example, if a certain kind of prey that's extra
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: super delicious is only active at dusk and dawn, then
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: maybe you focus your predation efforts at dusk and dawn,
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: because you've remembered that that's when the prey that's super
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: tasty is active. And on the other hand, the prey
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: might remember that when I smell cat urine, that means
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: that there's a cat in the area, and so anywhere
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: I smell cat urine, I'm just not going to hang
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: out anymore. And so you end up with this competition
• 26:18
  Speaker 1: for sensory systems and the ability to sort of like
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: think through risks and benefits that over time results in
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: smarter and smarter brains.
• 26:26
  Speaker 2: So is the argument just that smarter predators are more
• 26:30
  Speaker 2: successful and smarter prey and more successful that it's one
• 26:33
  Speaker 2: element of success in this sort of predator versus prey environment.
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: Yep, exactly.
• 26:38
  Speaker 2: But there's lots of predator prey situations and a lot
• 26:41
  Speaker 2: of times one or both of them are kind of
• 26:42
  Speaker 2: dumb deer not that smart, for example, though they've been
• 26:46
  Speaker 2: highly selected for because people like wolves been gobbling up
• 26:50
  Speaker 2: deer for many years. Is this just one possible way
• 26:53
  Speaker 2: evolution can go or is the argument that prey and
• 26:56
  Speaker 2: predation always leads to intelligence.
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: Yeah. So, first I'll note that it wouldn't surprise me
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: to find out that deer have gotten more stupid over
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: time because there's not tons of hunters out there and
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: we've killed most of their predators on this continent, so
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: they are perhaps a little bit relieved from the pressure
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: of this arms race, and maybe that explains their intelligence.
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: But yeah, so I think to me, that's one of
• 27:19
  Speaker 1: the issues with this hypothesis is that it's not as
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: far as I can tell, really clearer about which sets
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: of predators in prey or which kinds of predators should
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: end up, you know, maxing out being super smart and
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: which prey should end up being super smart. But it's
• 27:33
  Speaker 1: sort of more of a like, well, this is why
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: you end up with complex thought at all, and then
• 27:39
  Speaker 1: it just sort of depends on how much complex thought
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: you need, depending on what kinds of races you find
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: yourself in and with what kinds of organisms.
• 27:47
  Speaker 2: Because it's not hard to think of other examples, you know,
• 27:49
  Speaker 2: like spiders and flies, right, flies are very good evading spiders,
• 27:53
  Speaker 2: but they're not using intelligence. They're just like have a
• 27:56
  Speaker 2: crazy hair trigger and you can jump out of the
• 27:59
  Speaker 2: way in a bil I.
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: Mean that's pretty impressive as well, Like you know, those
• 28:03
  Speaker 1: crazy hair triggers could be because you know, you've had
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: selection for hairs that are particularly sensitive to you know,
• 28:10
  Speaker 1: spider webs, or maybe their visual systems are particularly good
• 28:14
  Speaker 1: at seeing the way light reflects off of a spider
• 28:17
  Speaker 1: web with some dew on it. But yes, I don't
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: think of flies as being particularly brilliant, although they outsmart
• 28:23
  Speaker 1: me when I try to smack them, so maybe they're
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: smarter than I give them credit for.
• 28:27
  Speaker 2: They're definitely amazing biological engineering. I don't know if it
• 28:30
  Speaker 2: counts as intelligence, but now we're back into that morass
• 28:33
  Speaker 2: of what is smart anyway. But I wouldn't put flies
• 28:36
  Speaker 2: near the top of the list.
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: I haven't read a lot of papers where flies were
• 28:39
  Speaker 1: like solving complex problems. Although I do think that they
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: keep track of their social structures because they fight with
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: each other, and I think who they fight with depends
• 28:47
  Speaker 1: on you know, who they fought with in the past.
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: So maybe there's a lot going on there that we
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: can't see.
• 28:51
  Speaker 2: All right, But you must have some fun examples of
• 28:53
  Speaker 2: predator and prey who have developed some clever intelligence.
• 28:56
  Speaker 1: I am particularly excited about chimps and New Caledonian crows
• 29:00
  Speaker 1: who have managed to like pull stems off of trees
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: and in some cases even like remove leaves and stuff
• 29:07
  Speaker 1: to make particularly good tools for going inside of like trees,
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: so that you can get bugs that are inside.
• 29:13
  Speaker 2: That's tool use. That's clever. Yeah.
• 29:15
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: And you'll find stories about crows who will sometimes like
• 29:17
  Speaker 1: if they have a metal implement, they'll bend it so
• 29:20
  Speaker 1: that they can sort of hook something out. There have
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: been stories of crows that are able to like drop
• 29:26
  Speaker 1: rocks into containers of water so that the water can
• 29:29
  Speaker 1: come up high enough so that they can drink it.
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: Oh wow, Like they do some pretty incredible things. Thinking
• 29:34
  Speaker 1: about prey, there are octopus that do things like use
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: halves of coconut shells and instead of using them like
• 29:40
  Speaker 1: in Monty Python to make the sound of a horse galloping. No,
• 29:46
  Speaker 1: I know, I don't understand, they pick up the coconuts shells,
• 29:50
  Speaker 1: clean them out, get inside of them, and then carry
• 29:52
  Speaker 1: them with them from place to place so that they've
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: got a shelter to hide from anything that might want
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: to harass or try to eat them. Okay, so there
• 29:59
  Speaker 1: are some amazing examples of animals that show a lot
• 30:02
  Speaker 1: of intelligence to either avoid being eaten or get their food.
• 30:06
  Speaker 2: Those are both definitely smarter than flies.
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: Well, but again, you know you're biased by what sounds
• 30:11
  Speaker 1: important to you and what you can understand. Well, but yeah,
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: I'll give you that. I hate flies. Diptorids are the worst.
• 30:19
  Speaker 1: My daughter knows I hate diptorans.
• 30:20
  Speaker 2: What are diptorids?
• 30:22
  Speaker 1: They're like flies? And mosquitoes.
• 30:24
  Speaker 2: Oh god, mosquitos absolutely the worst. If I could delete
• 30:27
  Speaker 2: mosquitos from the universe, I totally would do it. I
• 30:30
  Speaker 2: mostly love living creatures, and I appreciate that everything contributes
• 30:33
  Speaker 2: to the web of life. But mosquitoes, man, just delete those.
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: I know you are telling us in another episode recently
• 30:39
  Speaker 1: that you guys got some Chinese mosquitos that are now
• 30:41
  Speaker 1: all over the place and that you really hate them,
• 30:43
  Speaker 1: and I feel for you.
• 30:45
  Speaker 2: Nothing against the Chinese, nothing, no, no, of.
• 30:47
  Speaker 1: Course, of course, yep, nope. Didn't mean to apply that.
• 30:49
  Speaker 1: But so another part of Mark's question was would aliens
• 30:53
  Speaker 1: find our planet appalling because of all of the killings. So,
• 30:56
  Speaker 1: if predation is important for intelligence, and predation is like
• 31:00
  Speaker 1: all over the place, could you end up with an
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: intelligent alien species where there wasn't any predation? Is there
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: some other selection pressure that produces intelligent aliens and what
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: would aliens think of all of the killing? And you know,
• 31:14
  Speaker 1: I don't know, it might be appalling. There's an interesting
• 31:17
  Speaker 1: book called The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell, and I
• 31:21
  Speaker 1: do not recommend this book to children. Maybe read the
• 31:24
  Speaker 1: Wikipedia summary before you read it. It covers some intense topics,
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: but it's an interesting look at how humans feel when
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: they go to an alien civilization and see how they
• 31:33
  Speaker 1: deal with their predator prey relationships. But would you tell
• 31:36
  Speaker 1: us about Eric Kirschenbaum's book.
• 31:39
  Speaker 2: Yeah. He's a biologist at Cambridge and he wrote this
• 31:42
  Speaker 2: book called The Zoologist Guide to the Galaxy. What Animals
• 31:46
  Speaker 2: on Earth reveal about aliens and ourselves. And I'll be honest,
• 31:49
  Speaker 2: when I first saw this book, I thought, oh no,
• 31:52
  Speaker 2: he scooped me because I was at the same time
• 31:54
  Speaker 2: working on a book about what we can learn about
• 31:57
  Speaker 2: aliens from examples here on Earth. But I was more
• 31:59
  Speaker 2: focused on the side of it. And his book is
• 32:01
  Speaker 2: really fascinating. It's essentially looking at examples of evolution on
• 32:05
  Speaker 2: Earth and trying to draw conclusions about what might be
• 32:08
  Speaker 2: universal and what might be local and unique to Earth. It's,
• 32:12
  Speaker 2: of course impossible to know for sure, but you know,
• 32:14
  Speaker 2: when you see things pop up over and over again,
• 32:17
  Speaker 2: you can argue that they might be more common. And
• 32:20
  Speaker 2: when you see something that only happened once on Earth,
• 32:22
  Speaker 2: you can argue that maybe it's rare and therefore might
• 32:25
  Speaker 2: not be everywhere in the universe. And something he talked
• 32:28
  Speaker 2: a lot about was predation.
• 32:31
  Speaker 1: And you provided me with a quote where he even
• 32:33
  Speaker 1: says no ecosystem can exist for long without someone trying
• 32:37
  Speaker 1: to take a bite out of somebody else.
• 32:39
  Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly. He thinks it's essentially inevitable because you'll develop mobility,
• 32:44
  Speaker 2: and then you'll start to consume, and then you'll start
• 32:47
  Speaker 2: to consume other folks, and then other folks will try
• 32:49
  Speaker 2: to get away from you. And so when you get big,
• 32:53
  Speaker 2: you get noisy, and people develop ears and then they
• 32:55
  Speaker 2: use those to hunt, and so he thinks predation is
• 32:58
  Speaker 2: totally inevitable. Directly like, do you think aliens eat each other?
• 33:03
  Speaker 1: And he was like, oh, yeah, absolutely, okay, So at
• 33:06
  Speaker 1: least that argues that if aliens visit Earth, they shouldn't
• 33:09
  Speaker 1: find us too apart, although maybe they'd be shocked that
• 33:12
  Speaker 1: we eat lobsters because gross.
• 33:17
  Speaker 2: Lobsters are like just huge ocean conchroaches. I don't get it,
• 33:20
  Speaker 2: Like they look really gross to me.
• 33:22
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I'll pass. Sorry, I'm not into it. So
• 33:26
  Speaker 1: to be honest, when I was researching hypotheses for why
• 33:29
  Speaker 1: intelligence pops up from time to time, I didn't come
• 33:33
  Speaker 1: across this predation hypothesis often. The hypothesis that I came
• 33:37
  Speaker 1: across the most often is what's called the social intelligence hypothesis.
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: This is what Daniel was talking about earlier, which is
• 33:44
  Speaker 1: that group living selects for intelligence, and you need group
• 33:48
  Speaker 1: living to do things like track members of a group.
• 33:51
  Speaker 1: So remember, like, you know, when I was cooperating with Beth,
• 33:54
  Speaker 1: you know, I pulled some ticks off her back, and
• 33:56
  Speaker 1: the next day she pulled some ticks off my back.
• 33:58
  Speaker 1: So that's great, I'll keep working with her. But I
• 34:00
  Speaker 1: pulled some ticks off Frank's back, and that jerk never
• 34:03
  Speaker 1: returned to the favor. So I'm not going to work
• 34:05
  Speaker 1: again with Frank. And so it helps you like keep
• 34:08
  Speaker 1: track of individuals in your group and how you should
• 34:11
  Speaker 1: react with each of them differently.
• 34:13
  Speaker 2: Essentially, politics is complicated and it takes real intelligence, and
• 34:17
  Speaker 2: in a society, politics are important for survival. You have
• 34:21
  Speaker 2: to build coalitions, you have to worry about your enemies,
• 34:24
  Speaker 2: you have to worry about being betrayed by your allies.
• 34:27
  Speaker 2: It's complicated stuff.
• 34:28
  Speaker 1: Well, and you need to communicate with each other so
• 34:30
  Speaker 1: that if you're you know, a bee, for example, you
• 34:32
  Speaker 1: can waggle and tell everyone where the good food source is.
• 34:35
  Speaker 1: Or you need to if your wolves coordinate so you
• 34:37
  Speaker 1: can take down the moose so that you can feed everyone.
• 34:40
  Speaker 1: So social behavior requires a lot of intelligence to work out.
• 34:44
  Speaker 2: Have you ever read the books about the Wolves of Yellowstone?
• 34:47
  Speaker 1: Oh? Have you?
• 34:48
  Speaker 2: Yeah, there's a fascinating series of books written by a
• 34:51
  Speaker 2: guy who spent like forty years getting up at like
• 34:54
  Speaker 2: three in the morning and just watching the wolves and
• 34:57
  Speaker 2: each of a number, and he just got to know
• 34:59
  Speaker 2: them all and wrote these books about their politics. And
• 35:03
  Speaker 2: it's like a soap opera. You know, betrayals and arguments
• 35:07
  Speaker 2: and you know, love affairs and all sorts of crazy
• 35:10
  Speaker 2: stuff and wolve's going off to start their own packs
• 35:12
  Speaker 2: and then coming back and fighting their parents and like
• 35:14
  Speaker 2: it's dramatic stuff, and it leaves you with this sense
• 35:17
  Speaker 2: of like, wow, this is a society. You know, these
• 35:20
  Speaker 2: are intelligent creatures and they have all the same kind
• 35:23
  Speaker 2: of politics that we do. It really is a soap opera.
• 35:26
  Speaker 2: It's fascinating reading.
• 35:27
  Speaker 1: Robert Sipolski wrote a book about baboons called a Primates Memoir,
• 35:31
  Speaker 1: which is sort of the same. It's really becomes clear
• 35:33
  Speaker 1: how they're a society that has a lot of similarities
• 35:36
  Speaker 1: to how humans work. And also he's a fantastic writer.
• 35:39
  Speaker 1: I really enjoyed that memoir.
• 35:40
  Speaker 2: So I really recommend these books there by Rick McIntyre,
• 35:42
  Speaker 2: one of them has called, for example, the Rise of
• 35:44
  Speaker 2: Wolf eight. They're fantastic books. Really couldn't recommend them higher anyway,
• 35:49
  Speaker 2: Go ahead, tell us about other intelligent critters.
• 35:52
  Speaker 1: Yeah. So in the nineteen nineties it was observed that
• 35:55
  Speaker 1: there was this positive correlation between neo coortec side. So
• 35:59
  Speaker 1: this is like the outer part of our brain that's
• 36:01
  Speaker 1: close to our skull, and it's thought to be sort
• 36:04
  Speaker 1: of like a more recent mammalian thing. And so monkeys
• 36:09
  Speaker 1: and apes that had bigger neo cortexes were also thought
• 36:13
  Speaker 1: to be smarter. And this part of the brain is
• 36:14
  Speaker 1: used for things like language and sensory perception.
• 36:17
  Speaker 2: Can I stop you right there and be a little skeptical.
• 36:20
  Speaker 2: Anytimes somebody says something like that like this part of
• 36:22
  Speaker 2: the brain is used for XYZ, I'm like, we don't
• 36:24
  Speaker 2: understand the brain. Isn't this some like correlational study using
• 36:28
  Speaker 2: fMRI And it's like, well, there's more blood flow here
• 36:30
  Speaker 2: when we show them this picture of a baboon and
• 36:33
  Speaker 2: so therefore, right, it's all pretty fuzzy. I feel like
• 36:36
  Speaker 2: this should be a huge asterisk anytime somebody says this
• 36:39
  Speaker 2: part of the brain does.
• 36:40
  Speaker 1: X OMG, yes, yeah, no, I totally agree with you,
• 36:43
  Speaker 1: and so we'll move this point up a little bit.
• 36:45
  Speaker 1: One of the issues with this field is that to
• 36:47
  Speaker 1: try to support the hypothesis, they'll do things like look
• 36:49
  Speaker 1: at relative brain size and correlate that with things that
• 36:54
  Speaker 1: are related to social things like if you are a
• 36:56
  Speaker 1: species that tends to live in groups of five rather
• 36:59
  Speaker 1: than you know, by yourself, they'll look to see, do
• 37:02
  Speaker 1: you have a bigger brain if you live in groups
• 37:04
  Speaker 1: of five, or if you're a species that lives in
• 37:06
  Speaker 1: a group of just one. Does that make sense? And
• 37:09
  Speaker 1: so there's a lot of these correlations, but there's a
• 37:13
  Speaker 1: lot of argument about what you should be measuring in
• 37:16
  Speaker 1: a brain to begin with, like, what is the relevant
• 37:18
  Speaker 1: part of the brain you should be measuring. Is it
• 37:20
  Speaker 1: the whole brain, is it the neocortex? Is it actually
• 37:23
  Speaker 1: the density of neurons and a very particular part of
• 37:26
  Speaker 1: the brain that matters. And additionally, you know, there are
• 37:29
  Speaker 1: animals that can do similarly smart tasks that have very
• 37:34
  Speaker 1: different kinds of brains. You know, how do you compare,
• 37:36
  Speaker 1: for example, a primate brain and a bird brain. And
• 37:39
  Speaker 1: so one of the big critiques in this field is
• 37:41
  Speaker 1: that they do rely a lot on different measures of
• 37:44
  Speaker 1: brains that have not necessarily been locked in as the
• 37:48
  Speaker 1: correct thing to be measuring when you're interested in intelligence.
• 37:51
  Speaker 2: Right, And we mentioned these as critiques of the field
• 37:54
  Speaker 2: not because we think these folks don't know what they're doing. Yeah,
• 37:56
  Speaker 2: they're following a glorious tradition in science, which is like
• 37:59
  Speaker 2: tackling and possibly hard question by doing the only things
• 38:02
  Speaker 2: they know how to do. And often this leads to
• 38:04
  Speaker 2: breakthroughs you didn't expect. It's better than just sitting on
• 38:07
  Speaker 2: the couch and saying, well, it's impossible, let's not do it.
• 38:10
  Speaker 2: But another glorious tradition in science is being open about
• 38:13
  Speaker 2: the critiques of what we really do know and what
• 38:15
  Speaker 2: we don't know, and being careful about drawing too broad
• 38:18
  Speaker 2: a conclusion.
• 38:19
  Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. There have been a lot of correlations where
• 38:23
  Speaker 1: they have found that complicated social behaviors in insects and
• 38:27
  Speaker 1: birds and mammals are correlated with either bigger brains or
• 38:31
  Speaker 1: bigger brain parts. And that's at least suggestive. And again,
• 38:35
  Speaker 1: it's really hard to compare between two different species. What
• 38:37
  Speaker 1: is the right measurement for how intelligent they are? How
• 38:40
  Speaker 1: do you rank them? You know, as you're sort of
• 38:43
  Speaker 1: stumbling around in a dark room with no light on,
• 38:46
  Speaker 1: you've got to start somewhere. And I feel like they
• 38:48
  Speaker 1: have made some exciting progress and they're having these conversations
• 38:51
  Speaker 1: about what is the right thing to be measuring, and
• 38:54
  Speaker 1: you know, where do we go from here? And we
• 38:56
  Speaker 1: found something tantalizing here, how do we follow up and
• 38:59
  Speaker 1: get like a better answer based on this sort of
• 39:01
  Speaker 1: tantalizing initial result. That's pretty much where we are right now.
• 39:05
  Speaker 1: There's this interesting correlation, but we're still trying to figure
• 39:07
  Speaker 1: out what to measure and how to measure it.
• 39:10
  Speaker 2: So when you say correlation, you're saying there's a correlation
• 39:13
  Speaker 2: between brain size and like social activity, and that suggests
• 39:18
  Speaker 2: that bigger brains are smarter and social activities connected to
• 39:21
  Speaker 2: being smarter.
• 39:22
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that if you've got a bigger brain, you are
• 39:24
  Speaker 1: more able to, for example, live in a bigger social
• 39:27
  Speaker 1: group where you presumably have more you know, sort of
• 39:30
  Speaker 1: peers or conspecifics that you need to keep track of
• 39:33
  Speaker 1: so that you can remember their prior behaviors and you
• 39:35
  Speaker 1: can tell the difference between them. And so more complicated
• 39:39
  Speaker 1: social systems tend to be correlated with bigger brains relative
• 39:44
  Speaker 1: to body size or bigger brain parts. Sometimes this falls apart.
• 39:48
  Speaker 1: For example, little owls, which is Athena noctua. It's a
• 39:52
  Speaker 1: species of owl that is super cute. They are not
• 39:55
  Speaker 1: social like at all, but they got real big four brains,
• 39:58
  Speaker 1: and so it's kind of surprise that they're like, not
• 40:01
  Speaker 1: super social, but they got big old breaks. Why we
• 40:03
  Speaker 1: don't know.
• 40:04
  Speaker 2: Maybe they're sitting there thinking about eleven dimensional string theory
• 40:07
  Speaker 2: and maybe they know the answer.
• 40:08
  Speaker 1: Oh my god, we have to learn to talk to
• 40:09
  Speaker 1: the little owls.
• 40:12
  Speaker 2: Tell me, little owl what is the nature of the universe?
• 40:15
  Speaker 4: Oh?
• 40:15
  Speaker 1: That should be a poem like that sounds like the
• 40:17
  Speaker 1: kind of poem you sing to a kid when they're
• 40:18
  Speaker 1: going to bed.
• 40:22
  Speaker 2: All right, let's write that children's book.
• 40:23
  Speaker 1: All right. Okay, So now we're going to take a break,
• 40:26
  Speaker 1: and when we get back, we're going to talk about
• 40:28
  Speaker 1: one of the other hypotheses for the evolution of intelligence
• 40:31
  Speaker 1: as we answer our third listener question.
• 40:51
  Speaker 2: Okay, we are back, and we're talking about smartness across
• 40:54
  Speaker 2: the animal and alien kingdom? Is intelligence inevitable? What can
• 40:58
  Speaker 2: we learn from life on Earth and the patterns of
• 41:01
  Speaker 2: intelligence or deer and fly like dumbness on Earth? Is
• 41:05
  Speaker 2: there something we can tell about why humans ended up
• 41:08
  Speaker 2: so dang smart?
• 41:11
  Speaker 5: We as humans have long looked to the stars with
• 41:13
  Speaker 5: wonder and all trying to figure out exactly what the
• 41:16
  Speaker 5: universe is, what is it made of, what is our
• 41:19
  Speaker 5: place in it? And ultimately, I guess to try to
• 41:22
  Speaker 5: answer the age old question are we alone in the universe?
• 41:27
  Speaker 5: So if one of our Mars rovers or Europa Clipper
• 41:31
  Speaker 5: found even microbial signs of life out there, it would
• 41:34
  Speaker 5: of course be a game changer, a seismic event, to
• 41:38
  Speaker 5: be sure. And while it would be scientifically exciting, I
• 41:41
  Speaker 5: think it could also be somewhat disappointing because when most
• 41:45
  Speaker 5: of us look to the stars in hopes of finding
• 41:48
  Speaker 5: signs of life, I think we envision not just a
• 41:51
  Speaker 5: bacterial colony, but an actual, functioning civilization. So my question
• 41:57
  Speaker 5: to you is this, as you look at life here
• 42:00
  Speaker 5: on Earth, is there any indication at all that intelligence
• 42:04
  Speaker 5: is inevitable? I mean, given enough time for evolution to
• 42:08
  Speaker 5: do its thing, do you believe sentient beings would be
• 42:11
  Speaker 5: the ultimate result? And to put a finer point on that,
• 42:16
  Speaker 5: imagine if the asteroids that wiped out the dinosaurs had
• 42:19
  Speaker 5: narrowly missed the Earth and that extinction event never occurred.
• 42:23
  Speaker 5: Let's say mammals remained as nothing more than small, furry,
• 42:26
  Speaker 5: little rodent like creatures and did not lead to the
• 42:29
  Speaker 5: rise of the human species. Under those circumstances, do you
• 42:33
  Speaker 5: have any reason to believe that there might be an
• 42:36
  Speaker 5: intelligent civilization developed by reptilian creatures instead of warm blooded
• 42:41
  Speaker 5: things like us. Do you think dinosaurs could be running
• 42:45
  Speaker 5: the show these days?
• 42:47
  Speaker 2: Anyway?
• 42:48
  Speaker 5: Thank you for your consideration in answering this, and I
• 42:52
  Speaker 5: look forward to hearing what you say. Love the show,
• 42:54
  Speaker 5: Keep up the good work.
• 42:56
  Speaker 1: So Howard wanted to know if intelligence is inevitable and
• 43:01
  Speaker 1: man I don't know the answer, and it probably depends
• 43:04
  Speaker 1: on what the bar is for intelligence. But if you're
• 43:06
  Speaker 1: asking about like human level intelligence, there's over two million
• 43:10
  Speaker 1: described species on the planet, but only one human, and
• 43:14
  Speaker 1: so apparently you can have a lot of organisms without
• 43:17
  Speaker 1: getting us, you know, rocket level smart species. You only
• 43:22
  Speaker 1: get that once out of two million. So what do
• 43:24
  Speaker 1: you think Daniel would t Rex have been coming up
• 43:26
  Speaker 1: with Shakespearean style pros if that asteroid mister Earth?
• 43:30
  Speaker 2: Well, first, I want to quibble with your claim that
• 43:32
  Speaker 2: there's only one intelligent species. Okay, right, I think that's
• 43:35
  Speaker 2: a little bit definitional. Like we think, probably fifty thousand
• 43:39
  Speaker 2: years ago, there were multiple intelligent species. We just like killed, raped,
• 43:43
  Speaker 2: or ate the other ones, right, And so in some sense,
• 43:46
  Speaker 2: and you get smart enough, you're likely, I think, to
• 43:49
  Speaker 2: just kill off all the other intelligent competition un till
• 43:51
  Speaker 2: it becomes part of your in group. So you might
• 43:53
  Speaker 2: inevitably just get to one. But it seems like the
• 43:56
  Speaker 2: evidence suggests that there were multiple strands at least of
• 43:59
  Speaker 2: human life intelligence on Earth. Weren't there?
• 44:02
  Speaker 1: So usually when a listener asked the question, they mean,
• 44:04
  Speaker 1: like humans like as smart as us, you know, creating
• 44:07
  Speaker 1: rockets nine dimensional math. I don't know that even our
• 44:11
  Speaker 1: ancestors were that smart, you know, one hundred thousand years ago,
• 44:15
  Speaker 1: and so I'm not quite sure that there was you know,
• 44:18
  Speaker 1: songs were being sung by other species of humans. We
• 44:20
  Speaker 1: might never know, but you're right, they probably were very
• 44:23
  Speaker 1: smart relatively relative to other organisms on the planet.
• 44:26
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you're right that we don't know biologically. Do they
• 44:28
  Speaker 2: really have the same capacity and Neanderthals, for example, or
• 44:33
  Speaker 2: other variations. It's hard to know. And maybe they had
• 44:35
  Speaker 2: a different kind of smartness, right, maybe they would be like, hey,
• 44:38
  Speaker 2: eleven dimension string theory, that's the wrong way to go, man,
• 44:41
  Speaker 2: you should be doing loop quantum gravity.
• 44:43
  Speaker 1: That's right, that's right.
• 44:46
  Speaker 2: But yeah, the really deep question is like, is intelligence
• 44:49
  Speaker 2: inevitable in some creature? Are you likely to have it
• 44:51
  Speaker 2: no matter what happens? If the afteroid hadn't hit or
• 44:54
  Speaker 2: something else has gone different? On Earth, would you have
• 44:57
  Speaker 2: superintelligent spiders or whales dominating the planet, or reptiles or something?
• 45:02
  Speaker 2: And boy, I wish I knew the answer that, because
• 45:04
  Speaker 2: that would tell us a lot about the nature of
• 45:06
  Speaker 2: intelligence out there in the universe. Right, whether it's likely
• 45:10
  Speaker 2: when we land on alien planets to just find a
• 45:13
  Speaker 2: bunch of fun. Guy or something's going to be smart
• 45:16
  Speaker 2: on those planets. And I think the answer that we
• 45:18
  Speaker 2: really need a better understanding of how intelligence arose on Earth.
• 45:21
  Speaker 2: And as you could tell from this whole episode, we
• 45:24
  Speaker 2: don't know the answer to that either.
• 45:26
  Speaker 1: That's true. And you mentioned super intelligent spiders. Have you
• 45:29
  Speaker 1: read the Children of Time series?
• 45:30
  Speaker 2: Of course I have, Yes, I love that book. Yeah, fantastic.
• 45:34
  Speaker 2: We had Adrian Tchaikowsky on the Daniel and Jorge podcast,
• 45:37
  Speaker 2: really fun conversations. You guys should check that out.
• 45:40
  Speaker 1: Awesome. So, as you've pointed out, the other theories are
• 45:44
  Speaker 1: not exactly ironclad that we've talked about yet. There is
• 45:47
  Speaker 1: one additional hypothesis for why you get intelligence that we
• 45:50
  Speaker 1: haven't talked about yet that I saved for now because
• 45:53
  Speaker 1: it's possibly the one that's most relevant to space. It's
• 45:57
  Speaker 1: a bit of a stretch, but you know, I try
• 45:59
  Speaker 1: to have an answer for every question, no matter how
• 46:02
  Speaker 1: confused I am, So all right, here's my best shot.
• 46:05
  Speaker 1: So this hypothesis is called the cognitive buffer hypothesis, and
• 46:11
  Speaker 1: the idea is that how variable your environment is determines
• 46:16
  Speaker 1: whether or not you need to be intelligent to survive
• 46:18
  Speaker 1: in it. So maybe more variable planets would be more
• 46:22
  Speaker 1: likely to produce intelligent aliens. But so let's dig in
• 46:25
  Speaker 1: for a second and revisit that idea at the end.
• 46:27
  Speaker 1: So one of the ideas is that seasonality is important.
• 46:31
  Speaker 1: So if you live in an area where sometimes it's
• 46:34
  Speaker 1: really hot and sometimes it's really cold, maybe you need
• 46:37
  Speaker 1: to be smart to survive that transition between temperatures. So,
• 46:41
  Speaker 1: for example, migratory birds have two pretty smart solutions to
• 46:46
  Speaker 1: this problem. Some of them migrate and have amazing long
• 46:50
  Speaker 1: term spatial memory relative to non migratory ones, so they
• 46:54
  Speaker 1: essentially figure out how to leave when it gets bad
• 46:57
  Speaker 1: and then how to come back later, and that requires
• 47:00
  Speaker 1: some incredible brain abilities. And then there are other birds
• 47:04
  Speaker 1: that don't leave, but they have amazing memories for where
• 47:07
  Speaker 1: they've cached food, so even when food is rare, they've
• 47:11
  Speaker 1: hidden it when times are good, and they remember where
• 47:13
  Speaker 1: they can go to find it when times are bad.
• 47:15
  Speaker 1: And so the idea here is that living in a
• 47:18
  Speaker 1: super variable environment requires you to become intelligen so that
• 47:22
  Speaker 1: you can survive. There was a study looking at twelve
• 47:24
  Speaker 1: hundred bird species that found that you get bigger brains
• 47:27
  Speaker 1: and birds that live in environments that are more variable,
• 47:30
  Speaker 1: So suggesting that if things change more, you got to
• 47:32
  Speaker 1: be smarter to make it. What do you think, Daniel,
• 47:34
  Speaker 1: Do you buy it?
• 47:35
  Speaker 2: It makes some sense. It connects to the idea we
• 47:38
  Speaker 2: were talking about earlier that intelligence is about generalization, like
• 47:42
  Speaker 2: being able to solve new problems you hadn't seen before.
• 47:45
  Speaker 2: So if your environment is changing around you, ice ages
• 47:48
  Speaker 2: are ending, climate is changing something, you can't just rely
• 47:52
  Speaker 2: on the techniques handed down to you by ancestors. You
• 47:55
  Speaker 2: have to come up with new ideas to solve new problems,
• 47:58
  Speaker 2: and that requires intelligence. So it makes sense to me
• 48:01
  Speaker 2: that a climate with a lot of variation, or an
• 48:03
  Speaker 2: environment with a lot of variability to it would require
• 48:06
  Speaker 2: more intelligence in order to survive. On the other hand,
• 48:10
  Speaker 2: I don't know that. I consider like geese that's smart.
• 48:13
  Speaker 2: I mean, yes, they can do something amazing, which is
• 48:15
  Speaker 2: like navigate the planet with their magnetic sense in their eyeballs.
• 48:18
  Speaker 2: It's incredible. I couldn't do that. But I don't know
• 48:21
  Speaker 2: if that makes them smart. They seem like hyper optimized
• 48:24
  Speaker 2: to this one situation, like if for example, the planet
• 48:29
  Speaker 2: change the magnetic field flipped or where they need to
• 48:31
  Speaker 2: migrate to changed. Do you think geese would be able
• 48:34
  Speaker 2: to adapt to that situation?
• 48:36
  Speaker 1: So, the last time I was reading about birds and
• 48:38
  Speaker 1: their ability to sense the magnetic fields, my understanding is
• 48:42
  Speaker 1: that we don't actually understand that very well, and that
• 48:46
  Speaker 1: a lot of animals that we suspect rely on magnetic
• 48:49
  Speaker 1: fields also have other memory cues that they rely on
• 48:53
  Speaker 1: to get to where they're going.
• 48:54
  Speaker 2: Did you read that study about how whales might be
• 48:56
  Speaker 2: looking at the stars and navigating by the stars. Oh amazing,
• 49:00
  Speaker 2: Oh my god.
• 49:00
  Speaker 1: Okay, we should talk about that in a future show
• 49:02
  Speaker 1: because that's amazing. I'd love to read that.
• 49:04
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 49:04
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I guess that goes back to the question how
• 49:07
  Speaker 1: do you measure intelligence? And how do you make sure
• 49:09
  Speaker 1: that you're not measuring intelligence in a too human centric way?
• 49:11
  Speaker 1: Or maybe it doesn't matter because maybe if you're specifically
• 49:13
  Speaker 1: interested in how did you get human intelligence? Then maybe
• 49:17
  Speaker 1: focusing on human intelligence is fine. But I get lost,
• 49:21
  Speaker 1: like going to the grocery store sometimes, Like I use
• 49:23
  Speaker 1: my GPS in the town that I've been living in
• 49:26
  Speaker 1: for half a decade all the time.
• 49:28
  Speaker 2: And so GPS your goose positioning system.
• 49:33
  Speaker 1: So I'm impressed in these long distance migrants no matter
• 49:36
  Speaker 1: how they do it, because I would get lost. I'd
• 49:38
  Speaker 1: be in a lake.
• 49:39
  Speaker 2: Again the same way, like flies are impressive. They're very responsive.
• 49:43
  Speaker 2: They're faster off the starting block than I am, or
• 49:45
  Speaker 2: probably seen bolt is. But I don't know that. I
• 49:47
  Speaker 2: call it smart and so, but maybe you're right, maybe
• 49:50
  Speaker 2: I'm being too humanistic there. I'm looking for the kind
• 49:53
  Speaker 2: of intelligence that I know the same way like I
• 49:55
  Speaker 2: see in my dog, a lot of the kind of
• 49:57
  Speaker 2: intelligence I see in people. And that's what impresses me.
• 50:00
  Speaker 2: Sea patterns and respond to them and understand the world
• 50:03
  Speaker 2: around him and adapt to it.
• 50:05
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and appear to be able to read like the
• 50:07
  Speaker 1: emotions of people around them. Yeah, agreed. You've got this
• 50:11
  Speaker 1: seasonality components, which is about like you know, escaping extreme
• 50:15
  Speaker 1: temperatures and stuff. Another component of this idea is resource availability. So,
• 50:19
  Speaker 1: for example, if you are a monkey species that eats fruits,
• 50:23
  Speaker 1: fruits kind of ripen at different times, so they're available
• 50:26
  Speaker 1: sometimes not at other times. You need to remember where
• 50:28
  Speaker 1: the fruit trees are. And so there's some evidence that
• 50:32
  Speaker 1: monkeys that rely on fruit are smarter than monkeys that
• 50:35
  Speaker 1: can eat leaves because leaves are just always available, they're
• 50:38
  Speaker 1: easy to find, they're just much more reliable. So the
• 50:41
  Speaker 1: idea is that if seasons are changing your environment, or
• 50:45
  Speaker 1: resources that you need, or sort of popping in and
• 50:47
  Speaker 1: out of existence, either of those things are important for intelligence.
• 50:52
  Speaker 1: But you know, when you read about any of these hypotheses,
• 50:55
  Speaker 1: like the recent papers that I was reading, everybody's got
• 50:58
  Speaker 1: like their favorite hypothesis, point out limitations of the other hypothesis,
• 51:03
  Speaker 1: and at the end of the day, it could be
• 51:05
  Speaker 1: some combination of things. You know, it could be if
• 51:07
  Speaker 1: you're in a hyper variable environment and you've got a
• 51:10
  Speaker 1: big social group, that's when you get the super smart individuals.
• 51:14
  Speaker 1: Or maybe it's you know, the three things we've talked
• 51:16
  Speaker 1: about today, those are all important, plus a fourth thing
• 51:19
  Speaker 1: that nobody's thought about yet, and so at the end
• 51:21
  Speaker 1: of the day, we don't really have the answer.
• 51:23
  Speaker 2: So what I like to think about sometimes is like
• 51:25
  Speaker 2: fantasy data, Like if you had infinite resources and you've
• 51:29
  Speaker 2: asked me these kind of questions before you could go
• 51:31
  Speaker 2: all the way around the galaxy, whatever, is there a
• 51:33
  Speaker 2: way we could answer this question someone definitively with infinite
• 51:37
  Speaker 2: scientific powers you know, do you think actually seeing aliens
• 51:41
  Speaker 2: and surveying intelligence across the galaxy would answer this question
• 51:45
  Speaker 2: or or did just make it murky again?
• 51:48
  Speaker 1: Wouldn't surprise me that on a different planet there could
• 51:52
  Speaker 1: be some different thing that selects for intelligence relative to
• 51:55
  Speaker 1: what we find here on Earth. You'd think that if
• 51:57
  Speaker 1: you could find enough alien civilizations that had enough like
• 52:02
  Speaker 1: equivalents of New Caledonian crows and Homo sapiens, and you know,
• 52:06
  Speaker 1: enough different kinds of intelligence and enough variability and intelligence,
• 52:10
  Speaker 1: you'd be able to find some patterns. But in terms
• 52:13
  Speaker 1: of what you could do here on Earth, I think
• 52:16
  Speaker 1: we're doing what you can do here on Earth. Like
• 52:18
  Speaker 1: I think we're doing the best we can right now.
• 52:21
  Speaker 2: No, I think the alien question is the fascinating one,
• 52:23
  Speaker 2: and I think a lot of people feel like, of
• 52:25
  Speaker 2: course you do. If we could visit those planets and
• 52:28
  Speaker 2: see those then we would know, and you know, we'd
• 52:30
  Speaker 2: get some answers, like if we saw there's alien life,
• 52:33
  Speaker 2: we could be like, Okay, very clearly life is not
• 52:35
  Speaker 2: as rare, but for intelligence, it's so much harder to
• 52:38
  Speaker 2: define that unless we find alien life and it's intelligent
• 52:42
  Speaker 2: and exactly the same way we are, which would tell
• 52:45
  Speaker 2: us like, Okay, this kind of intelligence is weirdly inevitable.
• 52:48
  Speaker 2: That instead we're going to find like a huge variety
• 52:51
  Speaker 2: of different kinds of intelligences and we're going to get
• 52:53
  Speaker 2: stuck in the same question, just now on a bigger scale.
• 52:56
  Speaker 2: And it might be this question doesn't really have an answer.
• 53:01
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean it could be that there's no one answer.
• 53:05
  Speaker 1: I do feel like if you had thirty planets that
• 53:08
  Speaker 1: intelligence arose on all of them, you'd probably be able
• 53:10
  Speaker 1: to say, like, Okay, in every case where there's seasons,
• 53:15
  Speaker 1: you find some animals that are intelligent in this way.
• 53:19
  Speaker 1: Maybe it's like they're better at remembering where the good
• 53:22
  Speaker 1: food was or something. I imagine that we'd find some
• 53:25
  Speaker 1: common threads. But would we ever answer all of our questions. No,
• 53:30
  Speaker 1: probably not. Probably we'd get a lot more questions from
• 53:33
  Speaker 1: those twenty or thirty planets, But that would be exciting too.
• 53:36
  Speaker 2: I mean, we can't even agree on this podcast about
• 53:38
  Speaker 2: whether flies are intelligent. So I feel like what we're
• 53:42
  Speaker 2: really asking is when we find aliens, are they going
• 53:46
  Speaker 2: to have culture the way we have? Are they going
• 53:48
  Speaker 2: to develop technology? Are they going to be scientific? Are
• 53:51
  Speaker 2: they going to be exploring the universe? Are they going
• 53:53
  Speaker 2: to be like us? So in the end, I think,
• 53:55
  Speaker 2: really what these questions, deep down or asking is is
• 53:59
  Speaker 2: our experience universe. So so I think it really is a
• 54:01
  Speaker 2: human like thing. We could find aliens that are really
• 54:03
  Speaker 2: super duper smart, but so different from us that we
• 54:06
  Speaker 2: don't call it intelligence. We call it something else, schmid
• 54:08
  Speaker 2: intelligence or something. I think, really this is probing about
• 54:11
  Speaker 2: human intelligence.
• 54:13
  Speaker 1: Yeah, So first I want to reiterate that I do
• 54:15
  Speaker 1: feel like you should be in charge of naming new
• 54:16
  Speaker 1: things in just about any fields shima in front of it,
• 54:21
  Speaker 1: and I think that's great. Actually my first blog was
• 54:24
  Speaker 1: Fungilius schmundolous because I think schma is a great thing
• 54:27
  Speaker 1: to end in front of other words. But you know,
• 54:29
  Speaker 1: we didn't even talk about all of the hypotheses today.
• 54:31
  Speaker 1: So you mentioned culture. There's a cultural intelligence hypothesis that
• 54:34
  Speaker 1: focuses in particular on learning and like learning in a
• 54:38
  Speaker 1: cultural context and how that might be really important for
• 54:40
  Speaker 1: things like humans, And so I agree with what you said.
• 54:43
  Speaker 1: There's even more hypotheses we didn't get a chance to
• 54:45
  Speaker 1: talk about today. So let's take a step back and
• 54:48
  Speaker 1: see if we've answered all of the questions that we
• 54:51
  Speaker 1: were asked today. And so, you know, Tom wanted to
• 54:54
  Speaker 1: know what makes rocket level intelligence and I threw up
• 54:58
  Speaker 1: my arms and trucks, I don't know. But Tom wanted
• 55:03
  Speaker 1: to know if there's things that select for intelligence. And
• 55:06
  Speaker 1: we've talked about a couple things that we think maybe
• 55:08
  Speaker 1: select for intelligence. Yeah, and he pointed out that intelligence
• 55:12
  Speaker 1: might yet be unlucky for us, and you know, maybe
• 55:14
  Speaker 1: we will all blow up because of our nuclear weapons.
• 55:17
  Speaker 1: I hope not.
• 55:19
  Speaker 2: I don't know why I'm laughing at that.
• 55:20
  Speaker 1: Yeah, well, sometimes you laugh or you cry. Laughing is better.
• 55:23
  Speaker 1: And then we addressed Mark's question about whether or not
• 55:26
  Speaker 1: predation is necessary. Some people think it's important, but you know,
• 55:29
  Speaker 1: we don't know if it's the only thing. Then we
• 55:31
  Speaker 1: looked at Howard's question about whether or not intelligence is inevitable,
• 55:35
  Speaker 1: and I yet again threw up my arms and shrugs.
• 55:39
  Speaker 1: But you know, we had fun imagining it.
• 55:40
  Speaker 2: And I think that these are really fascinating questions. I
• 55:43
  Speaker 2: love the folks ask them, even if we don't have answers.
• 55:46
  Speaker 2: I think it's exciting to think about what efforts people
• 55:48
  Speaker 2: are making and tackling these really big, really deep questions,
• 55:52
  Speaker 2: because you know, those first steps are the hardest ones.
• 55:55
  Speaker 2: Like when you look back what the Greeks did or
• 55:57
  Speaker 2: what ancient civilizations have done to take the first steps
• 56:00
  Speaker 2: towards science, they seem obvious in hindsight maybe, but it's
• 56:04
  Speaker 2: difficult to take those first steps when you're up against
• 56:07
  Speaker 2: the abyss of our ignorance about these deep questions.
• 56:10
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and at the end of the day, I think
• 56:11
  Speaker 1: it's amazing that there is a species on our planet
• 56:14
  Speaker 1: that's asking these questions and are trying to buddle through.
• 56:17
  Speaker 1: And you know, I, when I looked at the neuroanatomy textbook,
• 56:21
  Speaker 1: threw up my hands and said, I'm studying something else.
• 56:24
  Speaker 1: Thank goodness. There are people who are like, I'm going
• 56:27
  Speaker 1: to spend my whole life banging my head against this
• 56:30
  Speaker 1: problem and make a little bit a headway and move
• 56:32
  Speaker 1: us all ahead. And so I lately feel like there's
• 56:35
  Speaker 1: a lot of reasons to be down on our species.
• 56:37
  Speaker 1: But it is pretty cool that we do this kind
• 56:39
  Speaker 1: of stuff, and I find the science that we do
• 56:41
  Speaker 1: super inspirational.
• 56:42
  Speaker 2: Yes, although I think we can agree that the smartest
• 56:45
  Speaker 2: people on the planet are the folks who listen to
• 56:46
  Speaker 2: this podcast.
• 56:47
  Speaker 1: Right, agreed, and that is the perfect note to end on.
• 56:52
  Speaker 2: And so before we sign off, we were curious did
• 56:55
  Speaker 2: we answer Tom and Mark and Howard's questions. We sent
• 56:58
  Speaker 2: this to them and hear what they had to say.
• 57:02
  Speaker 6: Thanks Daniel and Kelly for answering this question. You know,
• 57:05
  Speaker 6: one of the reasons I love your podcast so much
• 57:07
  Speaker 6: is because no matter how complete your answers are, you
• 57:12
  Speaker 6: always offer a more beautiful question at can't. And I
• 57:16
  Speaker 6: guess one of the reasons I was focused on rockets
• 57:19
  Speaker 6: is because aliens were more likely to kind of discover
• 57:24
  Speaker 6: alien technology than we are. Aliens first, and I imagine
• 57:27
  Speaker 6: that rockets are pretty important in getting off planet. I'm
• 57:33
  Speaker 6: not aware of any other way to do that, but yeah,
• 57:38
  Speaker 6: I mean, I very satisfied with your discussion, and I
• 57:43
  Speaker 6: look forward to finding out what this field is discovering
• 57:48
  Speaker 6: about intelligence and different kinds of intelligences and what we
• 57:54
  Speaker 6: might expect to find out there in the universe.
• 57:58
  Speaker 3: Thank you, Hi, Daniel Cally. Yes, you answered my question.
• 58:03
  Speaker 3: And while I was hoping the answer would be that
• 58:06
  Speaker 3: there could be some world out there where all the
• 58:09
  Speaker 3: creatures hold hands or tentacles or whatever and sing Kumbaya
• 58:15
  Speaker 3: and are cool to each other. It sounds like the
• 58:18
  Speaker 3: real answer is wherever there's life, whether it's intelligent or not,
• 58:23
  Speaker 3: something is gone, sooner or later get the idea to
• 58:27
  Speaker 3: eat something else. So thanks for taking my question and
• 58:31
  Speaker 3: thanks for the book suggestion. I will definitely check it out,
• 58:34
  Speaker 3: and of course thanks for the wonderful show.
• 58:37
  Speaker 5: Thank you Daniel and Kelly. This is Howard and I
• 58:40
  Speaker 5: want to thank you for taking on my question. I
• 58:43
  Speaker 5: know it can be challenging when the question has no
• 58:46
  Speaker 5: definitive answer, but I kind of knew that going in.
• 58:50
  Speaker 5: But what I really appreciated was listening to your thought processes,
• 58:55
  Speaker 5: how you break it down, how you would approach it,
• 58:57
  Speaker 5: what hilarities are there that might apply.
• 59:02
  Speaker 2: To it, And that was invigorating. Thank you so much.
• 59:07
  Speaker 2: I appreciate it. A quick non science announcement. May tenth,
• 59:13
  Speaker 2: twenty twenty five is the Stamp Out Hunger Drive, organized
• 59:16
  Speaker 2: in tandem with the US Postal Service. It's very easy
• 59:20
  Speaker 2: to help fill up your local food banks. Just leave
• 59:22
  Speaker 2: non perishable food at your mailbox and your carrier will
• 59:26
  Speaker 2: collect it for you. That's all you have to do.
• 59:29
  Speaker 2: Leave non perishable foods by your mailbox on May tenth,
• 59:32
  Speaker 2: twenty twenty five to help stamp out hunger.
• 59:41
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• 59:45
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• 59:47
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• 59:50
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