JPjplebreton@mastodon.social
Oct 2, 2026, 8:48 PM@mcc iirc Emily Bender has expressed regret over the name for that reason, coined (as frequently happens) not knowing it would stick so hard
Replies
- JPjplebreton@mastodon.socialOct 2, 2026, 8:52 PM
@mcc fwiw while parrots are clearly bright and charming thinking beings with qualia interiority etc, scientists are still a bit conflicted over how similar / complex they are compared to us; as with chatbots their ability to mimic language really muddies our ability to accurately asses what's going on with them, because we hear one utter a complete sentence and our anthropomorphizing tendency tells us we're dealing with a human!
- JPjplebreton@mastodon.socialOct 2, 2026, 8:56 PM
@mcc also there are other birds who are astonishingly good mimics who we've determined conclusively have way less going on cognitively than eg african gray parrots, they're just playing back little .flac files for us*, but it still gets us because language is so central to our perceptions of "intelligence".
* not to say it doesn't "mean something" to them! 
Luna Lacteajackemled@furry.engineerOct 2, 2026, 10:14 PM@jplebreton @mcc Oh ok, they're playing back little flap files!
CheesenessCheeseness@mastodon.socialOct 2, 2026, 10:22 PM@jplebreton @mcc Gratuitous shout-out to the lyrebird. What a champ. Absolutely impressive (while utterly depressing to think about the implications of noise pollution and habitat loss that result in the stuff people seem to get most excited about)
Oct 2, 2026, 9:02 PM@jplebreton so an important thing about Irene pepperberg's research is she concludes the reason every researcher before her found zero evidence of parrot cognition and she found significant evidence of parrot cognition is that other researchers were assuming parrot cognition would resemble human cognition whereas she was working from a starting point of analyzing parrot behavior in the wild and the specific way wild parrots seem to approach learning
- JPjplebreton@mastodon.socialOct 2, 2026, 9:04 PM
@mcc I'm familiar! (Karla worked with her in the 00s.) Fascinating lovely animals.
- Oct 2, 2026, 9:09 PM
@jplebreton *blinks* wait I think I actually knew that (about karla) but i had forgot i knew that
Oct 3, 2026, 7:39 AM@mcc @jplebreton I mean, that's IMHO one of the major flaws of most research into animals' inner lives. That, and the inverse.
One particularly enraging study I read was about pain. Scientists electrocuted fish if they got near some place, and observed that when subjected to the electro shocks, the fish behaved much like humans would when subjected to pain. They also observed the fish avoided triggering the sensation.
Result? "It's inconclusive whether fish experience pain"
- Oct 3, 2026, 7:41 AM
@mcc @jplebreton I get that you can't project human experience onto animals. But it's also true that "it behaves as if, but inconclusive" is pretty much a psychopath's response to other people.
So "cognition, but perhaps different" is a *massive* step, IMHO.
Kat SKatS@chaosfem.twOct 3, 2026, 9:07 AM@jens @mcc @jplebreton I disagree, vigorously.
This "don't anthropomorphise animals" always smelt like bullshit to me, including when we were indoctrinated with it at university. It's an expression of human supremacism, the religious belief that we're a breed apart from, and above, everything else.
This is nonsense. We're mammals with opposable thumbs and an overgrown cerebellum. It does give us capabilities that are a quantum leap beyond all others, but even that doesn't make us a different order of being altogether.
That said, I do agree with the stated premise, just in a way that ought to give its proponents apoplexy.
Don't look at it in terms of condescendingly acknowledging that a few sparks of divine essence might accidentally have splashed outward and stained another species or two.
Look at it as recognising feelings and experiences that other species and we share, to whatever extent.- Oct 3, 2026, 9:25 AM
@KatS That's pretty much what I mean.
I think there's a grain of truth in not assuming other animals experience things just like us. But "exactly like us" and "nothing like us" is a false binary.
We have all evolved to navigate the same world, sometimes the same niches, and we tend to broadly have the organs with the same functions, not to speak of the same DNA. It's highly unlikely that the "nothing like us" end of the spectrum is accurate.
- Kat SKatS@chaosfem.twOct 3, 2026, 9:11 AM
@mcc @jplebreton That rhymes exactly with studies that "proved" autistic people don't have empathy, by testing specifically and exclusively for the ways in which allistic people express it.
David Ppewnack@aus.socialOct 3, 2026, 9:48 AMFrom what I understand, parrots don't mimic other sounds in the wild ( unlike the Lyre Bird) ie. reproducing any sound and in particular human speech is only done in captivity.