[robbedpeter]

https://youtu.be/uFhBd5mMkU8

This is one of note thousands of videos of cats and dogs using buttons to talk.

Cats, and all mammals, have a neocortex. Theirs is not as deeply layered or large as humans, but they most definitely have the ability to reason abstractly, are aware of themselves, think emotionally, and engage in complex, time aware planning over long periods.

Your views are wrong. Language areas like Broca's region in the human brain are a consequence of physical distribution relative to the connectome and sensory endpoints. If you were to rewire the millions of connections to the lips, tongue, mouth, ears, and other body parts to be locations on the neocortex, broca's region would be somewhere different. You have about 1 square meter of neocortex responsible for all of your perception and cognition, and almost all of it is uniform. Neurons aren't differentiated by function, and animal experiments show that plasticity allows for arbitrary rewiring.

The literature in the field shows that human cognition is likely superior to other species in the depth of cortical layering and size of the organ. It's likely the only reason elephants and whales or other animals with larger brains can't compete with humans is the mere absence of hands and vocal organs. Our range of colors and audible senses are important but lesser than many animals.

Give an orca hands and human speech and there's nothing we know about neuroscience to imply that the animal wouldn't be smarter and more capable than humans. There's a lot of evidence that the killer whale would be more intelligent than humans in many ways.

The cortical layering and columnar architecture of neuron clusters differs between species, and seems to dictate the cognitive depth of abstract reasoning. There may be different algorithmic constructions in neural connections that favor human level cognition.

In principle, however, human brains aren't terribly different from many other large mammals, and elephants certainly display complex, emotional, symbolic, and abstract reasoning well within a range comparable to human experience.

Your notion of animal cognition is unscientific and biased toward an assumption of human superiority that isn't grounded in fact. Neuroscience is slowly and tirelessly matching toward reverse engineering the brain. The more we learn, the more we find similarity in the basic functions of mammal brains, from mice to humans to blue whales.

[otikik]

I think that video is terribly cute and the cat is adorable, but I also remain unconvinced that a cat can understand, "morning now, before night". That is too abstract. For context, it took my (then) 4 year old human child many months to understand "before" and "after". He would use them indistinctly to mean "not now".

[ntoskrnl]

I watched the video and I want to believe, but... I don't know. I have cats, I know cats are intelligent, cats can be trained to understand single words, etc. But I'm just not convinced any cat can string together English sentences like this. Also, the concept of time might be a bit abstract for a cat who is always living in the present moment. And then there's the most viewed video on that channel[1] where he presses the "cuddle" button, and then... doesn't cuddle. He seems like he knows pressing a button get a reaction, but he doesn't know which button is which. Good morning human, time to play with the disembodied voice buttons again.

Like I said though, I want to believe. Can you think of any longer videos that might convince a skeptic?

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pvgfI9P377U

[a_shovel]

This one [1] isn't very long, but I think it shows that the cat (Billi) does associate the buttons with a meaning.

The owner is playing with Billi with a toy on a string, then drops it on her back. She then quickly (within 10 seconds) presses "No", then "Back", to tell her owner to get the toy off of her back. If she was just pressing buttons to get a reaction, this would be no more likely than "Morning" "Love you", or "Want" "Hello", or any other arbitrary pair of buttons.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AYPFnDOPTQo

[ordu]

> Give an orca hands and human speech and there's nothing we know about neuroscience to imply that the animal wouldn't be smarter and more capable than humans.

Humans have one more difference from others: human cubs are born helpless. They even do not know how to use their eyes. They need to learn everything themselves. All the pre-wired genetic firmware was destroyed by evolution. It is very inconvenient for mothers of course, but on the other hand this shift from hardware to software gives unprecedented abilities to adapt to different environments. And probably it gives a lot of experience of making sense of the mess of input signal that can be useful later. And of course it is a factor of a selection: if you cannot learn how to use your eyes, then you are not Sapience enough to breed.

[goodpoint]

Those videos are comically misleading.

The author acts as if cats can understand abstract concepts and combining words into a SVO grammar. And with dozens of words!

"later morning" "later play [with] dad" "love you mommy"

This is simply far outside the cognitive abilities of cats.

Edit: Confirmation bias is so strong that I get downvotes for writing this.

[vorpalhex]

You're getting downvoted because you are making a strong contrary claim with no evidence whatsoever. It's the equivalent of two kids going:

"Yes it is!"

"No it's not!"

"Yeahuh it is!"