[kirab]

"an ability previously thought to be unique to humans".

This sentence.

I’ve read and heard it so many times now, that according to Bayesian statistics, I should correct my assumptions and assume that, in the end, we will find out that there is not a single thing that’s unique to humans.

[NiloCK]

The general sentiment is spot on - animals are amazing, complicated, sophisticated, and we will continue to be "humbled" over and over again, but maybe you've gone too far.

A few candidate "unique to humans" characteristics:

- surgical replacement of defective organs. I wouldn't be surprised if some animals have processes for amputations - especially insects - but I'd be pretty surprised if there are any kidney transplants going on.

- written language systems for durable information passing, phonetic alphabet systems. As far as I know, a phonetic alphabet was invented only once among humans, which makes it a rarity even for us.

- haircuts. This one is super plausibly wrong, but I don't think that any animals do this, and its a good example of something that they could do but just don't.

[Kim_Bruning]

> As far as I know, a phonetic alphabet was invented only once among humans, which makes it a rarity even for us.

A bit of an aside, but I'm a bit puzzeled by this statement. There are many phonetic alphabets invented through history of course. Are you saying they all have the same root or inspiration?

[dwighttk]

Wear clothes

Write about history no one currently alive has seen

Make music

Go to space

Theorize

[orangepanda]

Were we less human when we couldnt yet replace defective organs?

[RcouF1uZ4gsC]

There aren’t many fundamental unique differences between an 8086 and a M3 Max.

But the differences in scale are so vast that it opens massively different capabilities.

At some point, quantitative differences are so large they become qualitative differences.

Although both can hold matrices in memory and do math operations, the M3 Max can hold so much more and run math operations so fast that LLM inference becomes possible making it seem “intelligent” on a whole different level than an 8086 even though they are at some fundamental level very similar.

[bayindirh]

You're implying that bees are less intelligent than humans.

However they can sense electromagnetic fields and can sense whether a flower they're interested have pollen or not without looking at it with their eyes.

Elephants and whales can communicate over vast distances via sound. Bats can see without eyes. Salmons and pigeons can find the point they have born without even trying. A dog can smell history of a place, plus get much more information from a single smell.

Humans can do none of these things without tools.

Also, in electronics, there are accelerators which are much simpler in transistor count and architecture, but which can do much more than a more complex counterparts. GROQ inference cards and FPGAs come into my mind.

So neither capability, nor capacity in numbers is a valid measure for intelligence or capabilities in practice.

Just because a bee has less neurons than a chimp doesn't mean it can't have some kind of comparable intelligence when you compare the things they can accomplish.

Oh, also crows understand and exploit physical phenomena and can manipulate things with tools to get what they want.

[_acco]

It’s a common trope that “we are no different from animals,” but this is not true. Of course we are.

Far more interesting than the fact that animals “can” ape behavior is how they do - and how that differs from humans.

Check out the work of Richard Byrne [1]. Our best theories suggest that the way primates share behavior is through literal parsing and replication of sequences. A chimp is able to watch a fellow chimp complete a complex maneuver to open a nut, and can replicate that sequence. But the sequence can contain odd moves that obviously have no effect, and those moves too will be replicated. This signals a lack of understanding. Primates use an advanced copycat mechanism, which makes innovation very slow.

The way humans learn and transfer behavior is vastly different. We watch another complete a task and develop an explanation for how it works. Our reproduction isn’t us following a literal sequence, but using our understanding/mental model to solve the task. For example, if I watch a complex sequence to open a tricky nut, I’ll have developed a model for the physics of the nut, weak points, ways to get leverage, etc. I might memorize and repeat your sequence, but I might also get creative with my own method, knowingly or not.

And, of course, we can do this one-shot.

It’s the difference between a parrot mirroring words and a person retelling a story they heard.

We are super different than animals, and denying that fact will hide important secrets about knowledge and creativity.

[1] https://web.media.mit.edu/~cynthiab/Readings/Byrne-99.pdf

[somenameforme]

The "extremely complex" problem solving in this study, for chimps, was putting a ball in a draw, and then closing it. Would you have assumed that training a chimp to do so would be impossible before this study? Or that it would be impossible for other chimps to ape him, so to speak? In other words, is this study actually shifting your assumptions in any way? Or is it just the arguably grandstanding language being used that may be swaying you?

So for instance I think it's pretty well known that monkeys in Bali have taught themselves how to steal from tourists and then exchange the goods for treats. [1] And that was entirely self-learned/taught. That, to me, seems somewhat more impressive than putting a ball in a drawer, yet didn't really leave me with any awe beyond what one would normally have when interacting with monkeys. And such things leaves me decidedly unimpressed with chimps and a drawer, and even more cynical about the language used to describe it.

[1] - https://www.sciencealert.com/how-wild-monkeys-in-bali-took-t...

[graemep]

I am surprised anyone thought unique to humans. How is this different from commonly observed behaviour like these: https://www.britannica.com/story/how-other-species-learn

It does not even need scientific study to see these. Its common enough for causal observation.

[timeon]

My assumption is that difference is not that something is missing but just in complexity of things.

It is strange that people put other mammals in same category with birds for example. Thinking that humans are separate kingdom. I'm closer to pig than pig is to chicken.

[calepayson]

I believe the one truly unique thing humans can do is imitate complex actions with high fidelity. When we evolved this ability it lead to an explosion of behavioral complexity simply because imitated behavior satisfies all the criteria for evolution (s/o Dawkins).

We’re not unique in our ability to imitate, but we are unique (for now) in our ability to imitate well enough that imitated behaviors are stable enough to evolve.

[est]

> we will find out that there is not a single thing that’s unique to humans

There is, make fire and cook.

[bee_rider]

There are of course some Australian birds that famously spread fire, so partial credit IMO.

Also, figuring out how to make fire is pretty hard. I’d argue it isn’t something “humans do” in general. It is one of the earliest examples of something that somebody figured out, (or maybe it was figured out independently in a couple different places) but mostly it is a taught skill.

Teaching and long distance running are our special abilities. In both cases other animals might do the thing, but we’re much better at it than they are.

[someuser2345]

I agree about fire, but I'm pretty sure you can count bees making honey as cooking.

[andsoitis]

> there is not a single thing that’s unique to humans.

It doesn't bother me. The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

[FrustratedMonky]

That is true. There is nothing unique to humans.

Everything is a sliding scale.

Eagles can 'see' better than humans. No one is is up in arms about how wonderfully unique human eye-sight is, how Eagles are using 'just instincts'. Humans are divine in how complex their sight is, that it could never occur in other animals or machines. Totally impossible that we would ever have a machine that can 'capture images'.

[Ginden]

This, but unironically. Humans have the best daylight eyesight in mammals, and only birds of prey come close.

[wyclif]

Didn't Kubrick prophesy this? I'm thinking of the first act of the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey where one advanced primate learns how to use the femur of a tapir as a tool, then teaches the other primates in his tribe how to use bones as a weapon and how to walk upright (though we are not shown the teaching or knowledge transmission process).

[wizzwizz4]

No, since those are supposed to be the ancestors of humans.

[tiborsaas]

We have nice relatively longer and more distally placed thumbs, it's something :)

[CuriouslyC]

That would be the first step in becoming a brilliant scientist who goes unrecognized in his lifetime.

[katzgrau]

At some point, can’t we just admit to ourselves that we operate from a human-centric worldview and that clouds pretty much all of our thinking on what makes humans special (if anything)?

As a species we definitely have some narcissistic tendencies.

[zvmaz]

> At some point, can’t we just admit to ourselves that we operate from a human-centric worldview and that clouds pretty much all of our thinking on what makes humans special (if anything)?

I think this is true. The evidence being our ruthless exploitation of our fellow animals without any regard to their interests, suffering, etc.