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[TheSteppeWolf]

It's hard to define whether something can think or not, but... like, a cat or dog or human can (barring neurological affliction) usually think, while most insects can't. And about flies avoiding humans with flyswatters, that doesn't seem to work for me. If I wave it in front of it it goes away only to comeback very soon until I kill it. So I stopped bothering. They inevitably land on me or my food even if I collect the will to ignore the extremely annoying buzzing for whatever reason.

[Naturegirl1999]

How do you know insects don’t think?

[TheSteppeWolf]

How do you know insects don’t think?

I don't but most of them certainly don't act like they think much if at all. Ants? Maybe. Even then one ant is pretty dumb, they only show intelligence in groups.

[Naturegirl1999]

Cells in multicellular orgsnisms don’t all do thinking, but when they are together there is emerging complexity. What does an animal have to do in order for you to consider it thinking?

[TheSteppeWolf]

Cells in multicellular orgsnisms don’t all do thinking, but when they are together there is emerging complexity. What does an animal have to do in order for you to consider it thinking?

Be able to provably learn and use its newfound knowledge; be able to either show emotion or interpret them, preferably both; have some degree of social organization.

The higher the degree of those traits, the higher an animal's moral weight is, roughly.

[Iduno]

Eh, if wikipedia is accurate there's, like, actually a bunch of different aspects to depth perception, several of which don't actually require binocular vision. So you'd still have some sorts of depth perception with one working eye, just not the full suite, so to speak.

Also apparently biocular and binocular are different things, which I don't think I knew. Neat.

i meant to type binocular, I need to look at what I type before sending

I think they both work in this case?

And related to the current thread of conversation: I do remember what it was like to not be in pain constantly, and think I remember what not being mentally unstable was, although that one is less reliable for obvious reasons.


Edit: Why does this just sound like the chillest insult to me?

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

[Kagus]

Yeah, my mom has two working eyes and absolutely awful depth perception, so it's more than just the number of the ballin'.

[methylatedspirit]

So not all people with a working pair of eyes have good depth perception? Huh. I didn't even realize that was a possibility.

[scriver]

Some people are just shallow I guess

[Naturegirl1999]

Cells in multicellular orgsnisms don’t all do thinking, but when they are together there is emerging complexity. What does an animal have to do in order for you to consider it thinking?

Be able to provably learn and use its newfound knowledge; be able to either show emotion or interpret them, preferably both; have some degree of social organization.

The higher the degree of those traits, the higher an animal's moral weight is, roughly.

There are solitary animals, di they not think? If I don’t have emotion for like, 3 days, do I not think?

[delphonso]

I believe there's a lot of evidence that learning is seperate from thought. Toss a coin from each hand to the other at the same time. Thinking about that action makes it harder to learn how to do it. Thoughts retroactively claim credit for learning, but in the moment, they have little to add to the process.

Some people are just shallow I guess

Nice.

[Naturegirl1999]

I believe there's a lot of evidence that learning is seperate from thought. Toss a coin from each hand to the other at the same time. Thinking about that action makes it harder to learn how to do it. Thoughts retroactively claim credit for learning, but in the moment, they have little to add to the process.

Some people are just shallow I guess

Nice.

can you mention what you think a thought is? I think of the brain as a biological computer, stimuli being inputs, and thoughts as the outputs, actions being based on thought

[delphonso]

Thought is cognition/consciousness to me. Typing is a non-thoight action, but coming up with the words is done in thought.

[Naturegirl1999]

Thought is cognition/consciousness to me. Typing is a non-thoight action, but coming up with the words is done in thought.

Is there a way one can determine if others think?

Why do some people think killing flies on sight is unethical? They can't really think, and they are intruding on my territory, and I don't want them to disturb me during gaming, coding, or meditation, whatever. So if I see one I grab the flyswatter.

How would TheSteppeWolf know whether flies can think or not? People don’t really have any way of determining whether other humans think, let alone other animals. We just assume other humans can think because the human doing the assuming has thoughts, so other humans must have thoughts too. Why doesn’t this extend to other animals? They exhibit behaviors too, which when humans do them they are considered thinking. I don’t understand how someone can know that insects don’t think

[scriver]

Some people are just shallow I guess

Nice.

I can't tell if sincere or sarcastic