Years ago I was putting out the garbage in the back alley behind our building where I lived on the 8th floor. A crow attacked me out of the blue. Distracted by the attack, the back door slammed shut behind me. Since my key was only good for the front door, I had to walk around the building. That damn crow followed me the entire time, dive bombing my head, and screaming bloody murder at me. It was a little spooky.
When I finally got back inside and upstairs, I went and looked out the living room window, which looked out the same direction as the back alley. The crow had flown back around and was at the 8th floor looking in the window, from the other side of the pigeon netting we had on our balcony. On the inside of the pigeon netting, was another crow, desperately trying to figure out how it could escape. Not really sure how it had got itself through the pigeon netting in the first place.
I went out and sliced a hole through the netting and the trapped crow quickly joined its mate outside, who finally stopped screaming bloody murder. To this day it still amazes me that the crow's mate, knew which apartment I lived in and spotted me downstairs.
One day I was out walking by the water. A small bird was standing on a rock, apparently unable to fly. Crows were gathering and preparing to feast. I tried to scare them off, and sat by the little bird to prevent them from eating it. Silly, but it seemed right to me. The crows were not impressed. They became more daring, and eventually I decided to leave. A trio of crows broke off from the group and followed me all the way home, perhaps a mile's distance. They flew from branch to branch as I walked, with the tail crow moving to the lead every time. The tactical pattern continued the entire time.
Maybe it was just me, but for months I could have sworn there were crows out sounding the alarm whenever I left my apartment.
Bears are another animal that seem to recognize individuals and take offences personally.
There’s a delicate balance to be struck if you live in a neighborhood with a large crow population and also like to pet neighborhood cats — and like most of life, bribes go a long way to lubricate the peace.
They might be intelligent as us, but I have a hard time putting myself in a crow's shoes (?), so I don't expect them to be able to think like a human either.
One of the things they do in the wild is harass a larger predator so they can steal some of its prey, seems like what was going on to you. They'll pull a canine's tail while it's trying to eat to distract it for example.
This is only inspirationally relevant, but a few weeks ago, I saw a crow (or a raven, never quite sure) holding a stick, floating without moving, on top of Twin Peaks in SF, like it was waiting to give a wand to a wizard. When I got home, I wrote this weird little story about it: https://f52.charlieharrington.com/stories/a-great-unkindness...
Assuming you mean it's difficult to tell the difference, as opposed to just in this case:
Telling them apart is fairly straightforward! Crows are smaller, have a flatter tail, and typically flap quite a bit during flight. Ravens, by comparison, are much larger in size, have a diamond-shaped tail that moves quite a bit during flight, and typically glide during flight.
Love the whole family of corvids :D as well as your story!
I would like to point out that your description of how straightforward it is to tell them apart very humorously belies how it is not at all straightforward because all of your proposed evaluations are implicitly relative to something not seen.
> Crows are smaller, have a flatter tail, and typically... Ravens, by comparison...
If you see one bird, is that bird smaller or larger? Is its tail more flat or less? Smaller than what? Flatter than what? Flappier than what? Without seeing both, a lay individual can't easily evaluate "by comparison".
If you think woah that is one huge crow, than it’s probably a raven I find the easiest tell. Also the sound is a bit off and on the higher end I believe. And also their beak is more curved but that’s often hard to spot and not too reliable
You're doing it too. "bigger", "more curved", "higher sound". All of those are comparative. None of them help you know a raven or a crow except in relation to some idealized specimen of the other, which one likely doesn't have in front of them.
I'll take the bait. Ravens' beaks are hooked s.t. the top curves slightly around the bottom, an over beak if you will. The crow's beak is roughly conical and does not hook in this manner.
Additionally the raven's beak is is longer than it's head is wide (in profile). A crow's beak from the same view is approximately the same length as it's head.
This one sounds pretty good. Thanks (finally)! From a cursory search on the subject, it seems like one might need to be relatively close to be able to tell?
Maybe. A challenge in birding is getting close enough to look at things without scaring them away. The thing about both crows and ravens is they are (relatively) unafraid of humans. So, you shouldn't struggle much to get a good enough look to differentiate.
That's assuming Ravens are present in your area. One of the first things the guide books teach is to differentiate based on range. E.g. a candidate crow/Raven in Iowa is most likely a crow, since Ravens' range doesn't include the great plains.
Let me finish by plugging birding as a relaxing pastime that doesn't require much investment (just a $25 guide book for your area), and can really enhance any time spent out doors.
How could you tell apart an adolescent raven from a crow that had injured its beak, though? Each of you is making something relative to something else. The beaks are hooked. How hooked? Conical as opposed to what?
"Can/can't" isn't a great general indicator, because "doesn't" doesn't imply "can't" except circumstantially. If you see a bird floating, it might be a raven. If you see a bird not floating, you still have no idea.
Personally, when I see crows or ravens flying I often can't see their tail and I often can't quite tell how large they are. I find it easier to distinguish their call, a crow sounds like "caw" and a raven sounds like "gronk".
Uh well, along with others I'll just share how I differentiate them since both are common where I live.
3 Ways
1) if you can get a good look at the tail, think croW = wider/more or less even at the bottom, raVen = V like at the bottom (or diamond as a whole) but it's just a mnemonic and makes more sense if you see this http://naturemappingfoundation.org/natmap/images/drawings/ra...
2) Their calls are very distinct, hear one then hear the other and you won't confuse them atall but that requires having heard both and knowing which is which and I won't even bother to try to explain, you can find a million videos/etc. demonstrating if you really care.
3) Beak, ravens have a slightly curved tip usually and crows... don't but it's hard to see this because of the color, so again, depends on what you can observe
I can tell the crows and ravens apart in my region but I have to wonder how relativistic comparisons are. From what I've seen of hooded crows, I would be more inclined to categorize them as ravens, but there are probably larger ravens in their regions.
I live in an area with hooded crows and ravens. The ravens are a bit larger, but they aren't massively larger.
On the other hand, as long as there is enough light, you can always tell them apart because the hooded crows have a lot of grey so long as they are fully grown (young hooded crows are darker than adults)
I grew up in a forestland environment. Most of the adult ravens I saw along the roadside out-of-town (usually not bothered by cars driving by) were about the size of a chicken. Crows, as a rule ... were a lot smaller.
In my area, I see crows all the time, sitting on power lines and messing with posters on the street and so on. These are hooded crows and easy to distinguish from ravens. I see ravens as well, but not quite as often - though one of my local grocery stores has a small flock (murder!) of ravens that likes to forage in the parking lot. And to be fair, I live in a decently sized city of around 180,000.
I think the Northern California crows are larger than their east coast counterparts, so I agree, it is harder to tell them apart by size here. Ravens are larger still, though. If you see one in San Francisco, it's probably a crow. Occasionally you get a raven in Oakland but those are usually crows as well. If you get out to Mount Diablo you'll see both crows and ravens out there.
In the 'Once and Future King', the boy who will be King Arthur looses an arrow into the air, just for the joy of it. A crow comes out of nowhere and grabs the arrow. Art's foster brother believes the crow was actually a witch (Morgan le Fay?).
I'm just saying - keep an eye out for witches ;)
"Just as [the arrow] had spent its force, just as its ambition had been dimmed by destiny and it was preparing to faint, to turn over, to pour back into the bosom of its mother earth, a portent happened. A gore-crow came flapping wearily before the approaching night. It came, it did not waver, it took the arrow. It flew away, heavy and hoisting, with the arrow in its beak."
I love this book so much, thanks for reminding me of this part! One of my favorite quotes ever comes from Merlin in this book:
> The best thing for being sad is to learn something. That's the only thing that never fails. You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honour trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for it then — to learn. Learn why the world wags and what wags it. That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting. Learning is the only thing for you. Look what a lot of things there are to learn.
I had to look it up — a gore crow or gorcrow is a carrion crow and it’s called that because if its diet.
However, the first result on Google, excerpted for my benefit, was this:
> Gore crows are a form of Dead Hand, involving any number of normal crows killed by a Necromancer, then imbued with a spirit from Death. This may be one spirit shared among the entire flock, or simply a single crow with a single spirit. The more crows share a spirit, the more quickly the corpses erode.[0]
Corvids are all over mythology, their obvious intelligence and association with death, especially livestock, is ripe for making myth. It is unfortunate that they were maligned as the cause of death instead of following and cleaning up after it, humans have been unnecessarily cruel to corvids for a long time.
Great story! I love the image of the huge airships looming over the city. A lot of my stories in my "Fahrenheit 52" project have been extended versions of dreams. Whenever I have a particularly weird one, I try to tap it out quickly on my phone, even if it's the middle of the night.
Thank you! I’m doing it as a little writing project for the year, one short story every week, just to get better at writing, and also to expunge all these probably dumb story ideas from my head (with the hope that there’s now room for better ones).
I also read a comment online somewhere (maybe here?) recently where someone talked about a crow they met years ago while in college at the local Taco Bell who would exchange nickels for tacos. I believe they said that crow would even croak "TACO" when it presented the nickel.
I've been feeding the crows around my house since near the beginning of the pandemic. Since we were home we started noticing them. In fact, there are several bird types. Blue Jays and others I don't even know the type.
Unfortunately, our neighbors got angry because the crows would wait for feeding times and sit on the power lines and ... crap on their cars. And the squirrels grab the peanuts and hide them and once I was coming back from a walk and the neighbor walked up to me and said "hold out your hand" and then dropped a peanut shell in my hand. Really frustrating, because it's not like there are a lot of them. Usually they fly away with them and leave them elsewhere.
Two stories related to this:
1. I was talking with a neighbor for a good while. We were talking and heard a sound like metal dropping near me. I said "did you hear that, too?" ... I looked around and there was a bottle cap a few feet away and a crow above it on the power line. They were impatient and wanted their peanuts.
2. I was walking a few blocks away from my house and an empty peanut shell dropped right in front of me. Looked up and a crow on the power line.
Right now a couple of crows are building a next. One of them looks much bigger than normal and seems to fly slowly. Crowlets incoming??
Gotta agree there. And I have had a good relationship with that neighbor for 20 years. Now down the tubes because of a little bird shit. Ah, well, I value my bird friends more, TBH.
Similarly, I was impressed/frightened to learn that some hawks in Australia purposely start wildfires to flush out prey (by taking burning sticks from one wildfire to start others).
Or sledding, using discarded plastic lids, for the sheer fun. I've seen young raven fledglings flinging pinecones at eachother, and there's a sense of play and joy in what they do.
Good for them, the more conscious creatures we share the universe with, the better. Well, the planet, anyway. While we're nominally in charge. If we can avoid screwing everything up too badly.
Actually, hell, can the ravens take over? We seem to be bodging things up just a bit.
I've seen the sledding crow clip. It is funny to think about. For a human, part of the fun of sledding is the sort of controlled falling/almost flight-like experience. I guess that's old hat for a crow, so I guess they must see it from the other side somehow.
Whereas the nut cracking is cool for the intelligence shown towards survival, the one that truly astounds me is intelligence for the sake of having fun. Crow skiing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1WupH8oyrAo
A sense of fun and play seems to be the main way creatures have evolved to try new things and learn. I think this includes curiosity. It also seems common that it is young creatures that mostly engage in this behavior, and as we get older we get more serious and set in our ways.
It continues to surprise me that humans are surprised at other animals having deep intelligence and emotions and thoughts. As if the fact that animals don't speak English or whatever else human language is somehow a negative reflection upon them.
Same here. As someone who has spent his life around many animals, either as pets or in the wild or other contexts, it’s very plain that humans are surrounded by respectably sentient creatures. It always floors me whenever people are shocked at the complex thoughts, emotions, behavior and planning capabilities of non-human animals. It really just seems fundamentally obvious if you bother to interact with other creatures long enough. Heck, I’ve run into way too many people who refuse to even acknowledge that we humans are animals as well and I feel this innate arrogance persists to our detriment.
I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that a lot of people eat animals and so it makes them feel better ethically to see them as not having feelings or intelligence. Sometimes the animals they eat may actually be more intelligent than domesticated animals.
Human are there own folley thinking that they are the definition of intelligence. In years to come, we will realise how simple our physiology is, compared to the other creatures. Brain included.
"As if they are inferior because they don't speak English" is a pretty cheap shot; cows eat grass, what reason do they have for deep intelligence and thoughts, why would you expect a-priori that they must have such? It's sometimes suggested that human intelligence rose quite quickly from trying to outwit other humans; do cows try to outwit each other and slaughter other cow tribes to take control of their fields?
Another point is, other animals do dumb things - like videos of ducks walking over drains and the ducklings fall down the drain, or creature stuck in plastic sheet until it dies. Or creature does nothing while humans approach, kill, and eat it. It's hard to see examples like that and think "deep intelligence".
Emotions, yes - a lot of fear, pain, excitement, skittishness, visible in a lot of animal behviours. But examples of planning ahead, cooperation, tool using, they're so rare they make headlines like this article when observed.
Treating other people/animals as inferior because they don't speak "English" has been such a historically common theme that it's surprising you seem to deny it.
Nations bent on conquest and colonialism had been using those arguments to justify their actions for centuries. Not to animals but to other humans as well.
While it's mostly illegal to do so to humans now, it's still socially acceptable to do the same to animals.
We still don't know how human intelligence developed or the evolutionary pressures underlying our intelligence. Using that as an argument to summarily dismiss animal intelligence is a strawman at best, as is your other points - you could easily find humans which are literally dumb as a rock, does that have any bearing on the intelligence we're capable of as a species?
I'm not denying that people never treat other people as inferior because they don't speak English. I'm saying the reason people treat hamsters as inferior isn't "because hamsters don't speak English", and that saying that is as uninterestingly dismissive as saying "it's because hamsters don't wear makeup".
> "Using that as an argument to summarily dismiss animal intelligence is a strawman at best, as is your other points"
No it isn't. If cows have no reason to think thoughts to survive, do not compete with tricksy, planning, vicious cow-enemies on evolutionary timescale, display no visible deep thinking behaviour, cannot visibly communicate deep thoughts to other cows, to say "but they must have them because reasons" is not good logic. Me asking "why star a-priori with 'they must have them?'" is not a strawman or a summary dismissal.
> "you could easily find humans which are literally dumb as a rock, does that have any bearing on the intelligence we're capable of as a species?"
Your position is that "Some humans are stupid so cows are smart?" Really? Where's the cow Einstein, the hamster Beethoven, the Kangaroo Gandhi, where's the wolf whose face launched a thousand ships, or the beaver who added hydroelectric lighting to their damn? The intelligence humans are capable of as a species has taken over the world, it's bloody obvious, you can't miss it for looking - tool use, machine building, theorem proving, organising on a large scale, on a timescale which outlasts one lifetime while adapting to changing environments on a scale of hours to months not hundreds of lifetimes.
The presence of dumb humans doesn't undo that. The absence of all that surely does call into question the intelligence bears are capable of as a species.
I don't really know how you fail to comprehend this -- people have been proven to underestimate or look down upon other people who don't share the same language or looks. Whether it be barbarians, people with different skin color, or generally of different cultures.
And you just reply with "it's OBVIOUS that animals don't possess the same level of intelligence, show me the cow Einstein". The GGGP's point is that studies on animal intelligence is only surprising with this attitude. I feel like you're just trying to appeal to common sense without actually addressing people's point. Don't forget who made the claim that '"As if they are inferior because they don't speak English" is a pretty cheap shot'.
I'll sign off here. You are free to presume that we're unreasonable idiots who don't even have a speck of your "common sense".
The cow also does not write equations, does not do media interviews, does not drive a motorcar, does not write letters to the cow government on the dangers of atomic warfare. The hamster does not play music, gather other hamsters around and share music, does not make musical instruments. The kangaroo does not rally the crowds for the salt marches. You don't need to speak German to hear Beethoven's music, speak Gujarati to see Gandhi's rally, or speak anything to obeserve humans solve problems on massive scales which no other animals do. It's not that the hamster doesn't write /musical notation/ it's that the hamster /doesn't make music for orchestras/ to note in any notation.
The disconnected lever fallacy is the idea that you can take the lever from a ship's bridge to your home, and then when you move the lever, expect your home to move like the ship moves. Without knowing about the engine. You're taking that idea even further - without ever seeing the ship move, and having no lever for moving it, assuming that there must be an engine but it's hidden by the lack of a lever. It's not the absence of lever which is so important, it's the absence of powered movement.
> "You are free to presume that we're unreasonable idiots who don't even have a speck of your "common sense"."
I'm not willing to assume that hamsters must, a-priori, be capable of the works of Beethoven because you think it's racist not to. English speaking humans are racist to Spanish speaking humans. That's /not the same/. You don't need to speak Spanish to observe that Mexico City is many orders of magnitude more than what hamsters can demonstrably do.
(I also take this the other way; seeing that animals show emotional behaviours and therefore have emotions. I don't think animals are rocks, it takes some intelligence to find food, mates, build nests. But that's not demonstrating high or human level intelligence because humans are capable of so much more. I think it equally bad that humans do/did surgery on human infants without anaesthesia arguing that they "don't feel pain" ( https://www.bostonglobe.com/ideas/2017/07/28/when-babies-fel... ) and ( https://www.google.com/search?q=open+heart+surgery+infant+no... ))
> cows eat grass, what reason do they have for deep intelligence and thoughts
This line of argument doesn't make much sense given that pigs are very intelligent and you'd probably say "pigs roll in the mud, what reason do they have for deep intelligence and thoughts"
> other animals do dumb things - like videos of ducks walking over drains and the ducklings fall down the drain, or creature stuck in plastic sheet until it dies. Or creature does nothing while humans approach, kill, and eat it. It's hard to see examples like that and think "deep intelligence".
I could say the same about most humans
> But examples of planning ahead, cooperation, tool using, they're so rare they make headlines like this article when observed.
This is true, but the way you go about making a case for it ain't it.
This line of argument makes sense given that humans use ~20% of our energy running our brains, and evolution is known for cutting out energy hungry things which aren't helpful for survival. Cows don't have cooked fatty meat as a ready supply of energy, they don't need to chase prey, they don't need accurate throwing of spears or organising groups to set traps. Why would they evolve whatever you think "deep thoughts" are?
And no, it doesn't help to say "given pigs are intelligent, then pigs are intelligent".
> "I could say the same about most humans"
Go on then, say that most humans are stupid therefore "humans are not intelligent". That will be a very productive line of reasoning.
> This line of argument makes sense given that humans use ~20% of our energy running our brains, and evolution is known for cutting out energy hungry things which aren't helpful for survival. Cows don't have cooked fatty meat as a ready supply of energy, they don't need to chase prey, they don't need accurate throwing of spears or organising groups to set traps. Why would they evolve whatever you think "deep thoughts" are?
This is a logical fallacy which requires "deep thoughts" to evolve the same way we did. As mentioned, pigs are considered to be intelligent and yet you didn't choose to address pigs but instead chose cows.
> And no, it doesn't help to say "given pigs are intelligent, then pigs are intelligent".
It doesn't help to say that. That's true. It's a good thing no one said that though.
> Go on then, say that most humans are stupid therefore "humans are not intelligent". That will be a very productive line of reasoning.
It's about as productive a line of reasoning as you cherrypicking cows.
> "As mentioned, pigs are considered to be intelligent and yet you didn't choose to address pigs but instead chose cows."
If you're going to start with a conclusion, "animals can be intelligent because pigs are intelligent, QED" where does that get you?
Why, exactly, are "pigs considered intelligent"?
And, note that I'm not saying animals are dumb as rock, there clearly is some level of intelligence involved in navigating the world, finding food, finding mates, avoiding predators, and a level of difference between say hamsters and elephants. What I'm contesting is something like "approximately all animals must have the same capacity of thought as humans because humans are animals", or the original statement more like "we shouldn't be surprised if tests show animals do have because we should have been assuming that all along even without evidence".
> "It doesn't help to say that. That's true. It's a good thing no one said that though."
fine, then I don't disagree with your statement that "pigs are considered intelligent" in the sense that "people consider pigs intelligent" but I disagree that they are intelligent in the same way that humans are, and the reason I disagree is that they haven't been proven to be such. Occam's razor, if they haven't been shown to have human-level capacity for (invention, language, music, mirror neurons, communicating abstract information, symbolic manipulation, arithmetic, planning, teamwork), then we shouldn't assume they have it unless necessary.
> What I'm contesting is something like "approximately all animals must have the same capacity of thought as humans because humans are animals", or the original statement more like "we shouldn't be surprised if tests show animals do have because we should have been assuming that all along even without evidence".
Your objection was to someone else saying
> It continues to surprise me that humans are surprised at other animals having deep intelligence and emotions and thoughts.
This is not the same as
> approximately all animals must have the same capacity of thought as humans because humans are animals
That is you moving the goalposts.
> I disagree that they are intelligent in the same way that humans are
> if they haven't been shown to have human-level capacity for (invention, language, music, mirror neurons, communicating abstract information, symbolic manipulation, arithmetic, planning, teamwork), then we shouldn't assume they have it unless necessary.
Again, no one claimed that so you stating that you disagree is fine but who are you disagreeing with? I still don't understand why you feel the need to declare this.
When I was younger, I read many books by Henri Laborit (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henri_Laborit) -- his work is predominantly in French. As a surgeon and neurobiologist, he wrote a lot about the biology of behaviour. I can't find the interview anymore, but during an interview (also in French) with a Canadian journalist he quipped this: "L'homme est un animal, le problème c'est qu'il parle." (roughly: "Man is an animal, the problem is that he uses language.") And, so, I agree with the essence of your position. But maybe the problem isn't that humans are surprised that other animals feeling/thinking. Rather the problem might be that humans think they actually aren't animals to begin with.
It really shouldn't surprise you given the amount of humans that treat other humans like they lack deep intelligence, emotions and thoughts if they don't speak English.
To test whether crows know and can analyze the contents of their brains...trained two birds to peck a red or a blue target on a panel, depending whether they saw a faint light."
"[Researcher] Nieder kept varying the “rule,” with the birds told which color meant what — red = saw it, or blue = saw it — only after the flash. That required the crows, Glenn and Ozzy, to keep monitoring their brains; they had a second or two to figure out what they had seen and tell Nieder by choosing the corresponding target.
While the crows were solving these tasks, the researchers were tracking the activity of hundreds of their neurons. (Crows’ brains have 1.5 billion neurons, as many as some monkey species.)
"When the crows reported having seen a faint light, sensory neurons were active between the flash and the birds pecking the color that meant, yes, I saw that. If the crows did not perceive the very same faint stimulus, the nerve cells remained silent, and the bird pecked, no, I didn’t see anything. Ozzy and Glenn’s brain activity systematically changed depending on whether or not they had perceived the dim flash.
"During the delay, many neurons responded according to the crows’ impending report, rather than to the brightness of the light... The birds were aware of what they subjectively perceived, flash or no flash, correctly reporting what their sensory neurons recorded..."
I know this isn't scientific, but for those who may entertain the idea of a Creator, there's a mention of crow behaviour in the Quran, where it describes the story of Abel and Cain (sons of Adam and Eve), and how after Cain killed his brother, God sent a crow to teach him about burial:
"Then Allah sent a crow searching in the ground to show him how to hide the disgrace of his brother. He said, “O woe to me! Have I failed to be like this crow and hide the body of my brother?” And he became of the regretful." (5:31)
I once heard a theory that the story of cain and abel is about the agriculturalists killing the nomadic people by taking their lands ("killing their brother") idk how you'd think of the crow part in that interpretation but something to think about.
That theory is put forward in the book Ishmael by Daniel Quinn. Great read that will make anyone reconsider the foundations modern humanity is built upon!
European magpies have been documented to hold wakes for fallen flock members. It's not impossible crows have similar bit undocumented ceremonies. They definitely have a rudimentary culture.
Magpies are usually bastards, however, about a year ago a cat got run over in the street near my house and the only reason anyone knew to go to its aid was because a group of magpies stood around it in a circle shouting until someone came. Obviously I could be anthropomorphising this in the nicest possible way, the alternative is that they were taunting it Nelson Muntz style.
>To test whether crows know and can analyze the contents of their brains, neurobiologist Andreas Nieder of the University of Tübingen in Germany trained two birds to peck a red or a blue target on a panel, depending whether they saw a faint light. Nieder kept varying the “rule,” with the birds told which color meant what — red = saw it, or blue = saw it — only after the flash. That required the crows, Glenn and Ozzy, to keep monitoring their brains; they had a second or two to figure out what they had seen and tell Nieder by choosing the corresponding target.
... I don't actually understand what this means. Am I dumb or is this just badly written? Can someone explain? What is Nieder actually doing here, and how does it test whether the crows are introspecting? How are they "told" which color meant what?
If there was a faint light, and the red target appears, the birds were taught (how?) to peck it. If there was light and a blue target appears, don't peck it. If there was no light, and the blue target appears, peck it, and if the target is red, don't peck it.
So peck a red target = "I saw a light", peck a blue target = "I didn't see a light". If the opposite color target appears to what you need to peck, don't peck it.
Or: Target is red, did I see a light? If yes, peck it. Target is blue. Was there a light? If there wasn't, peck it.
I didn't continue reading the paper, but I guess the researchers concluded since they crows could answer the "Did I see a light?" question correctly most (i.e. statistically significant amount) of the times, it shows they can ponder the contents of their brains.
So how does this mean they can "ponder the contents of their own brains"? I'm pretty sure you could train even a very stupid creature to perform this task.
Isn't that effectively just a simple short term memory test? How does that tell us anything about whether crows can "ponder the contents of their minds"?
I don't know but I'm utterly amazed at the sheer number of anecdata comments here all completely ignoring the title's premise which is worded in a way that makes you think "what did you do, simulate a bird brain from scratch?"
I think the real question here is when consciousness evolved and where did it evolve from? Researchers have always felt a cerebral cortex is necessary to experience "consciousness" but crows have confirmed that's not necessary which only deepens the mystery:
This research has important consequences for our understanding of the evolution of higher intelligence. First, a cerebral cortex is not needed, and there are other anatomical means to achieve the same outcome. Second, either the evolution of consciousness is very ancient, tracing back to the last common ancestor of mammals and birds about 320 million years ago, or, equally intriguing, consciousness arose at least twice later on, independently in mammals and birds. Both options raise the likelihood, in my view, that higher intelligence on other planets may not necessarily be mammal or human-like, but could very well be birdlike.
We have a family of Crows who comes every morning, calls my wife, who gives them some treats and then go about their day. Sometimes they return at noon for lunch. We started leaving them puzzles to get to their food but they solved these pretty quickly. We now need to up our game. Originally it was just a couple. At some point only one came, which meant the other was watching their egg/offspring. Sure enough some time later kiddo joined them. Amazing bird.
I think they were meant for dogs originally. One is a round plate with small white 'bone' cases concealing treats underneath. They need to remove the small bones to get to the treats with two difficulty settings - they cracked that in a seconds, but still seem to enjoy 'playing the game'.
Another is a transparent tube, with plate like stoppers in different locations. Each stopper can be pulled out with a string, causing the treats on top to drop to the next compartment. When they reach the bottom (3 different 'plates') the crow gets his food. That also seemed just too easy for them.
We're now looking for more elaborate games to play with them.
Despite all the obvious communication from them, and them being part of our daily life, they are still scared animals and will not get to a arm's length distance. Still, we get what they give, and love them for it. Beautiful entities they are.
Concur. Jumping from "a collection of sensory neurons remained active after a sensory experience" to "Crows have subjective experience and 'ponder' the contents of their own minds" is an editorial leap. The latter likely isn't even provable in a scientific way.
If I said a fly wheel keeps spinning after being in contact with an outside force, you would never characterize it as "fly wheel acts of its own accord following demonstration".
A lot of the field of neurology is about sensationalising your findings by binding them to some abstract notion of psychology which doesn't even fit the study.
Maybe one day we’ll start accepting we’re not the only “intelligent” things on this planet and start treating all animals a little better/stop eating them.
Human behavior must be very confusing to the animals who observe it. The strange situations we create by (for example) dropping nets and catching dolphins, only to let them free. (Do they know we put out those nets, or are we just helpful monkeys that sit on the evil loud floating net monster and sometimes save them?).
And I wonder if the animals that we run these intelligence tests on know the humans are behind the tests. Maybe if crows achieve a culture with legends and stories, they'll have the a trickster god -- white coat, glasses man. For lab rats I guess white coat glasses man would take a more malicious aspect.
It was a while ago, so I actually don't remember how they regarded the humans -- the bad guys were mostly other animals, right? And then the farmer was some sort of distant menace or something... I think... good stories. I wonder how they hold up to adult readers.
Humans have achieved not just intelligence but co-operation.
we are "herd" enough that the benefits of learning from others overcomes the need to be smart enough to work it out yourself.
But individualistic enough that we won't follow the herd all the time (we might want to improve that given the success of religion and dictators).
But what I am trying to say is that intelligence is a necessary but not sufficbet condition. We also need ... politics ... for want of a better word.
Our brains seem to be wired as levels of co-operating systems coming to collective decisions - and that is a pretty good way to describe politics and society.
Human species is less a collection of organisms feeding and dying and more a distributed brain, trying to wake up.
Now that each node has a pocket sized way to communicate with each other node, I wonder what the conditions for consciousness really are?
Have you read Swarm by Norman Spinrad? It's a short-story which illustrates some of the points you have made by bringing an alien species that are less individually intelligent but more hive-oriented than human beings into the mix.
Also the book "The Invincible" by Stanisław Lem tells a story about distributed intelligent lifeforms.
Really nice as they are described in a very unique un-anthropocentric way, i.e. their rationality is hardly understandable by the space faring humans encountering them.
i can't seem to find the book by that title by that author.
I did find a book by that title but its 800 something pages long and don't think its the title you referred to.
do you mind providing a link?
I've red a short story that matches the description and the name. Took a while to remember but it was in A Science Fiction Omnibus [0], apparently it's by Bruce Sterling so could be a different story.
It is surprising. I suspect there are many millions of planets in our galaxy where intelligent life evolved and even invented radio, and I suspect that all but one or two of those civilizations ended disaster within about 100 years. It seems to be quite a challenge for a technological civilization to survive its own side-effects.
> I suspect that all but one or two of those civilizations ended disaster within about 100 years
All sorts of biological / ecological factors would come into play like average lifespan, the size of life in relation to the size of the planet, resource scarcity, reproduction rates, mobility, avg. number of offspring, mutation rates, weather patterns, geography, etc.
Then you get into social and technological factors.
We have a sample size of 1, so it’s hard to extrapolate or understand where we are on the probability curve.
The best data point we might have for a self-inflicted civilization ending event would be looking at it from a smaller point view. How many times in history has one group attacked another such that both groups ceased to exist?
One positive sign is that even with all our destruction and violence, someone usually wins or backs down with the ability to continue on living.
Of course there are always long-tail events like mutually assured destruction, but I don’t know if 100 years is the correct timetable for ~100% certainty.
There was an interesting HN discussion about it a few weeks ago here with folks chiming in on the best ways to assess the odds of a long-tail event like MAD:
The Fermi Paradox might be on an earlier stage of evolution. Perhaps it's easier that we thought to evolve intelligence from our common ancestor, but going from inert chemistry floating in space to that common ancestor is astronomically rare.
There's the data point that life here on Earth began as soon as it could when the planet cooled off. So it suggests life itself might not be that rare.
That could also mean life has to get started early or it won’t at all. If that’s the case then the only observation would be that life gets started early.
> That could also mean life has to get started early or it won’t at all.
How would that work? It seems to me the only that matters is that the proper conditions for abiogenesis be maintained for whatever duration it requires. It shouldn't matter how far along the Universe or planet history this period occurs
If life gets started in the violent conditions of primordial ocean in contact with primordial crust then there could be any number of factors that change that drastically lower the probability of abiogenesis happening. Like a change in the chemical makeup of the primordial ocean or crust or both. It could be the depletion or accumulation of any number of chemicals that interfere with or are needed for abiogenesis. My money would be on self catalytic reactions that use up the ingredients for abiogenesis being common in environments suitable for abiogenesis. Life could be rare because when you strike a match you should expect fire not some slow burning reaction that persistently stores information in a way that learns and if you get the fire you don’t get the life because they burn the same materials. If that is the case then life would need to be extremely lucky to exist long enough to evolve to the point where it has diversified its energy and material inputs past the point where it would be stopped in its tracks by simpler competing reactions that are closer to fire than life. I like this possibility more than simple environmental change because it makes the Ferny paradox far weirder of a calculation. Water worlds in the habitable zone for example would end up being mysteriously devoid of life since they would be perfect for non life reactions to take over where as planets with many isolated environments like lakes and tide pools could have a higher chance of recycled chemicals broken down not immediately being contaminated.
Neurons are old. The last common ancestor had some brains for itself, too.
Bird brains are much more neuron-dense than mammalian brains. They also lack the layered structure that permeates our cerebral cortex. I wonder if the different structure is what causes the funny head movement seen across bird species.
I had a crow that was on my back porch last year trying to tell me something, but I don't think I was clever enough to know what it was trying to say.
I could walk out on the porch and get within a foot or two of it without it flying away.
I hadn't been feeding them or anything.
I put out some water and ran the garden hose a bit and put out a bit of bread thinking that food or water was probably what it was looking for (it was during some very hot days in Seattle). It didn't really act all that interested in what I did though.
My house sits at near tree-top level, Steller's jays are frequent visitors. Like other corvids they're intelligent but also cranky, often contentious critters. The jays absolutely adore peanuts. Fun to watch their peanut selection procedure. They'll pick up a peanut then put it down, pick up another one put it down, maybe go back to first one. We're convinced they're hefting peanuts to select the heaviest. Then there's the occasional very vocal "argument" that breaks out. Bears astonishingly close resemblance to shrill overwrought political "discussions" we've heard, it's hilarious. Without doubt the jays are comedians in the avian community.
Curiously crows (abundant around here too) have displayed little interest in the peanuts on offer. OTOH there have been "wars" between the crows and jays, not sure what "issues" precipitated highly vocal confrontations. I assume it was territorial. Significantly there was never any evidence of killed or wounded black or blue participants.
Strikes me as sad and shameful that these corvid cousins know more about resolving differences than we humans ever seem to learn.
About a year ago my dog (~7mo at the time) would lunge at the ravens and try to chase them even though he was on a leash. I changed my route to prevent that behavior, but the ravens remembered both of us.
One morning they flew above us with a rotting sausage and dropped it right in front of my dog and waited for him to eat it. I had to pull it out of his mouth and when I looked up the ravens were all watching us.
I can’t say for sure, but it certainly felt like revenge.
The strangest picture I ever took was of an upside down crow. It's the first load on our band website https://blameclub.com
I posted it to Reddit at the time and got a bunch of suggestions ranging from "it's dead" to "crows love to play tricks". I never got to the bottom of what was going on.
We actually get that behavior a lot with parrots. Galahs mostly, but also Corellas and Cockatoos. It is most common to see Galahs hand upside down when there is a light rain, with their wings open and giving their armpits a wash. But not always. Once we caught a Cockatoo spinning three or four times around on a wire like some sort of trapeze artist while another pair looked on, including at one point holding on with a single foot. There seemed to be no reason apart from showing off. I believe that the main reason people think that swans occasionally fly upside down is also just to show off, for shits and giggles.
I've seen lorikeets do this outside my home. I've also seen cockatoos do a couple of screaming barrel rolls for seemingly no reason in their fly byes. I think they just like to have a little fun. Alternatively the lorikeet was looking for something to swoop down at.
Ever since I was a kid, whenever I would read things like this or stuff about animals doing human-like things, I always wind up thinking "what would it be like to be <whatever animal> for a day?", and in particular, what exactly _are_ the similarities between human cognition and other animals'. Even as a thought experiment along the lines of "assume we had a machine that could swap brains", it's always seems reasonable to assume that there are certain faculties that we possess that would not translate and would render the experience uncomprehendable (i.e., as a bird, do I even have the ability to actively probe my consciousness, to conceive and remember higher-order thoughts? I've always assumed the answer is a hard no).
I find myself wondering more and more if we are more similar than I give animals credit for.
If you want to befriend your local crows try buying a crow call - they will all look at you funny but you definitely get their attention. Supposedly they also like many types of nuts
There is often a lot of cawing in my backyard when I refill the bird feeder, or when the neighborhood cat comes by. Clearly the crows are communicating useful information in their social group. Too bad I can't speak crow and I don't know how much detail there is in crow language.
Here in the Netherlands there was the case of two corvids trying to harass a small owl so that they could use its nesting hole.
This in itself shows team work. They failed to get rid of the owl in time before the breeding season.
Next season they tried again. This time, together they stuffed the nest hole with so much stuff that the owl couldn't get in anymore. The owl would try to clear it but soon gave up as it was two working against one. With the owl permanently gone, they cleared the hole and seized it.
Isn't that stunning? This demonstrates memory as the previously failing tactic was not repeated. The idea of stuffing a nest surely isn't intuition or a skill learned from parents, it's a spontaneously formed idea for a highly specific problem.
They also have very complex social behavior where males exchange favors. Every bird knows of every other bird they commonly interact with whether they are owed or in debt. So that means they have a currency.
We should lose our arrogance and look at wildlife with new eyes and with new respect. And not just for wildlife superstars like crows or dolphins, do it across the board. Case in point, earthworms drag leaves into their underground lair and feed on them. When you give it the wrong type of leaf, it will reject it. When you give it the right type of leaf, yet wrongly oriented, it will turn it around. We're talking about a creature with a handful of neurons, figuratively speaking. It's one of the most stupid life forms and it can do that.
Now I feel bad for crows. They're in the same MALIGNANTLY USELESS boat as humans.
>
“For the rest of the earth’s organisms, existence is relatively uncomplicated. Their lives are about three things: survival, reproduction, death—and nothing else. But we know too much to content ourselves with surviving, reproducing, dying—and nothing else. We know we are alive and know we will die. We also know we will suffer during our lives before suffering—slowly or quickly—as we draw near to death. This is the knowledge we “enjoy” as the most intelligent organisms to gush from the womb of nature. And being so, we feel shortchanged if there is nothing else for us than to survive, reproduce, and die. We want there to be more to it than that, or to think there is. This is the tragedy: Consciousness has forced us into the paradoxical position of striving to be unself-conscious of what we are—hunks of spoiling flesh on disintegrating bones.” – Thomas Ligotti
That Ligotti chap really managed to put the darkest possible spin on the greatest possible miracle - consciousness.
Our brains represent a step change in the timeline of complexity in the universe, from subatomic things spontaneously coalescing into atoms, all the way up to Thomas the paranoid android.
Instead of being depressed that we will get hurt and die, let's be happy that we will be able to experience many interesting and wonderful things, many of which can be quite pleasant and meaningful.
“One cringes to hear scientists cooing over the universe or any part thereof like schoolgirls over-heated by their first crush. From the studies of Krafft-Ebbing onward, we know that it is possible to become excited about anything—from shins to shoehorns. But it would be nice if just one of these gushing eggheads would step back and, as a concession to objectivity, speak the truth: THERE IS NOTHING INNATELY IMPRESSIVE ABOUT THE UNIVERSE OR ANYTHING IN IT.”
― Thomas Ligotti, The Conspiracy Against the Human Race
"Thomas Ligotti is a contemporary American horror writer. His writings are rooted in several literary genres – most prominently weird fiction – and have been described by critics as works of philosophical horror, often formed into short stories and novellas in the tradition of gothic fiction"
The guy makes a living spouting this kind of depressing prose. So, he's good at it. I bet he might enjoy it, sometimes, too. Maybe the recognition, a little? So, perhaps he's a counter example to his own dour outlook.
Not to sound too cynical, but if he hates being known for his writing, why does he write and publish? Why have a website about his works?
That's very strange to me. I could understand hating being famous. But hating being known for the thing you're literally putting into the world so that people know about it?
> It is important to note that while all copyright-related content is presented with the permission of Thomas Ligotti, TLO was created upon the solitary actions of Jon Padgett and continues to exist independent of the direction or promotion of Thomas Ligotti.
I think it's normal for someone to feel the need to write and publish without wanting recognition. His publishing schedule is erratic and also dropped precipitously as he got well-known.
In the case of being a writer, having some sort of PR output (like a website) is part of managing your brand or whatever I guess. Of course it isn't mandatory, but I bet people have done things they hated more for money.
Ligotti's body of work constitutes perhaps the longest suicide note, and perhaps also the one most "writerly" in its composition, thus far in human history. That the act has yet to be consummated detracts little from this accomplishment, but one may to no less use or benefit spend time perusing road accident footage.
I'd argue that the things he despises so much are the exact same things that prevent consummation, so at a fundamental level, I doubt the soundness of his reasoning.
It would be a sign of callowness to bemoan the fact that pessimistic writers do not rate and may be reprehended in both good conscience and good company. Some critics of the pessimist often think they have his back to the wall when they blithely jeer, “If that is how this fellow feels, he should either kill himself or be decried as a hypocrite.” That the pessimist should kill himself in order to live up to his ideas may be counterattacked as betraying such a crass intellect that it does not deserve a response. Yet it is not much of a chore to produce one. Simply because someone has reached the conclusion that the amount of suffering in this world is enough that anyone would be better off never having been born does not mean that by force of logic or sincerity he must kill himself. It only means he has concluded that the amount of suffering in this world is enough that anyone would be better off never having been born. Others may disagree on this point as it pleases them, but they must accept that if they believe themselves to have a stronger case than the pessimist, then they are mistaken.
Naturally, there are pessimists who do kill themselves, but nothing obliges them to kill themselves or live with the mark of the hypocrite on their brow. Voluntary death might seem a thoroughly negative course of action, but it is not as simple as that. Every negation is adulterated or stealthily launched by an affirmative spirit. An unequivocal “no” cannot be uttered or acted upon. Lucifer’s last words in heaven may have been “Non serviam,” but none has served the Almighty so dutifully, since His sideshow in the clouds would never draw any customers if it were not for the main attraction of the devil’s hell on earth. Only catatonics and coma patients can persevere in a dignified withdrawal from life’s rattle and hum. Without a “yes” in our hearts, nothing would be done. And to be done with our existence en masse would be the most ambitious affirmation of all.
Ligotti repels me because, whether he acknowledges it or not, his is a counsel of despair. He's gotten so wrapped up in his own inability to find an answer to the simple question "why are we here?" that he has totally omitted to consider he may have a responsibility, in regard to his own person, to make an answer to it. Through that omission, he's inadvertently - I think inadvertently - made the purpose of at least his public life to tell everyone else how bad it is he can't come up with one.
Perhaps I'd have felt the same about Lovecraft, in his day.
> he may have a responsibility, in regard to his own person, to make an answer to it
I will concede that existentialism of this sort is really the only honest philosophical alternative to pessimism. Ligotti dismisses it, but I can't remember why right at the moment.
Oh dear. If I've ever seen literary onanism... this goes in the gallery.
Meanwhile, nobody argued that the writer should kill himself. What I said was that the things he does despise prevent the consummation of his expressed desire. Not acknowledging that is unsound.
But, as the kids say, "he probably can't hear himself over the sounds of his own talking".
In the counterfactual universe where we had strong evidence of higher cognition sans consciousness, sure. But it's pure speculation that anything like his space critters can exist in real life. Perhaps so, perhaps not. Fortunately, we will never know.
Well, it's hard to be happy when it requires you to actually be able to do what you want to do. Social hierarchy, resources and even brain chemistry are not in everyone's favour.
Contentness can be learned, though.
Or just use that brainpower and create medication that tricks the primitive parts of the brain into being happy. Profit!
“There seems to be an inborn drive in all human beings not to live in a steady emotional state, which would suggest that such a state is not tolerable to most people. Why else would someone succumb to the attractions of romantic love more than once? Didn’t they learn their lesson the first time or the tenth time or the twentieth time? And it’s the same old lesson: everything in this life—I repeat, everything—is more trouble than it’s worth. And simply being alive is the basic trouble. This is something that is more recognized in Eastern societies than in the West. There’s a minor tradition in Greek philosophy that instructs us to seek a state of equanimity rather than one of ecstasy, but it never really caught on for obvious reasons. Buddhism advises its practitioners not to seek highs or lows but to follow a middle path to personal salvation from the painful cravings of the average sensual life, which is why it was pretty much reviled by the masses and mutated into forms more suited to human drives and desires. It seems evident that very few people can simply sit still. Children spin in circles until they collapse with dizziness.”
― Thomas Ligotti
What if a thing with consciousness is also the only living thing which can accumulate a "self" that can propagate through lifetimes? The principle of how plants produce seeds would be the same although obviously the systems are different. To start with, plants pass on their "selves" through their "bodies" and seeds, but human children are obviously distinct selves, therefore, perhaps we ought to start searching for a physical system where a human self exists. It's an unconfirmed and probably foolhardy assumption that the brain alone creates and supports the existence or propagation of consciousness. What else in the universe is capable of doing what we already attribute to the physical capabilities of the brain as pertaining to what we call the physical (e.g. electromagnetic) activities of consciousness?
> It's an unconfirmed and probably foolhardy assumption that the brain alone creates and supports the existence or propagation of consciousness.
This is not an assumption that science makes. However, we have never observed consciousness in anything that does not have a brain, and physically altering a brain can cause fundamental changes in consciousness. So, until there is evidence that consciousness is not tied directly to a brain, its the best working model we have. Suppositions to the contrary are interesting but meaningless without being supported by evidence.
The selfish genes strike again. Humans (animals) are machines evolved to replicate their genes, who don’t care how happy or unhappy their replication machines are.
nice, I like this. thanks for sharing (and the later quote further into the thread). it's such irony that the "miraculous" consciousness we experience is simultaneously a curse ensuring direct awareness of our mortality and [depending on opinion] triviality.
Well, Ligotti would certainly know from malignant uselessness. Perhaps if he took a little more trouble for self-reflection he would less often perpetrate it.
The wild thing about this article is less the article content, and more the realization that I know adult humans less self aware than what is described in corvids.
I really hate this mind set. Every single human being that ever lived is a ridiculously intelligent entity. It isn’t funny or cute to pretend otherwise and just because some people dedicate that intelligence to things you or I don’t agree with, or just because they don’t care about the same things as us, doesn’t make them less self aware than any other person.
Disagree. Some people are less self-aware than others. It's not a matter of opinions or what you believe in, it's a matter of how much you are aware of your own cognition.
There are many people out there who seem to lack the ability to analyze the consequences of their behavior, or to admit that they were ever wrong. There are also people who seem to be very bad at understanding what are their motivations for doing certain things. Not being able to look back at your own behavior and your own mistakes makes it nearly impossible for these people to grow.
I won't get into the argument as to whether these differences in self-awareness are biological in origin or due to nurture. It's probably some of both. Either way, even though this metric is multidimensional and hard to quantify, some people are definitely less self-aware than others. Just like some people are less physically fit than others.
How do you distinguish between the case where these people are actually less self aware vs being roughly just as self aware but having different values from your own? In other words, they are aware of much of what everyone around them is aware, they just act on it differently?
In any case, the vast majority of healthy humans are probably more self aware than the vast majority of healthy crows, no?
You seem to think these people stupid instead of stubborn humans who don’t care about what your definition of “self aware” is. I’m sure these people think your way of thinking is odd as well.
I think it's similar to short term reward vs delayed gratification (see the marshmallow experiment[0]). By refusing to admit you've ever made mistakes, you can protect your ego in the short term. However, you're also alienating people and preventing learning from taking place. That has a long-term cost in terms of missed or lost opportunities.
Intelligence is a far-cry from self-awareness. I once knew someone who would regularly (daily, for years), in conversation, cut other people off like they weren't even there to completely change the subject to their own preference. I once called them out on it and tried to finish my original point to the rest of the table. They yelled at me and demanded an apology that I would dare cut them off like that, that I would dare try to finish my own point.
I have several similar stories, but the rest are far too specific for the open internet.
You're not alone in this. I find it a very tired, unoriginal perspective to keep asserting how dumb other people are. At the end of the day, the simplest human brains are still a marvel of science and computational complexity. The fact that it so often gets used for "dumb" things only impresses me more.
Unfortunately, a lot of people boost their worth by degrading others, so to give that credit to those that they look down on would cause them a certain degree of cognitive dissonance.
Only if you assume that I look down on those I'm speaking of. I don't. It's an entirely human thing to do, and something most people will find themselves doing at some point.
It is entirely possible to simply ignore that intelligence. And why wouldn't you, if you're safe and fed? Being stupid is easier - very much in line with evolution, too.
It's hard not to notice that many people are... dumb, but content or happy. They don't second guess, they don't fret, they don't think much.
Why wouldn't you? Smarter people are generally happier than others too when the question is researched.
I suppose it's possible to mistake low neuroticism for stupidity. And if you don't talk to dumb people (pick an IQ range below 100) very often you might not know their worries and concerns, especially if they're not overt about them as is fashionable for Lisa Simpson-esque individuals.
Still bad news on adjusting your base intelligence (apart from drastically down through damage), I don't know about adjusting self-awareness though I suspect it's a bit more mutable in good and bad ways (if only because related traits better understood are more mutable), but at least your desire to feel happier or more content more often is a possible state for you to achieve if you work at it. Some people will recommend therapy (surprised nobody has internet-diagnosed you with depression already), or meditation, or philosophy, or drugs (prescription or party), or whatever (I like the idea and research of gratitude journals https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gratitude_journal but don't keep one), I don't want to recommend anything, just point out that personality and outlook is more mutable than something like base intelligence, which is good news for your melancholy should you wish to attempt change.
Are “smart” people happier? I see lots of people claiming the exact opposite (usually in reference to themselves ofc) but have never bothered to see if it’s a real study or something.
Of course it's not the only thing, and can be greatly mediated by other factors. From the book Age of Em, citing that and other sources, "people today tend to be both happier and more productive when they have jobs, autonomy at work, health, beauty, money, marriage, religion, intelligence, extroversion, conscientiousness, agreeableness, and non-neuroticism."
I've gone back and forth on my feelings for the mindset. My current feelings just encompass the differences so it's not really a like or hate anymore either way. Yes, the human species is very intelligent and in a uniquely general way on this planet, the difference between a village idiot and Einstein is quite small compared to the difference between a village idiot and any member of any other species. Scenarios like Idiocracy are just laughably implausible because while evolution can sometimes work fast for little changes which can make a difference against big selection pressures, it's generally very slow (we have math to say how slow!), and it seems plausible that what makes us uniquely generally intelligent took evolution a long time to produce, has many interdependent and complicated things, and would take evolution a long time to unmake. I suspect we as a species would sooner go extinct for one reason or another before we suffered enough mutations that reached fixation and caused a notable decline in our capability of general intelligence.
On the other hand, small scale situations similar to what's depicted in fun-fiction like Idiocracy or other things keep happening, and the idea that reality is stranger and crazier than fiction holds true. I've joked that the 2020s are going to be the dumbest decade, and will require the dumbest people. Holding up well so far. Furthermore, even if we acknowledge that humans are intelligent, period, there is still great variation within humans. There is variation on every trait we can measure, self-awareness should be no different, the presumption that no one is more or less self aware than any other person defies reason. Apart from that, just observing people's behavior in a casual way I think it obvious that people vary quite a bit when it comes to self-awareness, both in general every day lives (which I can notice varies in myself) or in specific focused tests. It doesn't get better when you switch from casual observation and conversation to more detailed study, psychology and psychotherapy are full of strange and fascinating data (and not just of fundamentally damaged brains) which I think a model that assumes equal capacities in self-awareness would be hard-pressed to explain.
When I finally got back inside and upstairs, I went and looked out the living room window, which looked out the same direction as the back alley. The crow had flown back around and was at the 8th floor looking in the window, from the other side of the pigeon netting we had on our balcony. On the inside of the pigeon netting, was another crow, desperately trying to figure out how it could escape. Not really sure how it had got itself through the pigeon netting in the first place.
I went out and sliced a hole through the netting and the trapped crow quickly joined its mate outside, who finally stopped screaming bloody murder. To this day it still amazes me that the crow's mate, knew which apartment I lived in and spotted me downstairs.