Improbability Principle

[Laird]

An interesting comment by "Post Epoch" below the video:

We used to watch the crows in Washington State put chestnuts under our car tires. It seemed like they had mostly learned to put them in front of my car's tires, because I always pulled forward away from the curb, and under my roommate's tires, because he always backed out of the driveway. Really smart critters.

Came out one morning to find around 8 chestnuts in front of each of my tires and a whole bunch of crows sitting in the tree next to our house watching me get into my car!

Yes - that's essentially what I was thinking of previously when I mentioned the possibility of the crows thinking longer-term. The experimental study was really testing whether the crows were thinking "Here comes something that will crack a nut." But it seems equally plausible that they would be thinking "This is a place where nuts will get cracked." 

Exactly!

The first is signal driven, by seeing the car the neurons start  firing.  The physical event of the stimulus starts a casual chain leading to a response.  Brain as machine.

The second is (at least I claim it is) direct perception, whereby the useful meanings in the living thing's environment are detected.  "A place where nuts are cracked" is a classic example of affordance.  (see J. J. Gibson and the School of Ecological Psychology)

 Gibson rejected outright indirect perception, in favour of ecological realism, his new form of direct perception that involves the new concept of ecological affordances. He also rejected the emerging constructivist, information processing and cognitivist views that assume and emphasize internal representation and the processing of meaningless, physical sensations ('inputs') in order to create meaningful, mental perceptions ('output'), all supported and implemented by a neurological basis (inside the head).
His approach to perception has often been criticised and dismissed when compared to widely publicised advances made in the fields of neuroscience and visual perception by the computational and cognitive approaches.[4]
However, developments in cognition studies which consider the role of embodied cognition and action in psychology can be seen to support his basic position.[5][6][7]

Given that Gibson's tenet was that "perception is based on information, not on sensations", his work and that of his contemporaries today can be seen as crucial for keeping prominent the primary question of what is perceived (i.e., affordances, via information) – before questions of mechanism and material implementation are considered. Together with a contemporary emphasis on dynamical systems theory and complexity theory as a necessary methodology for investigating the structure of ecological information, the Gibsonian approach has maintained its relevance and applicability to the larger field of cognitive science. - Wiki 

[Laird]

Interesting stuff.

Going back to the subject of crows, it seems worth pointing out that a crow in the lab has been observed solving a problem that arguably required more complex problem-solving ability than that involved in working out that automobiles can be used to to crack open nuts (edit: just to be clear, even though I'm posting this video, I don't condone keeping birds or any animal captive for research purposes):

I like how this is similar to the questions asked about psi - "remarkable" individuals are identified post hoc using methods which produce false positives (see the OP), and it isn't clear how to distinguish between false and true positives so as to discover whether there is even such a thing as a true positive in the first place.

I think the article cited in the original post was about remarkable spontaneous events rather than remarkable individuals. (After all, it's easy enough to devise tests for those who claim remarkable psi powers, at least if they are supposed to operate consistently.)

But of course, this is where the analogy between the crow problem and psi breaks down, because modern parapsychology is focussed much more on experiment than on spontaneous occurrences. It's not a question of proponents relying on anecdotal evidence and sceptics carrying out experiments to disprove it. In fact, as sceptics do so few experiments, it's much more a question of proponents relying on experimental evidence and sceptics looking for ways to dismiss it.

[Laird]

if there are remarkable individual crows, their number are too small to show up as even a very small effect amongst a group of crows (based on the very high power of the "% relinquish" measure) - that is, true positives are uncommon

Linda, since the above ignores the critique several of us have made of the study's assumption that the behaviour of the crows should differ between when a vehicle is arriving and when one is not, and implicitly holds the assumption to be valid: could you please explain why you believe that assumption to be valid in the face of the critiques presented in this thread?

Linda, since the above ignores the critique several of us have made of the study's assumption that the behaviour of the crows should differ between when a vehicle is arriving and when one is not, and implicitly holds the assumption to be valid: could you please explain why you believe that assumption to be valid in the face of the critiques presented in this thread?

Are you suggesting that crows drop nuts on hard surfaces not to break them, but in the hope that a car driving by...eventually...will crack it open? And that this is the behavior observed in the published reports?

Linda

[Laird]

Are you suggesting that crows drop nuts on hard surfaces not to break them, but in the hope that a car driving by...eventually...will crack it open?

It appears to be David Attenborough's conclusion that at least some crows in Japan do this - and not only that, but that some of these crows take advantage of pedestrian crossings. I'd encourage you to watch the video I posted. [Edit: lest I be seen as hedging: yes, based on evidence such as that in the videos I've shared in this thread, I do think that at least some crows have "nutted" this out and that they do behave in this way.]

In any case, you've answered a question with a question: could you please answer more directly why you think that the assumption that the behaviour of the crows would differ between when cars were arriving and when no cars were arriving was valid given that the worst-case average time to wait for the next car was 45 seconds?

Are you suggesting that crows drop nuts on hard surfaces not to break them, but in the hope that a car driving by...eventually...will crack it open? And that this is the behavior observed in the published reports?

You seem to be falling back on an argument from incredulity. Perhaps the parallel with psi scepticism is stronger than I thought. 

In any case, you've answered a question with a question: could you please answer more directly why you think that the assumption that the behaviour of the crows would differ between when cars were arriving and when no cars were arriving was valid given that the worst-case average time to wait for the next car was 45 seconds?

I asked a question because I was trying to pin down where you think the idea comes from that the crows' behavior is related to using cars as nutcrackers. I'm not sure how "the behavior of the crows doesn't differ whether cars are present or absent" fits into this, so I was looking for you to be more specific. I'm also not sure how crows removing the nuts most of the time when a car is coming is meant to show that they are trying to use the car as a nutcracker.

How would you go about investigating whether or not crows behave in a way which facilitates the crushing of nuts by cars? 

Linda

[Laird]

I'm not sure how "the behavior of the crows doesn't differ whether cars are present or absent" fits into this

That's curious, because you should be - I pointed it out in post #55.

In your post #49, you claim that an effect didn't "show up". Any effect, though, would have been based on a difference in behaviour of crows between when cars are approaching and when cars are not approaching. So, you're implicitly assuming that this difference is meaningful (to the question at issue). Others, including myself, have pointed out that it probably isn't meaningful. How do you respond?