BEAR on 1/10/2006 at 16:01
BEAR
BEAR
BEAR
BEAR
I'm very unimaginative.
LancerChronics on 1/10/2006 at 17:10
Lancerchronics works for me on a few levels.
1)The Lancer is the best FFT job ever, including its evolution to the Dragoon.
2)Chronics, sounds like it has something to do with time, which I philosophize about when I am bored. I also like pocket watches.
3)I was completely obsessed with a certain book series when I created this name. The Dragonlance (r) Chronicles
Thus, LancerChronics was born. I've kept it ever since. It's been over 4 years now I think.
And no my name does not have anything to do with the street name for marijuana, "chronic".
I also have a few "sub names" I use for games and stuff. These are generally derived from mythology, such as Gungnir(my personal favorite), spear of Odin, and Mjolnir, hammer of Thor. I also like using the Brightblade surname on some chars, after everyone' favorite knight.
Parker'sSire on 2/10/2006 at 01:15
Quote Posted by lomondtaffer
There's actually a place called Hershey ???
(
http://www.hersheypa.com/) yup.
Javert4186 on 4/10/2006 at 03:05
Quote Posted by Agent Monkeysee
Actually it's almost certainly the opposite. Intelligence studies... suggest that the more social an animal is the more, I dunno about
intelligent per se, but the more akin to
human intelligence the animal will exhibit.
Where on earth are you getting this from? This sounds likeyou are quoting Roma, 2006 (Right Out of My Ass). By your definition ants and bees are smarter than cats.
Gingerbread Man on 4/10/2006 at 03:31
It's a circle. Higher "intelligence" requires a better brain, however you want to define "better" -- in the case of monkeys at least, the development of a more complex brain system was both the result and the cause of social behaviour.
Fruit = sugar, sugar = fuel. But fruit also means that you have to learn, remember, and track ripeness. And because it's resource management, you also have to learn and remember territory -- eventually you learn how to patrol an area, going from one region of fruit to another before circling back to the first one. Otherwise you have feast / famine situations.
Territory patrolling means you have to devote even more of your new shiny brain to geography and landmarking. Which means you need more fruit. And with all this energy going into cerebral functions, your body isn't getting the lion's share. Besides, you need a quick, small body to get at the fruit efficiently. So here you are, a brain on spindly legs, and that's no good when there are predators. So to cover more ground, scout new areas, and keep an eye out for snakes and jaguars, you have to huddle together and create some kind of division of labour. Which is the beginnings of very complex social behaviour, and that requires more fuel to keep the brain remembering, tracking, and (more importantly) figuring out ways to improve your social status.
Ants are not social, nor are bees. They have a heirarchy, a caste system, and that's based on biology rather than cognition. In a monkey tribe, it's not always the biggest / oldest / strongest that is in charge. More often than not, it's the most cunning. Troupes of monkeys also display upward, downward, and sideway movement throguh the social strata. A drone bee never becomes the queen.
Anyway, if anyone can actually define "intelligence" in some sort of testable way, that would be a start. But assuming we're talking about something which is implied by complex and -- in this case -- gregarious behaviour, then ants don't have it. They're no more intelligent by those criteria than the gears and springs in a clock.
Javert4186 on 5/10/2006 at 01:51
In animals, the test of intelligence is problem solving, not social behavior (for example, the classic experiment where they showed monkeys could figure out how to stack a box on another box to get a reward while other animals could not). More specifically, the ability to achieve one's goals in response to novel stimuli. I'm not making this up, that is what most psychologists believe. Some, like Howard Gardner, think there are multiple intelligences (these are skill or domain based - musical, mathematical, spatial) the only one that comes close to the ability to act in social contexts is a subtype of personal intelligence which is really more like empathy.
All kinds of animals have social hierarchies, these are instinctive - essentially the same thing that you are calling "biological, not cognitive". I don't see how something causing behavior could be biological and not cognitive. Cognition arises from the presence of a forebrain (even if it is a rudimentary one).
Understanding how to behave in a hierarchy takes reward and punishment primarily. "hey I don't eat when I hunt alone. I better find others" Note that in terms of collaborative hunting, the only primate that does that is man, which we probably learned from the domesticated dogs who neanderthals travelled with. No other primate is collaborative in their hunting (read Animals in Translation if you don't believe me). Are dogs therefore smarter than apes?
Now think about people. Would you say that the most intelligent are the most socially capable? Or even that the socially skilled are always the smartest? I know we are talking about animals, but if social behavior = intelligence, then it is the logical conclusion of your argument.
M
caringiscreepy on 5/10/2006 at 02:01
but apes dont really hunt. i mean they dont need to stalk and kill fruit. sorry i realise this is nit-picking!
Javert4186 on 5/10/2006 at 02:18
Quote Posted by caringiscreepy
but apes dont really hunt. i mean they dont need to stalk and kill fruit. sorry i realise this is nit-picking!
What do you think I am doing?:p
Gingerbread Man on 5/10/2006 at 02:37
Quote Posted by Javert4186
I know we are talking about animals, but if social behavior = intelligence, then it is the logical conclusion of your argument.
Yeah, see, I think you totally missed my point. Or one of them, at any rate.
