Science, AI, and illusions of understanding
Many Minds
AI will fundamentally transform science. It will supercharge the research process, making it faster and more efficient and broader in scope. It will make scientists themselves vastly more productive, more objective, maybe more creative. It will make many human participants—and probably some human scientists—obsolete… Or at least these are some of the claims we are hearing these days. There is no question that various AI tools could radically reshape how science is done, and how much science is done. What we stand to gain in all this is pretty clear. What we stand to lose is less obvious,...
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The primeval soil of play
Many Minds
Puppies wrestling and mock-biting each other. Toddlers playing hide and seek. Kittens pouncing—repeatedly—on a toy mouse. You've no doubt looked on at scenes like this with amusement. And you've no doubt seen some of those viral videos—of ravens sledding down hills, of bumble bees playing with balls. All these moments make us smile, maybe even giggle. But the scientific questions they raise merit serious attention. Where do we see play in the animal kingdom? Where do we not? What functions does play serve? Do we—and many other creatures—have an elemental need for play? My guest today...
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The big five and beyond
Many Minds
If you've heard anything about the study of human personality, you've probably heard about the “big five.” This is a framework that attempts to characterize human personality in terms of five broad factors or dimensions—neuroticism, extraversion, openness, conscientiousness, and agreeableness. The big five framework has been enormously influential, generating heaps and heaps of data, and study after study on the stability of personality, on the factors that shape our personalities, on how our personalities predict success and satisfaction. But is the big five really the best we can do?...
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Philosophers on psychedelics
Many Minds
Some call it the "psychedelic renaissance." In the last decade or so, interest in psychedelic drugs has surged—and not just among Silicon Valley types and psychiatrists and neuroscientists. It's also surged among a stereotypically soberer crowd: academic philosophers. The reasons are clear. With their varied and sometimes transformative effects, psychedelics raise ethical questions, epistemological questions, metaphysical questions, questions about the nature of experience and the nature of the mind. My guest today is . Chris is a philosopher of cognitive science at the University of Western...
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The cuttlefish and its coat of many colors
Many Minds
We humans have a hard time becoming invisible. For better or worse, we're basically stuck with the skin and body we have; we’re pretty fixed in our color, our shape, our overall appearance. And so we're fascinated by creatures that aren't—creatures that morph to meet the moment, that can functionally disappear, that can shape-shift on a dime. And no creatures are more skilled, more astonishing, more bedazzling in their abilities to do this kind of thing than the cephalopods. But how do they do this exactly? What's going on in their skin? What's going on under their skin? And what's going...
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Life, free energy, and the pursuit of goals
Many Minds
You've probably come across the "free energy principle." It's become one of the most influential ideas in the broader cognitive sciences. Since the neuroscientist Karl Friston first introduced it in 2005, the theory has been fleshed out, extended, generalized, criticized, and cited thousands and thousands of times. But what is this idea, exactly? What does it say about the nature of brains and minds? What does it say about the phenomenon of life itself? And is anything that it says really that new? My guest today is . Kate is a philosopher at the University of Edinburgh and the author of the...
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Universal emotions in fact and fiction
Many Minds
Are human emotions universal? Or do they vary from one place to the next and from one time period to the next? It's a big question, an old question. And every discipline that's grappled with it brings its own take, its own framings and forms of evidence. Some researchers appeal to cross-cultural experiments; others turn to neuroimaging studies or conceptual analysis. Some even look to fiction. My guest today is , an Associate Professor of English Literature at Arizona State University. Brad is the author of a new book, ; in it he maps the landscape of debate around this long-contested topic....
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From the archive: Fermentation, fire, and our big brains
Many Minds
Hi friends, We're taking care of some spring cleaning this week. We'll be back in two weeks with a new episode. In the meantime, enjoy this favorite from our archives! - The Many Minds team ––––––––– [originally aired February 22, 2024] Brains are not cheap. It takes a lot of calories to run a brain, and the bigger your brain, the more calories it takes. So how is it that, over the last couple million years, the human brain tripled in size. How could we possibly have afforded that? Where did the extra calories come from? There's no shortage of suggestions out there. Some say...
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Howl, grunt, sing
Many Minds
The tree of life is a noisy place. From one branch come hoots and howls, from another come clicks and buzzes and whines. And coming from all over you hear the swell of song. But what is all this ruckus about? Why do so many animals communicate with sound? What kinds of meaning do these sounds convey? And—beyond the case of human speech—do any of these sounds merit the label of “language”? My guest today is , a zoologist at Cambridge University. Arik is an expert on vocal communication across the animal kingdom and the author of the recent book . Here, Arik and I talk about why the...
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The development of evolution
Many Minds
Evolution is not what it used to be. A lot has changed since Darwin's day. In the first half of the 20th century, evolutionary theory was integrated with an emerging understanding of genetics. Late in the 20th century, biologists started taking seriously the idea that organisms don't just adapt to their environments, they change them. Recently, researchers have started to acknowledge the role of culture in evolutionary processes. And so slowly our understanding of evolution has been reconsidered, updated, expanded. And more updates are underway. But it's not just our understanding of evolution...
info_outlineThey tend to move under the cover of darkness. As night descends, they come for your gardens and compost piles, for your trash cans and attic spaces. They are raccoons, skunks, and coyotes. And if you live in urban North America, they are a growing presence. Whether you consider them menacing, cute, fascinating, or all of the above, you have to grant that they are quite a clever crew. After all, they've figured out how to adapt to human-dominated spaces. But how have they done this? What traits and talents have allowed them to evolve into this brave new niche? And are they still evolving into it?
My guest today is Dr. Sarah Benson-Amram. Sarah is Assistant Professor of Forest and Conservation Sciences and Zoology at the University of British Columbia; she also directs the Animal Behavior & Cognition Lab at UBC. Sarah's research group focuses on the behavioral and cognitive ecology of urban wildlife. They ask what urban wildlife can teach us about animal cognition more generally and try to understand ways to smooth human-wildlife interactions.
Here, Sarah and I talk about her work on that trio I mentioned before: raccoons, skunks, and coyotes. These three species are all members of the mammalian order of carnivora, a clade of animals that Sarah has focused on throughout her career and one that has been underrepresented in studies of animal cognition. We discuss the traits that have allowed these species—and certain members of these species—to thrive in dynamic, daunting urban spaces. We also talk about the big picture of the evolution of intelligence—and how urban adapter species might shed light on what is known as the cognitive buffer hypothesis. Along the way, we touch on: the neophilia of raccoons and the neophobia of coyotes, puzzle boxes, the Aesop's fable task, hyenas and elephants, brain size, individual differences, human-wildlife conflict, comparative gastronomy, and the cognitive arms race that might be unfolding in our cities.
If you have any feedback for us, we would love to hear from you. Guest suggestions? Topics or formats you'd like to see? Blistering critiques? Effusive compliments? We're open to all of it. You can email us at manymindspodcast at gmail dot com. That's manymindspodcast at gmail. Though, honestly, if it's really an effusive compliment, feel free to just post that publicly somewhere.
Alright friends, on to my conversation with Sarah Benson-Amram. Enjoy!
A transcript of this episode is available here.
Notes and links
8:50 – A study of manual dexterity in raccoons.
11:30 – A video featuring raccoon chittering, among other vocalizations.
12:00 – A recent academic paper on the categorization of wildlife responses to urbanization—avoider, adapter, exploiter—with some critical discussion.
14:00 – A study of how animals are becoming more nocturnal in response to humans.
18:00 – An encyclopedia article on the Social Intelligence Hypothesis, by one of its originators, Richard Byrne. A recent appraisal of how the hypothesis has fared across different taxa.
18:30 – A recent review article by Dr. Benson-Amram and colleagues surveying carnivore cognition.
25:00 – On the question of urban vs rural animals, see the popular article, ‘Are cities making animals smarter?’
28:00 – A study by Dr. Benson-Amram and colleagues using puzzle boxes to study behavioral flexibility in captive raccoons. See also her follow-up study, conducted with a large team of neuroscience collaborators, examining the brains of raccoons who successfully solved the puzzle boxes.
34:30 – An earlier study by Dr. Benson-Amram on innovative problem solving in hyenas.
36:30 – Our earlier episode on animal personality with Dr. Kate Laskowski.
39:00 – A study by Dr. Benson-Amram and colleagues exploring raccoons’ ability to solve the Aesop’s Fable task. She has also used this task with elephants.
44:00 – A study by Dr. Benson-Amram and colleagues examining reversal learning in raccoons, skunks, and coyotes.
49:00 – An article articulating the “cognitive buffer hypothesis.”
51:00 – A paper discussing—and “reviving”—the so-called ecological intelligence hypothesis.
53:00 – A study by Dr. Benson-Amram and colleagues comparing brain size and problem-solving ability in mammalian carnivores.
56:00 – A paper by Dr. Benson-Amram and colleagues on cognition in so-called nuisance species, in which they discuss the idea of a "cognitive arms race."
57:30 – A paper on bin-opening in cockatoos and how it might be leading to an “innovation arms race.”
Recommendations
How Monkeys See the World, Dorothy Cheney and Robert Seyfarth
Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are? by Frans De Waal
An Immense World, by Ed Yong (featured in a previous episode!)
Urban Carnivores, by Stanley D. Gehrt, Seth P. D. Riley, and Brian L. Cypher
Many Minds is a project of the Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute, which is made possible by a generous grant from the Templeton World Charity Foundation to UCLA. It is hosted and produced by Kensy Cooperrider, with help from Assistant Producer Urte Laukaityte and with creative support from DISI Directors Erica Cartmill and Jacob Foster. Our artwork is by Ben Oldroyd. Our transcripts are created by Sarah Dopierala.
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