Yeah that’s a great question. In my reasoning absence of evidence is the evidence of absence, but admittedly a weak one. Theoretically I imagine you can run an experiment to test this, something like—present a chimpanzee with a very difficult but solvable task, let it have maybe one go to figure out how things work, then take the task away. Then let it have another try after some time, repeat (eta: with new chimpanzees or tasks), measure success as a function of time. I’m not saying it’s a great experiment design, just that “spends resting hours on solving problems” is an externally observable quality. If there’s any real evidence they do, I’ll be the first to admit that part is not correct, and it was just a guess to begin with.
Yeah that’s a great question. In my reasoning absence of evidence is the evidence of absence, but admittedly a weak one. Theoretically I imagine you can run an experiment to test this, something like—present a chimpanzee with a very difficult but solvable task, let it have maybe one go to figure out how things work, then take the task away. Then let it have another try after some time, repeat (eta: with new chimpanzees or tasks), measure success as a function of time. I’m not saying it’s a great experiment design, just that “spends resting hours on solving problems” is an externally observable quality. If there’s any real evidence they do, I’ll be the first to admit that part is not correct, and it was just a guess to begin with.