It would be odd if they kept the cognitive machinery for this around (and using up resources for the rest of their bodies) without making use of it.
Humans who learn to drive cars have amazing cognitive machinery for it despite not being evolved for it. The human brain being able to edit the sense of time when driving cars seems pretty amazing. Similar things go for reading.
The ability of brains to learn is very general.
Given that the buttons work for autistic humans who are not capable of learning sign language learning to use them is likely less cognitively demanding then learning to use sign language.
I more meant “keeping around cognitive machinery which is capable of this” without making use of it. Given that wild wolves use (relatively) simple hunting strategies which do not seem to rely on much communication, there doesn’t seem to be much need to have a brain capable of communicating relatively abstract thoughts. That doesn’t seem to affect your core argument though
Good point about autistic humans who can’t learn sign language though, I hadn’t considered that. I guess my model of autism was more like:
“Autism affects the brain in lots of different ways which is able to knock out specific abilities (like speech) without knocking out other abilities (like the capability to have and communicate complex thoughts, which would not have evolved in an animal without speech)”
than drawing on some amount of general purpose computing behind each one. I haven’t studied autism enough to know if this is correct.
I would expect that moving fast running fast through a dense forest does take a lot of cognition to know where to go effectively. Terrain knowledge gets likely also used.
Humans who learn to drive cars have amazing cognitive machinery for it despite not being evolved for it. The human brain being able to edit the sense of time when driving cars seems pretty amazing. Similar things go for reading.
The ability of brains to learn is very general.
Given that the buttons work for autistic humans who are not capable of learning sign language learning to use them is likely less cognitively demanding then learning to use sign language.
I more meant “keeping around cognitive machinery which is capable of this” without making use of it. Given that wild wolves use (relatively) simple hunting strategies which do not seem to rely on much communication, there doesn’t seem to be much need to have a brain capable of communicating relatively abstract thoughts. That doesn’t seem to affect your core argument though
Good point about autistic humans who can’t learn sign language though, I hadn’t considered that. I guess my model of autism was more like:
“Autism affects the brain in lots of different ways which is able to knock out specific abilities (like speech) without knocking out other abilities (like the capability to have and communicate complex thoughts, which would not have evolved in an animal without speech)”
than drawing on some amount of general purpose computing behind each one. I haven’t studied autism enough to know if this is correct.
I would expect that moving fast running fast through a dense forest does take a lot of cognition to know where to go effectively. Terrain knowledge gets likely also used.
If that were the case, don’t you think that animals that actually run faster than humans in dense forest would be more intelligent ?
Which animals are you thinking about?