I think we’re mostly in agreement, and I’m not disputing that it pays to be careful when it comes to animal cognition. I’d say again that I think it’s a meta-rational skill to see the patterns of what is likely to work and what isn’t, and this kind of stuff is near-impossible to communicate well.
I’ve read about the car-nutracker thing somewhere, but without the null result from research. If you had asked me to bet I’d say it would be unlikely to work. But it’s illustrative that we both still agree that corvids are smart and there’s a ton of evidence for it. We just don’t know the exact ways and forms, and that’s how I feel about the dog thing. There’s something there but we need to actually study it to know the exact shape and form.
I predict FluentPet is at best going to become a niche hobby down the road, with less than 1% of dog owners having trained their pet in 10 years.
I don’t think it will be niche because it’s already not niche, considering the massive viewership. But your 1% figure sounds about right as a higher bound, given the sheer number of dog owners, the amount of work required and people’s low desire to train their pets. A cursory google search says 4% of US dog owners take a training class, so serious button use will have to be a fraction of that.
I think we’re mostly in agreement, and I’m not disputing that it pays to be careful when it comes to animal cognition. I’d say again that I think it’s a meta-rational skill to see the patterns of what is likely to work and what isn’t, and this kind of stuff is near-impossible to communicate well.
I’ve read about the car-nutracker thing somewhere, but without the null result from research. If you had asked me to bet I’d say it would be unlikely to work. But it’s illustrative that we both still agree that corvids are smart and there’s a ton of evidence for it. We just don’t know the exact ways and forms, and that’s how I feel about the dog thing. There’s something there but we need to actually study it to know the exact shape and form.
I don’t think it will be niche because it’s already not niche, considering the massive viewership. But your 1% figure sounds about right as a higher bound, given the sheer number of dog owners, the amount of work required and people’s low desire to train their pets. A cursory google search says 4% of US dog owners take a training class, so serious button use will have to be a fraction of that.