Claire Xen  🏳️‍⚧️ 🏳️‍🌈 🧙🏻‍♀️ BLM  🏴 🚩

i wonder if i can teach our cat to open cans or at least packets of cat food

this cat clearly understands the abstract concept of a game. she doesn't hunt a toy mouse, she plays hide-and-seek with me. doesn't even have to be a mouse, anything she can grab with her mouth works. problem is, she's way too good at it for it to stay entertaining for long

i've pretty much exhausted the set of places in this apt where i can hide a mouse. she sees the general direction where it went, plans how to get there, follows the plan, plans again if it didn't work, and uses her sight (i've verified that it's not smell) to locate the mouse

roommate says that i'm playing portal with her, and (a) basically yes (b) i should definitely teach her more abstract concepts like "button" (c) please for the love of god can some VC fund Aperture Science so I don't have to make everything myself #catcognition

my working theory is that intelligence is way more common in animals than what common knowledge says but only the species that have language can keep it in active use for a lifetime. the rest just kind of figure out how to survive and then get stuck in a rut

I'm very conflicted about this theory. On the one hand my gut feeling tells me that this is true for most reasonable definitions of "intelligence". On the other hand I don't know of even a single definition of "intelligence" that I would call "reasonable" (in non-AI setting).

by "intelligence" here i mean "rudimentary theory of mind and ability to plan ahead in short term"