this post was submitted on 04 Jan 2025
145 points (98.0% liked)

Casual Conversation

2200 readers
1 users here now

Share a story, ask a question, or start a conversation about (almost) anything you desire. Maybe you'll make some friends in the process.


RULES (updated 01/22/25)

  1. Be respectful: no harassment, hate speech, bigotry, and/or trolling. To be concise, disrespect is defined by escalation.
  2. Encourage conversation in your OP. This means including heavily implicative subject matter when you can and also engaging in your thread when possible. You won't be punished for trying.
  3. Avoid controversial topics (politics or societal debates come to mind, though we are not saying not to talk about anything that resembles these). There's a guide in the protocol book offered as a mod model that can be used for that; it's vague until you realize it was made for things like the rule in question. At least four purple answers must apply to a "controversial" message for it to be allowed.
  4. Keep it clean and SFW: No illegal content or anything gross and inappropriate. A rule of thumb is if a recording of a conversation put on another platform would get someone a COPPA violation response, that exact exchange should be avoided when possible.
  5. No solicitation such as ads, promotional content, spam, surveys etc. The chart redirected to above applies to spam material as well, which is one of the reasons its wording is vague, as it applies to a few things. Again, a "spammy" message must be applicable to four purple answers before it's allowed.
  6. Respect privacy as well as truth: Don’t ask for or share any personal information or slander anyone. A rule of thumb is if something is enough info to go by that it "would be a copyright violation if the info was art" as another group put it, or that it alone can be used to narrow someone down to 150 physical humans (Dunbar's Number) or less, it's considered an excess breach of privacy. Slander is defined by intentional utilitarian misguidance at the expense (positive or negative) of a sentient entity. This often links back to or mixes with rule one, which implies, for example, that even something that is true can still amount to what slander is trying to achieve, and that will be looked down upon.

Casual conversation communities:

Related discussion-focused communities

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

If you sit down next to a cat, and throw your arm over the back of the sofa while someone reaches over from behind and starts to pet the cat, and then after a little bit you stand up and leave while the phantom arm is still petting the cat, the cat understands that something really freaky is happening, gets scared, and runs away.

I would have thought they'd be happy that whatever weird thing is happening is petting them, but apparently not. An arm with no human is alarming and bad. I think it's cool that their mental model is that similar to ours.

top 15 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] [email protected] 59 points 3 months ago (1 children)

They too have an understanding of object permanence for things outside their field of vision. They want to understand what's near them and what's touching them.

If they realize the thing touching them is unknown and it can't make sense of what it might be then it might be something dangerous (and this instinct will still be there in a safe space in your home).

[–] [email protected] 30 points 3 months ago

It's even more than that. The cat thought it knew who was doing the petting, then the world model with that explanation was yanked out of existence.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 3 months ago (1 children)

I vaguely recall Monty Python conducting some studies on confusing cats too. Thanks for your contributions to the ongoing research!

[–] [email protected] 19 points 3 months ago (2 children)

Did you just see this on youtube? I was mindlessly scrolling while not logged in or anything and I saw a thumbnail of a video of that exact scenario.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

Can confirm. This exact thing was on my YouTube feed yesterday. And I mean precisely as OP describes it.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 months ago

Did OP watch that and post this because of it? TIME HAS YET TO TELL

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 months ago

You caught me, that is exactly what happened.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Mammals in general are so smart that I wonder if this mental model is shared by the whole class, or at least the Boreoeutheria (clade that includes both carnivores and primates, plus a lot more critters). And, like, the evolutionary benefits of that model are obvious - if whatever tore your arm apart is still lying around, you need to run away ASAP.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 3 months ago (2 children)

Birds are very smart too, some of them are much smarter than the average mammal.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 3 months ago

I remember an article not long ago about a songbird that “riffs” within its song. Something like a jazz musician might. I’m fuzzy on the details, but this was stated as a sign of intelligence. The theory is that neural density might be variable based on the species…or something. Basically even that a bird brain can be intelligent and capable of some level of free thinking. We all know about crows and their street smarts too.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago

Some of them are really smart indeed, and I wouldn't be surprised if they developed a similar mental model through convergent evolution.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 3 months ago
[–] [email protected] 7 points 3 months ago

Are you a youtuber doing "social experiments" now, but now with cats?

Or are you trying to do "IQ tests" on cats?

😆