Latest gorilla tragedy

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Latest gorilla tragedy

Postby Anglerphobe » Fri Jun 22, 2018 8:47 pm

Fleeting are the the famous gorillas of this world. Koko, the western lowland gorilla that was taught to understand english and communicate with american sign language, and who had a cat, has gone to the great exclusive jungle in the sky. Unlike the other great gorillas of our time, gunned down in their youth, Koko died of natural causes at 46.

The news was accompanied by another round of the now traditional post mortem gorilla eulogising. News organisations and well wishers described her as "the gorilla who mastered sign language" and spilled their hearts at the tragedy of yet another celebrity ape death.
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"Tusser, they tell me, when thou wert alive,
Thou, teaching thrift, thyselfe couldst never thrive.
So, like the whetstone, many men are wont
To sharpen others, when themselves are blunt."

Anyone who has any kind of opinion fucking disgusts me.
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Re: Latest gorilla tragedy

Postby Deathclaw_Puncher » Fri Jun 22, 2018 10:41 pm

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Re: Latest gorilla tragedy

Postby cmsellers » Fri Jun 22, 2018 11:16 pm

I have nothing against Koko, however she was just a gorilla; the media focus on her as a "talking ape" is one of my pet peeves.

Koko learned a few signs for things she wants, and that's the limit of what's been convincingly demonstrated. When it came to Francine Patterson's claim about things like her use of vocabulary to communicate feelings and her ability to compound words, it was always necessary to have Patterson as an interpreter, and her interpretations would vary depending on what was convenient. When Koko signed "nipple" at female staff, Patterson would tell them to take their tops off, however when she signed "nipple" at visitors she would tell them that "nipple" sounds like "people" and Koko was telling them she liked people.

Patterson's research methods were unscientific, her treatment of Koko was questionable, and her treatment of female staff was completely inappropriate. She was an excellent showman and convinced the general public of her claims, however at the same time she managed to convince much of the scientific community that all animal language research is pointless and any convincing results are fraudulent.

And this is unfortunate, because we've since seen better work with more convincing results in animals that are not gorillas. The most persuasive case in my mind is Irene Pepperberg's work with Alex, though even if you believe all of Pepperberg's claims Alex could not use recursion, without which you cannot have a true language. (Indeed, there is only one case in animal intelligence studies which suggests any animals can reason recursively: studies of tool use in New Caledonian crows.) If you still want to find evidence of proto-language in our closest relatives, work with bonobos like Kanzi has also been far more rigorous than Patterson's work with Koko, and the results more convincing, if less sweeping in scope. Though the results with bonobos have been less impressive than Alex, I'm still willing to buy most of the claims researchers have made for Kanzi.

Humans have a bias toward large charismatic apes, and Patterson was an excellent self-promoter. I think that that's incredibly unfortunate. It's interesting that today, the "see also" sections of the Wikipedia pages for Alex and Kanzi both link to Koko's page, while Koko's page doesn't link to the pages of any other individual animals used in animal language experiments, which indicates the relative place each of these animals has in our collective consciousness: Koko is still the talking animal, despite the dearth of actual evidence that she could do anything beyond memorize a few signs for things she wants.
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Re: Latest gorilla tragedy

Postby Krashlia » Sat Jun 23, 2018 7:30 am

Deathclaw_Puncher wrote:
Spoiler: show
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that took me a while to notice.
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Re: Latest gorilla tragedy

Postby Marcuse » Sat Jun 23, 2018 11:55 am

Humans have a bias toward large charismatic apes


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InB4 tits out for Koko becomes a thing.
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Re: Latest gorilla tragedy

Postby cmsellers » Sat Jun 23, 2018 7:55 pm

Marcuse wrote:InB4 tits out for Koko becomes a thing.

Too late.

Also, if anyone is still trying to figure out DP's post
It spells out "Rest in Peace Koko•"
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Re: Latest gorilla tragedy

Postby Harambe » Sun Jun 24, 2018 12:26 am

Yes ... tits out for Koko indeed.

It's about time. I've been waiting for some ... companionship.
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