classic excerpts for my first thesis draft
goal: to try and write until I know what i want to say, then delete all the parts that look like this, but I'm fond of this so here you go
Humans love dogs. Dogs love humans. This lovely two-way relationship has lead to all sorts of innovations. For one thing, humans have bred dogs to do a variety of specific tasks, but in addition to this, to survive dogs had to be able to speak human. Since dogs have no larynxes, they were forced to learn alternative methods of communication. While still evolving true telepathy, they currently display a rather advanced capability to comprehend humans, something that, in all honesty, humans aren’t very good at, which is why they need dogs.
So anyway, first of all you’ve got the idea of theory of mind, which is thought to be a large part of the reason that humans are so “good” with other humans. Theory of mind is cool because if you start testing babies at tiny-tot time A and then test them when they’re more like toddlers you can see the shift from I can’t see you and you can’t see me to I want this cookie and you prefer muffins. For a long time, since human beings are arrogant fucks, they decided they were the only ones with theory of mind. There are many examples of similar hubris throughout history.
In this case however, science has slowly proven humans wrong (ironic since they, in fact, are science). Similar to most studies, the first TOM studies were done with chimps and, in fact, proved the general human hypothesis that only humans are awesome. Later studies however, which were more sensitive to the context in which the chimps were being asked to perform (in these cases competition versus cooperative) found that chimps were actually pretty good at understanding the knowledge of both humans and conspecifics.
in other news, I really wish I was eating sugar. Mm sugar.