Chimps hate school too
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Apes will speak
One day, apes will converse with humans. They will not be as fluent and rich in their expressions as the best of humans. They will probably even find it hard to ever get to human averge. However, they will converse. They will use a sign language or a computer language. However, those conversations will take place one day. The ape brain is ready. First, however, humans need to understand that the path to wisdom does not go through schooling. Not for humans, and not for the apes.
The story of the conversation with apes should be used an inspiration for educators. Stop schooling children!
Why don't apes like, school?
Humans always wondered about the richness of the language of animal communication. Perhaps, we could tap into the animal world. We might then communicate and learn more about animal lives.
There have been many efforts to communicate with apes, dolphins, and other animals considered highly intelligent. If apes can beat humans in many cognitive tasks, they should then have a capacity to acquire some language in which they could communicate with humans. Speech areas of the cortex are just specialized fields that develop in their unique locations as a result of unique brain wiring at work in language development. Input and output determine the conceptualization and the architecture (topology). The unique anatomical advantages granting the ability to produce a variety of vocals is not a problem. Apes could easily use a sign language like Koko. In contrast, singing birds have a wide range of vocal capacities, but they did not develop a talking culture (as far as we know).
Scientists often seem to make the same error when they try to teach apes as they make when they try to school humans. The key to efficient learning is the learn drive and this cannot be effectively controlled extrinsically.
The standard schooled way is to generate associations, e.g. between human spoken words and pictures. It is not much different than learning with SuperMemo except scientists do not rely much on spaced repetition. If they did, they might actually make things worse by generating toxic memories (see: SuperMemo does not work for children).
The main problem is that researchers do not sufficiently rely on the ape's learn drive. The apes subject to operant conditioning remember the tricks of the language because they get rewarded for successful recall (e.g. tasty treats). As a result, their motivation to learn is comparable to that of a bored student at school. They will remember if they have to, but they will almost never go beyond what is required. Soon they will be well-schooled and further progress will depend on the blood, sweat and tears of the researcher.
An important aspect of schooling is that first you force the individual to learn a symbol or a sign, and only then there is a chance to use it and prove symbol's usefulness. Like with a mollycoddled baby, researchers know the habits of an ape: when it needs food, when it is time to sleep, thus the artificial barren landscape is comparable to "stressless upbringing" within uninteresting environment.
A natural way to raise a chimp to high intelligence would be to let him roam into human community voluntarily and adapt for the sake of reward that are typical for humans. Disparities of strength and emotion could easily make a chimp into a bully, which would instantly pose challenges in adaptation. Another interesting avenue would be to let chimps explore a virtual world. We should quickly make an effort to let apes play computer games to their heart's content. Only if we observed significant differences with humans could we safely say we have outdistanced our cousins well enough for our worlds to be unbridgeable. We might never form a mixed free society. Without freedom, chimps in human world are treated like slaves. This perpetuates the myths about the limits of their brains. This was exactly what happened to actual slaves in conditions of slavery. To this day we harbor the myth that whites are somewhat superior to other races (intellectually).
In the ideal case, an ape should live in an intelligent free community dominated by humans communicating with apes fluently in a chosen language (e.g. sign language based on ape preferences), full of children who learn the same non-spoken language (to the exclusion of human languages) and enhanced with all the great tools of modern digital world such as computer games tailored to ape preferences. As apes cannot speak, they are mute, but capable of understanding spoken language. Excluding spoken language might eliminate one of the reasons for potential discrimination in the community.
Is such a community realistic? Apes are stronger than humans, and they develop faster. Children would quickly become slaves of dominant bullies. Without children, cultural transmission from adult humans might be difficult. At the end of this text, I will present an exemplary algorithm that would allow of communication between separated communities or societies.
Ape experiments
Washoe, Nim, Koko and Kanzi
Gua (1931)
A fantastic early wasted chance was the Kellog experiment in which a chimp was to be raised together with a baby, side by side, with no differences in upbringing (1931). The experiment started with an unethical separation of the chimp baby from her mother. That would have an instant effect on development. Separation from mother has powerful impact in both apes and humans. On one hand, the baby would be clingier, stress prone, and dependent on caregivers. This is great for achieving obedience and dutiful schooled learning. However, such a baby quickly hits a wall and further progress is less likely. The same happens to sensitive kids at school. At some point, expectations exceed the pleasure of progress, and a feedback loop of stagnation sets in. Allegedly, the human baby started barking like a chimp, which scared of his parents. The worry was not necessary. Chimps are on a faster developmental trajectory, and it would only be natural to have a dominant effect on child development. For this to be a risk, a child would need to lose his need to communicate with humans, which would be unlikely.
Gua could understand some words faster than Donald: "get down", "don't touch", etc. Skeptics asked about the difference between chimps and training dogs to understand voice commands. The skepticism implies that the dog response is of a different quality than a human response. If we speak of a simple pattern recognition, voice recognition and assocation of the stimulus with a desired behavior, we have the exact same mechanisms involved in dogs, chimps and humans. Human intellectual superiority is hardly relevant in that form of training. The difference shows up at later stages. Understanding "fetch" is analogous in those species. However, a human might provide a vocal response "No!".
We need to remember about a common illusion associated with development. Children who develop fast often hit the ceiling faster. The run out of cells and synapses to employ pruning for the sake of abstractness. Women tend to develop faster. They excel in preschool and primary school. However, past puberty, the boys tend to catch up and still have some reserve to continue on a fast crystallization on of intelligence. In conditions of compulsory schooling, this can have a devastating effect on self-esteem in women, which contributes to the myth that women are less intelligent than men.
Kids who are late in development (e.g. late to speak, late to read, etc.) are often branded as intellectually tardy. This cognitive misappreciation stems from the precocity paradox. That school branding again may have a tragic effect on self-esteem and become a self-fulfilling prophecy. In reality, kids with the highest potential to develop remarkable intelligence do proceed over a slower developmental trajectory on average. This is just a matter of statistics associated with rewiring vast areas of the neocortex in the conceptualization process.
Koko
Figure: Iconic image of Koko and Penny. A close relationship with a human is a great formula for boosting the learn drive for language. Picture source: BBC
Dr Terrace does not understand the brain
I have a great deal of reservations about work, claims, and motivations of Dr Herbert Terrace. He started as a believer in the ape language only to denounce it later on with seemingly credible claim "I investigated and concluded I was wrong".
Here, I hypothesize that Terrace was more into publicity than into science. When it was convenient to announce the incredible ape Nim Chimpsky, he did so. When the interest waned, he came up with another stunt claiming he was wrong. That helped selling his book. Terrace's science plans seemed strongly affected by his sexual interests. Most of early caregivers to Nim were attractive ladies, and (human) sex was an extra enjoyable ingredient in ape research.
When Terrace reunited with Nim a year after abandoning him in a chimp shelter, Nim showed incredible joy and love that we rarely see even in humans. This was not the case when Nim was visited by his other caregivers (with some exceptions, e.g. Bob Ingersoll). Terrace visited Nim with TV cameras. It was all for show. Terrace never visited his friend Nim again in the following two decades. Terrace had no characteristics of a loving mother, and no insight into the mind of "his child".
I have insufficient evidence to complain about Terrace ethics, however, I debate it only as a hypothesis about why a researcher would be so blatantly wrong. After all, he should know about Nim far more than me. I believe that the truth about Nim is best revealed through the minds of those who truly loved that animal. Like a good mother, they all knew they were in a dialog with an animal even if they did not care much about the science part. My own reasoning is based on the understanding on how the conceptualization process works in the adaptation to the environment. At the level of the cortex, there are no qualitative differences between humans and apes in their ability to develop or learn a language. Terrace was analytical, which provided for a schooled perspective. Caretakers were loving, which helped them understand the analogies between ape-to-human vs. child-to-adult communication.
The indicators on Terrace's poor grip of conceptual computation is his reasoning about Nim. "Apes do not understand. They do not ask questions. They just want food!". "The only reason Nim signed was to obtain rewards". We all speak or listen to obtain rewards. The whole behavior is based on seeking rewards and avoiding penalties.
In conclusion, Terrace said (source):
That says an awful lot about the evolution of intelligence. How do chimpanzees think without language? How do they remember without language?
The problem is that we need no language for conceptual computation. It is school that seems to convince everyone that reasoning requires a language. A little toddler can solve pretty complex problems without ever being able to recognize words or string them together. If you reason in words, you have likely been schooled. When typing these words, I do tend to reason in words, however, that's only the reasoning that precedes expressing my thoughts in written language. The thought behind those words has a form of the conceptual computation. It is strongly visual and keeps sparkling in the background. Conceptual computation branches out into many areas of perception.
Terrace observed that Nim's best sentence was devoid of grammar: "give orange me food give eat me orange food give eat orange me you". Chomsky believes that grammar is hard-wired in the brain. It must be a human brain, he believes. In reality, we learn grammar in the exact same way as we recognize other patterns in the environment. Nim's grammar is just a sack of nouns and verbs that encodes meaning with a bit of backup from reasoning. We, grammatical humans, do not have any problems with decoding the sentence, so the chimp does not have much motivation to improve on the syntax.
Terrace's PhD was on discriminant learning without errors. This is a classic effort in Skinnerian approach where intelligence plays little role, and goals are achieved with little frustration. This kind of research and reasoning underlie the foundation of the Prussian school model in which kids are trained to respond correctly, build associations, avoid errors, and be guided through the system without much frustration (as in Finnish or Australian school systems).
Dr Susan Savage-Rumbaugh says that the linguists have it all backwards: "Comprehension is the route into language". She observes that translating comprehension to words is easy. She is right. (source). In addition, Susan loves her apes, and it shows (see her profound TED Talk)(hilarious too).
Terrace came closest to explaining the problem of ape language when he noticed the deficit of shared attention, and shared intentionality between chimps and caretakers. However, little does he emphasize that in the wild, chimps hunt in groups, employ shared gaze, facial gesture imitation, or dyadic joint attention (such as between a mother and an infant). Once again, we see the role of the mother. Chimp's life is a life on a leash in a caged orphanage under strict human control. We could simplify the theory by observing that a chimp just does not indeed give a d***. The effect of teaching without inner motivation is comparable to the effects of unwanted schooling in humans.
Conceptualization curve
Nim's progress in sign language vocabulary illustrates the universality of the conceptualization curve. The stabilization phase was not plotted. It should rather be called stagnation or reversal stage when Nim spent his time caged in a research center in a vaccine testing program.
Figure: Acquisition of new signs in a chimp follows the same conceptualization curve pattern as it is the case in humans. At four years old, the speed of learning is slower as it is the case of humans. The speed is determined by the needs, the culture, the learn drive, etc. It is not a reflection a smaller brain size and a smaller cortical surface. The presented case refers to Nim Chimpsky born in November 1973. Nim's vocabulary graph that begins at 5 months of age shows that chimps acquire vocabulary faster than children at first. This in turn reflects the developmental trajectory. Slow trajectory may imply higher ceiling (see: Precocity paradox)
In the conceptualization curve, once basic building blocks of rudimentary concepts fill out the brain of a newborn, first signs can be mastered. Those first useful concepts accelerate the conceptualization process, which is exponential at first.
Figure: Acquisition of new vocabulary in a child's life usually shows an exponential acceleration after learning the starting set of 20-50 words. This usually happens between 12 and 24 months. After that, a standard conceptualization curve is followed with a saturation phase reflecting the applicability of the learned vocabulary. This in turn reflects the complexity of culture and the richness of concepts employed in abstract thinking. For links to actual data sets see Nick Winter's blog. See also: Human Speechome Project
In learning vocabulary, in apes or in humans, saturation is inevitable:
Figure: Vocabulary use increases with age. At first the growth is exponential, at later ages, saturation is the result of limited applicability. Saturation separates the vocabulary growth curve from the conceptualization curve. We may run out of useful vocabulary, but we never run out of new concepts to learn to reason about reality. Source: TestYourVocab.com
It can be shown that the human cortex is vast enough to provide space for lifelong learning with no noticeable saturation (see How much knowledge can human brain hold).
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Figure: Projected course of lifelong knowledge acquisition in spaced repetition. The curve was compiled with the use of data from users of different ages. The middle course of the projected curve has been replaced with actual data from my own 32-years-long learning process (Piotr Wozniak, December 28, 2019). Instead of using the usual metric, i.e. the count of items, the curve uses the sum of retrievability estimates for the collection. All perceived accelerations in learning, e.g. caused by innovations in incremental reading, turned out largely illusory. This raises an exciting possibility that the overall speed of learning may be relatively constant as suggested by some properties of memory derived from the neurostatistical model of memory. The projected slowdown at older ages is hypothetical and may be associated with inevitable aging rather than with the limit on the size of the concept network
Even if cortical resources seem unlimited, in learning vocabulary, saturation is a reflection of usability. It is possible to drive one's vocabulary to 50,000 and beyond, e.g. with the help of SuperMemo. However, as evidenced by my own case, at some point, further progress is well-schooled, i.e. it does not reflect the needs, it reflects snobbishness or misguided understanding of pragmatic use of the language. There is little value to memorizing cute active forms of the language, if the use increases the risk of being hard to understand by your average interlocutor or reader? Analogously, passive memorization of all language mini stumbles becomes an art for art's sake.
When a friend mocked my attitude yesterday: "Nemo judex in causa sua", I rushed to Wikipedia and imported an article to SuperMemo. That's well-schooled knowledge hamstering. With my years of knowledge squirrelling, I may never see that phrase in my life again, not even in SuperMemo, and yet it takes valuable space, and the cost of googling is little enough to say that benefits of knowledge do not go beyond the costs of memorizing (an item), or even importing (a topic). What should I do? I left the phrase in the collection. It is a memento of my banter with a friendly teacher who loves to demonstrate his Latin wisdom.
A chimp's brain is more pragmatic. There is no SuperMemo and no well-schooled thinking, which goes like this: "I may need this word". The chimp will be driven solely by the learn drive. In the case of Nim, the saturation ceiling was lifted by extrinsic motivation. Nim was rewarded for memorizing new words even if he did not care about memorizing them. That artificial life of the saturation ceiling was a scourge of all primate language learning.
In conclusion, an ape's conceptualization curve must be similar to that of a human with the size limit providing no practical obstacles in learning. The speed of learning should be comparable if we consider the processing, and short-term memorization given the same level of motivation. The vocabulary saturation would reflect the needs in a given environment. As ape's environment is impoverished (from an ape's point of view), little wonder that apes might saturate at 6000 words while we start saturating at 30,000. Apes have little culture (see section: Culture). That might be painfully the most missing ingredient that sterilizes the learn drive, and limits it to basic survival instincts with food, sex, and social interaction in the center.
Unpredictability of conceptualization
For an ape to speak, ape's brain conceptualization would need to be driven by the need to use the language. The learn drive that determines the outcomes should have a strong language component.
The need for a language is universal in survival. Even the bees talk via the waggle dance. However, the brain tissue needed for learning is expensive. This is why most animals communicate using primitive signals. For fish, the language may include signals such as "predator", "food", "breeding", etc. The grammar may have just one production rule and a small set of terminals.
Even at this level, human-to-animal communication might be possible (e.g. with a robot bee doing a waggle dance to pass the messages to the hive).
Language learning is difficult and expensive. We can see it in human communities. Before the time the learn drive for language kicks in, a child may be unteachable. It is no coincidence that many smart kids speak late. Their passions for exploring the world may often overshadow the need to communicate. If a solo explorer feels fulfilled in his learning quest, he needs no help, and consequently, he needs no communication. In apes, this problem is far greater. In dogs, it is largely insurmountable. A cheetah on a savannah may have all her day focused on finding food. This kind of learn drive will not be conducive to developing a language.
The effect of the environment is obvious, but the effect of neural input on the development of the cortex may be less so. Imagine someone wired your sex organs in such a way that their impact on your brain and reward centers increased by an order of magnitude. Chances are that your entire life might revolve around sex. The brain would conceptualize differently. Even with present normative wiring, with reward diversity reduced due to life circumstances, a human may live their sexual obsessions all day long. It is not unusual to have a man focus entirely on finding mates for romantic adventures. Once compulsory schooling is over, further "academic" learning is of little interest in such cases, and conversations serve primarily the objective of mating, and small talk.
A sexually "over-conceptualized" brain would specialize in mating, and in all things needed for effective mating. For such a brain, the entire education, the job, the language, the habits, might all be subjected to the goal of reproduction.
Similarly, blind people have their conceptualization directed at maximization of the use of non-visual senses. This affects how the cortex develops. Areas for sight may play a number of useful functions that maximize adaptations unrelated to visual experience.
In Project Nim, Nim demonstrates how his sexual urges interfered with his learning. Instead of learning, he would hump a doll, his favorite cat, or even a rock. Nim is not dumber. His sexual urge is simply proportionally greater, and he does not try to hide it like humans do. He is not subject to social pressures.
Bonobos are super-smart, but the role of sex, social life and food in their lives is far larger than it is the case in humans. Consequently, a smaller portion of their learn drive is devoted to "academic" learning, and we can never see the snowballing effect of positive feedback between learning, communication, creativity, and problem solving. This learning-and-creativity positive feedback contributes to exorbitant learn drive that produces personalities such as Elon Musk. The effect of the environment is best illustrated in Koko. When she moved from the zoo full of distraction to life of a "human child", her vocabulary acquisition rate doubled.
As for urges and instincts that provide distraction, in my own brain, I found a weak spot for music. At times, music is irresistible. I may theorize that if learntropy of music is high, there should be some value in consuming music. In fact, Tom Durrie attributes his longevity to the love of music. When I discover a nice piece of funk, I cannot stop dancing. Music can invade my brain at best creative times. This is why I am very careful when I energize my morning with a few bars of music for a good start. In my case it is a matter of self-control. I rationally deny myself a bit of musical pleasure which only makes the drive worse. I empathize with bonobo. I am sure their problem is far greater. Their world is not less rich, but their defenses might be weaker.
Abstract thinking
Many people claim that apes, in their language learning, just mimic or memorize. They believe that apes lack comprehension and are unable of abstract thinking. Those claims come from the lack of understanding of the way the brain conducts conceptual computation.
To discuss abstract thinking, we need to define abstract knowledge. We can define abstract thinking as conceptual computation on abstract knowledge. In that sense, we can show that an ant can also employ abstract thinking even though a skeptic will not be satisfied with the degree of abstractness.
For an ant to tackle a worm, and collectively drag it to an anthill, the ant's brain needs to abstract from details to build a model of a worm, of food, of home, of routes, and the complex models of cooperation including vectors, forces, space, teammates, etc. This complex network of concept maps needs to be activated intelligently to procure motor function needed to get to the goal. This is nothing else but abstract thinking.
The only difference between ants and humans is the degree of richness in the world of concepts. It is not even complexity. It is the degree of abstractness achievable in the rich world of concepts where multiple concepts can be employed to abstract into a higher-level concept (e.g. where a leg, and a tail helps abstract to the level of a dog).
Our brains perform computations that are as simple as those in the brain of the ant when thinking of E-mc2. It is only the richness of tools that makes the difference. Ants have no idea of E, m or c. All they know is what might stand behind mass, light, and perhaps energy. The richness of concepts depends on the extensive store of memory for the conceptualization process. This store is proportional to the size of the cortex in which humans are vastly superior to ants and apes.
Size of the brain is not really that essential for speech unless a given functionally needs to compete for an area of the cortex with other important functionalities.
The cortex is plastic. Kids who lose the left brain early also develop a language. They may differ from your typical kids, but so will apes whose brains are even smaller.
Chimp brains are a third of human brain. That a lot of space to economize if chimps only wanted to.
Figure: The brain of a chimpanzee is one third of the human brain in size. That's plenty of cortex to economize (source: Wikipedia)
Chimp TV
A popular idea for chimp education is to just let the apes watch TV all day long and learn about humans and their culture. This is not unusual for parents to employ this kind of "education" when they are too busy.
Chimp education via TV is not likely to build a strong learn drive. Even dogs seem to have the advantage of domestication and a wider range of interest common with their owner.
If dogs show no interest in TV, the owner may claim they are just no smart enough. For one, TVs are designed for humans, and are imperfect viewing for dogs. They rarely show what interests dogs most: other dogs. Worse of all, TV sets do not release smells.
However, the real problem with chimps and TV is the same as with kids not being interested in adult TV or adults being bored with kid TV. It is a semantic mismatch resulting in low learntropy.
Kids love to watch YouTube or TikTok, and the most popular content is made by those who are just a bit more knowledgeable, or a bit more experienced, or a bit older, or a bit better equipped technologically. For adults, those YouTube videos are usually dumb and boring. Adults tend to think that kids would better take a schoolbook and do something "useful".
For TV or YouTube to make sense for chimps, it would best be made by chimps themselves. As compared with humans, they could undergo a faster cultural evolution due to not being limited by technology, and being able to draw upon human culture. We have a vicious circle here though. How do we motivate a chimp to make a movie without the chimp being interested in watching movies in the first place? Culture is like a snowball. It needs to start small.
In modern world, where kids can make their own movies, communicate via art and science, learn from each other, we sat them in a Prussian classroom as if nothing has changed since the 18th century.
Here is an orangutan, most patiently trying to communicate with humans using simple gestures. This kind of interaction, in the long run would lead to satisfactory communication and mutual understanding. Sadly, this kind of exchange never lasts. Humans will depart amused and amazed, while the ape will be forced to repeat the same rudimentary code when interacting with another newcomer: