I’ve always wondered how intelligent dogs, birds, chimpanzees, bonobos, dolphins, rats, etc. could become with say, 100 years of rigorous scientific selective breeding for intelligence.
I can’t imagine any of them would reach human level intelligence (unless they had some really lucky mutations), but they might become extremely interesting, and highly instructive about the nature of intelligence.
Oh, I think they’re already extremely interesting/instructive. Consider Border Collies; they can memorize <300 commands, which is pretty impressive. There aren’t any grammar-producing results or indication of genuine understanding, but just the memorization points to a pretty good memory. And the border colly breed only goes back 1 or 2 centuries before it disappears in the general sheepherding/working-dog haze.
What could your 100 years of rigorous breeding do? I dunno; intuitively I feel that if silver foxes could be completely domesticated in a few decades, 10 decades ought to get border collies up to chimp-level cognition.
I’ve always wondered how intelligent dogs, birds, chimpanzees, bonobos, dolphins, rats, etc. could become with say, 100 years of rigorous scientific selective breeding for intelligence.
I can’t imagine any of them would reach human level intelligence (unless they had some really lucky mutations), but they might become extremely interesting, and highly instructive about the nature of intelligence.
Oh, I think they’re already extremely interesting/instructive. Consider Border Collies; they can memorize <300 commands, which is pretty impressive. There aren’t any grammar-producing results or indication of genuine understanding, but just the memorization points to a pretty good memory. And the border colly breed only goes back 1 or 2 centuries before it disappears in the general sheepherding/working-dog haze.
What could your 100 years of rigorous breeding do? I dunno; intuitively I feel that if silver foxes could be completely domesticated in a few decades, 10 decades ought to get border collies up to chimp-level cognition.