Without commenting on the rest of the review: wasn’t Clever Hans demonstrated to be not “here’s how animals are surprisingly intelligent” but “here’s how it’s surprisingly easy to sneak body language cues to an animal”?
Exactly. Horses are intelligent enough to understand involuntary body language, but they still can’t create societies. Harari argues that this is a point in favor of the idea that communication alone is not sufficient for mass cooperation.
Without commenting on the rest of the review: wasn’t Clever Hans demonstrated to be not “here’s how animals are surprisingly intelligent” but “here’s how it’s surprisingly easy to sneak body language cues to an animal”?
I understood this sentence to mean that animals are intelligent insofar as they can pick up subtle body language cues.
Exactly. Horses are intelligent enough to understand involuntary body language, but they still can’t create societies. Harari argues that this is a point in favor of the idea that communication alone is not sufficient for mass cooperation.