"... an emotion that has never previously been found in any other mammals apart from humans."
Before clicking, see if you can think of an experiment that would test a rat's capacity to feel regret.
Meanwhile, I'm picturing a rat singing "My Way"...
Regrets, I've had a few/But then again, too few to mention/I did what I had to do/And saw it through without exemption...
That actually is probably the way a rat thinks. (Hey: The Rat Pack!)
I'll bet you think I should regret writing this post. Non, je ne regrette rien.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
40 comments:
You're on fire!
HaHa. Bet California Chrome was regretting going so slow.
The Obama administration appears to be a refutation of that finding.
It takes a rat to know a rat.
I guess I've been wrong about some people....
Admitting regret is just Not Done. It shows weakness and humility.
Two rats. One guillotine. One piece of cheese. One rat lives. Another loses its head. Will the surviving rat recognize action and reaction, and return the cheese? Will it attend to the headless corpse-mouse?
The first hurdle will be to establish a recognition of cause and effect. The second hurdle will be to distinguish between curiosity and emotion.
The published experiment, at the very least, establishes not that rats experience regret, but that they exercise priorities. While turning around is circumstantial evidence of regret, it is also evidence of a simple non-linear decision process. I guess it depends on what the phenomenon of "emotion" is.
That said, what do they hope to gain through experiments which anthropomorphize animals? The unique character and quality of humans is axiomatic.
I was amused at something more biblical...
Genesis 6:6 New International version
The Lord regretted that he had made human beings on the earth, and his heart was deeply troubled.
A rat, full of regret for past actions that included abusing the trust of his fellows, actively working to make their lives and situations worse, denying them useful work, chasing good ones who rat and saving the lives of bad ones who rat, would be ferreted out by reporting his unrepentent attempts to continue to act like a rat until removed from having any power over his fellows.
Circuit designs in the 60s had regretter modules.
That was EE humor for a circuit that doesn't quite work as desired elsewhere.
When it misses what it's supposed to detect or vice versa, a the regretter circuit activates.
Did Donnie Brasco have regrets?
Links and posturing may placate the mob Althouse....but we need the Full Althouse Piaf Singing...En Francis!
Might explain the exclamation: Aw Rats!
Just guessing about Rat Regret, but,
"Damn. I can't believe I ate the whole wheel of cheese."
(Accidentally) Followed a link on that page, was surprised to find " serial cucumber masturbater" was a man.
I couldn't think of one. They couldn't either.
Ahem...je ne regrette rien. Not rein.
Not Democ Rats.
Maybe I'm missing something, but this statement from the article, This makes sense because you don't regret the thing you didn't get, you regret the thing you didn't do. doesn't seem to ring true.
"If only I would have done x, I would be y," or, "If only I had done x, I would have y".
The action not done is incidental to what you missed out on getting the result, isn't it? The sentence from the article seems to suggest you regret not doing something for the doing's sake, ie, the regret isn't from not achieving.
Not.
And I ask: So what?
Does this help build a better rat trap?
The one who found his way into my garage this winter looked like he regretted eating the "snack" we left for him.
I don't know. I'm pretty sure Obama regrets nothing he has ever done.
Ain't free association wonderful?
Much like our president, the rats never actually say that they regret their choices. They do look back at their forgone options with, an evidently quantifiable, level of wistfulness.
Oh, for crying out loud. That is not "regret." That is nothing more than the rat continuing to search for food. Does a rat "regret" the wrong turns taken in a maze searching for food? These researchers would apparently think so.
Now if they can show me a rat that starts crying while waiting for food or breaks down in the throws of depression over their past choices, then they can call it "regret."
"Ahem...je ne regrette rien. Not rein."
Thanks. That was totally an autocorrect. I do know nothing in French.
Fixed.
"Links and posturing may placate the mob Althouse....but we need the Full Althouse Piaf Singing...En Francis!"
I'm not a good singer, but I did do my Edith Piaf imitation in the car with Meade just now.
Is this anthropomorphism of rats, or ratopomorphism of humans?
"I'm not a good singer, but I did do my Edith Piaf imitation in the car with Meade just now."
I'll bet Meade has a few regrets now.
Maybe you need to come up with a tag for "rat politics". Maybe this can count for the first entry.
Nowhere near as interesting as this clip.
I'm still trying to figure out Cagney's last line to the Jewish guy, which I think is something like "Do you think I'm a shegetz?
A friend with a python asked if he could have the rat I had just trapped, to strengthen the gene pool of his pet store rat line.
The rat got all of his females pregnant and gnawed then his way out of the cage.
Now, he says, he has a line of Nazi rats.
Pet store rats are pretty friendly, unmixed with field rats.
Rat psy-ops would then have to be be based on Rat Guilt. But the French have je ne regret rien Rats that are immune. Wisconsin Cheese Industry take note.
Before clicking, see if you can think of an experiment that would test a rat's capacity to feel regret.
A male rat wearing shorts stares up and sees AA frown disapprovingly. Rat then changes into a suit.
Well, it's not really about 'regret' in any convincing sense of the word, which brings with it an emotional content that the rat 'experiment' doesn't (couldn't) capture. It's also an oddly 19th century idea, the sort of thing Darwin might have come up with. In his review essay in the April 24 NYRB ("The Mental Life of Plants and Worms, among others"), Oliver Sacks quoted various passages from Darwin's book about worms, including his view that in certain respects they "deserve to be called intelligent, for they then act in nearly the same manner as a man under similar circumstances."
At bottom, this rat experiment is based on the notion that any organism's mental life can be explained entirely in terms of neurons, synapses, etc., all of which can be reduced to strictly cause/effect relations. If that's true, of course, it would hardly be surprising that there is nothing that differentiates human responses from those of animals -- it would all just be a matter of degree, with the more complex reactions perhaps associated with the relative number of neurons, etc., firing away. It would also mean that much of what we say about our own lives, and how we conceive of our humanity, would be pure nonsense.
If you accept the premise, that is.
As Dean Martin probably said, I've had a few as well, but I don't regret it.
Give Subject Rat A an upper middle-class upbringing, including private high school and Ivy League university. He will think he has got it made and that he doesn't need a thing. Then introduce him to female Rat B, who, though beautiful and free-spirited, is unimpressed by Rat A's BMW and skiing weekends in Vermont. Rat A will pursue Rat B until a fateful gray day in November, the sky weeping cold rain upon the bare trees in Central Park, when Rat B tells him that she refuses to be his chattel, that she can't be the safe, comfortable suburban wife Rat A wants and needs. Rat B bids Rat A goodbye, saying she is off to Sri Lanka to work with harelipped orphan girls.
At this point you, the Rat Scientist, should take note of outcomes. Does Rat A (1)After a short period of introspection retreat to a commune in New Mexico, experience satori in the sweat lodge, emerge to found a vast business empire producing holistic food additives, marry his Venezuelan housekeeper and sire six children with her, or (2)Submerge himself in amassing a fortune, engineering hostile takeovers of family-owned businesses and selling off their assets regardless of how many lose their livelihoods, meanwhile putting away a quart of Glenlivet every night until finally his liver gives out and he dies, mouthing "B--B"?
I think that would give you your answer.
Yeah, right.
There are no Youtube videos of dogs showing regret, shame, guilt or other emotions.
I dare you to try to do some googlefu and find some.
Actually, fox squirrels are capable of expressing regret. I have experienced it firsthand.
It would seem that these researchers never owned a dog.
This post misses the most important question: Are rats capable of regretting 400 years of slavery in America?
Post a Comment