Here’s a story that seems to say something…something deep about the human condition. Or maybe it’s just funny? I’m going with “deep”’.
The story is about a man by the name of Jim Eggers and his parrot, Sadie. Eggers suffers from bipolar disorder, “psychotic tendencies,” and the occasional homicidal impulse. He’s been to court for throwing hot water on someone, threatening to kill an archbishop, and the like. He’s heavily drugged, but generally functional.
Over time, Eggers’ pet parrot picked up on self-comforting talk Eggers used in the privacy of his apartment: “It’s O.K., Jim! You’re all right, Jim! Calm down, Jim!” Eggers found the parrot’s reassurances more soothing than his own, so he rewarded the bird. Now Eggers carries Sadie around with him in a backpack (with padding for warmth in winter weather). When he gets agitated in public, Sadie calms him down.
The article is really about disability rights and service animals, the definition of which has been expanding and creating controversy in recent years. (The article also features a miniature horse and various primates.) But Eggers and his parrot seem to speak of bigger issues. Like…what?
I’d go first for the indomitable human spirit, or something along those lines. How amazing to persist, even if it takes walking around with a personal parrot. Or maybe the story’s message is about human ingenuity. Or maybe it’s about what we all take for granted, and what you have to work unbelievably hard for, if you suffer a mental disability.
There’s also something to be learned, perhaps, about consciousness or about human sociability. We often naively think that normal consciousness is univocal. If you hear “voices in your head,” then you’re mad. But what Eggers seems to be missing is certain inner voices. He can’t hear an inner self-comforting voice, so must carry one around in a backpack. We actually may need multiple inner voices.
It’s interesting that a tape recorder wouldn’t be as effective as Sadie. The parrot probably understands no more, but there’s something different about an unpredictable living thing. A foot massage done by another person, however little they understand your problems, feels completely different from those massage machines they have at stores in the mall.
If you also find the story evocative, what do you think it evokes?
For me it evokes some of the extended mind material from Chalmers et al.
Cool story btw, thx for link.
Ahh…that’s good. That’s the impression you get–that this guy has made the parrot an extension of his own mind.
Yes, Chalmers uses the address book as the external memory for the Alzheimer’s patient. Here we have a man using a parot for his impulse control.
I wonder. If the parrot really understood no more then it probably wouldn’t be more effective than a tape recorder. I wonder if it makes a difference (to Eggers and hence his choice of Sadie rather than a tape recorder) that the parrot has a mind even though it probably doesn’t have a Theory of Mind.
I hear a re-run of Terri Gross’s interview with Irene Pepperberg the other day, and much of it was (naturally) about what Alex understood and felt. It was a surprising amount for (as Pepperberg said) a brain the size of a walnut.
So I wonder if the difference between parrot and tape recorder doesn’t have to do with the parrot’s (however comparatively slight) awareness or sense of fear, aversion, desire, etc. Alex was not happy about being left at the vet clinic when he was ill, and unlike most animals he had some tools to make that explicit.
Ophelia, Yeah, my explanation’s not so good. I was thinking it was unpredictability that makes the parrot better than a tape recorder, but an unpredictable tape recorder probably wouldn’t work. It’s the parrot having a mind (and a massage-er having a mind) that’s crucial. But why that should be is hard to say. Maybe we just have some deep-rooted inexplicable preference for the presence of “others.”
Faust–I haven’t read the extended mind paper, just have the general idea. What about other minds as extensions of one’s own? Like having your husband remind you of something instead of writing it down on the calendar? (Or having a parrot that calms you down.) Do you know if Chalmers talks about other minds as extensions of one mind?
Hmmm excellent question. I will go back and re-read that essay when I have a moment and be on the lookout for a mention of that. If I recall he was trying to keep it fairly narrow because he was dealing the question of what constitues a “belief” but it’s been a few months since I read it so I’ll have to review.
In principle I don’t see why not though. It seems a somewhat senile person could “store” their addresses in a “spouse unit” just as easily in a “notebook.”
I may add that in principle it seems that this fellow might indeed benefit from a machine, it’s just that the taperecorder is too simple a machine to do the job. As I understand it what machines, limited AI really don’t do well at the moment is pattern recognition. The parrot is clearly good at recognizing an emerging pattern of agitation and giving the correct responses at the right time. I see no reason why a sufficiently advanced machine could not do the same, but this gets into questions relating to machine AI and so forth.
But is recognizing an emerging pattern of agitation and giving the correct responses at the right time the only salient feature? It might be…but I’m wondering if it isn’t also to do with the parrot’s vulnerability, its capacity to suffer and be agitated itself, so that the parrot and Eggers have the same kind of thing at stake, and in some sense have sympathy for each other - or at least it doesn’t seem absurd to imagine that they do (while it would seem absurd to imagine that of a machine). (Unless of course the machine were designed to look sentient and conscious etc - but that amounts to the same thing.)
“Unless of course the machine were designed to look sentient and conscious etc - but that amounts to the same thing”
Is it? If it does ammount to the same thing, then I guess it would be filed under “communication,” i.e. that in addition to merely giving the correct resonses at the right time, the responses must be given “in the right way,” i.e. with body language that expresses meaning in addition to a mere order or request to calm down. However, there would be no need for the machine to have any “vulnerability,” or “capacity to suffer itself” it would merely need to simulate enough external signs to suggest such an interiority.
The machine is room temperature. The parrot is 109 degrees.
If that’s not enough reason, the machine doesn’t move and the parrots are lively.
The machine has no give at all, while the parrot is a springy fellow.
The machine is dead. The parrot is alive - a warm, moving, soft little buddy. And he/she is seriously cute.
What don’t you get?
Great stories, seeing eye horses and the monkey that prempts panic attacks. Animals that live in flocks, troops, herds and packs can empathise with other animals that live in communities. Sadie would see Jim go into crazy preening mode and react with his own voice like a benign anima.
By “amounts to the same thing” I just meant it wouldn’t seem absurd to imagine sympathy, for the same reason, even though in the case of the humanoid machine the reason would be based on a kind of trick. People who design robots design some of them to look humanoid or cute etc in order to elicit feelings - and this works even on people who know perfectly well that the robots were designed that way. In other words I suppose I’m laboriously re-inventing the teddy bear. It would seem…eccentric for an adult to bond with a teddy bear but much less eccentric than bonding with a frying pan or a drill bit.
Putting a crude face on something, anything, elicits primitive feelings of…”that’s sentient”ness. I can’t remember where I know that from, but I think it’s from somewhere.
I’m contradicting what I said in my first comment. There I wondered if it was actual sympathy or at least the possibility of it that made Sadie better than a tape recorder, now I’ve said the appearance makes a difference. Well I guess I think it’s one or both - anyway the tape recorder has neither.
I should add an emoticon, so that everyone could bond with it.
[The machine is room temperature. The parrot is 109 degrees.]
Temperature can be easily produced. I take it you’ve never used an electric blanket.
[If that’s not enough reason, the machine doesn’t move and the parrots are lively.]
Machines can certainly be made to move.
[The machine has no give at all, while the parrot is a springy fellow.]
Are you not familiar with the furry robots used in nursing homes in Japan?
[The machine is dead.]
OK, though I would just say “is not alive.” Personally I don’t think of rocks and metal and so forth as being dead.
[The parrot is alive - a warm, moving, soft little buddy. And he/she is seriously cute.]
As above, all these things except “being alive” could be simulated in theory, and often are in practice. And may I add, I find parrots to be pretty ugly.
What don’t you get about doing hypothetical thought experiments?
But of course I am doing the hypothetical thought experiment. And I continue. The parrot can appeal to all our senses, except - please agree - taste. The machine for all its fascinations, and I am totally attached to my iPhone, has no feathers to ruffle, no eyes to respond to another’s. All pets are comforts to their owners. Even my fish and turtles and frogs give me a feed back although they’re nowhere near 109 degrees. You’re right. No electric blanket.
I think the issue here is why Sadie the parrot is comforting, even though she doesn’t understand the guy’s problem any more than a tape recorder. I don’t think the issue is whether you could build an artificial parrot….that’s another question.
Now wait, would it be eccentric to bond with a teddy bear, a frying pan or a drill bit? And about furry robots being used in nursing homes in Japan. What? Is that true? Are these furry robots that look and feel alive? I think that would be relevant to what rtk and Ophelia have said (which made sense to me).
http://www.elderweb.com/home/node/3088
That is a link to the furry robot seal story.
It is certainly relevant to this topic in my opinion. The question of making an artifical parrot simply came up because of the question of whether or not the machine regulation device would need to be “dressed up” as a simulacrum of a living thing, or if mere sophisticated pattern recognition and a well timed request to calm down (a very fancy taperecorder in other words) would be sufficient here.
It would only be fair to dress up the parrot like a tape-recorder to validate some theory or another. Why tape recorder, though, in this day and age? There are smaller more recent machines that can be disguised as teddy bears even more easily. I’ve seen on tv the furry robots in Japan. Soooo gross.
I wish I could post a pic here of the dog that was brought to me recently in a hospital for cheering up purposes. It wore a hat and big sunglass rims and odd attire. Apparently the animal appeal was judged inadequate and some human stuff needed to do its healing trick. Plain dog would have worked better, but it was fun.
Faust, Your comments at 7:03 were getting into questions about whether machines can be warmed up to seem like living things. That’ s what seems irrelevant to the question at hand, which is whether being (or seeming) alive is comforting. But the furry robot thing is interesting, because presumably they’re not that similar to living things. If they are just as comforting as things that are/seem alive, then being/seeming alive isn’t critical. I’ll look at your link…
rtk–Maybe dressing up the dog is supposed to add comedy to the mix, not make the dog seem like a human healer.
Key bit from that link–
It’s not just being or seeming alive though - it’s something more, or maybe more than one thing more. A plant wouldn’t be the same, nor would a lobster or a snake.
I’m laboriously reinventing Harry Harlow’s experiments, too, I guess. We don’t want to cling to the metal mommy even if there is milk in her bottle, we prefer the towel mommy even if there is no milk in her bottle. Poor little rhesus macaques.
A parrot looks enough more humanish than a lobster does that the fantasy that the parrot sympathizes is sustainable, even by someone who knows perfectly well that the fantasy is a fantasy. That’s my guess.
Yeah, not just alive, but alive in a way that makes the animal seem like a kindred spirit. But I don’t know about this sympathy business. If I’m sick, it’s comforting having the cat lie on the bed, but I really don’t have the feeling at all that my cat feels sympathy for me. I think my cat doesn’t understand me at all, and frankly I don’t understand my cat either. Maybe we just don’t have a good relationship (he meows a lot, generally makes a nuisance of himself, except when asleep). Yet we kind of bond based on the sheer fact that he’s warm and furry and breathes in a familiar way, etc.
Sympathy could still be involved, but only in a very indirect way. Maybe we’re wired to like human company, and that’s partly because humans offer sympathy. The cat is basically just a close enough substitute to trigger the pleasant sense of sympathy being available? He’s essentially a false positive. (!!)
I don’t want to belabor the point on the machine parrot but I feel I’m being misunderstood so I’ll make one more attempt to clarify:
1. On of the key questions here is indeed the question of “seeming alive” and whether or not this “seeming” is a key piece of the “parrot comfort function.”
2. rtk indicated that machines were not like living things, i.e. not warm, not fuzzy, inanimate.
3. I responded by pointing out that machines could be made to be all those things and that at this point it is only a technical question as to the degree of simulation that is possible. It may be that right now we can not generate a perfect simulacrum of an animal but if we could it seems likely that the “seeming” function could be satisfied to such a degree that humans would react to the robot in the same way as they would to a real living animal. Philip K Dicks “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep” might be fun here since that book is (in part) about robotic animals and empathy.
So the question insofar as the machines are concerned is this:
What is it that the machines LACK that must be ADDED in order to effect the same therapeutic results as a live animal?
Ophelia in her self correction sums it up nicely:
“There I wondered if it was actual sympathy or at least the possibility of it that made Sadie better than a tape recorder, now I’ve said the appearance makes a difference. Well I guess I think it’s one or both - anyway the tape recorder has neither.”
i.e it may be the “actual sympathy” that is key here…but it may be that an appearance of sympathy will suffice.
In any case the question of slowly closing the gap between the lifeless, cold, uncaring tape recorder and the perky charming parrot might help us understand exactly HOW MUCH “life stuff” needs to be added in order to provide the desired result, whether that be impulse control, or a reduction in depression.
You feel that the key passage in the Paro article is the one that shows they actually would have liked to use real animals, but they were forced to the robots because of biological difficulties: i.e. unpredictable behavior (scratching), and allergic reactions. So a full animal is better right? Of course. But how much appearance of being a live animal do we need to ADD to the robot in order to get the same, or at least a similar result?
I think that the key passage is this:
“Almost everyone has touched or played with cats and dogs, so when they experience the robotic form of these animals, they can not help but compare the robot to the real creatures. If the robot does not respond in a familiar way or if it feels different from the real animal, people often become critical of the robot and lose the chance to experience its therapeutic qualities. We selected baby harp seals as the model for our robot because most people have not had any contact with such animals.”
This strategy is the result of the uncanny valley:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncanny_Valley
i.e. when people do not judge the reality of the robot in comparison to an actual creature, the uncanny valley is avoided and the therapeutic qualities can be experienced. Thus showing that at least to some degree the real animal is not needed, what is needed is to trick the brain into thinking that there is a real animal there.
This still leaves open the question of what it is that we are looking for exactly, what we need in the OTHER (and I do think otherness is key here) to feel that we are encountering a REAL PRESENCE. In some cases it might be the sympathy of THE OTHER, but it could be anything I suspect, and the needs of the fellow with poor impulse control are different form the needs of a elderly person needing some company.
Sure. Cats are comforting as warm bodies even if they’re annoying when awake and strolling around yelling. I was talking about sympathy specifically as part of speculating on Eggers and the parrot. I’m guessing that he’s more or less pretending that Sadie understands and means what she says, and that this pretense is assisted by the fact that Sadie can suffer as well as the fact that Sadie does not look like a lobster or a drill bit.
It helps that she’s outside his head rather than inside. It helps that she stands on two feet and has a face. It helps that she says ‘You’re okay Jim.’ It helps that she says that when he needs it. It helps that she’s sentient.
It all adds up. That’s my guess.
One more point Jean,
I know you were interested by that book where the fellow described “capacity to deceive” as being the quality that sets humans apart from animals.
So when meditating on the uncanny valley, and the revulsion it causes, it made me think about how we may have some programming that causes us to be very wary of certain kinds of deception.
Perhaps there is something special about our relationship with animals because they are not interested in deceiving us, some kind of deep authenticity?
I suspect you are already at some variant of this conclusion and I’ve spent all of 2 minutes thinking about this, but the uncanny valley phenomenon had me thinking about your book review.
Faust, I agree completely on what you say the issues are in the last comment–in essence,
The question that didn’t strike me as relevant is how possible it really is to build an apparent parrot out of non-biological stuff. Of course, that’s interesting in its own right.
Ophelia–I was guessing that I had something in common with this guy. I figured his feeling better because of the parrot was not entirely different from my liking the cat to be on the bed, or people in hospitals liking to hold puppies. So the fact that feelings of receiving sympathy don’t seem to play a role in my own case has some (slight) relevance to the whole issue. Being that I’m just one person, it certainly doesn’t say a lot. Eggers does seem like a singular guy, too. Maybe what he needs from animals is different than the norm.
Faust, I had never heard of “the uncanny valley.” That’s great stuff. Hmm–that’s an interesting thought that animals are not interested in deceiving us (except apes, according to Rowlands). Had not made the connection, despite thinking about these things for more than two minutes!
Oh, animals are interested in deceiving us all right, they just don’t know how. Come on - animals are interested in deceiving us into thinking it’s feeding time right now, and now, and now, and now; also into thinking that it is impossible to know who shredded the side of the couch, who crapped on the living room rug, who barfed on the pillow, who tore up the garden.
Jean - ah, I see. Whereas I was thinking it was actually different from the cuddly mammalian variety of comfort - because birds aren’t cuddly, so I figured the effect was really something else. Though…I wonder if carrying Sadie in a backpack has a cuddly effect - or is it just functional, that being the best way to take her along. (I could read the article…but I’m enjoying speculating.)
Pepperberg talks about the illusion. Alex knew to say ‘I’m sorry’ when he did something he knew the humans objected to. He wasn’t a bit sorry, it was just something to say, but it was hard for the humans to keep that in mind because he said it so well, in such an appealing little voice.
Yeah, funny thing about the lobster. I don’t connect at all. I definitely have eye to eye contact with my fish. I can quite hear them whimper Feed me and I’ll wave my sweet little tail for you. But the lobsters have serious appeal to the sense from which I exempted the parrot - taste. Maybe the whole animal thing boils down (bad expression) to the eye contact. I’m altogether serious that I feel empathy with frogs, squirrels, birds and to some extent with creepy crawlers generally if they don’t present themselves in swarms. And buzz a lot.
“I think the issue here is why Sadie the parrot is comforting”
My guess is that he’s essentially relating to himself through the parrot - ‘projection’ for want of a better word. I say this because he was trying to relate to himself before (e.g., self-soothing) but found the parrot was more effective.
Knowing you’re talking to yourself maybe reduces the effect of any soothing; projecting your own thoughts and personality onto something else leads to an ‘illusion of external agency’, and probably enhances it.
Another advanced “taperecorder.”
http://www.lovingthemachine.com/2008/12/creepy-robot-to-monitor-seniors.html#links
Truth be told, I need one of those. I say it’s cute.
I just happened on this site because I’m interested in the story. The topic “our understanding of what other beings (animals, birds…) feel or think” has recently been discussed among a group of poets I know. It seems the whole discussion here flatly assumes Sadie doesn’t understand Jim’s need, she just senses some “vibe” from him and responds with what she’s picked up. My question is: How do we know what Sadie understands or feels?