I always just wrote this little tale off as “good at reading people”, and honestly that’s still my assumption. After reading Blindsight though, I think it’s a good allegory for possible intelligence without consciousness. What if the horse just has the ability to perform those kind of calculations when incentivized, but has no concept of what it’s actually doing beyond responding to stimulus.
Then again I knew a horse that would recreationally lick electric fences, so probably not that. Interesting thought though.
Feels kinda presumptuous to assume that horses don’t have consciousness.
Turns out it was really good at reading people. It would notice the subtle changes in facial expressions as it tapped the correct number of times. When the horse and participant were blocked by a partition, it couldn’t math anymore.
The modern version of this trick is bunny the dog, that dog that “talks” by pushing buttons.
I have a cat that uses buttons to talk - it’s not bullshit. It asks for food, for clean litterbox, to play. It understands the concept of “now” and “later”. It argues with me when I tell it “no”. It uses the buttons when I’m not looking at it.
Took a shitton of training, but now it gets excited for new buttons and tries them out and to see what I do in response to it.
I really want to teach my cat how to speak but I struggle to believe this isnt confirmation bias.
I too math better with thunderous applause.
