Befriend Cats with the Slow Blink
Curiosity Weekly
Warner Bros. Discovery
4.6 • 964 Ratings
🗓️ 12 November 2020
⏱️ 12 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Learn about how slow blinking at a cat can help you make friends with it, how temptation bundling can help you reinforce good habits, and why Moravec’s Paradox says the easy stuff is hardest for artificial intelligence.
Slow blinking at a cat can help you make friends with it by Steffie Drucker
- Feline friendly? How to build rap-paw with your cat - new psychology study. (2020). EurekAlert! https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2020-10/uos-ffh100720.php
- Rigby, S., & Science, P. (2020, October 8). Want to make friends with a cat? Blink slowly, say scientists. BBC Science Focus Magazine; BBC Science Focus Magazine. https://www.sciencefocus.com/news/want-to-make-friends-with-a-cat-blink-slowly-say-scientists/
- Humphrey, T., Proops, L., Forman, J., Spooner, R., & McComb, K. (2020). The role of cat eye narrowing movements in cat–human communication. Scientific Reports, 10(1). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-73426-0
Reinforce Good Habits With Temptation Bundling by Ashley Hamer
- Original episode: https://www.curiositydaily.com/where-online-lingo-comes-from-how-to-reinforce-goo/
Moravec's Paradox Is Why the Easy Stuff Is Hardest for Artificial Intelligence by Ashley Hamer
- Russell, S. J. and Norvig, P. (1995). Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach. Prentice Hall. https://web.archive.org/web/20170831090316/https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/bef0/731f247a1d01c9e0ff52f2412007c143899d.pdf
- Mandelbaum, R. F. (2018, April 25). AI Is Getting Pretty Good at Studying Distant Galaxies. Gizmodo; Gizmodo. https://gizmodo.com/ai-is-getting-pretty-good-at-studying-distant-galaxies-1825513242
- Cascone, S. (2017, July 11). AI-Generated Art Now Looks More Convincingly Human Than Work at Art Basel, Study Says. Artnet News; artnet News. https://news.artnet.com/art-world/rutgers-artificial-intelligence-art-1019066
- There are two kinds of AI, and the difference is important. (2017). Popular Science. https://www.popsci.com/narrow-and-general-ai/
- Moravec, H. (1988) Mind Children: The Future of Robot and Human Intelligence. Harvard University Press. https://www.google.com/books/edition/Mind_Children/56mb7XuSx3QC?hl=en&gbpv=1&printsec=frontcover
- Rubinov, M. (2015). Neural networks in the future of neuroscience research. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 16(12), 767–767. https://doi.org/10.1038/nrn4042
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hi, you're about to get smarter in just a few minutes with Curiosity Daily from Curiosity.com. |
| 0:07.0 | I'm Ashley Hamer. |
| 0:08.0 | And I'm Natalia Reagan. |
| 0:09.0 | Today you learn about how |
| 0:14.0 | temptation bundling can help you reinforce good habits |
| 0:17.0 | and why Moravac's paradox says the easy stuff is hardest |
| 0:21.0 | for artificial intelligence. |
| 0:22.0 | Let's satisfy some curiosity. is hardest for artificial intelligence. |
| 0:23.0 | Let's satisfy some curiosity. |
| 0:25.0 | Cats get a bad rap for being aloof and expressionless. |
| 0:30.0 | But if you've ever had a close relationship with a cat, you've probably learned to read their signs. |
| 0:35.9 | One sign that many cat owners know and love is the slow blink. |
| 0:40.6 | That lazy droop of their eyelids when they make direct eye contact with you from across the room. |
| 0:46.0 | Some cat owners even say it's how they say I love you, and that it's polite to slow blink back. |
| 0:52.0 | Well, finally, science has done a controlled study of the slow blink, |
| 0:57.8 | and the result should make cat lovers everywhere feel vindicated. |
| 1:02.1 | In the first experiment scientists visited 21 cats in their homes to see how |
| 1:06.7 | they'd react to their owner slow blinking at them. Each owner sat near their cat and either ignored them or made direct eye contact as they did the slow blink. |
| 1:17.0 | The team found that cats were more likely to slow blink after their owner had done it than when they were just in the room together. |
| 1:23.7 | Next they tested whether the same thing would happen with strangers that is with |
| 1:28.8 | the researchers themselves. The experimental setup was the same but the team tested 24 different The close. Then they either slow blinked to the cat or made indirect eye contact. |
| 1:45.0 | Just like with the owners, the strangers slow blinking made cats more likely to slow blink back. |
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