What Do Fish Thoughts Look Like?

Found this article and realized how awesome we (humans) are. In a short period of time compared to the universe we have evolved so much that we learned how to genetically engineer the fish’s neurons to glow green when activated, went to space, invented a bunch of things to make our lives easier.

Unfortunately we are also pretty dumb. Because in the process of being awesome we invented things that can kill us all and destroy the gift we were given called earth.

Whoever or whatever gave us a planet to live on probably realized that it was a big mistake to put us in control.

This story about the turtle and spider by the river is a good example of our behavior and the outcome.

The spider said to the turtle "will you give me a ride across the river?" The turtle responds "why would I do that when you are a spider and you will bite me causing me to drown?" The spider says "why would I do that when I would drown too?" The turtle thinks for a moment and reluctantly agrees and they start across the river. About half way over the spider bites the turtle and the turtle says "Hey, why did you bite me?" The spider says "because I'm a spider dummy!" At that point they both proceeded to drown...

What Do Fish Thoughts Look Like?

Like us, zebrafish get hungry. But unlike us they have to engage full-on hunting mode instead of just walking to the fridge to get a snack. By observing a fish brain while it hunts for dinner, Japanese scientists have seen exactly what thoughts look like on the scale of single neurons. Zebrafish, a common model organism used in biology labs around the world, were held in place while a paramecium snack swam in front of their eye. The scientists were able to genetically engineer the fish’s neurons to glow green when activated, and because the fish are nearly transparent, they could use sophisticated microscopes to map which neurons were firing.

It's crazy.

it's like getting some massive convoluted application and running a debugger on it. You see what happens in a function but you still don't get to see just what is going on in total. We're doing that. With dna and with things like this.

We may be able to assume how things work, but like the program, we will never see the source code.

Like nop'ing out segments of code to see how they affect the entire program, we determine what seems to do what.

Only here, we're turning the code green.

Yargh im interested but worried.. it's really beyond the scope of human understanding, yet we're still tinkering.

Interesting still.

I imagine they think like this:




Peace

reply to post by jude11


i dont get it.

reply to post by whatsecret

Originally posted by whatsecret

.........in the process of being awesome we invented things that can kill us all and destroy the gift we were given called earth.

[color=8FFFF8]"It worked." (said after witnessing the first atomic detonation).

J. Robert Oppenheimer

[color=8FFFF8]"I am become death, the destroyer of worlds."

 

FYI: Oppenheimer is often referred to as the "father" of the atomic bomb. ☼

Originally posted by whatsecret

"because I'm a spider dummy!"

I knew what was coming, but that↑last line ended up being funnier than I had expected.

Originally posted by tehdouglas
reply to post by jude11

 

i dont get it.

I guess you gotta be a fish to understand...

Peace

reply to post by whatsecret

What Do Fish Thoughts Look Like?,

Hey a little castle...

Hey there's another fish... *wave*

Oh look...theres a nifty little plant!!

I'll go check it out.... oh hey theres another fish!!

Oh my God... Look at that little castle!!

Never saw that before.... Oh look a another fish...

I'd imagine their thoughts probably look like pictures. I know the article was talking about neurons...but I mean their actual thoughts.

I suppose it depends whether you're prawn again or just looking for Cod.

Scientists used to say that a goldfish forgets everything after a round in the bowl, but I think that was somehow discounted.

The question is whether the powers have really made a chimera or hybrid creature, or if they would seriously attempt this.
If they mix humans with any other species my first guess would be "fish".

The seas and oceans are huge and unexplored.
Although most of our subsistence fish species are going towards extinction, or the way of the buffalo, there may be more to plunder deeper in the ocean.

A human/fish hybrid with gills might be just the Franken-creation to find it.

Originally posted by WaterBottle
I'd imagine their thoughts probably look like pictures. I know the article was talking about neurons...but I mean their actual thoughts.

edit on 3-2-2013 by WaterBottle because: (no reason given)

I have often considered what an animal that knows no language thinks. I mean, we are mostly guided by an internal dialogue. Spoken words are said in our heads with almost everything we consciously do. The human life is notoriously devoid of knowledge of its own instinctive behaviors (unless they are pointed out).

RE: the OP....that is interesting. Wonder what behavioral changes were invoked by causing the neurons to glow? I guess we won't really ever know how our tinkering to enable observation can, itself, change the results observed.

Being a Piscean, the thought of eating a fish would be like being a eating one of my own.

A fish has feelings, just like any living thing. We just can't hear them scream.

I't's easy to justify if you don't feel like you are hurting something...........

Janeway to Chicote! ...scorpion now!!!

Lol, sorry, I couldn't help myself.

These supposed "fish-like thoughts" are so human in nature. Why would a fish be speaking in LANGUAGE (words) rather than pictures?

Their mind is probably so silent, and they are probably not able to think of abstracts....