Game Theory - Can a Goose DESTROY YOUR LIFE? (Untitled Goose Game)

Episode Date: May 29, 2023

Join Game Theory host MatPat as he breaks down the science and math of Untitled Goose Game! Credits: Writers: Matthew Patrick Editors: Dan "Cybert" Seibert, Tyler Mascola and Shannon (Bomb0i) Assistant Editor: AlyssaBeCrazy Sound Editor: Yosi Berman

Why would birds do something like that? I mean, why would they just attack? Welcome to game theory! Ruinning childhoods faster than an overly aggressive puzzle-solving waterfowl. Today we're taking a Gander at a recent little indie gem, untitled goose game. You get it? Gander, name for a male goose. Ha ha! That is some spicy writing there, Matt Pat. Anyway, if you're not familiar with this game, allow me to break it down for you. Get it? Down? Like, down feathers? Because geese have down feathers?

Oh, this stuff is gold! In Untitled Goose game, you play as the titular goose, looking to carve out his place in the greatest game birds' Hall of Fame alongside Falco, Kazui, Chokebo's, The Stupid Owl, who talks too much from Zelda, and, uh, the Angry Bird, bird, I guess? Alright, so Greatest Birds and Video Games, it's not a very long list. You'll spend your day completing a checklist of daily activities, all with one goal in mind, making everyone around you miserable. And that's it. It's not about saving the day or protecting your clutch of eggs. Heck, you aren't even looking for food. Your one and only purpose in this game is to be nature's biggest troll by Flapping, honking, and straight up attacking the locals. It's all pretty basic things that we've seen birds do time and time again

But what about some of the more complex goals in this game like tricking someone to cut the award-winning rose or dressing up a statue? Heck even convincing someone to put a ribbon around your neck I mean those are some pretty big asks for a literal bird-brained creature So our question for today is a goose actually intelligent enough to perform the level of complex thought that we see demonstrated throughout Untitled Goose game. Or is this goose only that smart because it has a human brain? Us as the player controlling it. You could say that this episode is one that's for the birds. To answer the question of Goose Intelligence demonstrated an Untitled Goose game, we first have to look at how intelligence is measured. In humans, we typically resort to measuring this based on IQ.

However, what we commonly refer to as an IQ test is actually a combination of several different kinds of standardized tests specifically designed to measure your reasoning and problem-solving abilities. Researchers can't just sit a goose down in a classroom and start asking it questions. And therefore, they don't typically try to give animals an overall general IQ score. Instead, they usually test them on individual tasks that are intended to measure various cognitive skills, like memory, language, use of tools and weapons, reasoning and problem-solving, and also something they call theory of mind, which is really just the ability to understand that other living creatures have mental states, that are different from your own and might affect their behavior.

And it's those sorts of animal tests that matter the most for our theory today. By observing the goose's behavior as he performs some of the more complex tasks in the game, we can then identify what cognitive skill the goose is best demonstrating and then see whether there are any scientific studies that show geese having this skill in the real world. I don't know about you, but it's enough to give me goose bumps. Maybe that's a bit extreme, but I couldn't think of another way to work in another goose pump. Goose Willis! It's an episode that would make Goose!

Goose Willis proud. Let's start with theory of mind. In our case, the goose's ability to assess humans and predict their behavior. In the game, we see this in a variety of different ways. The goose terrorizes the kid outside the local market because he knows this kid is scared of him and won't fight back. On the other hand, the goose keeps his distance from the various shopkeepers that do pose him a physical threat. The goose even performs in front of a few pub goers like a trained monkey, but, you know, minus the mammalian hair, live births, and cute little fess hat. So it's pretty clear that an untitled goose game are Protagousness Approaches people in different ways to achieve different desired outcomes. But how does this apply to geese out in the real world?

Well, believe it or not, but geese are able to size up humans and adjust their behaviors accordingly. A good example of this comes from the work of Dr. John Marsloff at the University of Washington in Seattle, who researches how humans affect birds and their behavior, including the behavior of white-fronted geese, snow geese, and of course the Canadian goose. According to Dr. Marsloff, when migrating, geese, often encounter hunters, who they'd obviously want to avoid. Simply put, human equals death, right? So you'd assume that they'd be on guard when around humans, or outright avoid congregations of humans altogether, right?

But that's not actually what happens in the wild. Instead, when geese arrive in Seattle, the geese fearlessly parade around the humans. They become docile. They even sleep out in the open as humans watch. Well, that might seem like needlessly reckless behavior for a migrating goose, it's actually a my mind. great idea. Being vigilant at all times requires a lot of energy. So it's actually

advantageous for geese to be able to identify friendly neighborhoods where they can let their guard down versus areas where they're more at risk for hunters. Dr. Marsloff's research showed that geese were able to switch between two modes of behavior, high vigilance and also complete unconcerned, depending on the types of humans that they sensed nearby. This means that geese are able to understand basic human behavior and predict the level of threat coming from those humans for a given situation. Guns out, certain of dress fly away. City folk come out to play. That said, I don't know if this is a credit to the intelligence of the geese or it just shows how impossible it is to be intimidated by people wearing Birkenstocks, beanies, and drink in LaCroy. We are talking about Seattle after all. So to eliminate the potential hipster bias, I actually looked at another study, only to find that it found similar results. Michael Ward is an ornithologist at University of Illinois, meaning he's an expert in the study of Orinth.

A study of birds. Michael and his team wanted to figure out why there were so many Canadian geese in Chicago during the winter. His initial hypothesis, maybe they were just fans of deep dish pizza and duh bears, but that wasn't it, surprisingly. Quote from him, we thought the geese would fly to forage on nearby agricultural fields during the day, then fly back to the city to roost, but that wasn't the case. What we learned is that they weren't going to the city for food, they were going there because there were no hunters. End quote. Long story short, geese, it seems, are able to understand that not all humans are the same, and they take stock of their surroundings to figure out whether they're around the safe or dangerous kind of.

of humanity. And that ability to observe how humans behave and react accordingly is core to what we see throughout the various missions in Untitled Goose game. So that first feat of intelligence absolutely checks out, but what about the second one? Using tools. Tool use is considered a pretty important indicator of animal intelligence, since it requires a certain level of adaptability. One way to think about it is like this. It can't be in a goose's genetic programming to close a garage door or open a gate like we see the goose do in the game because these sorts of didn't exist when the geese were first evolving. The ability for a goose to perform tasks involving tools or objects

things that its ancestors would have never interacted with indicates that the goose has the ability to learn and innovate based on the materials in its surroundings. Kind of like a feathery Elon Musk. So do we see our goose using tools in the game? Okay, well sure, I mean he uses tools insofar as he grabs rakes and shovels and drags him around with his creepy little geese teeth. But that's not what I mean. Using tools in this context means using an object to complete a task, or make something easier, or to enable something that was impossible before. And it's not like our goose is the one out there using the hedge clippers to cut that prized rows. That said, our goose in the game does indeed show himself to be a master of one simple machine in particular.

The inclined plane. Check this out. Sure, to you, it might just seem like a pile of junk, but in actuality, it's a goose rap. It's a goose wrap. Ramp, Ramp, forgot the M. Goose rap. Hey, I'm a goose. Take a gander at me. Your new MC flying free. Cut in your bush and spilling your tea. But in actuality, it's a goose ramp. You see, domestic geese can't fly. So without the tool of a ramp, that goose would have been trapped there. And it doesn't stop there either. The goose uses baskets to carry groceries, uses a garage door tether, even unlatches gates and unties strings. In this way, the goose shows that he has a rough understanding of the tools that humans use. But what about geese?

in real life. Well, you might think it odd for a goose to possess a brain that's well adapted to using tools, but it's actually quite common for birds to possess this sort of skill. You ever heard of a nest? Well, a nest matches all the qualifications of tool use in animals. The bird carries an object for future use, in this case a stick, or a twig, or a piece of twine. It then uses that building material to help with the problem, ensuring the safety and stability of its eggs. And lastly, the twigs and twine are modified by the bird with the specific intent of building the nest. In fact, geese in particular are uniquely suited to dealing with unfamiliar nest building materials because they're migratory. Unlike a lot of other birds, which might spend their entire life living in a single habitat,

geese that migrate have to create nests in a variety of different environments, and are therefore constantly choosing the best materials for the job. In the modern day, sometimes that means using artificial materials like human-made nets, or say, a pile of bells. Geese even know enough to build their nests adjacent to man-made structures to help them protect against the wind. Now I know what you're saying. Most of this stuff is just primitive learned behavior. And to that I say yes, yes it is. But don't get your feathers all rustled because now we're on to the big daddy. Reasoning and

problem-solving in geese. This concept might seem like a straightforward idea, but it's important to understand what exactly is meant by problem-solving skills when applied to the animal world. Many animals are engaged in what would initially look like problem-solving behavior, but really they're just performing certain actions by instinct. For instance, an earthworm responds to by crawling out of the wet ground so it can get oxygen, but this isn't proof of thought or any sort of cognition. A worm is just biologically programmed to seek out the surface when the ground is wet. It's not thinking, oh no, I'm gonna drown, I gotta get to higher ground so I can breathe.

It just does these things immediately from birth without having to learn them. Likewise, succeeding through trial and error doesn't indicate problem solving either. Let's take the observations of C. Lloyd Morgan, a famous scientist of animal behavior. Morgan observed that a dog in a latched enclosure would eventually discover how to lift that And after doing so for the first time, would then be able to repeatedly perform that step in faster and faster instances. This is an example of learning. However, prior to learning how to unlock the latch, the dog wasn't making any deliberate attempts to unlock his confines. He was just randomly flailing around until he eventually discovered the solution by trial and error. It never thought about the problem and mentally formed a solution to try out. Sure, dogs can be taught how to solve a problem, but they can't figure out how to solve the issues themselves other than by trial and error. On the other hand, Wolfgang Kohler, another early animal investigator, found in 1917 that chimpanzees were actually capable of reasoning

After realizing that a fruit was too high for them to reach these chimpanzees responded by placing a box Underneath the hanging fruit and then climbing onto the box in order to reach it This was not just a random act that led to a solution These chimpanzees deliberately observed a situation and mentally formulated a potential solution to try out This is what is meant by reasoning and problems solving when you talk about the animal kingdom. Now obviously not all animals are gonna be as smart as chips. They are some of our closest living relatives after all But could our white feathered hero do the same thing or is his performance just gonna give us a big old goose egg? Well it turns out that being a bird brain isn't as strong of an insult as you might think Birds are in fact some of the few animal species that are indeed capable of reasoning out cause and effect

Specifically the bird type Corvids are shown to possess similar reasoning that rival even the reasoning of chimps. Now, corvids include your crows, ravens, and rooks. An experiment conducted by researchers Nathan John Emery and Christopher David Byrd, yes, that is his real name, talk about your nominative determinism, saw rooks presented with food that could only be retrieved by raising the water level in a container. Huh, now why would that sound familiar? They also provided these rooks with rocks. Simple solution, right? You put the rock in the container of water, which displaces the water and raises the water level allowing them to access the floating food. It's a pretty complex solution isn't it? But not only were the rooks able to make this

connection, but they also figured out that larger rocks would raise the water level more than smaller rocks. I mean, that is a shockingly deep level of problem solving for an animal like a bird. They assessed the problem, they realized a solution, they even figured out an optimized solution with the bigger rocks, and they chose the best tools for the job. That is better reasoning than half of team theorist over here. I mean seriously, Chris, you're a bird brain, and I'm not talking about Corvids. Sorry, I think. I don't really know what you mean. But here's the catch. This was a test with rooks. We're concerned about the intellect of a goose. And unfortunately, as it turns out, Corvids are in a league of their own when it comes to this kind of advanced cognition. In fact, the Corvid family is unique not just among birds, but within the entire animal kingdom. Possessing this level of advanced problem-solving ability just isn't very common in most animals. And geese, well, let's just say geese aren't in the Corvid family. Heck, they're not even part of the same order as Corvids.

Basically, the only commonality between geese and corvids is that they're both birds. Two wings, two feet, one beak, all evil. So if we're talking brass tacks, if this had been untitled Crow game, pretty much everything you see in the game would have been possible by the actual bird in real life. But that doesn't quite have the same charm. And so we're left with geese. Geese that, clearly based on this episode, are smart. They have the ability to read their environment. They learn from observing the behavior of humans. They're even able to use simple tools.

So when it comes to understanding chains of cause and effect, geese just aren't able to reason and problem solve in the same way that other animals like rooks, crows, and chimpanzees do. Geese, like dogs, are stuck figuring things out by trial and error. Which, when you look at the task list of Untitled Goose game is most of what you need, quite honestly. This is a game of stealing shinies and chasing children. Of the game's 45 different tasks, only Only 13 really require an upper level of reasoning. But yeah, if we're assessing whether a goose is smart enough to do all of the things we see in this game, then this goose is cooked. But hey, that's just a theory. A game theory!

Thanks for watching!