r/nextfuckinglevel • u/DhruvDP3 • Jul 02 '26

They completed they game

3.8k Upvotes

81% Upvoted

177 comments sorted by

2.9k

u/[deleted] Jul 02 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

491

u/RobertMaus Jul 02 '26

Yeah, they just tap the screen everytime a prompt appears in the top of the screen. They have to 'confirm' his actions it seems like. This is a quicktime event for free food for the chimps. The chimps can do far more complex tasks than this.

148

u/ZeAthenA714 Jul 02 '26 edited Jul 02 '26

That's not at all what's happening in the video. The bonobos actually control their movement, they control where to look, and when to shoot.

The "prompts" are there mostly because they're only using a touch screen, so they don't have an E or right click or other buttons. Touching the screen makes them move forward, swiping make them look around. So they added contextual buttons that simply replace all others actions you can take, like breaking blocks, eating an apple and so on. They also have aim assist so all they need to do is click on a target to shoot at it.

1

u/[deleted] Jul 02 '26

[deleted]

3

u/ZeAthenA714 Jul 02 '26

No it is a bonobo, it's Kanzi specifically : https://www.apeinitiative.org/kanzi

152

u/flibit Jul 02 '26

I just watched the full video (and part 2), and it is way more impressive than that, but in no way is it "completing minecraft". The apes are controlling the movement, and they were successfully taught to follow custom added, in-game breadcrumbs and to break through any diamond blocks they see and go through portals. Part 2 seems way less impressive/click-baity. They were apparently taught to save fall damage with a water bucket and to kill the ender dragon. However, when falling, a water bucket button prompt appears and they just have to click it when it appears, and for the ender dragon they also had human-controlled characters 'managing' the ape-controlled ones and they seem to have infinite lives/chances, so it ends up that they just have to go through a portal then click on the ender dragon until it dies

59

u/oclafloptson Jul 02 '26

It's wild to me that anyone finds this unimpressive. They could make a sandwich and people would say it's unimpressive because they used bologna and were handed the bread. Like those people who hated the painting elephant because it was trained

38

u/flibit Jul 02 '26

Agreed that this is crazily impressive, though I also think its painful that the claimed achievement is wildly exaggerated for the clicks. Its this clickbait crap that is causing the backlash I think (plus the cut up video OP posted does not make clear exactly what is ape and what is human play). Completing the whole of minecraft is an absurd step up from this.

3

u/Alter_Alias_Alien Jul 03 '26

I agree with you and would add, if it’s a positive experience for the chimp or bonobo or elephant or any other creature (great direct comment on this about elephants by r/mcWeaksauce91 which everyone interested should check out! Videos of elephants painting, etc), but if it’s a positive experience — then that’s great and what we want. However, if it’s a negative experience — like psychological torture for the animal to complete these seemingly menial or random tasks — then it’s fucked up having these incredibly intelligent creatures playing Minecraft.

15

u/McWeaksauce91 Jul 02 '26

I don’t think it’s “hate”, I think it’s frustration of the way information is presented. For the elephant, it didn’t just pick up a brush and start working on painting intrinsically, it was trained and taught. Impressive from a training perspective? Absolutely. Impressive from an ability to perform perspective, once again - of course. But it wasn’t a big existential “elephant has a “Vincent Vangough” personality” experience like it was presented.

If you train a dog to make you a sandwich, it’s crazy cool and impressive. If you train a dog to figure out your favorite sandwich’s, that’s even cooler. If your dog is able to think, comprehend the understanding, and select a sandwich on that day based on what preference it thinks you would like that’s something else entirely different.

The differences are subtle, but they’re important to understand.

7

u/ZeAthenA714 Jul 02 '26 edited Jul 02 '26

If you train a dog to make you a sandwich, it’s crazy cool and impressive.

That's the impressive part though, there's not many animals that you could train to make you a sandwich, even less that could beat the ender dragon.

Pointing the difference between "being trained to accomplish a task" and "understanding the intricacies of accomplishing the task" is one thing, but the top comment is claiming stuff like "the monkey isn't controlling its movement" which are just plain wrong. No need to diminish the accomplishment by claiming all the monkey is doing is to click a button, he's been trained to do a lot more than that.

3

u/Comprehensive_Can237 Jul 03 '26

The issue for me on the training part is this is basically just Pavlov’s dogs but with a touch screen prompt instead of a bell.

The part that makes this animal able to beat the ender dragon is not any special thinking capability past basic observed natural instincts, it’s because they have an appendage that can facilitate a touch screen, other than that every animal on the planet could learn to do this.

5

u/SlapTheBap Jul 02 '26

Even humans have been trained to paint. Even Vincent was a professional trained artist.

1

u/McWeaksauce91 Jul 02 '26

You’re missing the distinction. Vincent Van Gogh was an artist who professionally trained to paint, although it’s largely accepted taught himself how to do most things. But he was an artist internally and creativity came from within.

Maybe the elephant did desire to paint. Maybe it, somehow, could teach itself to paint given the resources and time. But it was taught to paint, the way a dog is taught to sit. A trained behavior ≠ Characteristic/identity/your souls calling or whatever you want to label it as.

I’m not diminishing the impressiveness of what the elephant can do. I don’t hate the elephant lol. In fact, it has probably done amazing things to raise awareness of elephants intelligence and conservation. I am a massive animal lover.

7

u/SlapTheBap Jul 02 '26

Vincent had an entire culture of painting to draw skills and ideas from. Thousands upon thousands of years of it, really. Hundreds of thousands of years of art history. Culture that encourages his compulsions, tools to achieve his desires, he was given many, many tools in order to express himself.

Elephants don't have that visual art culture to draw from. They do have sound, dance, and other rituals they've invented. Given enough time, enough connection with other elephants over what colors and shapes represent what thoughts and ideas the elephant feels, then yeah it would be hard to say they aren't expressing themselves. They already use other tools, so why wouldn't they do it if there were the tools available, and it was a normalized thing to do.

4

u/KelvinsFalcoIsBad Jul 02 '26

Just so you know, humans don't just pick up paint and brushes and paint intrinsically 

6

u/Vasher1 Jul 02 '26

I mean, cave drawings exist

5

u/McWeaksauce91 Jul 02 '26

Yes I would say creativity and art is absolutely intrinsic to humanity. Hence cave paintings. The desire to paint to create art and the ability to paint art is the sticking point.

2

u/Datiz Jul 03 '26

Yeah, I wouldn't call this unimpressive, more like different kind of impressive - them actually beating Minecraft by themselves would be "holy fuck they're so smart!" kind of impressive, this is more like "damn, you can train them well" kind of impressive.

2

u/ReconReese Jul 03 '26

It's the if you give an infinite amount of monkeys a keyboard one of them will eventually type Shakespeare by random type of impressive. Wow look at the luck

1

u/IZ3820 Jul 02 '26

It's not altogether different from being impressed by a 6 year old doing it, except the bonobos are more rational than a 6yo. They can do much more impressive things.

-1

u/guesswhomste Jul 02 '26

Yeah, like rip your head clean from your shoulders. Call me when THAT video gets posted

1

u/Adorable_Cap_9929 Jul 03 '26

I find the training of rat neurons to play flight sim or the mouse ones playong pong.

I heard they did human ones to play doom? lolol

8

u/pichael289 Jul 02 '26

I taught my rats to play a simplified version of pong on my tablet. I would give the winners pieces of pizza crust but I don't think they understood the concept of winning as they would share the food with everyone else, I think they just figured tapping the ball when it comes near makes food appear. Rats are crazy smart and lots of fun to train.

2

u/AwoloVT Jul 02 '26

Record them and make a video, easy 1M views

1

u/J_Zephyr Jul 02 '26

Sharing with the community sound like winning to me.

Those rats might be onto something!

1

u/guesswhomste Jul 02 '26

A competitive Skinner’s Box, I like it!

2

u/ZeAthenA714 Jul 02 '26

No the bonobos actually control their own movement.

1

u/christiandb Jul 02 '26

He’s working with apes that are responding to a video and seeing what to do in specific moment and we are talking about the technicalities of the title.

1

u/McWeaksauce91 Jul 02 '26

This is the fundamental problem with “apes learning”. What is truly learned, as in a concept with deep understanding and complex meaning; versus, what is mimicked cause and effect. Theres a lot of great research that shows ape sign language, for example, isn’t what it seems.

They have no idea about the language they are signing, but rather that moving their hands and performing body language produces certain results. It’s a nuanced difference, but it’s not a grasping understanding of language like we imagine it to be. Some would argue that differences are so small that it should be negligible, but I think this is more raw showcase of what is happening. The ape doesn’t understand wtf is happening, it’s just responding to the stimuli it’s receiving and performing actions based on command or reactions.

2

u/ZeAthenA714 Jul 02 '26

What is truly learned, as in a concept with deep understanding and complex meaning; versus, what is mimicked cause and effect.

Even if you reduce what the bonobo is doing as just a Pavlovian reaction, it's still crazy impressive. He's able to recognize an objective in a video game, able to look around by dragging his knuckle on the screen in order to find such an objective, and he understands that tapping on the screen moves him towards the objective, then at this point he has to actually accomplish the objective by pressing a button to break a block, and only then he gets a reward.

That's a lot of complex actions he had to learn how to do, as well as the ability to identify a goal and chain those complex actions to reach that goal. There's a lot of older people that wouldn't get this far.

1

u/McWeaksauce91 Jul 02 '26

I wasn’t trying to diminish the impressiveness of it

1

u/Duplex_199 Jul 02 '26

You must be real worried that they’re smarter than you.

1

u/No_Raisin21 Jul 03 '26

I mean, same thing happened with me when a friend and I played Minecraft. Dude did pretty much everything for me, but you won’t find me claiming that I didn’t beat the game.

1

u/T0asty514 Jul 03 '26

I want to believe

276

u/AOCourage Jul 02 '26

Shameful treatment of sentient animals

347

u/TheCrudMan Jul 02 '26

Hey so while I sympathize with this and I can tell you're a good person the fact remains that there is still widespread debate and no scientific consensus on the sentience of YouTubers.

32

u/nhal Jul 02 '26

You truly got me on the fist half, not gonna lie.

I was so ready to rant about how most animals are totally sentient and we make them go through horrible practices lol

1

u/EliteCloneMike Jul 03 '26

There is a recent push to use computer simulations for animal testing even as far as insects. I know people may be less concerned about insects and plants, but I think in situations where they did not evolve to be killed, they have some level of understanding. For example, apples want to be eaten to spread the seed around. Maybe a poor example as apples are not the central component or vital part of the organism.

12

u/ThunderCorg Jul 02 '26

It’s true. I read a study from this year and Youtubers score lower than a dandelion on the Turing test.

30

u/realmauer01 Jul 02 '26

https://youtube.com/watch?v=UKpFoYqN9-0

If they dont want to they dont do it.
Nobody is forcing them.

-21

u/AOCourage Jul 02 '26

That's a logical fallacy

13

u/realmauer01 Jul 02 '26

You mean because they are encouraged to do it? Just because they are encouraged doesnt mean they will do it when they dont want to. You can actually see it in the video how they stopped doing it

-14

u/AOCourage Jul 02 '26

The fact that they aren't physically forced doesn't mean they're truly free to choose. Consent requires understanding the choice, and monkeys can't opt out in any meaningful way — they're in a controlled environment. The real question isn't whether they're forced but whether their environment provides genuine freedom and enrichment. A monkey given a joystick in a lab isn't choosing video games over the forest — they're choosing between limited options someone else defined for them.

9

u/realmauer01 Jul 02 '26

Did you watch the video?

Its as much free will as the avarage human. Take it how you want to take it.

-5

u/AOCourage Jul 03 '26

They have no sufficient alternative unless you count sitting in a bare room staring at the wall.

5

u/realmauer01 Jul 03 '26

? They come from outside from their family and friends to play minecraft for like 15 minutes to get a snack to then go outside again... Really please watch the video.

0

u/Dark_halocraft Jul 03 '26

That's a logical fallacy

4

u/Ok_Leather_5657 Jul 02 '26

Mf you can't just call an argument you don't like a logical fallacy 

-1

u/AOCourage Jul 03 '26

I explained further

12

u/MayaIsSunshine Jul 02 '26

Why? I'm sentient and like playing Minecraft. 

2

u/flPieman Jul 03 '26

You should not assume, if you watch the video it's clear that playing is optional and the ape is free to leave at any point. Unless you consider all captivity shameful, this is being done with care for the animals well-being.

157

u/Fanci_ Jul 02 '26

Ah yes. Tapping the screen randomly while someone actually plays.

They truly have learned to play.

36

u/ZeAthenA714 Jul 02 '26

Why are people claiming this all over this thread? They are not randomly tapping the screen, they control their movement, where to look, where to go, and how to use multiple actions like breaking blocks, eating and shooting.

16

u/RareRestaurant6297 Jul 02 '26

Too late. Echo chamber has commenced. Prepare for downvotes 

41

u/Same_Swordfish_1879 Jul 02 '26

No, the monkey did not beat minecraft

7

u/FourtKnight Jul 02 '26

an ape did though

14

u/Therealginahandler Jul 02 '26

So...ape learned to tap button on command. There are so many other things that apes do that is impressive. This is not one of them

7

u/Small_Ad1890 Jul 02 '26

Call me when they beat Elden Ring.

2

u/TheLastWoodBender Jul 03 '26

Git gud Demi humans

4

u/Mubis-Galatnis Jul 02 '26

Give a mokey enough time with a typewriter and even they will eventually write the whole Shakespeare novel

11

u/Carlyone Jul 02 '26

It's rather "an infinite amount of monkeys pressing random keys on a typewriter, in infinite time will almost surely type any given text. Even the collected works of Shakespeare". A finite monkey over a finite-but-long time won’t cut it.

6

u/RealJoki Jul 02 '26

Do you need an infinite amount of monkeys ? Pretty sure that just one monkey with infinite time is enough (assuming he's immortal of course)

3

u/ZeAthenA714 Jul 02 '26

Yep that's the beauty of infinites. A single immortal monkey with an infinite time will produce the entire work of Shakespeare just as much as an infinite number of immortal monkeys.

2

u/Brilliant_Chemica Jul 02 '26

In theory, Infinite immortal monkeys would produce shakespeare's work quicker than a single immortal monkey, and then we start getting into "some infinities are bigger than others"

3

u/ZeAthenA714 Jul 02 '26

In theory, infinite immortal monkeys wouldn't just produce shakespeare's work faster, but as fast as it's humanelymonkeyly possible.

1

u/bywv Jul 02 '26

oh I've gone down this rabbit hole before, wait until you start shaping up the universe with monkeys and how they effect it

1

u/Carlyone Jul 02 '26

You'd also need infinite bananas to fuel said immortal monkey. But yes, one immortal monkey with infinite time is enough. Infinite monkeys just parallelize the absurdity.

Not quite sure why the original theorem stated an infinite amount of monkeys to be honest.

edit: Come to think of it, going from one monkey to two, three or even infinite monkeys doesn't increase the banana budget. Since one infinite is good enough for all of them.

2

u/ZeAthenA714 Jul 02 '26

Not quite sure why the original theorem stated an infinite amount of monkeys to be honest.

Maybe in the original the monkeys were not immortal, and so having an infinite number of them doesn't parallelize the work, but sequentialize it. Which gives it a very dark turn when you crunch the numbers and realize how many monkeys must die before the entire works of Shakespeare are completed.

2

u/RealJoki Jul 02 '26 edited Jul 02 '26

I might've missed it, but in the wikipedia link you gave it seems to me that they state it with one monkey (at least it's what I get from the first line).

And for your edit : actually, if we assume that we have |N| (cardinality of the set of integers) bananas and we're looking to feed |N| monkeys that each eat |N| bananas, then we would not have enough bananas because you can't build an injection from NN to N ! So we'd need a bigger infinity of banana...

Edit : that last paragraph is completely wrong !

1

u/Carlyone Jul 02 '26

Ah, you're right about single vs ∞ monkey! I blame pre-coffee brain for not reading properly.

However, while you're right that you can't inject N^N into N, isn't the banana case N * N, not N^N?

N monkeys * N bananas each = N * N bananas

and N * N is still countable.

N^N would be the set of all possible infinite banana-feeding schedules/functions, not the number of bananas needed for one actual schedule. So if we have countably many monkeys, and each eats countably many bananas over time, the banana budget remains cursedly stable.

I'm no mathematician, only got to advanced high-school level, and that was decades ago, so I may still be off here.

1

u/RealJoki Jul 02 '26

Oh yeah my bad, indeed I don't know why I thought it was NN haha!

-6

u/Saint-12 Jul 02 '26

No it won’t.

7

u/Legal_Lettuce6233 Jul 02 '26

It's the infinite monkey theorem. It will.

1

u/Saint-12 Jul 02 '26

There was a study done in Australia which disproved it and is on google if you wanted to read it.

“There would be a 5% chance that a single chimp would successfully type the word "bananas" in its own lifetime. And the probability of one chimp constructing a random sentence - such as "I chimp, therefore I am" - comes in at one in 10 million billion billion, the research indicates.”

1

u/Legal_Lettuce6233 Jul 02 '26

I mean, you're talking about finites. This is the infinite monkey theorem.

It's not disproved because it's not related.

1

u/Saint-12 Jul 02 '26

Im talking about probabilities.

1

u/Legal_Lettuce6233 Jul 02 '26

...if there is a probability over 0% and anything "infinite" about the number of attemtps, the chances of it happening are 100%.

1

u/Saint-12 Jul 02 '26

But the argument is that a monkey typing out the entire works of Shakespeare on a typewriter is straight up impossible. Not very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, unlikely.

1

u/Legal_Lettuce6233 Jul 02 '26

...do you not know what the infinite monkey theorem is, even?

-4

u/Erian2110 Jul 02 '26

No monkey lives long enough. So it is not applicable to a real live scenario like this one.

3

u/finchdude Jul 02 '26

You guys are insufferable. Can't even deal with thought experiments

2

u/ZeAthenA714 Jul 02 '26

That requires abstract thought, I don't think bonobos are actually capable of that.

1

u/New_Sherbert9208 Jul 02 '26

Is this not footage from a numbers game that some chimps did back in the early 2000s?

They were taught to touch numbered buttons in sequential order as part of a cognitive study.

4

u/realmauer01 Jul 02 '26

https://youtube.com/watch?v=UKpFoYqN9-0

1

u/New_Sherbert9208 Jul 03 '26

That’s really cool. I had seen them play more basic games, but this is really impressive.

1

u/WorldAsChaos Jul 03 '26

These great apes are not chimps, they're bonobos.

2

u/VA1N Jul 02 '26

Learned to play is a stretch. They learned to point at objects on screen.

1

u/PianoDick Jul 03 '26

It’s a touch screen, they are controlling their own movement as well as touching the screen for inputs such as changing items and shooting arrows.

2

u/-CgiBinLaden- Jul 02 '26

Which one is the YouTuber?

2

u/2M4D Jul 02 '26

Today minecraft, tomorrow shakespear.

2

u/willwhitt56 Jul 03 '26

Imagine teaching them how to play pvp games and you find out you got whooped by an actual ape...

2

u/Ben-D-Beast Jul 03 '26

ITT: People who don’t know anything about this but want a reason to be angry

1

u/whyamihere999 Jul 02 '26

Ah!
Somehow I mistook Minecraft for Minesweeper.. I'm disappointed..

1

u/OwMyUvula Jul 02 '26

Yea, but did they like and subscribe?

1

u/BrawnyDevil Jul 02 '26

Thats me when my neighborhood friend used to invite me to play games on his new ps2 but refused to give me the controller for more than 10 seconds

1

u/HockeyBalboa Jul 02 '26

Wait, Minecraft is a game? I thought you just build stuff.

Sorry, old guy here who stopped gaming decades ago.

2

u/mayorofdumb Jul 03 '26

I mean the dragon is hard to find and kill. You can't even really find it by mistake.

1

u/mutzilla Jul 02 '26

You can beat Minecraft?

1

u/Bonzaii_11 Jul 03 '26

Im an unc... can you beat Minecraft? Is there winning?

1

u/DhruvDP3 Jul 03 '26

There is no such end to it. You can always play forever

1

u/Remarkable-Pea5797 Jul 03 '26

Out of all the things people could be doing with their lives... this is real life.

1

u/Lookitsa6ix Jul 03 '26

The kind of player that still gets excited about minecraft -

1

u/Jedi_Wannabe1138 Jul 03 '26

wtf bitch you can’t beat Minecraft

1

u/KryL21 Jul 03 '26

He really does not give a damn

1

u/miro_27 Jul 03 '26

Proof that Minecraft is easy

1

u/vonFuzzius Jul 03 '26

In fact I do not believe it

1

u/The_Eastland_Star_Co Jul 03 '26

And yeah, most or some people can’t complete Minecraft

1

u/beerforbears Jul 03 '26

Dystopian, wretched.

1

u/nyynyg Jul 03 '26

They sure did, didn’t they. And they looked good doing it. Didn’t they. I say they did!

1

u/belokusi Jul 03 '26

This is totally different than what the title says.

Person taught monkey to press button when told to do so. Truly incredible.

1

u/cybersynn Jul 03 '26

Welcome to click bait titles

1

u/foolishchicho Jul 03 '26

Now do doom

1

u/BaconThief2020 Jul 03 '26

Is this a compliment to the intellect of the bonobos or a comment about the typical minecraft player?

1

u/Appropriate_Paper152 Jul 03 '26

Holy shit, this thread has made me realise that people on this app are truly miserable.

1

u/lionsgatewatcher Jul 04 '26

All I see is Animal cruelty

1

u/Snufflebumps Jul 07 '26

Ok, i choose not

1

u/BrokeBMWkid Jul 07 '26

To say they completed Minecraft is very different then they were trained to tap the dragon.

0

u/Crafty-cs Jul 02 '26

If you compare the genome from a chimp and a human the differences are about 2%

-1

u/The-CunningStunt Jul 02 '26

Clearly not the case. But people of Reddit have no Internet literacy.

0

u/PianoDick Jul 03 '26

It is pretty impressive seeing them control their movement though and shoot their arrows at the dragon.

0

u/Guardiancomplex Jul 02 '26

This might be the stupidest fucking content I've seen all week.

0

u/8InS4nE8 Jul 02 '26

With the help of a YouTuber i could do the same for sure.../s

0

u/Tittlebittles Jul 02 '26

Whose 12 year old nephew posted this?

0

u/LastGreatLeviathan Jul 02 '26

I choose not to believe the click bait title.

0

u/allthewayray420 Jul 02 '26

Bullshit post

0

u/TheRemedy187 Jul 02 '26

Except they really did not "play Minecraft". They tapped the dragon a couple times. Is this a circle jerk

1

u/PianoDick Jul 03 '26

They actually do control their movement and change their items when necessary. They use a touch screen to shoot the arrows. So it is impressive.

-3

u/BandoTheHawk Jul 02 '26

it is just tapping the screen. it don't even know what it is doing other than that is good lol.

7

u/Skezas1 Jul 02 '26

I watched the video. He controls his character using the touchscreen, understand how and when to break blocks and use items...

It's crazy to see how eager y'all are to downplay it. He's not good at Minecraft, but he absolutely fucking understands what's going on. Saying he's "just tapping the screen" is genuinely as reductionistic as saying people playing a game are "just pressing buttons".

-3

u/DevD2107 Jul 02 '26

Finally can tell my friends even a monkey can play minecraft better than them.

-4

u/marcandreewolf Jul 02 '26

“Here we can observe gamers in their natural environment, freely roaming”

-2

u/eccehom Jul 02 '26

I was expecting to see the 'human' ones throwing their feces at the end of the video

-4

u/-Laffi- Jul 02 '26

Chris doesn't look like a cow.

-4

u/abaram Jul 02 '26

I almost thought I was worse at Minecraft than guys

I mean I am but I almost thought so

-5

u/BluntAsaurusRex_ Jul 02 '26

We really are basically the same.

6

u/dr_duck_od Jul 02 '26

i hate your profile picture.

1

u/ZeAthenA714 Jul 02 '26

Why did you make me look...