Posted by
michael
on from the so-long-and-thanks-for-all-the-touchscreens dept.
zephc writes "Wired is reporting that a group of researchers are working with an artificial language of whistles in an attempt to communicate with dolphins."
206 comments
hey this is a great opportunity for mankind!
by
Anonymous Coward
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Does this mean that soon Nike will be able to pay dolphins 5 cents an hour to do labor? well sense they're not human slavery would be ok i guess...awsome, exploiting third world countries wasn't profitable enough, now theres a whole new "minority" to rape for profits! yeehaw! let freedumb roar!
Dolphins are stupid!!!
by
Anonymous Coward
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OK, that is an exaggeration, but I don't think they are much smarter than a big wet dog. I worked as an intern in a series of psych experiements trying to get dolphins to replicate Sue Savage-Rumbaugh's keyboard communication with chimps, and multiple years of training would only give the dolphins a 20 word "vocabulary". That's pretty lame. I think David Brin summarized it best. Read here to see what he had to say
Re:Just a suggestion
by
Anonymous Coward
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Yes, but dolphin's hearing is much more like our siight - they build a 3d-world map using sonar, so their "hearing" is still in the spatial domain, as well as the temporal. Humans have a little ability in this area - we can tell where a sound is coming from, and with _years_ of practice, some people, particularly musicians/ orchestra conductors/opera-hall architects, can tell the rough shape of a room from the echoes in it.
So, some concepts that might at first seem "sight based" are in fact "spatially based", and so would still make sense to a dolphin - e.g. "round", "fuzzy", "near" etc - and there's even the soinic analogue of colours, since different objects reflect ehcolocation clicks in different ways.
And dolphins do have reasonably good eyesight, too, by the way - they're short sighted in air (however that means they see better underwater), but they have eyes that are forward facing-enough for binocular vision (they are, after all, pack hunters like most animals we rate as "intelligent" - humans, chimps, wolves/dogs, etc). Chances are, they use their eyes for the final moments of moving in for the kill.
3
Re:Why the preoccupation with "intelligent" animal
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Anonymous Coward
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Er... Tuna have blood, quite definitely. Fish blood, but it is red...
David Brin : Uplift == very good read
by
Anonymous Coward
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For those of you who don't happen to know or who are not familiar with literature (;0) ):
David Brin, "Uplift" and sequels
very good read
Whatever the first coherent sentence is...
by
Anonymous Coward
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Consider:
-- Dolphins are one of the few species, other than humans, who have sex just for the pleasure of it.
-- Male dolphins, particularly younger ones, will often hump anything that (a), moves, (b) doesn't hurt, and (c), may not move. I know this from personal observation (and, with a whole pool's worth of mixed male/female population, it provided hours of entertainment that I think would have made even Hugh Hefner blush!)
Whatever the first coherent sentence received from a dolphin ends up being, I would wager that it will be very X-rated.;-)
Re:Why the preoccupation with "intelligent" animal
by
khaladan
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Exactly!
Now, what do you do for food?
Do you eat plants?
How dare you assume that you can eat plants and not eat animals! Who said plants weren't as good as animals? If one living thing has worth, then they all have worth! Don't you dare eat the plants!
Don't drink water either. Who said that H20 molecules deserve to quench your thirst? Just die.
Re:Why the preoccupation with "intelligent" animal
by
Don+Negro
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Dude, have you ever cleaned and filleted a tuna?
I'm guessing not, since you'd remember having to wash the blood off of your hands, knife, table, ect.
The real question is whether trolls like you have blood.
Don Negro
--
Don Negro Perl 6 will give you the big knob. -- Larry Wall
If the assumption was valid, the conclusion would also be valid.
However, other dolphin researchers have noted that dolphins are primarily visual in clear water and use sound most when visibility is impaired.
Dolphins are also tactile animals, using touch as a method of communication.
The idea of borrowing skills and ideas from people who are familiar with a non-visual world is great, IMHO. It only works, though, if that's the problem you're trying to solve.
IMHO, there are too many "dolphin experts", with too many contradictory ideas. Dolphin studies, right now, are not much more advanced than medieval alchemy. Without the benefit of being able to recognise either lead or gold.
-- It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Exactly. The only adjectives which would be visual would be colors and levels of brightness. Any other descriptions of objects can be experienced by touch or other senses.
Re:Dolphin Uplift -- Math Mistake (combinatorics)?
by
Doug+Merritt
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You're right, my math example was horribly
flawed; I was getting sleepy when I wrote that.
I shouldn't even have said "four word sentences",
for that matter, since that implies there might
be meaning attached to each position in the
sentence, implying some kind of grammar, which
is actually part of what Brin is contradicting.
One or two word order-insensitive sentences would be more to the
point.
Brin's essay didn't give specific numerical
data, as I recall, so I'll just leave it there.
-- Professional Wild-Eyed Visionary
Dolphin Uplift / David Brin
by
Doug+Merritt
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David Brin, who coined the "uplift" term in the
title of this article, also had some very
interesting comments to make about dolphin
communication (and therefore implicitly about
upper bounds on dolphin intelligence).
Brin has written fascinating science fiction about
genetically-alterered dolphins actually crewing
and captaining starships, but it's interesting to
note that he has also strongly critiqued
non-fictional hopes
of communication with unaltered dolphins.
In his essay Dogma of Otherness (originally
published in Analog, Apr 1986, collected in
his book Otherness, 1994), he points out that,
long ago, dolphin researchers analyzed dolphin
"speech" (sonic and ultrasonic sound emission),
and simply applied information theory to the
sounds, and discovered that, no matter whether
we understand what dolphins are saying or
not, nonetheless, they don't seem to be saying
very much: they use only a few sound patterns,
which are only used in short sequences.
(Information theory, to oversimplify, allows
us to say "if there are only N bits of variation
in a message, then that message cannot possibly
convey more than 2^N bits of information,
regardless of what those bits mean."
It separates the question of the often-unknown
meaning of messages, from
the question of how many messages might in
principle be communicated with any given
communication system.
It has been invaluable in e.g. cryptography
and computer science since the WWII era.)
In other words, there just isn't very much
information that can be extracted (in an
information-theory sense) from dolphin sonic
signals, regardless of what those signals mean.
It's as if we can see that they have (e.g.) a
6 word vocabulary, and never use more than 4
words in a sentence, and never speak in paragraphs. No matter what they're saying, that
would limit them to communicating no more than 24
thoughts total -- period.
(I'm making up the above numbers in order to get
across the gist of Brin's essay.)
What this means is that, it doesn't *matter*
whether we understand dolphin "speech" or not,
because their speech just doesn't contain enough
information to convey very much. In particular,
Brin's argument says that there is no way in
hell that dolphins could be using sonic holograms,
or any other large-information-conveying signals.
Brin might, of course, be wrong in his
interpretation of dolphin research, but I personally have seen nothing to refute him in
the 15 years since I first read his essay.
That still leaves us the option of Uplifting
dolphins, of course, just as Brin does in his
fiction. That is, making dolphins
intelligent, rather than hoping they
already are intelligent.
As to other primate communication, another
poster in this thread claimed a chimp made
signs quoted as "Tickle me, then bring me
one of those bananas. Oh, and I would like to watch some TV
That's laughable. The original signs were literally
"Tickle. Banana. TV.". Paraphrasing those
(admittedly interesting) signs into full sentences is
a kind of blatant lie, in my book.
Chimps and apes are pretty smart. But they don't use complex grammar, and pretending otherwise
doesn't help them (nor us).
1997 - Ukrainian dolphins trained by the Soviet Navy for military operations are now being used for therapy with autistic and emotionally disturbed children.
Now there's an interesting reason to communicate with dolphins. It hits awfully close to home, as my son has been diagnosed with Asperger's syndrome, a form of autism. Too bad the local zoo doesn't have any kind of marine mammal program....:o(
-- "How many light bulbs does it take to change a person?" --BMcC-->
Not "evolutionarily important" !!!?
by
Julian+Morrison
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Did you perchance miss the bit where humans took over the earth? Or the bit where we've near-on exterminated all the more inconvenient other species? Did you miss the part where humans have no significant predators left in countries where intelligence is valued? Or the promise from intelligently-designed space flight of off-world colonies that mean even a planetbuster or a global plague wouldn't kill us all?
Methinks you didn't really give enough thought to that one.
Will this cause man to stop tring to polluting the ocean or will just cause us to exploit another speices. I believe this will not be a good thing for the dolphins.
The purpose is quite easy and clear. Once there is a common set of words understood on both sides it becomes possible to ask simple questions of the dolphins. From that we will learn more about them from their own responses than by mere observation alone. This was the case with teaching apes sign language and it will be the case with any animal that we can develop a common language that allows simple questions to be asked.
The simple fact is that we don't have the ability yet to understand what they are saying... however we do have the ability to communicate in a common form with common words. Doesn't matter if its something new for both of us; just as long as both parties can really understand it.
I don't actually expect this project to work... In my opinion something based on ideas would have a much better impact and help speed up the possability of asking questions (ie common "words" for food/playtime/warm/cold).
But, who says we shouldn't expect dolphins to understand our linguistic nature? How will we know if we don't try? Recent studies have shown that a bit of "music" is in all mammals... and our human languages (as diverse as they may all be) are nothing but ideas expressed via sound.
That's a pretty good core to share.
-- ---
I do not moderate.
Re:It's great! Oh maybe not
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jim68000
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given that ulaanbaatar is the capital city of mongolia, they must be way lost.
--
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need more time?
Re:Does no one here have respect for language?
by
Christopher+Thomas
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I'm no Luddite, I'd love to be able to talk to dolphins and/or apes...but you can't teach language to apes and dolphins. Language isn't just a matter of brute processing power of the brain. It requires innate wiring created to handle it.
...Which is already present, because these species already use language to communicate with themselves.
The problem is teaching them a lanugage that _we_ can understand. This has already been done for apes and chimps (apes with sign language, chimps with keyboards). Dolphins are trickier, but that's mainly a practical issue (they can't sign or type, so we're working ona whistle code).
That apes and dolphins are capable of using language is not in question. The question is "are they smart enough to be considered people under the law", which can only be assessed by direct communication of better quality than we've managed to achieve to date. This is an engineering problem, not a theoretical problem (we know it can be done, but not how to do it).
Dolphins resemble humans in a couple aspects:
First they both talk incessentantly, far more than
is needed for survival. Second, they both have
sex far more than needed for procreation.
Perhaps they'd undersatnd each other's bawdy jokes.
The researches have started out naming objects. Think about a dolphin's natural habit. There just aren't that many objects they care about - other fish, and themselves. IF there is a dolphin natural language, it is not going to be chuck full of nouns. They might have names for themselves, other fish, the water, the sky, and the ocean flow.
Relating to them on the level of simple human objects is certainly the simplest for humans, and is the way historically we have learned each other's languages, but I doubt it is going to work with a species whose natural environment is so alien to our own.
And besides, why is it so hard to tell if dolphins are actually speaking intelligently with one another with their clicks and whistles. What they do seems complex, yes, so we seem to stop there and say 'they are talking'. Why don't we subject their 'talk' to rigorous analysis and decode it. If there is not enough structure to it that we can't decode it, we are either too dumb to understand, or it is little more than bird song (that would be my guess).
-josh
Re:Your last comment is untrue
by
HeghmoH
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I don't see why you should be commenting on the subject of animal language comprehension when you don't even seem to be able to understand the meaning of the "last comment".
-- Mod down posts with a "Free Mac Mini/iPod" sig, they're spam!
Niven's Known Space features intelligent dolphins and humans who communicate with them. His novel World of Ptavvs in particular features them (though it doesn't revolve around them).
-- Mod down posts with a "Free Mac Mini/iPod" sig, they're spam!
This may be the only way to determine whether or not dolphins have a language of their own.
There may still be problems, due to the difference between different species (who could predict that people would have a language and that chimpanzees would not?). Other problems might be at a more gramatical level. I have often wondered whether or not dolphins could project a sonic holograph, or at least enough of one for another dolphin to interpolate. If they did some sort of mpeg style compression, it might not look at all like speech.
Caution: Now approaching the (technological) singularity.
--
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Re:Why the preoccupation with "intelligent" animal
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rark
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> It's been said before, but it needs repeating:
> what about the tuna? Why worry about killing all
> those dolphins when we're so intent on killing
> the damn tuna? If you cut tuna, do they not
> bleed?
Because we eat the tuna. Therefore we furthur life. By your argument, why do we kill carrots -- I mean, not only are they alive, but they take longer to die, and are often *eaten* alive.
We aren't eating the dolphins.
(I strongly suspect, also, that tuna have a better energy use-to-energy output ratio -- i.e. they eat fewer sunlight-calories than dolphin, pound for pound, but I could be wrong about that)
Re:Does no one here have respect for language?
by
rark
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The concept you're trying for is 'grammer', and yes, it is hardwired (humans are hardwired to create grammer, not for specific grammatical rules). For a nifty discussion of this (in non-verbal languages, as well) see _Seeing_Voices_ -- I believe by oliver sacks...
That said, I'm not convinced that at least some animals *don't* have language. In this case 'I don't know' is a more intellectually honest answer than 'absolutely not' -- how would we know if dolphins have vocabulary and grammar? we're talking a completely alien species here. Up until the last century even deaf humans who used sign language were often considered sub-intelligent and without language. If you still believe this about deaf humans and/or sign language, please do read the above book.
> For humans, "teaching" language is not a
> necessity. Consider: EVERY child brought up (in
> non-pathological conditions, c.f. "Genie")
> learns language.
False: See autism and hearing disorders.
My two year old (now three) went to speech therapy to do what your two year old does naturally. That said, it's fairly clear that his usage of language (now) is the same as that of most other three year old children. Just because it must be taught doesn't mean that the individual is mimicking the language after it's taught.
data: he's autistic. best theory is that because of the sensory issues involved he didn't automatically pick up language the way most kids do. He had to be guided to it. Once he was guided to it, though, he's taken to it fairly well.
The point I was trying to make is that you seemed to be trying to draw some line between 'taught behavior' and roteness -- and it's not nearly that simple.
If you look at the two major presidential candidates for the last US election there's an obvious reason why we're looking for intelligence outside our own species. That reason is Hope.
-- Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
//begin quote
Why is it we humans think that we can conquer every task that we put ourselves to? It makes no sense to me that we might be able to understand something that dolphins know. There are just some things that can't be learned.
//end quote
I ask this in all earnestness(sp?????)
If i have never tried something, I already have failed by not trying.
If I have never known the answer, I never have tried to answer it, or I haven't asked the right question.
If however I have asked the question, I have tried, then at least I personally can feel better by knowing that I have an answer when someone asks me that question.
Unless we have tried, no one will be able to know, no one will be able to start from that point on. The ultimate goal is to answer the question, to ask "What if?". And to answer it.
This is IMNSHO, one of the best things we can learn. Dolphins are one of the smartest mammals/animals on the planet. I personally would be ashamed if everyone said what you just did. It isn't our/my say to tell our fellow humans what is and isn't worthwhile to do. Just because something seems impossible doesn't mean it is. Just because something seems illogical doesn't mean it is. I personally am glad that someone thinks out of the box, if no one did, we all would be in trouble.
I just cant see how us quite possibly learning to communicate with another life form is not worthwhile. Imagine, if you will, the possiblilites, the gains if we do learn to communicate?
We can learn the perspective of a TOTALLY different mindset. We could learn things never before possible, all by breaking one barrier, language. The possibilites are endless. Therefore we MUST try.
I just can't personally fathom not to ask, What if? I don't believe there ISN'T anything I can't learn, because EVERYTHING can be learned. Period, the first step to failure is never to try.
I leave you with this question, Imagine if Einstein, Newton, the Wright Brother's, Tesla, Edison, Sun Tzu, Kennedy, and many, many more, had come to your conclusion, and not tried? (another what if, ironically)
A related quote on chimp langage.
by
pfft
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Others have argued that primates who - or do I mean "that"? - give the
appearance of using language are doing something very different from what we
do when we use language. Rather than communicating - that is, converting
private ideas into the common currency of signs in patterns - they are
manipulating symbols that have no meaning, but whose manipulation can achive
desired goals for them. To a strict behaviorist, the idea of distinguishing
between external behaviours on the basis of hypothetical mental qualities such
as "meaning" is absurd. And yet such an experiment was once carried out with
high-school students instead of primates as subjects. The students were given
colored plastic chips of various shapes and were "conditioned" to manipulate
them in certain ways in order to obtain certain rewards. Now, the sequences in
which they learned to arrange the chips in order to get the desired objects
could in fact be decoded into simple English requests for the objects - and
yet most of the students claimed to have never thought of matters this way.
They said they detected patterns that worked and patterns that didn't work,
and that was as far as it went. To them it felt like an exercise in
meaningless symbol manipulation! This astonishing result may convince many
people that the chimp-language claims are all wishful thinking on the part of
anthropomorphic animal lovers. But the debate is far from settled.
Douglas R. Hofstadter about chimp language, from The Mind's I
Re:Why the preoccupation with "intelligent" animal
by
Tiamat
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You wrote:
"Intelligence isn't even an evolutionarily important characteristic: just look at how few species possess it -- if it were more valuable, then it would be selected for, and more species would have it. Which species do have it? Squids, spiders, and other predators. Intelligence has evolved at each stage in animal evolution (cephalopods, arachnids, mammalia, etc.) but only as a means of furthering predation. Where's the morality in that? "
I take exception to this: There are examples of real intelligence that develops NOT to further predation, but to further self-defense and communal living. Rabbits are well known (both in folklore, and to anyone who has ever had a house rabbit) to posses an uncanny intelligence, awareness of the intentions of others, complex communication/body language, etc..., and I have yet to see a rabbit hunt another living being for food. This is simply too reductive a view of intelligence. Intelligence often evolves to promote cooperation, defense, and to make the most of available resources. There isn't much immoral about that in itself.
(I suppose we could also discuss elephants, who have well-documented 'symbolic systems' built on low-frequency vocalization.)
Its a quote from the short lived "The Big Guy and Rusty the Boy Robot" (based on the comic book by the same name). The series lasted for 6 episodes (maybe 8, I'll have to check) on FOX Kids a year or so back. The basic premise is that in the 70s/80s (although the 'tech style' looks more like a style-istic 50s) the army created a robot to protect the world from aliens and other monsters/evil menaces. It was supposed to be automated but the Artificial Inteligence wasn't up to snuff (cute scene where they ask the robot "How many fingers am I holding up?" to which he replies "Tuesday"). The army makes it a piloted vehicle... but thats on a need to know basis only, as far as everyone else knows, its just a big robot (hence "The Big Guy"). Flash forward to 'now'. A company finally puts together a fully functional A.I. and a new robot with a learning neural net, thats still kind of new at the job of defending the earth (hence "Rusty the Boy Robot"), who ends up as the "Big Guys" side-kick (he Idolizes the big guy and wants to grow up to be just like him).
The quote comes from the head of the corporation that built rusty addressing the scientist who built him, right after Rusty went charging into a situation and got badly clobered... repeatedly.:)
If you can find a copy of it, its rather funny and entertaining. Too bad the Saban (the E-Bola virus of Childrens Programming) was(is?) in charge of the Fox Kids programming line-up and nixed it.
-- This space for rent. All reasonable inquiries will be entertained at proprietors discretion.
For dolphins, the primary route to assimilate information is via sound.
Perhaps they could use blind people.
Somehow I don't think the "Seeing Eye Dolphin" would really catch on. What? You ment...
Oh. Never Mind.;)
-- This space for rent. All reasonable inquiries will be entertained at proprietors discretion.
Re:Does no one here have respect for language?
by
BeanThere
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If apes or dolphins had anything approaching a human-level ability at language, we'd observe them spontaneously using it
We have. They do. Duh. Try to do at least the most basic amount of research before posting. We don't know how complex their language is because we don't understand it, but the fact that it is there is not under dispute.
Re:What will they find...
by
tomcrooze
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Some people have already mentioned the parrot that can understand English. What they haven't made clear is just how sophisticated that parrot is.
When shown a purple square block and a purple triangular block, and asked "What is the same?", the parrot will reply "color", and when asked "What is different?" the parrot will say "shape". Furthermore, they've gotten the parrot to start teaching another parrot to speak English. On one occasion, the "teacher" parrot even told the "student" to "speak more clearly" when he pronounced the word paper incorrectly.
Theres been alot of talk about how inteligent dolphins are. Maybe they are. But they havent dont anything about it. They're like the bright kid who never does anything with it. Even if they have greater cognitive ability than humans, they sure havent done much with it. They still live a brutal existance of animals. They still get caught in tuna nets and eaten by the occasional shark and die of disease without devising ways to defend themselves or finding cures.
It wouln't matter much. It's not just sound dolphins as well as most aquatic creatures can detect subltle changes in water pressure and electrical fields. Dolphins not only communicate using sound but also rely on posture, waves and who knows what else.
Let's say that someone undertook a very worth cause and was able to simulate all the sensory input a dolphin receives and somehow translated it into some sort of sensory input a human understood. Do you think a human being could make sense out of it? Of course not.
In order to communicate you need to have something in common with the creature. I am afraid a creature which only experiences air a minute fraction of it's life will find very little to communicate to you.
--
War is necrophilia.
Re:"Uplifting dolphins" reference
by
dcs
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I failed to mention many things about the series. Book titles, for instance. I'm not reviewing it.:-)
And as for the fleet, it's not known (at Startide Rising) whether it's really progenitor's or not (though it is certainly suspected so), and there are many species which are humanoid.
-- (8-DCS)
"Uplifting dolphins" reference
by
dcs
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· Score: 3
This expression comes from the Uplift series, a couple of science fiction trilogies by David Brin. The central theme in the series is that no sentient species in the universe, except one fabled "progenitors", has ever attained sentience by itself. Instead, they all have been genetically engineered into sentience, a process known as "uplifting".
Humans, naturally, uplift dolphins and chimpanzees (and then proceed to dogs, what a waste!).
Mind you, I hated the first book, the second book is terribly annoying and it's story is continued (and finished) only in the fifth and sixth books. Third book is actually ok, but no dolphins there.:-)
-- (8-DCS)
Re:"Uplifting dolphins" reference
by
JEI
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Brin's books are: Sundiver, The Uplift War, Startide Rising, Brightness Reef, Infinity's Shore, and Heaven's Reach.
I thought they were very good, and David Brin in general is an excellent writer. He, along with two other authors wrote a new Foundation series.
-- Justin Ingersoll
Re:"Uplifting dolphins" reference
by
StarTideRising
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· Score: 1
What would a story about uplifting dolphins be without a plug for David Brin eh?
-- I have heard it said that in order to go anywhere, one must leave the place where he is and arrive somewhere else.
I thought it would be a story about the dolphins right before the world was destoryed.
Don't Panic!
Re:Your last comment is untrue
by
thogard
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These people claim there was 1 shark attack fatality in 2000 in the US
http://www.flmnh.ufl.edu/fish/Sharks/statistics/ 20 00attacksummary.htm
That was the year which a kid was killed in Fl after being knocked in the head by a bottle nose dolphin but I can't find that story.
Story about another dolphin attack
http://www.i5ive.com/article.cfm/whales/23805
Yet another story:
http://whale.wheelock.edu/archives/ask99/0494.ht ml
After one of those stories hit the main press was when the Parks dept sent out their warning which basicly said that warning were to be put up where people my interact with dolphins saying that they are wild animals and can be unpredictable.
Dolphins (and sharks) are natural killers. That how they survive. Recently a large amount of evidence shows they can be violent. A google search on "dolphin attack" will give you lots of reading material.
Re:Your last comment is untrue
by
thogard
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· Score: 1
The dolphins I've see all have much larger mouths and teeth than the sharks I've seen and I've seen a fair number of both. Sure the great white is big but most sharks are slightly smaller than dolphins and won't attack people except by mistake. Dolphins on the other hand will play with humans and they play rough. They have also been known to attempt to stun people with their sonar. it works with small fish and not so well with humans but it could be fatal.
I just mentioned the point to bring up some interesting discussion. I'm not the least bit worried about being attacked by a either sharks or dolphins.
I wonder if this will be like some of the attempts to speak with apes that turned out to be scientifically flawed and many of the results are due to wishful thinking on the part of the researchers. One example is the Koko uses American Sign Language which some words must be done at specific locations. Koko never did that so when some researchers were counting its vocabulary they would over count simple hand motions. People who often used sign language to communicate with others didn't understand what Koko was saying. Koko's communication was no more complex than the communication between smart dogs and preceptive masters.
I wonder if this is going to be the same thing.
A side note about cute dolphins: The US Parks department had a warning a few years ago because
dolphins kill and attack more people in the US than sharks.
All they have so far are dolphins mimicking sounds- no evidence that the dolphins can understand it at all. Like parrots. Seems vaporous to me.
True. OTOH there's a lot of evidence that dolphins engage in sophisticated conversations with each other (looking at the entropy of the signals they emit and other things). So it's not so unreasonable to think this experiment is worth doing.
--
perl -e 'fork||print for split//,"hahahaha"'
Re:Why the preoccupation with "intelligent" animal
by
divec
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· Score: 3
High intelligence is far rarer than almost any other animal characteristic. [...] From reading your post, I can't tell whether you're the sort who would cry for days upon rubbing your hands and inadvertently killing some bacteria, or the type who would gleefully kill monkeys for fun. In either case, I'm not impressed.
Interesting. Reading between the lines, I take it that you think that intelligence is the important characteristic when deciding if killing is wrong.
So what about the case when it's a human, but with very low intelligence and very low awareness? Say, less than the average chimp. Do you think it's worse to kill them than to kill a chimp? Just to make it easier, assume they do not have any [close] living relatives, so we're not talking about the amount the killing would upset other people.
I believe most people would say "intelligence is the [main] deciding factor when considering if it is acceptable to cause an animal to suffer". But I think most of them would also say "It's wrong to kill a human, no matter how low their intelligence is".
--
perl -e 'fork||print for split//,"hahahaha"'
Re:Does no one here have respect for language?
by
Hard_Code
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· Score: 2
AFAIK, all "language" is not made equal. For instance, elephants, dolphins, and apes all definately communicate in some manner, this stuff *is* hardwired...but it simply isn't the verbal "language" we are accustomed to. They're not teaching dolphins to speak English, they are just piggy backing on the dolphin's natural communication methods, to try to communicate with them. While it would be great (and perhaps impossible as you say) to teach animals human language, we can certainly at least try to communicate in the first place. That's all that's trying to be done. We're not sending these animals to Harvard for a literary degree.
Re:Why the preoccupation with "intelligent" animal
by
commbat
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· Score: 1
So what about the case when it's a human, but with very low intelligence and very low awareness? Say, less than the average chimp. Do you think it's worse to kill them than to kill a chimp? Just to make it easier, assume they do not have any [close] living relatives, so we're not talking about the amount the killing would upset other people.
Now that sounds reasonable to me. Let's do it. Where do I sign your petition. I suggest changing the wording to exclude TEMPORARILY lowered intellegence, or you'd have scientists trolling bars for their research subjects.
-- 'Intellectual Properties' are uncontrollable in the wild. To base an economy on them is just stupid.
Re:It's great! Oh maybe not
by
jovlinger
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· Score: 2
nah.
The ones they speak to will have been bred in captivity, and know nothing of the ocean (like the lost tribes of ulan-baata believe the world ends at the edge of the forest).
However, if the language can be taught to some dolphins, AND if they prove capable of teaching it to their children (like some gorillas have), AND if the dolphins are released AND if we manage to find an n-th generation dolphin that still speaks a comprehensible dialect (you have to imagine that our choice of words to include in the language and our tenses and sentence structure are hardly going to be spot-on for life at sea) THEN we may learn something about dolphin culture.
Hey, we could actually learn alot from how the language has evolved, even if it is no longer comprehensible. But in until then, insights into thought processes are "all" (pretty amazing even that, IMHO) we can hope for.
Re:Why the preoccupation with "intelligent" animal
by
ErikZ
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· Score: 1
"...and I have yet to see a rabbit hunt another living being for food."
Gee, you think that's maybe because they can't DIGEST meat? Or maybe when the world is filled with food that just SITS there (Grass), hunting down something is a waste of time?
Later,
ErikZ
-- Democrats or Republicans. They are both taking us to the same place and they are not afraid of us anymore.
The article title refers to Uplifting, which is a term from a series of books by SF author David Brin. In these books (Startide Rising is one of them), dolphins and chimps are modified by humans to raise them to a higher level of intelligence. Humans have made contact with many alien races, and humans are unique in that they have no know uplifters, and evolved intelligence without external help.
I'd hardly call trying to communicate with dolphins "uplifting". We still don't really know the level of their intelligence. Maybe they are trying to uplift us.
LS
-- There is a fine line between being a cultivated citizen and being someone else's crop. - A. J. Patrick Liszkie
All we're going to be doing is creating a Turing Machine. We would learn that "squeek-squah" should be met with a response of "boor-grap" or something.
Then you've never spoken to your parents. You just learned at an early age that "don't do that you little brat!" should be met with a response of putting down the knife.
Ultimately, behavior becomes the meter by which we measure our understanding of a language. That is, we measure by the behavior of the listener(s) and by the behavior of other speakers.
The man in the box had no input aside from streams of characters. We have much more than that. ____________________
-- ___
The ends are ape-chosen, only the means are man's.
-- Aldous Huxley
Re:Why the preoccupation with "intelligent" animal
by
steffl
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· Score: 1
I don't think you harm h2o molecules by drinking them. you just take them for a rollocoaster ride.
erik
-- ...all excited, don't know why...
First communication with dolphins will read....
by
SmokeyDP
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· Score: 1
Re:Why the preoccupation with "intelligent" animal
by
drin
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· Score: 1
>As a matter of fact, if you cut a tuna, it will not bleed. This is because tuna do not have blood.
Really? That's odd - why is it that I have to spend time washing all the blood off the deck of my boat after a day of tuna fishing? I know it's not *my* blood......
What makes us think that we can translate their language? All we're going to be doing is creating a Turing Machine. We would learn that "squeek-squah" should be met with a response of "boor-grap" or something. I remember reading once about a thought experiment where a person is inside a box with a language-response book. An experimenter would feed in Japanese characters, and the person inside would look up those characters and spit out a "response". Eventually, the person inside would get so good that they wouldn't need to look it up; they recognize it immediately. To the scientist outside, it looks like the box understands Japanese, but the person inside is just following the rules.
Why is it we humans think that we can conquer every task that we put ourselves to? It makes no sense to me that we might be able to understand something that dolphins know. There are just some things that can't be learned.
"It makes no sense to me that we might be able to understand something that dolphins know. There are just some things that can't be learned."
If you don't try you can't find out. Just because something is difficult doesn't mean it can't be done. Many things are impossible, but we don't know until we try. Your an unimaginitive fool if you think the fact that since we can be wrong and we can fails means we should never investigate something further.
--
So close and yet so far from the world's perfect ID number
One major difference: the box experiment was not actual communication. The person in the box never sent out messages of his own devising for the people on the other end, nor was there any attempt to send meaning to the person in the box.
Communication attempts among humans that speak different languages involves negotiated transmission of meaning. If dolphins have a language, and we can get the dolphins to attach these whistles to the same referrents as we do, the prerequisites for such a negotiation are met. Whether such negotiation will be successful is certainly open to question, but cannot be determined until we actually try.
Because we're not brain dead postmodern liberals
by
kevin805
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· Score: 2
Is it crueler to kill a cockroach, or a baby chimp?
Is it crueler to kill a catfish, or a cat?
I think most would say the second in both cases, because we can recognize emotions in cats and chimps, but not in catfish or cockroaches (the second question is intentionally vaguer).
When I read the Darwin awards, I really don't feel a damn thing about the deaths of people that stupid. When it's someone like Phil Hartman or Peter McWilliams dying, though, we've lost something.
Imagine: a schoolbus goes off the cliff. All 15 children, two teachers, and the driver die. Would you rather it be a special ed class, or the speech and debate team? Most people can answer that question, though they feel bad about it.
I have a very simple chain of what I think things are worth:
bugs fish reptiles brain dead postmodern liberals birds mammals lawyers and politicians primates cute mammals stupid people dolphins normal people people I like women who I want to fuck family me.
Everyone else out there has a similar scale. It probably isn't drastically different from mine. I really don't give a shit if some subspecies of wasp goes extinct, but I would care if Bonobos go extinct. Of course, I'd probably be less upset by some random murder or small car accident than about thousands of dolphins dying, so one level doesn't totally override another, but that's the general picture.
If we can't value animals differently, then we have to say, the more the better, which means that all multicellular animals are bad. But that's just idiotic, so we must value things other than how many animals there are. Also, stupid animals will never survive the sun blowing up in 4 billion years. We might. They need to start learning how to communicate with us because they better get cracking on the ass kissing if they want us to take them with us.
Of course, if I were a brainwashed postmodern liberal, I wouldn't be able to cope with the fact that my existence necessitates that some other animal doesn't exist, so I'd just go kill myself to make the world a better place.
The first thing they should tell the dolphins...
by
twivel
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· Score: 1
All your bases are belong to us!
"entertainment center for the dolphins"???
by
Seth+Finkelstein
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· Score: 2
The underwater touchscreen is the first of its kind. It's made up of
an infrared beam grid mounted onto the tank window and a monitor
screen that faces the dolphins....
"The touchscreen is a kind of entertainment center for the dolphins,"...
Remember the web-browser for the birds, literally, from
the Slashdot story:
The Internet For Parrots ?
Now we have a touchscreen
entertainment center for the dolphins.
Things are getting out of hand. What's next? Using computer-controlled
motors on arctic ice-blocks so penguins can play Tetris?
Why are they always getting caught in those fishing nets ?
Becasue they use sonar to detect objects in front of them. So nets don't show up (thats why dolphins and whales get beeched). The nets are also hards to see underwater anyway.
Re:If dolphins are so smart
by
PhunkySchtuff
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· Score: 1
Reminds me of a Deep Thought by Jack Handey...
by
shiwala
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· Score: 1
I can just imagine how frustrating this must be for the people doing the research. Jack Handey probably summed it up best in his Deep Thoughts...
"It seemed to me that, somehow, the blue jay was trying to communicate with me. I would see him fly into the house across the way, pick up the telephone, and dial. My phone would ring, and it would be him, but it was just this squawking and cheeping. "What?! What?!" I would yell back, but he never did speak English."
Re:Groundbreaking Research
by
Wolfier
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· Score: 2
Well, we're just lucky we have media to remember stuffs for us.
Otherwise, we'd be pretty much like the chimps in this aspect...
Wait. Maybe we can teach the chimp reading and writing too.
They better had observed them for long enough...
by
Wolfier
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· Score: 2
There is a slim possibility that the Dolphins are not only as smart as us - they are actually SMARTER than the researchers. They're just pretending to be dumb, and our smart scientists have been fooled all along.
Of when one dolphin knows it's being studied, it spread the news to the whole dolphin community, making the "fool faking" behavior spread like wildfire.
As a result, we humans as dumber animals than the dolphin will never be able to study its true behavior.
Re:Groundbreaking Research
by
Steeltoe
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· Score: 1
Teach them something that is a meaningful addition to their lives, and they will not forget so easily throughout the generations. Also, consider the fact that not every individual is fit for the stubborn teacher-role. Teach many, and the lessons will have a better chance to stay in their society.
> Not only did the chimps communicate with them
> over food and life in general, they also taught
> the sign language to their children.
Sort of.
Spent years training a chimp several hundred signs, and that chimp will teach their child a dozen, and that child will teach their child nothing. So far we have yet to discover something that can be taught to an amimal that will be self-sustaining in their society. --
Arthur C Clarke wrote a novel about exactly this topic over thirty years ago. His book Dolphin Island is based around a waterproof keyboard worn on the arm which emmits Dolphin whistles.
Yet another device Clarke should have patented. First the geosynchronous comminucations satelite, now this. What's next, monoliths? --
Re:Why the preoccupation with "intelligent" animal
by
swordgeek
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· Score: 2
I can think of a reason that we should be worried about dolphins before tuna, and that is that tuna breed much faster. There is more tuna, they're being replenished faster, and we're much less likely to drive them into extinction.
That said, I agree--we shouldn't be looking at driving ANYTHING into extinction.
The other thing is that we (well, many of us) have an urge to find proof of 'higher' intelligence. Not just the intelligence present in spiders, but intelligence on the level that we could carry on a discussion with. It's a fascinating concept to think of what we might (potentially) learn from something as 'alien' as a non-human (and in this case, ocean-going) life. I think a lot of us are looking for something to help us avoid killing ourselves off, and taking half the planet with us.
--
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
Re:Why the preoccupation with "intelligent" animal
by
swordgeek
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· Score: 2
Yeah but to some extent, Koko has been a disappointment. Very quick learner, but they found that her (I think) intelligence was quite limited. No new insight or revelations on the human race.
Also, dolphins live in a more disparate world. That looks intriguing.
--
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
Um, I hate to intrude on such optimism, but those who pollute, abuse, dominate, and otherwise misuse the earth do not hesitate to do the same to other human beings. Since they regard their own kind as negligible, why should they grant equal rights to another species?
Last time I checked, the cans still read "tunafish".
--
"I'm surfin the dead zone
--
--
"I'm surfin the dead zone
In the twilight, unknown"
Possible things to say...
by
DrEldarion
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· Score: 3
Bassos-Hull agrees. "It won't be free-floating conversation," Bassos-Hull said. "We'll be able to ask questions and they will be able to answer in very simple terms."
I wonder how long it will take for someone to figure out how to ask the dolphins who all their base are belong to.
Maybe that's not such a good idea, though. They may decide to retaliate by moving 'Zig'.
Besides, who says dolphins don't make tools - or at least toys? Using their built-in anatomical structures to manipulate the raw materials avalable to them, they can do things like this.
--
Any sufficiently well-organized community is indistinguishable from Government.
That said, language without tool use is like writing a Perl script without an interpreter: it does nothing. Until dolphins can create their own tools, either through us really uplifting them or a la the oft quoted Onion article, we can't really consider them intelligent.
Speaking as a former major in animal psych, this is an intensely parochial definition of intelligence. Are you saying that if you get talking with a dolphin and it can solve puzzles, beat you at chess, understand the microsoft case and help you with your love life* you won't consider it "intelligent" because they don't have the oppossable thumbs or (in most cases) any need for tool use? (If you are counting on tool use for your sense of superiority, you better not read anything on it. Unless you want to consider chickens smarter than dolphins) The presures and needs of their environment are entirely different than ours, so attempting to judge their true intellectual capacity by what we have done is just foolish.
With any luck we will establish cominication and find that from their point of view the little toys we build are all cute and clever, but until they can help us learn to navigate the world by ultrasonic landmarks, they won't be able to "really consider us intelligent".
*"ah, just get some of your buddies together and gang rape a shark. You'll feel better."
Whether is it good or bad, there are definite signs of an advanced intelligence. For example, humans are no longer constrained to certain environments; we can now take our environments with us. Dolphins still seem to exist within their environment.
Is this a universal sign of intelligence, or an application of inteligence to a species specific desire? It is VERY tricky to judge levels of inteligence cross species, especially since humans always set themselves up at the top of the pile and look for tests to confirm their assumptions. (the history of animal intelligence testing is rife with examples of tests that were dismissed as "inaccurate" judgments of intelligence because they gave the "wrong" answer in where they ranked humans.)
Its also important not to confuse cultural accomplishments with signs of species level inteligence. There is little reason to believe that our biological ability to reason has evolved significantly since the stone age, and no reason to imagine that a "tribe" of modern children raised without the cultural buildup of knowlege would progress in their lifetimes to even a bronze age level of technology (silly Ayn Rand stories aside). Don't let a lucky choice of your number and kind of ancestors lull you into a false sense of superiority.
Taking our environment with us is one way in which humans have applied their intelligence. I'd never rank it as an acid test that could be applied to another species unless we knew A LOT more about its psychology. Experimental/cognitive psychologists will make a judgement they have been training and studying to make, and the rest of us will say "oh".
Besides, who says dolphins don't make tools - or at least toys?
From my tour of the Living Seas (Epcot, research, not training, 1997) I also recal some of the researchers describing situations where the dolphins would use tools if they were in a situation where the materials were present and needed. The whole tool thing is a little bit of a red herring since a dolphins natural habitat is a tool poor environment, while homonids evolved in a tool rich environment. (early tools were found objects that could be thrown or used to extend reach, modifying and actually producing tools came later.) From a research paper I did several years ago on tool use, I don't recal any purely ocean dwelling animals* that used tools, while many "low intelligence" land animals did. Hence my opinion that spontaneous tool use as a intelligence criterion is parochial.
I liked your link, BTW. I suspect that dolphins are one step better than merely inteligent and will be found to be artistic (song, etc). Sigh, if only I'd stuck with the PhD program...
*shore dwellers like sea otters had tool use, but there are comfortable on land as well as in the water.
Just in case you missed it, and weren't actually being sarcastic there, exhibit A and exhibit B. Arthur Clarke, a Nostradamus For The Twenty-Fifth Century. Be afraid =)
Content focused page version
by
mrBlond
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· Score: 1
Kudos to zephc for giving the print friendly link. It's not quite Alertbox, but much better than the default crap page "design" we've become accustomed to. "The vast majority of web 'designers' should be shot." - JatTDB --
mrBlond
The underwater touchscreen is the first of its kind. It's made up of an infrared beam grid mounted onto the tank window and a monitor screen that faces the dolphins.
Maybe a dolphin is posting to this thread. No mouse mentioned, but slashdot does load (rather badly) on lynx...
--
Re:Why the preoccupation with "intelligent" animal
by
leodegan
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· Score: 1
I'm not sure I understand your assertion that evolutionary advancement is a better qualifier for animal protection than intelligence.
I would assert that a good qualifier for animal protection is the animal's capacity for empathy. Eating tuna is a means of survival for us, and many other creatures. I doubt that the tuna 'miss' or have any remorse for the tuna that get caught. This is not true of Dolphins.
This kind of research on animal intelligence is indeed groundbreaking, and is opposed from many sides who believe that animals cannot really communicate with humans, and any signs of communication are really just imitation. It's like with SETI: Trying to get people to finance a project where you tell them you want to talk to chimpanzees, or dolphins, or parrots (some interesting experiments there, too) is similar to requesting grants for funding a nanotechnological molecular assembler that circulates in your blood and destroys viruses..
This despite the fact that many of these projects have produced astonishing results. I was especially fascinated by the work of Dr. Roger Fouts and his colleagues, who have tried to teach the American Sign Language to chimpanzees -- and succeeded. Not only did the chimps communicate with them over food and life in general, they also taught the sign language to their children. And more precise than you might imagine: Instructions like "Tickle me, then bring me one of those bananas. Oh, and I would like to watch some TV" are not at all uncommon;-)
Find more info at their Institute, I especially recommend the book "Next to Kin". I really wish such projects could be funded through micropayments. If every Slashdot reader donated a dollar to this research, they'd be much farther than they are now.
--
Re:Groundbreaking Research
by
BlowCat
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· Score: 1
And then we have this research gem where some guy tells how to get laid, by a dolphin! How did he get his data?
--
"No one will smell that."
Re:Groundbreaking Research
by
Cyclopatra
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· Score: 5
If every Slashdot reader donated a dollar to this research, they'd be much farther than they are now.
Well, you can make a donation online here. And the project's webpage is here for more info and pictures of cute dolphins:P
I gave 'em 25$. Anybody else find that they donate a lot more as a result of reading/. ? Maybe it's a second/. effect...your website gets hammered, but your donations skyrocket...
Cyclopatra
"We can't all, and some of us don't." -- Eeyore
-- "We can't all, and some of us don't." -- Eeyore
Re:Groundbreaking Research
by
OlympicSponsor
·
· Score: 2
"Also, consider the fact that not every individual is fit for the stubborn teacher-role."
For humans, "teaching" language is not a necessity. Consider: EVERY child brought up (in non-pathological conditions, c.f. "Genie") learns language. It doesn't matter what kind of teacher the child's parent is, the child WILL acquire language. Whereas with chimps, it takes skilled trainers many years to get a chimp to use even 50-100 signs.
If you've ever raised children, the above is very clear to you. I have a two-year old who is learning words faster than I can keep up. In fact, he's learning language faster than HE can keep up. He knows and says more words than he can fit into his limited ability to articulate syllables. Thus, "bay bay" can be "basement" or "baby". And just in the last month or two he's started making two (and sometimes three) word "sentences" ("Fix light", "Evan basement", "Read book", etc). I will admit to having explicitly taught him a few individual words ("drill", "toothbrush", etc) but the rest of the vocabular and ALL of the grammar he's done on his own.
The question isn't: "do apes/chimps find language useful"--there are obvious uses for language for ANY animal. The question is: "are apes/chimps CAPABLE of learning language" (as opposed to mimicked signing).
--
Non-meta-modded "Overrated" mods are killing Slashdot
--
Non-meta-modded "Overrated" mods are killing Slashdot
(Hey Ryan! Here's your proof!)
Re:Groundbreaking Research
by
OlympicSponsor
·
· Score: 2
I would define both autism and hearing disorders as "pathological". But even deaf children learn language--when in the company of OTHER deaf people.
I have no idea about your three year old because 1) you give no data and 2) I'm not a child language development expert. --
Non-meta-modded "Overrated" mods are killing Slashdot
--
Non-meta-modded "Overrated" mods are killing Slashdot
(Hey Ryan! Here's your proof!)
Re:Groundbreaking Research
by
OlympicSponsor
·
· Score: 3
"...teach the American Sign Language to chimpanzees -- and succeeded. Not only did the chimps communicate with them over food and life in general, they also taught the sign language to their children. And more precise than you might imagine: Instructions like "Tickle me, then bring me one of those bananas. Oh, and I would like to watch some TV" are not at all uncommon."
When did this research take place? I just finished (re-)reading "The Language Instinct" by Steven Pinker and he had a pretty scathing review of "ape language" research (although clearly he only covered stuff up to the publication date of the book). To pick an example at random, there was one team that was teaching sign language to chimps. The team members were supposed to write down every time the chimp made a sign. The only deaf, ASL-"native" team member wrote down FAR fewer signs. He eventually complained or quit or wrote a book or something. He said the other team members were recording that the chimp was signing "banana" when he pointed at a banana and signing "TV" when pointing at a TV. He also mentioned that the apes didn't direct the signs at people the way we do with language. That kind of indicates it wasn't so much directed communication as trained behavior.
As for the precise examples: I seriously doubt it. Even Koko (whose trainer, Penny Marshall verges on the religious [i.e. "willing to lie"] regarding her ape's abilities) only signs things like "water bird" and "glasses Koko".
As an aside, I see the title of the book is "Next of Kin". Presumably this is supposed to be evocative of some kind of reasoning like this: "Apes are the closest relatives of humans, therefore they can probably talk good, too". Fallacy alert! What if a disease had wiped out all the apes 1000 years ago, leaving, say, lemurs as our closest living relatives? Would lemurs then be expected to be able to talk? Or what if we discovered a group of Neanderthals living in the mountains (Yeti, Sasquatch, etc)? Could we then drop apes from our experiments because as more distant relatives they clearly won't be able to talk? "Closest living relative" has no biological implications--it's simply a historical accident. --
Non-meta-modded "Overrated" mods are killing Slashdot
--
Non-meta-modded "Overrated" mods are killing Slashdot
(Hey Ryan! Here's your proof!)
Oh boy, talking with dolphins...
by
Rhinobird
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· Score: 1
I'm all for it as long as the first conversation doesn't go like this:
In A.D. 2101
War was beginning.
Captain: What happen ?
Mechanic: Somebody set up us the bomb.
Operator: We get signal.
Captain: What !
Operator: Main screen turn on.
Captain: It's You !!
Cats: How are you gentlemen !!
Cats: All your base are belong to us.
Cats: You are on the way to destruction.
Captain: What you say !!
Cats: You have no chance to survive make your time.
Cats: HA HA HA HA....
Captain: Take off every 'zig' !!
Captain: You know what you doing.
Captain: Move 'zig'.
Captain: For great justice.
-- If Mr. Edison had thought smarter he wouldn't sweat as much. --Nikola Tesla
Re:Your last comment is untrue
by
aardvarkjoe
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· Score: 2
Try The Language Instinct by Stephen Pinker. (Great book; should be on everybody's reading list. However, I can't give you an exact page because my friend stole it.) If you do some reasearch, you'll find that although she did seem to learn some things, many of their more impressive "results" were the result of wishful thinking rather than actually learning things.
Yes, the chimps learned to tell them that they were hungry. However, a dog can do that just as well, and nobody claims that they're actually using language. Communicating a concept such as "I'm hungry," "I want that toy," or "Tickle me" is a long way from actual language or conversation.
--
How can we continue to believe in a
just universe and freedom to eat crackers if we have no ale?
Your last comment is untrue
by
Maestrogenic
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· Score: 1
Source.
--
Uhh, that looks OK. We haven't seen that number yet.
Re:Your last comment is untrue
by
Maestrogenic
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· Score: 1
Yes, but the difference is that sharks attack humans because they think they are seals. This happens quite frequently, especially in places like Hawaii.
On the other hand, dolphins are VERY rarily known to attack unprovoked. Sure, there have been some fatal attacks, such as one in Brazil a few years ago, where the dolphin had various object shoved down its blowhole when visiting near the beach.
Sharks are more suited to large prey, such as seals (and people), while dolphins eat smaller fish. Just look at teeth sizes.
--
Uhh, that looks OK. We haven't seen that number yet.
Re:Your last comment is untrue
by
raju1kabir
·
· Score: 4
Try The Language Instinct by Stephen Pinker. (Great book; should be on everybody's reading list. However, I can't give you an exact page because my friend stole it.)
Pinker's critical evaluation of Koko begins in earnest on p. 337 (I've assiduously hunted down my copy whenever it's left my hands for too long).
To begin with, the apes did
not "learn American sign language." This preposterous claim is based on the myth that ASL is a crude system of pantomimes and gestures rather than a full language with comples phonology, morphology, and syntax. In fact the apes had not learned any true ASL signs. The one deaf signer on the Washoe team later made these candid remarks:
"Every time the chimp made a sign, we were supposed to write it down in the log... They were always complaining because my log didn't show enough signs. All the hearing people turned in logs with long lists of signs. They always saw more signs than I did... I watched really carefully. The chimp's hands were moving constantly. Maybe I missed something, but I don't think so. I just wasn't seeing any signs. The hearing people were logging every movement the chimp made as a sign. Every time the chimp put his finger in his mouth, they'd say 'Oh, he's making the sign for
drink,' and they'd give him some milk... When the chimp scratched itself, they'd record it as the sign for scratch... When [the chimps] want something, they'd reach. Sometimes [the trainers would] say, "Oh, amazing, look at that, it's exactly like the ASL sign for give!" It wasn't."
Now, it's also possible that this native signer was excessively picky about ASL; in high school language classes, for instance, students can understand each other saying stuff that no native speaker of the language in question would ever be able to puzzle out. But it seems more likely that what was reported is true; the apes were just being apes and the researchers were biased in favor of positive results.
-- "Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it." -- GBS
Right now, all they can do is get dolphins to reproduce some of the introduced whistles...there's no communication, or transfer of information between humans and dolphins. This kind of thing has been tried before, and hasn't gone anywhere.
Also it's documented that dolphins communicate just as much through whistles as they do through movement.
While a simplified signing language has worked with an ape, remember that apes communicate similarily to humans; dolphins do not...
--
Uhh, that looks OK. We haven't seen that number yet.
Is there really a difference. . .
by
ishpeck
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· Score: 1
. . . between "intelligent" and "trained"? Think of the public education system and all other such drivel.
If that's the case, there are only a handful of truly intelligent humans in all of existence.
--
"If I were to ask you a hypothetical question, what would you like it to be about?"
Re:Why the preoccupation with "intelligent" animal
by
Brand+X
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· Score: 2
On the other hand, speaking as a Hawai'i boy who has, in his life, pulled a reasonable number of ahi and akule out of the water (mmm... good eating!), and who has a reasonable familiarity with their internals, I have to say there is a point to the nerve complexity angle. Not much there in the ahi skull... and those are some of the big, and relatively clever, tunas. clever in the sense of put up a good fight... survival instincts.
I've never met a cognizant fish. Yes, I value conciousness, in some degree, at least, much more highly than respiration, much less cell division. Yes, I'd place a marginally self aware computer higher on the deserves-consideration-for-not-being-killed scale than an essentially automated organic. No, I don't consider killing individuals with self awareness inherently immoral. Someone who intends to kill me, and cannot be dissuaded by other means, dies. Someone who kills, or deliberately hurts or tortures someone I care about, or who is obviously willing to kill with malice without reason of defense or fear, dies. I find this in no way ethically reprehensible. Killing self aware, nearly sentient life forms for no better reason than a few dollars in profit and a cheaper can of tuna, I think, falls into the reprehensible category.
Combine this research with wearable computers
by
Global-Lightning
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· Score: 2
Envision this:
A small wearable computer designed to be worn on a diver's back. Unit could either fit under a wet/dry suit or attached to the SCUBA gear.
Unit has input and output devices for humans and dolphins:
Human input: Microphone (will require specially adapted head unit)
Human output: Earphones
Dolphin input: hydrophones
Dolphin output: underwater speakers
Human to dolphin communication:
Human speaks into microphone -> Speech recognition software processes input into intermediate symbols -> dolphin interface software takes intermediate symbols, translate into squeaks, whistles, pops, etc. -> output is feed to the underwater speakers -> Dolphin hears, and hopefully understands!
Dolphin to human will be by a similar process, with the input from the hydrophones and the output going to the earphones.
Issue to workout:
Dolphin software will obviously take the most work. Do dolphin speak via a standarized language? Does each pod have it's own dialect? Is the language regular or irregular? Context based or context free? In addition, software updates need to be worked out, ultimately leading to processes that learn new dialects or phrases in real-world use.
Hardware needs to be small, sturdy, waterproof, have enough power to last the time of a dive. Should have sufficient processor power and memory to support translations in at least near-real time.
Re:It's great! Oh maybe not
by
albamuth
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· Score: 1
I agree - the dolphins kept in captivity, isolated from their tribe or whatever, must be pathologically disturbed as a result of their confinement. Any prisoner, State/Federal, who has been in the joint long enough will tend to become despondant, disciplined, and "institutionalized".
Dophins are social creatures - remove them from their socierty and their language becomes meaningless. I think the only way to discover their language would be to follow them around and record their communications and try to decipher that. If they are indeed as intelligent as a monkey or more, then there is no reason not to suspect that they have a rich culture and philosophical tradition. Why would they care to surf the web? Technology only serves to imprison and humiliate them - the ones who are later released must seem completely insane to the "wild" dolphins out there.
-- [pink beam of light]
Why Some Animals Are More Important
by
mr.+interaction
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· Score: 2
I've considered this question at length, and have finally developed a system to determine which animals I can or cannot kill:
Unique data content.
Ants are perfect genetic copies of each other; their brains can only carry a few bytes of unique data at a time. I can kill ants with impunity.
Cows are genetically distinct (containing more than a few megabytes of distinct data), but their brains are virtually identical. I wouldn't go on a mad cow-slaughtering spree, but I wouldn't necessarily feel guilty about eating a cheeseburger on a fresh, thick kaiser roll.
Apes? Dolphins? African Grey Parrots? Dogs? Octopi? To all appearances, these animals possess not only unique genetic data, but also a certain amount of reasoning ability and memory. As they contain unique psychic data, I'd definitely have some qualms about killing them for any reason. In fact, I might go so far as to suggest that apes, dolphins, and African Greys be treated as almost human -- we don't really know how smart they are, and until we know, we should be treating them well.
Which brings us to people. People contain BIGNUM amounts of unique data apart from their genetic data. People are far more important than ants, bacteria, and even dogs. All effort should be expended to keep them alive and kicking.
Re:Why Some Animals Are More Important
by
pogen
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· Score: 2
Interesting. But what about pigs? Did you know that pigs are just as
smart if not smarter than dogs?
Yeah, but a dog's got personality, and
personality goes a long way. We'd have to be
talking about one charming motherfucking pig.
You can't fool me head-breather!
by
OwnedByTheMan
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· Score: 1
I'd recognize a dolphin troll anywhere. Sadly for you, net-mush, I know the truth.
no evidence that the dolphins can understand it at all. Like parrots.
Actually, at least one parrot can understand human speech and answer questions. You show him something red and wood, and ask what color it is, he answers (red) or what it's made of, and he answers 'wood'. He is not just 'Clever Hans'ing it.
One of the most interesting scientific minds in the modern era, Dr. John C. Lilly, is also the pre-eminent researcher on dolphin interspecial communication. The inventor of the Sensory Deprivation tank, the inspiration for the films Day of the Dolphin and Altered States, as well as one of the first researchers into the therapeutic potential of LSD and Ketamine, this man is quite a character. Interested parties are directed to certain bios.
Cognitive ability is not dependant on technology. Technology is dependant on intelligence, but also on resources and physical manipulation. Dolphins, without those crucial opposable thumbs, aren't all that good at manipulating objects. Their social interactions and language (what little we can figure out from it, anyway) seem to indicate that they are quite intelligent, even if they can't make and use tools.
I wonder if they have developed any understanding of mathematics, beyond simple counting. Math is fairly abstract, so it probably wouldn't suffer as much in translation as other ideas which are grounded in either species' primary means of perception.
--
Bugrit! Millenium hand and shrimp!
Re:Why the preoccupation with "intelligent" animal
by
maaaaanis
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· Score: 1
we have found such creatures:
http://www.koko.org/world/
Koko has been hold ing conversations for quite some time by the looks of it.
Marten, who has been working with three dolphins at the park, says the dolphins already recognize and repeat the artificial whistles he has devised.
However, they have yet to relate the whistles to the objects they refer to -- this will be the next goal of the research. "The second stage is to see if the dolphins recognize what the whistles stand for..."
And then they claim that:
"We'll be able to ask questions and they will be able to answer in very simple terms."
All they have so far are dolphins mimicking sounds- no evidence that the dolphins can understand it at all. Like parrots.
"Like parrots," you say. I saw once on TV a parrot that could identify (in English) objects, their number, color, and probably some other things too. I think it's reasonable to assume dolphins could do at least that much.
Now, I'm not exactly sure how intelligent dolphins are, but I understand they're pretty smart. Other posts here seem to indicate they might even be as smart as humans. That's pretty interesting. Imagine if you were a dolphin, being about as smart as you are, but trapped in a fishlike body, unable to do much but swim around. And now, the humans are trying to communicate! How interesting.
I wonder if dolphins are aware of the cities we've built and the technology we have. After all, they've never been on land. Surely some have noticed the big ships we float out there, though. Are they smart enough to comprehend what those ships are? Hmmmm.
Their first words will be...
by
McQualude
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· Score: 1
"More fish, please."
"Could I have the keys to the gate tonight, Dad."
"Stop that whistling or I'll flipper your ass!"
"My hesitation is that dolphins are primarily acoustic animals while humans are primarily visual animals. In humans,
the most-used sense is vision; we use it to process data."
I remember reading something about Dolphins that they couldn't distinguish images on a TV, and that was part of the problems that came with working with them.
-- George II -- Spreading Freedom and American values, one bomb at a time.
Ok, people, this is quite obviously a troll. It's written as if the author had the Troll-HOWTO sitting on his desk while he did it.
First, notice the subject material - the morality of killing animals. Clearly intended to stir up unendable controversy by posing a question that has no agreeable answer. Second, the emotional pleas: "If you cut tuna, do they not bleed?" (As a poster above noted, no they don't, they don't have blood).
And third, and most telling, the way it starts off normal and well-reasoned, then drifts into absolute lunacy at the end (because moderators only read the first couple paragraphs). At the beginning, it's a perfectly reasonable discussion of intelligence and the relative worth of species, at the end, he's trying to suggest using dolphins for undersea exploration. Hello! Wake up, moderators. This is utterly impossible because A) communication will never be at the point where dolphins can give scientific reports and B) dolphins can't handle the pressure 10,000 feet under the surface any more than we can.
With moderating like this, it's no wonder slashdot is becoming a joke.
The "homo" in "homosexual" is not Latin homo "man" as in Homo sapiens, it's Greek homo "same" as in "homogeneous," so "homosexual" would be an appropriate term. If the "homo" in "homosexual" meant "man," then wouldn't straight women be homosexual?
As part of a graduate level class in scientific visualization (we were using an MRI scan of a beluga whale head to try to find out which organ actually produced the sonar) I got to 'meet' one of the US Navy's beluga whales.
The trainer made a hand motion and the whale came partially out of the water onto a dock so we could pet it. As the whale did so the trainer blew a whistle and said that was used as a reward. A couple of times the whale slid off the dock and was motioned back up by the trainer, but this time the whale gave a whistle that sounded identical to the trainer's (at least to my sonically-naive ears). When asked, the trainer said that the whale knew she was being good and was rewarding herself.
While it doesn't have anything to do with language, it does seem to me that it is a behavior that implies a lot more self-awareness than most of the things animals are taught to do.
Old news (what an oxymoron)
by
billcopc
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· Score: 1
I don't see what's so amazing about this, they've been researching dolphin communication for decades. I remember one time they were using DSP gadgetry to convert human syllables into dolphin-like squeals, and had managed to develop a reliable communication path with the dolphins by studying the dolphins' reactions to each syllable. This practice dates back from the mid 70's, back when that DSP processor took up a whole room. I'm afraid I don't have refences to back it up, but all I can say is that I saw this as a little kid on PBS or something.
A common language has the potential to finally force mankind to stop treating the earth as its own, and realize that we share it with many other creatures - some perhaps as advanced as we are.
As much as I love your optimism, we humans cannot even get along with ourselves. I think that most people do understand that we do not own the world. But that does not keep people from trying to take it from others, and all the evil that comes from doing that.
The problem is not that the researchers can see, but that they use a langauge that is primarily created by sight oriented creatures (humans). A blind person still speaks the same language as his sighted counterparts, even though it uses lots of notions that are based on vision. e.g., in English the habit of saying 'I see' to mean 'I understand'.
I would bet that most adjectives are sight based (red, dark, round, fuzzy, far, near, etc.). Translating these concepts to a non-sight oriented creature may be difficult.
So, a blind researcher would not have a significant advantage, except that they might be able to determine, perhaps, which parts of langauge biased. e.g., a blind person would say that they have no idea what the words 'bright' and 'red' really mean. But such things are pretty obvious to a sighted person as well (a sighted person would not be blinded to the bias in the language, pun intended).
I think they are indeed sight based. Some of them have tactile and even aural components, but I think that they have visual components which do not translate. I admit I did not make that clear.
A dolphin may indeed be able to tell you that something sounds round, but thats a very different thing than looking round.
Re:What will they find...
by
Daemosthenes
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· Score: 1
That is EXACTLY what I do...
Well, not really. I had actually just finished up installing some new drivers for my video card (in Windows, for the mad Counterstrike action), and after rebooting I pulled up some/. I guess I just got lucky..
47.5% Slashdot Pure(52.5% Corrupt)
What will they find...
by
Daemosthenes
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· Score: 5
I predict the first message will read something like this...
Indeed, this is also true in South Africa. The top researcher of dolphin life in South Africa, Dr Peter West, admitted this recently. In fact, not only do dolphins kill more people in South Africa and Mozambique than sharks, but they are also the leading cause of death in Plettenberg Bay, one of the key dolphin areas in South Africa. So I unfortunately have to agree with thogard about the "cute dolphin" theory. However, while I do believe that this research will be key in the next generation of anthropological science, I do not believe that dolphins will be able to comprehend complex languages such as English or any other Indo-European language.
-- "A few atoms won't even light a match" - Dr Jones, 1933
Yes, I have found that I have donated far more than I ever have in the past. This year, so far, I have donated $300.00, and plan to get to $1,200 by the end of the year. I have never donated in the past.
I blame PayPal. {;D}=
Luckily, the site you linked to didn't support PayPal; I'd be out another $5.00 if they did..!
What I have discovered, is that when you donate to projects, you give them much more than the little money you give them. That little bit of money allows them to do a whole lot more work.
Let's suppose someone has put 100 hours of work of their personal time into a project, but they're stuck now. They need $250.00 for some task. I don't know, web hosting for a year, or something like that. They've reached a wall, in terms of how much further they can go. When you pay that $250.00, not only are you paying for just removing that wall, but you are also getting a boatload of free work out of them! They may put in another 100 hours of work and enthusiasm, from your $250. If there were no obstacles, you just paid someone 2.50 an hour for a cause that you really believe in, and everyone's happy with it. I strongly believe that online donations are going to make the world a significantly better place.
A common language has the potential to finally force mankind to stop treating the earth as its own, and realize that we share it with many other creatures - some perhaps as advanced as we are.
Perhaps dolphins are intelligent, but it is very unlikely that they are as advanced as we are. Whether is it good or bad, there are definite signs of an advanced intelligence. For example, humans are no longer constrained to certain environments; we can now take our environments with us. Dolphins still seem to exist within their environment.
big deal, the navy already figured this one out. but what the article failed to mention is that the noises actually kill the dolphins. maybe theyd rather us not talk to them hehe
the onion covers this one pretty well:
Dolphin's Evolve Opposable Thumbs 'Oh Shit,' Says Humanity
...philosopher John Searle's "Chinese Room" model. It's worth noting that this is an extremely controversial position (almost to the point of inciting "religious" arguments) among cognitive scientists, because it essentially claims that computers can never "think" or "understand" in the way that people do. Thought != computation. To me (and apparently many others) that elevates the process of human thought to an almost magical/mystical level. What is it the neurons in our brain do if it's not computational? (Note that I'm not arguing that we are deterministic, however.)
It makes no sense to me that we might be able to understand something that dolphins know.
I think the answer to this depends on how strictly you mean "understand" or "know". For example, dolphins may well have very different visual systems than humans do. So in a strict sense, we will never understand or know what it is that dolphins really "see". On the other hand, we do possess a wide range of technologies that allow us to simulate or create analogies to many things -- so even though we might not be able to experience sight in the same way that dolphins do, we could perhaps understand or relate to it. Of course, there are some physiological differences that will be really difficult to understand -- what does it feel like to have fins instead of legs? -- but those kind of things are impossible to understand even among humans. Try explaining sight to someone born blind, or how menstruation feels to a man. There's a hardware difference that can't be bridged...
--
"Biped! Good cranial development. Evidently considerable human ancestry."
I read some of the ape-language research when I was in college, and I recall being profoundly disappointed. Mass-media coverage had led me to believe (and frankly, I think I just wanted to believe) that chimps etc. might really be able to learn fairly complex speech (sign language) patterns. Alas, the utterances never showed any sign of what we consider linguistic structure, as opposed to simple emission of a handful of memorized symbols. And there is a fundamental difference: Human language operates on many more complex levels than mere regurgitation of symbols. Consider, for example, word order: "Mark ate the bear" vs. "The bear ate Mark". Same words, very different meaning. To the best of my knowledge, research of language in other animals has never shown even this simplest grammatical distinction, let alone subtleties such as tense, intentionality, and so on.
By contrast, I had an experience the other day that reminded me just how amazing human language capabilities are. I was visiting my brother-in-law's place and playing with his 2.5-year-old son. At some point we were kind of tickling each other, and he pouted and said "I don't like anymore, so I going sit my chair" and did just that. I don't have kids, but I was kind of shocked that a 2.5-year-old could put together such a coherent and nuanced thought (even if the grammar wasn't perfect, his intentions were entirely clear). And I can tell you that this utterance is more complicated by an order of magnitude than anything any researcher has ever managed to coax from any non-human primate (again, unless there have been big developments since I last examined this research).
By the way, I'm not arguing that chimps are not very, very smart. They can learn to distinguish themselves in mirrors (I think they are the only species ever to have been shown to be able to do so); they can plan ahead; they can practice deception (which for some reason the academic papers always refer to as "prevarication"). They have complex social structures, some tool use, and some evidence of "culture" (i.e., learned traditions that differ from tribe to tribe and are passed from generation to generation). But they don't appear to have, or be capable of learning, language in anything like we as humans understand it.
It may be that chimps and other non-human apes simply lack the cortical structures required for this -- humans do contain very highly specialized and localized language structures in the brain. The specialization of this circuitry becomes clear when you look at cases of people who have small lesions or other damage affecting a particular point in their language centers: They may lose the ability to speak, but not to understand; they may lose the ability to process nouns, but not verbs; they may lose the ability to process abstract nouns but retain the ability to process concrete nouns. If chimps don't have brain structures that can perform these language functions, it's extremely unlikely we'll ever be able to simply "teach" them language as we understand it. And it's unlikely that evolution would have given them such incredibly specialized brain structures if they weren't using them, which they clearly aren't.
Personally, if I wanted to "uplift" a species, I'd focus less on language and more on tool use. I wonder if you could teach chimps to flake rocks to make simple stone-age knives, and then take those knives and bind them to a shaft to make axes... such things would seem to be within the mechanical and cognitive ability of chimps, and if they could learn those skills and pass them to their children, who knows where that would lead... maybe researchers who did that with chimps in the wild would come back 1,000 years later to discover that they were building simple huts and learning how to tame fire, that critical step on the way to the iron age. Then again, maybe I've just watched 2001 a few too many times.
--
"Biped! Good cranial development. Evidently considerable human ancestry."
...there's also documentation of dolphins engaging in sexual activity with same-sex partners. (I'd call it "homosexual" behavior, except that dolphins aren't Homo like we H. sapiens.) Anyway, that's a bit of trivia to throw at your homophobic friends next time they claim that same-sex activity is "unnatural".
--
"Biped! Good cranial development. Evidently considerable human ancestry."
I didn't realize that "homosexual" derived from the Greek root. (The fact that the alternative is "hereto-" should have clued me in -- duh! -- but I didn't think that far ahead, and I shot myself in the foot trying to be cute.)
As for straight women being homosexual by my botched definition, I suppose that would be true, but I figured that it was probably one of those words coined by men in an era when they didn't really consider women peers, and then it ended up being applied to them later.
--
"Biped! Good cranial development. Evidently considerable human ancestry."
The *real* first thing the dolphins will say
by
tenzig_112
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· Score: 2
I hate to point out (what is to me) the obvious, but if homo sapiens were to find out that dolphins really are intelligent and capable of language and culture, how long do you think it would be before some jackass declared war on them? Or tried to convert them to their religion (there's an interesting idea, if dolphins are intelligent, do they have souls? if they have souls, do they need to be "saved"?)
That said, language without tool use is like writing a Perl script without an interpreter: it does nothing. Until dolphins can create their own tools, either through us really uplifting them or a la the oft quoted Onion article, we can't really consider them intelligent.
-- God invented whiskey so the Irish would not rule the world.
Re:The first thing they should tell the dolphins..
by
Basalisk
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· Score: 1
All your FISH are belong to us.
Re:Why the preoccupation with "intelligent" animal
by
The+Troll+Catcher
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· Score: 1
Why?
If a being is extremely intelligent, one would think it would learn very quickly - i.e. have a very gentle learning curve.
That is, if by steep and gentle learning curves that a person with a steep learning curve is very difficult to teach and one with a gentle curve is very easy to teach.
The reason we need to communicate with Dolphins...
by
Microsift
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· Score: 1
Re: Why search for ETs? Why leave your apartment?
by
namespan
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· Score: 2
Why send email? Why post things on slashdot? Why put a premium on intelligent animals?
Because: most human beings like to communicate with other sentient beings. It's satisfying. Even having a horse or dog is nice if you're out on the trail for weeks w/o human company. I just spent 5 mere days traveling w/o really speaking more than a few sentences to anybody, and I was soooo glad to get home to where I could talk to somebody.
Intelligent animals are held in high regard because the level of interaction and communication can be higher, and most humans value this. Not to mention, of course, the mystery of what something that really is different from us could tell us if we knew how to talk with them.
--
-- Libertarianism is rich wolves and poor sheep playing gambler's ruin for dinner.
Re:Dolphin Uplift -- Math Mistake (combinatorics)?
by
namespan
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· Score: 2
In other words, there just isn't very much information that can be extracted (in an information-theory sense) from dolphin sonic signals, regardless of what those signals mean. It's as if we can see that they have (e.g.) a 6 word vocabulary, and never use more than 4 words in a sentence, and never speak in paragraphs. No matter what they're saying, that would limit them to communicating no more than 24 thoughts total -- period.
Hmmmm. I realize this is nitpicking -- since languages are almost never so effecient as to make use of a different meaning for every possible symbol/bit (though, in context, they're effecient enough to apply multiple meanings to the same symbol). But...
6 symbols and 4 slots would actually give you
6*6*6*6 = 1296 possibilities. Even puting a "no duplicate word" rule in would give you 360 different possibilities.
--
-- Libertarianism is rich wolves and poor sheep playing gambler's ruin for dinner.
Maybe now we can get a better insight into the animal thought process and their communication levels. This may finally give us the answers to many puzzling questions.
--
There's always sufficient, but not always at the right place nor for the right folks.
"My hesitation is that dolphins are primarily acoustic animals while humans are primarily visual animals. In humans, the most-used sense is vision; we use it to process data."
"For dolphins, the primary route to assimilate information is via sound.
Perhaps they could use blind people.
--
There's always sufficient, but not always at the right place nor for the right folks.
Except for one item: "...if [intelligence] were more valuable, then it would be selected for, and more species would have it."
Actually, a few days ago I argued a similar position, but I'm not so sure I was right. Let me try the opposite stance here and see what happens.
Every species exploits at least one ecological "niche". For instance, trees use sunlight. But the existence of trees creates a new niche--tree bark. So there evolved insects to eat the tree bark. This creates a new niche: tree-bark eating insects. So we get woodpeckers. Then there are bird droppings on the ground so we get dung-beetles. Etc.
Once there is a significant amount of relatively intelligent life (lions, elephants, etc) there is a new niche based on out-thinking. We are able to eat buffaloes, etc because we are able to outthink them. We've also outthought grass (aka grains) by planting it in large patches, removing competition (weeds) and then harvesting in big truck loads.
Now we get to the crux of my point: Is there any more room in our niche? At the beginning (several million years ago) there may have been more than one semi-intelligent mostly-ape. But since part of our nature seems to be warfare, they've been wiped out. Then our numbers exploded to the point where our niche is almost OVER-populated--there's no selection pressure for other animals to take advantage because there's little or no surplus "out-thinking" for them to take advantage OF. Thus, no other intelligent animals. --
Non-meta-modded "Overrated" mods are killing Slashdot
--
Non-meta-modded "Overrated" mods are killing Slashdot
(Hey Ryan! Here's your proof!)
Re:Does no one here have respect for language?
by
OlympicSponsor
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· Score: 2
"For instance, elephants, dolphins, and apes all definately communicate in some manner, this stuff *is* hardwired...but it simply isn't the verbal "language" we are accustomed to. They're not teaching dolphins to speak English, they are just piggy backing on the dolphin's natural communication methods, to try to communicate with them."
You seem to have a very impoverished view of human language. Fish in water, no doubt.
Language is more than vocabulary. There are rules for creating words: Darwin. Darwin-ian. Darwin-ism. Even simpler: One wug, two wugs. There are rules for displaying meaning through grammar: "Dog bites man." vs "Man bites dog." Recursiveness: Darwin-ian-ism-s. "Do you think that the person who dumped the bucket could be the brother of Mary who chipped his tooth?"
Delve deeper into English (or look superficially at some other languages) and you'll find even more interesting items.
Compare that to an ape screech indicating (maybe) "Danger!" --
Non-meta-modded "Overrated" mods are killing Slashdot
--
Non-meta-modded "Overrated" mods are killing Slashdot
(Hey Ryan! Here's your proof!)
Re:Does no one here have respect for language?
by
OlympicSponsor
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· Score: 2
"That apes and dolphins are capable of using language is not in question. "
Yes, it is. I know of no scientific study that shows that apes OR dolphins "understand" more than simple words ("ball" "round" "go" etc). Can you give pointers to scientists (not animal trainers like Koko's Penny Marshall) who have published controlled studies (not anecdotal, "I swear the cat knows what I'm saying" evidence) in peer-reviewed journals (not Time magazine)?
--
Non-meta-modded "Overrated" mods are killing Slashdot
--
Non-meta-modded "Overrated" mods are killing Slashdot
(Hey Ryan! Here's your proof!)
Does no one here have respect for language?
by
OlympicSponsor
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· Score: 5
I'm no Luddite, I'd love to be able to talk to dolphins and/or apes...but you can't teach language to apes and dolphins. Language isn't just a matter of brute processing power of the brain. It requires innate wiring created to handle it. Consider cases of otherwise intelligent people who because of stroke, disease, injury, genetic impairment, etc are unable to process language. Conversely, think of disorders where the subject is able to converse on quite a sophisticated level but has an IQ of around 50.
If apes or dolphins had anything approaching a human-level ability at language, we'd observe them spontaneously using it. Check out "The Language Instinct" by Steven Pinker for more info on this topic. --
Non-meta-modded "Overrated" mods are killing Slashdot
--
Non-meta-modded "Overrated" mods are killing Slashdot
(Hey Ryan! Here's your proof!)
The same technique was used to attempt to communicate with John Carmack of id Software
Johns remarks: Vertex programs aren't invariant with the fixed function geometry paths.
That means that you can't mix vertex program passes with normal
passes in a multipass algorithm. This is annoying, and shouldn't have
happened.
In light of these statements the efforts were seen as a failure, we may never know if anyone will ever understand Carmack.
Scientists are attempting to begin conversation with patent lawyers through a series of "duh" "dur" "hyuck" and "golly"'s. While they admit that there is no hope for intelligent reponses, their goal is to debunk the myth that patent lawyers are completely unintelligent. Good luck with that one, O Brave Scientists.
What is wrong with use-value as a measurement of worth? Why should we support the perspective that every animal has value?
Surely, every species plays a role in the ecosystem. That's not to say that that role should outweigh the potential human benefit that could come from taking an action that might threaten a member of a species.
For example, if we were to let up a little bit on the regulations that retard the growth of power plants in california we would not be seeing the potential explosion in consumer costs and direct heating costs. Who is to say that the benefit of cleaner air is not worth less to the actual citizenry than the benefit of cheaper power?
Re:Why the preoccupation with "intelligent" animal
by
raju1kabir
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· Score: 2
So what about the case when it's a human, but with very low intelligence and very low awareness? Say, less than the average chimp. Do you think it's worse to kill them than to kill a chimp? Just to make it easier, assume they do not have any [close] living relatives, so we're not talking about the amount the killing would upset other people.
I believe most people would say "intelligence is the [main] deciding factor when considering if it is acceptable to cause an animal to suffer". But I think most of them would also say "It's wrong to kill a human, no matter how low their intelligence is".
Well, first of all, killing and inducing suffering are two very different things. Let's think of the ramifications of each:
Killing:
A being, together with its memories and experiences, ceases to exist. The continuity and lessons of these are lost.
Whatever that being had the potential to achieve, will not be acheived.
Other beings that care for this being will suffer sadness.
Other similar beings, assuming they're smart enough, will develop an aversion to you or to beings like you.
That being's genes are lost from the pool unless it has already reproduced.
Causing suffering:
A being experiences sensations that its brain tells it are damaging and should be avoided.
The being experiences the frustration of being unable to avoid those sensations.
That being and perhaps other similar beings, assuming they're smart enough, will develop an aversion to you or to beings like you.
Which of these outcomes is tolerable under various circumstances depends very much on the being in question.
If someone/something has a brain deficiency or natural lack of capacity which makes it impossible for them to experience pain, then it's not particularly horrible to poke them with sharp needles (as long as they're clean, I guess).
Most of the time, however, I think it's the other way around. Hence the tradition of humanely terminating animals that are so wounded they're in extreme pain and will never walk again.
Putting it all together, based on the ramifications itemized above, I think that as intelligence rises, killing the being becomes increasingly "more worse" than causing it to suffer. Both are bad, of course, bu they're not the same.
-- "Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it." -- GBS
Re:Why the preoccupation with "intelligent" animal
by
raju1kabir
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· Score: 3
If any animal has worth, then they all have worth. If we're squeamish about killing any one kind of animal (a "higher-order" "intelligent" animal), then we should be squeamish about killing all animals, since intelligence is just another characteristic and not a particularly important one at that.
I'd hope that once we get things worked out with the dolphins, they display more sophisticated reasoning ability than that. Why exactly aren't dolphins more important than other animals? Because they are more intelligent, and that's nothing special. Why isn't it special? Because it just isn't. I see.
High intelligence is far rarer than almost any other animal characteristic. It represents the fruits of more evolution, and in studying it we see the reflections of more complex processes and detailed natural history than in simpler traits.
From reading your post, I can't tell whether you're the sort who would cry for days upon rubbing your hands and inadvertently killing some bacteria, or the type who would gleefully kill monkeys for fun. Both possibilities flow from your argument. In either case, I'm not impressed.
-- "Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it." -- GBS
But how do you think this scientific venture will change the way people approach this?
Why the preoccupation with "intelligent" animals?
by
Chuck+Flynn
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· Score: 5
Why are humans so preoccupied with intelligence as a measure of species worth? Because we're narcissistic to think that we possess it as a defining characteristic and that therefore other animals are valuable in so far as they approximate our own species?
Intelligence isn't even an evolutionarily important characteristic: just look at how few species possess it -- if it were more valuable, then it would be selected for, and more species would have it. Which species do have it? Squids, spiders, and other predators. Intelligence has evolved at each stage in animal evolution (cephalopods, arachnids, mammalia, etc.) but only as a means of furthering predation. Where's the morality in that?
If any animal has worth, then they all have worth. If we're squeamish about killing any one kind of animal (a "higher-order" "intelligent" animal), then we should be squeamish about killing all animals, since intelligence is just another characteristic and not a particularly important one at that. This absurdity is well illustrated by the author's final point:
The ultimate goal of Marten's research is to illustrate to the world the high intelligence of dolphins and the need to protect the species.
"Dolphins are being killed by the millions so we can get our tuna. It's like what people used to say about the American buffalo -- 'Gee there used to be buffalo up on those hills.' The same will be true of the dolphins if we do not act," Marten said.
It's been said before, but it needs repeating: what about the tuna? Why worry about killing all those dolphins when we're so intent on killing the damn tuna? If you cut tuna, do they not bleed?
I can only think of one really good reason why we should be studying dolphin communication and that's so we can learn from their experience with other sea creatures. We've been to the moon and back, but there are parts of our own ocean that we've never explored, depths we've never plumbed. If we could communicate with dolphins and ask them what they've seen of our aquatic universe, then maybe we'd know a lot more about what goes on beneath the surfaces of our placid lagoons. Dolphins provide a perfect solution to the dangers and expenses of manned and unmanned submarine exploration -- let's not reinvent the wheel by reinventing the dolphin.
Re:It's great! Oh maybe not
by
onepoint
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· Score: 1
Let say for example that they are able to communicate with us, Do I want to know ( or am I scared to listen ) to the damage we have done to them.
Dolphins speaking to us would be an awakening. I'm just a bit frightend by the outside chance that there first thing they would say to us is " save us please "
The other point on this is how the church would take a stance after the dolphins say HI
I am not an enviromentalist
so don't flame me
spambait e-mail
my web site artistcorner.tv hip-hop news
please help me make it better
-- if you see me, smile and say hello.
Why start with only four words?
by
DeDaDiDo
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· Score: 1
They should first create an entire language, not just four words. Then build a universal translator into a Diamond Rio and embed it in the mouth of a mama dolphin or maybe they should use a robot for this (they could get Universal Studios to build it). Then they just kidnap a couple of baby dolphins and have the mama/robot teach them the made up language instead of their native language.
You know, if they could get the dolphins to respond to say, multi-tone whistling at a very high rate, maybe they could hit something like 300-1200 baud... think about it.:-)
When will we see an Ocean War.. the intelligent dolphins in groups of 1000's hitting all the US navy's submarines and ships, because the first message of a human to a dolphin will be "We own the oceans" we will finally stop to hear from IRAQ in the news.
Why are they bothering to use these under-water monitors to test dolphins abilities in simple audio-visual games. Let's cut to the chase, make Bash operable by jabbing of the monitor with the nose and high-pitched squeeking alone, and see if these dolphins' are really as 1337 as marine biologists claim their neurological ski11z enable them to be.
Someday, my friends, you will by H4X3D by a dolphin.
I, frankly, don't see the point of constructing a new language for use only in dolphin-human interactions. Human languages are all very similar (there are linguistic elements actually built into us genetically), and I can't imagine it being possible for us to create a new language without relying too much on our own linguistics. We try to teach dolphins how to say "fish," well I wouldn't doubt that dolphin-speak may lack nouns. Can anything be learned from teaching dolphins a new language, besides the fact that dolphins can learn a new language? It's the equivilent to meeting a primitive human tribe somewhere and getting them all to learn esperanto to communicate with us. If we want to learn about dolphins, we have to learn what dolphins are saying... not what we are teaching them to say.
But I bet that park in Hawaii is getting a lot of new visitors, and subsequently revenue;)
First, it was not a troll.
Now I shall defend my previous comments.
I understand the intent of the project, and I apologize if I gave the impression that I didn't. The differneces between human languages and dolphin language(s) are obviously quite numerous. That is why "we don't have the ability yet to understand what they are saying."
The reason we can not understand them is not because their language is beyond us, it is merely because our languages are different. Any language that we create in an effort to communicate with dolphins will be more similar to human languages than dolphin languages
Currently, they are researching with single words, and are apparently successful. Where do we continue after this? A question can not be asked with only nouns. In order to form a question, a grammar is needed. Any grammar we create will be based on human grammars.
This is exactly the case with apes learning ASL. ASL has a human grammar. Apes have the advantage of being similar to humans and this is not too far a stretch from their own forms of communication.
Why, though, should we expect dolphins to understand our more complex linguistic nature, when we can't understand theirs?
But, who says we shouldn't expect dolphins to understand our linguistic nature? How will we know if we don't try? Recent studies have shown that a bit of "music" is in all mammals... and our human languages (as diverse as they may all be) are nothing but ideas expressed via sound.
Ok, we can try to communicate with each other via music. I have no problem with that. If it's something inherent in all mammals, we can probably somehow touch ground with each other using it. But, you've just admitted that human linguistics isn't the best approach. Music is not human language. It's the same approach we take with SETI. We don't try to communicate with aliens in human languages; we use prime numbers and other fundamentals of math.
So let us take a similar approach with dolphins. But in the meantime, let them try to communicate with dolphins in human-like language.
For years, both scientists and fiction writers have assumed that contact with an intelligent species would come from the stars. Perhaps they've been wrong all along.
Test given to dolphins indicate a high degree of both spatial and linguistic intelligence - a combination that was once thought to be the exclusive domain of human beings. Further, dolphins demonstrate highly structured social orders, and variations in culture between dolphins from different geographical regions.
A common language has the potential to finally force mankind to stop treating the earth as its own, and realize that we share it with many other creatures - some perhaps as advanced as we are.
- qpt
--
--
Domine Deus, creator coeli et terrae respice humilitatem nostram.
this reminds me of that simpsons episode when all the dolphins came walking out of the ocean and took over springfield. originally they had lived on land and we humans ran them into the sea and now they were back for revenge. the townspeople tried fighting back but eventually Homer and the family ( along with the town ) were run into the sea to live forever.
sure its funny on tv....but now its starting to happen...and that my friends - is serious. we must stop this dolphin uprising!
How is this different to training a cat to respond to a "dinner call" by banging a teaspoon on a tin. It's pretty simple really... There is a thing called "homeostasis". Good things get rewarded.. thou must strive after these. Bad things you will get punished for... avoid these at all costs. I don't see what ground-breaking revolution has been discovered here.....
Re:Why the preoccupation with "intelligent" animal
by
american+goon
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· Score: 3
It's been said before, but it needs repeating: what about the tuna? Why worry about killing all those dolphins when we're so intent on killing the damn tuna? If you cut tuna, do they not bleed?
As a matter of fact, if you cut a tuna, it will not bleed. This is because tuna do not have blood.
Dolphins, on the other hand, will bleed if cut. Dolphins evolved from land-based mammals, which needed blood to emulate the salt water of the fish from which they evolved.
In other words, fish are barely plants in terms of their evolutionary development, and if you need some deeper, "more essential" quality to babble over in your pot-soaked hippie philosophical non-discussions then try thinking about how likely some creature with so little sensory perception available to it and so little processing power to back it up could possibly have a consciousness connected to it.
If you want to whine about how killing dolphins might be no worse than killing tuna then you might argue that cutting the grass when you mow your lawn is a horrible atrocity. And, you could continue that cutting grass is like killing people. Grass doesn't bleed when you cut it, either.
Slashdot Mirror
Does this mean that soon Nike will be able to pay dolphins 5 cents an hour to do labor? well sense they're not human slavery would be ok i guess...awsome, exploiting third world countries wasn't profitable enough, now theres a whole new "minority" to rape for profits! yeehaw! let freedumb roar!
OK, that is an exaggeration, but I don't think they are much smarter than a big wet dog. I worked as an intern in a series of psych experiements trying to get dolphins to replicate Sue Savage-Rumbaugh's keyboard communication with chimps, and multiple years of training would only give the dolphins a 20 word "vocabulary". That's pretty lame. I think David Brin summarized it best. Read here to see what he had to say
Yes, but dolphin's hearing is much more like our siight - they build a 3d-world map using sonar, so their "hearing" is still in the spatial domain, as well as the temporal. Humans have a little ability in this area - we can tell where a sound is coming from, and with _years_ of practice, some people, particularly musicians/ orchestra conductors/opera-hall architects, can tell the rough shape of a room from the echoes in it.
So, some concepts that might at first seem "sight based" are in fact "spatially based", and so would still make sense to a dolphin - e.g. "round", "fuzzy", "near" etc - and there's even the soinic analogue of colours, since different objects reflect ehcolocation clicks in different ways.
And dolphins do have reasonably good eyesight, too, by the way - they're short sighted in air (however that means they see better underwater), but they have eyes that are forward facing-enough for binocular vision (they are, after all, pack hunters like most animals we rate as "intelligent" - humans, chimps, wolves/dogs, etc). Chances are, they use their eyes for the final moments of moving in for the kill.
3
Er... Tuna have blood, quite definitely. Fish blood, but it is red...
For those of you who don't happen to know or who are not familiar with literature ( ;0) ):
David Brin, "Uplift" and sequels
very good read
Consider:
;-)
-- Dolphins are one of the few species, other than humans, who have sex just for the pleasure of it.
-- Male dolphins, particularly younger ones, will often hump anything that (a), moves, (b) doesn't hurt, and (c), may not move. I know this from personal observation (and, with a whole pool's worth of mixed male/female population, it provided hours of entertainment that I think would have made even Hugh Hefner blush!)
Whatever the first coherent sentence received from a dolphin ends up being, I would wager that it will be very X-rated.
Exactly!
Now, what do you do for food?
Do you eat plants?
How dare you assume that you can eat plants and not eat animals! Who said plants weren't as good as animals? If one living thing has worth, then they all have worth! Don't you dare eat the plants!
Don't drink water either. Who said that H20 molecules deserve to quench your thirst? Just die.
I'm guessing not, since you'd remember having to wash the blood off of your hands, knife, table, ect.
The real question is whether trolls like you have blood.
Don Negro
Don Negro
Perl 6 will give you the big knob. -- Larry Wall
However, other dolphin researchers have noted that dolphins are primarily visual in clear water and use sound most when visibility is impaired.
Dolphins are also tactile animals, using touch as a method of communication.
The idea of borrowing skills and ideas from people who are familiar with a non-visual world is great, IMHO. It only works, though, if that's the problem you're trying to solve.
IMHO, there are too many "dolphin experts", with too many contradictory ideas. Dolphin studies, right now, are not much more advanced than medieval alchemy. Without the benefit of being able to recognise either lead or gold.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Good I can type in my CC# over an unsecure connection then have it emailed to some one...
I'm surprised that no one's mentioned that Project Delphis utilizes PowerMac G4's and Mac OS X to process the language of the dolphins. The story appeared a while back at Apple's Science&Technology site
Exactly. The only adjectives which would be visual would be colors and levels of brightness. Any other descriptions of objects can be experienced by touch or other senses.
LetterJ
Head Geek
The Glass is Too Big: My Take on Things
I shouldn't even have said "four word sentences", for that matter, since that implies there might be meaning attached to each position in the sentence, implying some kind of grammar, which is actually part of what Brin is contradicting. One or two word order-insensitive sentences would be more to the point.
Brin's essay didn't give specific numerical data, as I recall, so I'll just leave it there.
Professional Wild-Eyed Visionary
Brin has written fascinating science fiction about genetically-alterered dolphins actually crewing and captaining starships, but it's interesting to note that he has also strongly critiqued non-fictional hopes of communication with unaltered dolphins.
In his essay Dogma of Otherness (originally published in Analog, Apr 1986, collected in his book Otherness, 1994), he points out that, long ago, dolphin researchers analyzed dolphin "speech" (sonic and ultrasonic sound emission), and simply applied information theory to the sounds, and discovered that, no matter whether we understand what dolphins are saying or not, nonetheless, they don't seem to be saying very much: they use only a few sound patterns, which are only used in short sequences.
(Information theory, to oversimplify, allows us to say "if there are only N bits of variation in a message, then that message cannot possibly convey more than 2^N bits of information, regardless of what those bits mean." It separates the question of the often-unknown meaning of messages, from the question of how many messages might in principle be communicated with any given communication system. It has been invaluable in e.g. cryptography and computer science since the WWII era.)
In other words, there just isn't very much information that can be extracted (in an information-theory sense) from dolphin sonic signals, regardless of what those signals mean. It's as if we can see that they have (e.g.) a 6 word vocabulary, and never use more than 4 words in a sentence, and never speak in paragraphs. No matter what they're saying, that would limit them to communicating no more than 24 thoughts total -- period.
(I'm making up the above numbers in order to get across the gist of Brin's essay.)
What this means is that, it doesn't *matter* whether we understand dolphin "speech" or not, because their speech just doesn't contain enough information to convey very much. In particular, Brin's argument says that there is no way in hell that dolphins could be using sonic holograms, or any other large-information-conveying signals.
Brin might, of course, be wrong in his interpretation of dolphin research, but I personally have seen nothing to refute him in the 15 years since I first read his essay.
That still leaves us the option of Uplifting dolphins, of course, just as Brin does in his fiction. That is, making dolphins intelligent, rather than hoping they already are intelligent.
As to other primate communication, another poster in this thread claimed a chimp made signs quoted as "Tickle me, then bring me one of those bananas. Oh, and I would like to watch some TV
That's laughable. The original signs were literally "Tickle. Banana. TV.". Paraphrasing those (admittedly interesting) signs into full sentences is a kind of blatant lie, in my book.
Chimps and apes are pretty smart. But they don't use complex grammar, and pretending otherwise doesn't help them (nor us).
Professional Wild-Eyed Visionary
1997 - Ukrainian dolphins trained by the Soviet Navy for military operations are now being used for therapy with autistic and emotionally disturbed children. Now there's an interesting reason to communicate with dolphins. It hits awfully close to home, as my son has been diagnosed with Asperger's syndrome, a form of autism. Too bad the local zoo doesn't have any kind of marine mammal program.... :o(
"How many light bulbs does it take to change a person?" --BMcC-->
Did you perchance miss the bit where humans took over the earth? Or the bit where we've near-on exterminated all the more inconvenient other species? Did you miss the part where humans have no significant predators left in countries where intelligence is valued? Or the promise from intelligently-designed space flight of off-world colonies that mean even a planetbuster or a global plague wouldn't kill us all?
Methinks you didn't really give enough thought to that one.
Hit a mouse with a hard disk, be arrested and fined for cruelty to the hard disk?
Will this cause man to stop tring to polluting the ocean or will just cause us to exploit another speices. I believe this will not be a good thing for the dolphins.
Is this a troll? Maybe I'm a fish...
The purpose is quite easy and clear. Once there is a common set of words understood on both sides it becomes possible to ask simple questions of the dolphins. From that we will learn more about them from their own responses than by mere observation alone. This was the case with teaching apes sign language and it will be the case with any animal that we can develop a common language that allows simple questions to be asked.
The simple fact is that we don't have the ability yet to understand what they are saying... however we do have the ability to communicate in a common form with common words. Doesn't matter if its something new for both of us; just as long as both parties can really understand it.
--- I do not moderate.
I don't actually expect this project to work... In my opinion something based on ideas would have a much better impact and help speed up the possability of asking questions (ie common "words" for food/playtime/warm/cold).
But, who says we shouldn't expect dolphins to understand our linguistic nature? How will we know if we don't try? Recent studies have shown that a bit of "music" is in all mammals... and our human languages (as diverse as they may all be) are nothing but ideas expressed via sound.
That's a pretty good core to share.
--- I do not moderate.
given that ulaanbaatar is the capital city of mongolia, they must be way lost.
-- need more time?
I'm no Luddite, I'd love to be able to talk to dolphins and/or apes...but you can't teach language to apes and dolphins. Language isn't just a matter of brute processing power of the brain. It requires innate wiring created to handle it.
...Which is already present, because these species already use language to communicate with themselves.
The problem is teaching them a lanugage that _we_ can understand. This has already been done for apes and chimps (apes with sign language, chimps with keyboards). Dolphins are trickier, but that's mainly a practical issue (they can't sign or type, so we're working ona whistle code).
That apes and dolphins are capable of using language is not in question. The question is "are they smart enough to be considered people under the law", which can only be assessed by direct communication of better quality than we've managed to achieve to date. This is an engineering problem, not a theoretical problem (we know it can be done, but not how to do it).
Dolphins resemble humans in a couple aspects:
First they both talk incessentantly, far more than
is needed for survival. Second, they both have
sex far more than needed for procreation.
Perhaps they'd undersatnd each other's bawdy jokes.
The researches have started out naming objects. Think about a dolphin's natural habit. There just aren't that many objects they care about - other fish, and themselves. IF there is a dolphin natural language, it is not going to be chuck full of nouns. They might have names for themselves, other fish, the water, the sky, and the ocean flow.
Relating to them on the level of simple human objects is certainly the simplest for humans, and is the way historically we have learned each other's languages, but I doubt it is going to work with a species whose natural environment is so alien to our own.
And besides, why is it so hard to tell if dolphins are actually speaking intelligently with one another with their clicks and whistles. What they do seems complex, yes, so we seem to stop there and say 'they are talking'. Why don't we subject their 'talk' to rigorous analysis and decode it. If there is not enough structure to it that we can't decode it, we are either too dumb to understand, or it is little more than bird song (that would be my guess).
-josh
I don't see why you should be commenting on the subject of animal language comprehension when you don't even seem to be able to understand the meaning of the "last comment".
Mod down posts with a "Free Mac Mini/iPod" sig, they're spam!
Niven's Known Space features intelligent dolphins and humans who communicate with them. His novel World of Ptavvs in particular features them (though it doesn't revolve around them).
Mod down posts with a "Free Mac Mini/iPod" sig, they're spam!
This may be the only way to determine whether or not dolphins have a language of their own.
There may still be problems, due to the difference between different species (who could predict that people would have a language and that chimpanzees would not?). Other problems might be at a more gramatical level. I have often wondered whether or not dolphins could project a sonic holograph, or at least enough of one for another dolphin to interpolate. If they did some sort of mpeg style compression, it might not look at all like speech.
Caution: Now approaching the (technological) singularity.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
> It's been said before, but it needs repeating:
> what about the tuna? Why worry about killing all
> those dolphins when we're so intent on killing
> the damn tuna? If you cut tuna, do they not
> bleed?
Because we eat the tuna. Therefore we furthur life. By your argument, why do we kill carrots -- I mean, not only are they alive, but they take longer to die, and are often *eaten* alive.
We aren't eating the dolphins.
(I strongly suspect, also, that tuna have a better energy use-to-energy output ratio -- i.e. they eat fewer sunlight-calories than dolphin, pound for pound, but I could be wrong about that)
The concept you're trying for is 'grammer', and yes, it is hardwired (humans are hardwired to create grammer, not for specific grammatical rules). For a nifty discussion of this (in non-verbal languages, as well) see _Seeing_Voices_ -- I believe by oliver sacks...
That said, I'm not convinced that at least some animals *don't* have language. In this case 'I don't know' is a more intellectually honest answer than 'absolutely not' -- how would we know if dolphins have vocabulary and grammar? we're talking a completely alien species here. Up until the last century even deaf humans who used sign language were often considered sub-intelligent and without language. If you still believe this about deaf humans and/or sign language, please do read the above book.
> For humans, "teaching" language is not a
> necessity. Consider: EVERY child brought up (in
> non-pathological conditions, c.f. "Genie")
> learns language.
False: See autism and hearing disorders.
My two year old (now three) went to speech therapy to do what your two year old does naturally. That said, it's fairly clear that his usage of language (now) is the same as that of most other three year old children. Just because it must be taught doesn't mean that the individual is mimicking the language after it's taught.
data: he's autistic. best theory is that because of the sensory issues involved he didn't automatically pick up language the way most kids do. He had to be guided to it. Once he was guided to it, though, he's taken to it fairly well.
The point I was trying to make is that you seemed to be trying to draw some line between 'taught behavior' and roteness -- and it's not nearly that simple.
So Long and Thanks For All the Fish?
If you look at the two major presidential candidates for the last US election there's an obvious reason why we're looking for intelligence outside our own species. That reason is Hope.
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
Why is it we humans think that we can conquer every task that we put ourselves to? It makes no sense to me that we might be able to understand something that dolphins know. There are just some things that can't be learned.
//end quote
I ask this in all earnestness(sp?????)
If i have never tried something, I already have failed by not trying.
If I have never known the answer, I never have tried to answer it, or I haven't asked the right question.
If however I have asked the question, I have tried, then at least I personally can feel better by knowing that I have an answer when someone asks me that question.
Unless we have tried, no one will be able to know, no one will be able to start from that point on. The ultimate goal is to answer the question, to ask "What if?". And to answer it.
This is IMNSHO, one of the best things we can learn. Dolphins are one of the smartest mammals/animals on the planet. I personally would be ashamed if everyone said what you just did. It isn't our/my say to tell our fellow humans what is and isn't worthwhile to do. Just because something seems impossible doesn't mean it is. Just because something seems illogical doesn't mean it is. I personally am glad that someone thinks out of the box, if no one did, we all would be in trouble.
I just cant see how us quite possibly learning to communicate with another life form is not worthwhile. Imagine, if you will, the possiblilites, the gains if we do learn to communicate?
We can learn the perspective of a TOTALLY different mindset. We could learn things never before possible, all by breaking one barrier, language. The possibilites are endless. Therefore we MUST try.
I just can't personally fathom not to ask, What if? I don't believe there ISN'T anything I can't learn, because EVERYTHING can be learned. Period, the first step to failure is never to try.
I leave you with this question, Imagine if Einstein, Newton, the Wright Brother's, Tesla, Edison, Sun Tzu, Kennedy, and many, many more, had come to your conclusion, and not tried? (another what if, ironically)
Douglas R. Hofstadter about chimp language, from The Mind's I
You wrote:
"Intelligence isn't even an evolutionarily important characteristic: just look at how few species possess it -- if it were more valuable, then it would be selected for, and more species would have it. Which species do have it? Squids, spiders, and other predators. Intelligence has evolved at each stage in animal evolution (cephalopods, arachnids, mammalia, etc.) but only as a means of furthering predation. Where's the morality in that? "
I take exception to this: There are examples of real intelligence that develops NOT to further predation, but to further self-defense and communal living. Rabbits are well known (both in folklore, and to anyone who has ever had a house rabbit) to posses an uncanny intelligence, awareness of the intentions of others, complex communication/body language, etc..., and I have yet to see a rabbit hunt another living being for food. This is simply too reductive a view of intelligence. Intelligence often evolves to promote cooperation, defense, and to make the most of available resources. There isn't much immoral about that in itself.
(I suppose we could also discuss elephants, who have well-documented 'symbolic systems' built on low-frequency vocalization.)
Its a quote from the short lived "The Big Guy and Rusty the Boy Robot" (based on the comic book by the same name). The series lasted for 6 episodes (maybe 8, I'll have to check) on FOX Kids a year or so back. The basic premise is that in the 70s/80s (although the 'tech style' looks more like a style-istic 50s) the army created a robot to protect the world from aliens and other monsters/evil menaces. It was supposed to be automated but the Artificial Inteligence wasn't up to snuff (cute scene where they ask the robot "How many fingers am I holding up?" to which he replies "Tuesday"). The army makes it a piloted vehicle... but thats on a need to know basis only, as far as everyone else knows, its just a big robot (hence "The Big Guy"). Flash forward to 'now'. A company finally puts together a fully functional A.I. and a new robot with a learning neural net, thats still kind of new at the job of defending the earth (hence "Rusty the Boy Robot"), who ends up as the "Big Guys" side-kick (he Idolizes the big guy and wants to grow up to be just like him).
:)
The quote comes from the head of the corporation that built rusty addressing the scientist who built him, right after Rusty went charging into a situation and got badly clobered... repeatedly.
Hope that helps,
The requisite IMDB link is Here.
If you can find a copy of it, its rather funny and entertaining. Too bad the Saban (the E-Bola virus of Childrens Programming) was(is?) in charge of the Fox Kids programming line-up and nixed it.
This space for rent. All reasonable inquiries will be entertained at proprietors discretion.
For dolphins, the primary route to assimilate information is via sound.
;)
Perhaps they could use blind people.
Somehow I don't think the "Seeing Eye Dolphin" would really catch on. What? You ment...
Oh. Never Mind.
This space for rent. All reasonable inquiries will be entertained at proprietors discretion.
If apes or dolphins had anything approaching a human-level ability at language, we'd observe them spontaneously using it
We have. They do. Duh. Try to do at least the most basic amount of research before posting. We don't know how complex their language is because we don't understand it, but the fact that it is there is not under dispute.
Take that! And that!
Some people have already mentioned the parrot that can understand English. What they haven't made clear is just how sophisticated that parrot is.
When shown a purple square block and a purple triangular block, and asked "What is the same?", the parrot will reply "color", and when asked "What is different?" the parrot will say "shape". Furthermore, they've gotten the parrot to start teaching another parrot to speak English. On one occasion, the "teacher" parrot even told the "student" to "speak more clearly" when he pronounced the word paper incorrectly.
This reminds me of a short story by Larry Niven, but I can't remember what it was called....anyone out there know the one I'm talking about?
So, the dolphins are finally getting the monkeys to learn how to communicate. That's a good sign!
For great justice, take off every zig.
Execute? [Y/N] _
Theres been alot of talk about how inteligent dolphins are. Maybe they are. But they havent dont anything about it. They're like the bright kid who never does anything with it. Even if they have greater cognitive ability than humans, they sure havent done much with it. They still live a brutal existance of animals. They still get caught in tuna nets and eaten by the occasional shark and die of disease without devising ways to defend themselves or finding cures.
It wouln't matter much. It's not just sound dolphins as well as most aquatic creatures can detect subltle changes in water pressure and electrical fields. Dolphins not only communicate using sound but also rely on posture, waves and who knows what else.
Let's say that someone undertook a very worth cause and was able to simulate all the sensory input a dolphin receives and somehow translated it into some sort of sensory input a human understood. Do you think a human being could make sense out of it? Of course not.
In order to communicate you need to have something in common with the creature. I am afraid a creature which only experiences air a minute fraction of it's life will find very little to communicate to you.
War is necrophilia.
I failed to mention many things about the series. Book titles, for instance. I'm not reviewing it. :-)
And as for the fleet, it's not known (at Startide Rising) whether it's really progenitor's or not (though it is certainly suspected so), and there are many species which are humanoid.
(8-DCS)
This expression comes from the Uplift series, a couple of science fiction trilogies by David Brin. The central theme in the series is that no sentient species in the universe, except one fabled "progenitors", has ever attained sentience by itself. Instead, they all have been genetically engineered into sentience, a process known as "uplifting".
:-)
Humans, naturally, uplift dolphins and chimpanzees (and then proceed to dogs, what a waste!).
Mind you, I hated the first book, the second book is terribly annoying and it's story is continued (and finished) only in the fifth and sixth books. Third book is actually ok, but no dolphins there.
(8-DCS)
"All your ocean are belong to us"
I thought it would be a story about the dolphins right before the world was destoryed.
Don't Panic!
These people claim there was 1 shark attack fatality in 2000 in the US/ 20 00attacksummary.htm
t ml
http://www.flmnh.ufl.edu/fish/Sharks/statistics
That was the year which a kid was killed in Fl after being knocked in the head by a bottle nose dolphin but I can't find that story.
Story about another dolphin attack
http://www.i5ive.com/article.cfm/whales/23805
Yet another story:
http://whale.wheelock.edu/archives/ask99/0494.h
After one of those stories hit the main press was when the Parks dept sent out their warning which basicly said that warning were to be put up where people my interact with dolphins saying that they are wild animals and can be unpredictable.
Dolphins (and sharks) are natural killers. That how they survive. Recently a large amount of evidence shows they can be violent. A google search on "dolphin attack" will give you lots of reading material.
The dolphins I've see all have much larger mouths and teeth than the sharks I've seen and I've seen a fair number of both. Sure the great white is big but most sharks are slightly smaller than dolphins and won't attack people except by mistake. Dolphins on the other hand will play with humans and they play rough. They have also been known to attempt to stun people with their sonar. it works with small fish and not so well with humans but it could be fatal.
I just mentioned the point to bring up some interesting discussion. I'm not the least bit worried about being attacked by a either sharks or dolphins.
I wonder if this will be like some of the attempts to speak with apes that turned out to be scientifically flawed and many of the results are due to wishful thinking on the part of the researchers. One example is the Koko uses American Sign Language which some words must be done at specific locations. Koko never did that so when some researchers were counting its vocabulary they would over count simple hand motions. People who often used sign language to communicate with others didn't understand what Koko was saying. Koko's communication was no more complex than the communication between smart dogs and preceptive masters.
I wonder if this is going to be the same thing.
A side note about cute dolphins: The US Parks department had a warning a few years ago because
dolphins kill and attack more people in the US than sharks.
perl -e 'fork||print for split//,"hahahaha"'
Interesting. Reading between the lines, I take it that you think that intelligence is the important characteristic when deciding if killing is wrong.
So what about the case when it's a human, but with very low intelligence and very low awareness? Say, less than the average chimp. Do you think it's worse to kill them than to kill a chimp? Just to make it easier, assume they do not have any [close] living relatives, so we're not talking about the amount the killing would upset other people.
I believe most people would say "intelligence is the [main] deciding factor when considering if it is acceptable to cause an animal to suffer". But I think most of them would also say "It's wrong to kill a human, no matter how low their intelligence is".
perl -e 'fork||print for split//,"hahahaha"'
AFAIK, all "language" is not made equal. For instance, elephants, dolphins, and apes all definately communicate in some manner, this stuff *is* hardwired...but it simply isn't the verbal "language" we are accustomed to. They're not teaching dolphins to speak English, they are just piggy backing on the dolphin's natural communication methods, to try to communicate with them. While it would be great (and perhaps impossible as you say) to teach animals human language, we can certainly at least try to communicate in the first place. That's all that's trying to be done. We're not sending these animals to Harvard for a literary degree.
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
So what about the case when it's a human, but with very low intelligence and very low awareness? Say, less than the average chimp. Do you think it's worse to kill them than to kill a chimp? Just to make it easier, assume they do not have any [close] living relatives, so we're not talking about the amount the killing would upset other people.
Now that sounds reasonable to me. Let's do it. Where do I sign your petition. I suggest changing the wording to exclude TEMPORARILY lowered intellegence, or you'd have scientists trolling bars for their research subjects.
(chanting)Cognitive Rights! Cognitive Rights! Cognitive Rights!
'Intellectual Properties' are uncontrollable in the wild. To base an economy on them is just stupid.
nah.
The ones they speak to will have been bred in captivity, and know nothing of the ocean (like the lost tribes of ulan-baata believe the world ends at the edge of the forest).
However, if the language can be taught to some dolphins, AND if they prove capable of teaching it to their children (like some gorillas have), AND if the dolphins are released AND if we manage to find an n-th generation dolphin that still speaks a comprehensible dialect (you have to imagine that our choice of words to include in the language and our tenses and sentence structure are hardly going to be spot-on for life at sea) THEN we may learn something about dolphin culture.
Hey, we could actually learn alot from how the language has evolved, even if it is no longer comprehensible. But in until then, insights into thought processes are "all" (pretty amazing even that, IMHO) we can hope for.
"...and I have yet to see a rabbit hunt another living being for food."
Gee, you think that's maybe because they can't DIGEST meat? Or maybe when the world is filled with food that just SITS there (Grass), hunting down something is a waste of time?
Later,
ErikZ
Democrats or Republicans. They are both taking us to the same place and they are not afraid of us anymore.
The article title refers to Uplifting, which is a term from a series of books by SF author David Brin. In these books (Startide Rising is one of them), dolphins and chimps are modified by humans to raise them to a higher level of intelligence. Humans have made contact with many alien races, and humans are unique in that they have no know uplifters, and evolved intelligence without external help.
I'd hardly call trying to communicate with dolphins "uplifting". We still don't really know the level of their intelligence. Maybe they are trying to uplift us.
LS
There is a fine line between being a cultivated citizen and being someone else's crop. - A. J. Patrick Liszkie
round, fuzzy, far, near
These are not sight based.
Trees can't go dancing
So do them a big favor
Pretend dancing stinks!
And looking round is different from BEING round.
Trees can't go dancing
So do them a big favor
Pretend dancing stinks!
All we're going to be doing is creating a Turing Machine. We would learn that "squeek-squah" should be met with a response of "boor-grap" or something.
Then you've never spoken to your parents. You just learned at an early age that "don't do that you little brat!" should be met with a response of putting down the knife.
Ultimately, behavior becomes the meter by which we measure our understanding of a language. That is, we measure by the behavior of the listener(s) and by the behavior of other speakers.
The man in the box had no input aside from streams of characters. We have much more than that.
____________________
___
The ends are ape-chosen, only the means are man's. -- Aldous Huxley
I don't think you harm h2o molecules by drinking them. you just take them for a rollocoaster ride.
erik
...all excited, don't know why...
So long and thanks for all the fish...
I can't believe that no one posted this... for chrissake:
More crack reporting at The Onion: Dolphins Evolve Opposable Thumbs.
>As a matter of fact, if you cut a tuna, it will not bleed. This is because tuna do not have blood.
Really? That's odd - why is it that I have to spend time washing all the blood off the deck of my boat after a day of tuna fishing? I know it's not *my* blood......
-drin
Why is it we humans think that we can conquer every task that we put ourselves to? It makes no sense to me that we might be able to understand something that dolphins know. There are just some things that can't be learned.
------
That's just the way it is
Is it crueler to kill a cockroach, or a baby chimp?
Is it crueler to kill a catfish, or a cat?
I think most would say the second in both cases, because we can recognize emotions in cats and chimps, but not in catfish or cockroaches (the second question is intentionally vaguer).
When I read the Darwin awards, I really don't feel a damn thing about the deaths of people that stupid. When it's someone like Phil Hartman or Peter McWilliams dying, though, we've lost something.
Imagine: a schoolbus goes off the cliff. All 15 children, two teachers, and the driver die. Would you rather it be a special ed class, or the speech and debate team? Most people can answer that question, though they feel bad about it.
I have a very simple chain of what I think things are worth:
bugs fish reptiles brain dead postmodern liberals birds mammals lawyers and politicians primates cute mammals stupid people dolphins normal people people I like women who I want to fuck family me.
Everyone else out there has a similar scale. It probably isn't drastically different from mine. I really don't give a shit if some subspecies of wasp goes extinct, but I would care if Bonobos go extinct. Of course, I'd probably be less upset by some random murder or small car accident than about thousands of dolphins dying, so one level doesn't totally override another, but that's the general picture.
If we can't value animals differently, then we have to say, the more the better, which means that all multicellular animals are bad. But that's just idiotic, so we must value things other than how many animals there are. Also, stupid animals will never survive the sun blowing up in 4 billion years. We might. They need to start learning how to communicate with us because they better get cracking on the ass kissing if they want us to take them with us.
Of course, if I were a brainwashed postmodern liberal, I wouldn't be able to cope with the fact that my existence necessitates that some other animal doesn't exist, so I'd just go kill myself to make the world a better place.
All your bases are belong to us!
Things are getting out of hand. What's next? Using computer-controlled motors on arctic ice-blocks so penguins can play Tetris?
Sig: My Latest Censorware Essay:
What Happened To The Censorware Project (censorware.org)
why do they live in igloos ?
Why are they always getting caught in those fishing nets ?
I can just imagine how frustrating this must be for the people doing the research. Jack Handey probably summed it up best in his Deep Thoughts...
"It seemed to me that, somehow, the blue jay was trying to communicate with me. I would see him fly into the house across the way, pick up the telephone, and dial. My phone would ring, and it would be him, but it was just this squawking and cheeping. "What?! What?!" I would yell back, but he never did speak English."
Well, we're just lucky we have media to remember stuffs for us.
Otherwise, we'd be pretty much like the chimps in this aspect...
Wait. Maybe we can teach the chimp reading and writing too.
There is a slim possibility that the Dolphins are not only as smart as us - they are actually SMARTER than the researchers. They're just pretending to be dumb, and our smart scientists have been fooled all along.
Of when one dolphin knows it's being studied, it spread the news to the whole dolphin community, making the "fool faking" behavior spread like wildfire.
As a result, we humans as dumber animals than the dolphin will never be able to study its true behavior.
Teach them something that is a meaningful addition to their lives, and they will not forget so easily throughout the generations. Also, consider the fact that not every individual is fit for the stubborn teacher-role. Teach many, and the lessons will have a better chance to stay in their society.
- Steeltoe
http://www.debunkingskeptics.com/
You're assuming we're better off than them. Maybe we are, but taking a look out of my window.. Maybe not.
- Steeltoe
http://www.debunkingskeptics.com/
Whoever it is that wrote that article.
Needs to learn that it is possible to write paragraphs longer than one sentence.
Prediction:
A Wired article next week will be in iambic pentameter.
All kings is mostly rapscallions. -Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
I read the article on the front page, and wondered how many posts it'd be before I saw "so long and thanks for all the fish." #2 is pretty good. :)
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum sonatur.
At least I can always read slashdot to find the articles I missed a week ago somewhere else.
Drag n' Drop DVD Recommendations
So why haven't these hyper intelligent dolphins made any attempt at teaching us the sounds for "sea urchin" or "gimme more fish"?
Maybe they are not all that intelligent....
> Not only did the chimps communicate with them
> over food and life in general, they also taught
> the sign language to their children.
Sort of.
Spent years training a chimp several hundred signs, and that chimp will teach their child a dozen, and that child will teach their child nothing. So far we have yet to discover something that can be taught to an amimal that will be self-sustaining in their society.
--
Slashdot monitor for your Mozilla sidebar or Active Desktop.
Yet another device Clarke should have patented. First the geosynchronous comminucations satelite, now this. What's next, monoliths?
--
Slashdot monitor for your Mozilla sidebar or Active Desktop.
I can think of a reason that we should be worried about dolphins before tuna, and that is that tuna breed much faster. There is more tuna, they're being replenished faster, and we're much less likely to drive them into extinction.
That said, I agree--we shouldn't be looking at driving ANYTHING into extinction.
The other thing is that we (well, many of us) have an urge to find proof of 'higher' intelligence. Not just the intelligence present in spiders, but intelligence on the level that we could carry on a discussion with. It's a fascinating concept to think of what we might (potentially) learn from something as 'alien' as a non-human (and in this case, ocean-going) life. I think a lot of us are looking for something to help us avoid killing ourselves off, and taking half the planet with us.
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
Yeah but to some extent, Koko has been a disappointment. Very quick learner, but they found that her (I think) intelligence was quite limited. No new insight or revelations on the human race.
Also, dolphins live in a more disparate world. That looks intriguing.
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
(Note: Those who have not seen Johnny Mnemonic won't get this)
-=This space reserved for sig=-
Um, I hate to intrude on such optimism, but those who pollute, abuse, dominate, and otherwise misuse the earth do not hesitate to do the same to other human beings. Since they regard their own kind as negligible, why should they grant equal rights to another species?
I don't really think you can tell how smart they are until you learn how to communicate with them?
Otoh, I think they estimated a gray jaco's (unsure of english name though, parrot) intelligence at about iq40 compared to a grown human.
Hmmm... they do "talk", though.
--
"I'm surfin the dead zone
--
"I'm surfin the dead zone
In the twilight, unknown"
Two words: Hands.
Uh, that's just one word, but there are two of them, mostly.
--
"I'm surfin the dead zone
--
"I'm surfin the dead zone
In the twilight, unknown"
No way!
Last time I checked, the cans still read "tunafish".
--
"I'm surfin the dead zone
--
"I'm surfin the dead zone
In the twilight, unknown"
Bassos-Hull agrees. "It won't be free-floating conversation," Bassos-Hull said. "We'll be able to ask questions and they will be able to answer in very simple terms."
I wonder how long it will take for someone to figure out how to ask the dolphins who all their base are belong to.
Maybe that's not such a good idea, though. They may decide to retaliate by moving 'Zig'.
-- Dr. Eldarion --
Besides, who says dolphins don't make tools - or at least toys? Using their built-in anatomical structures to manipulate the raw materials avalable to them, they can do things like this.
Any sufficiently well-organized community is indistinguishable from Government.
Clearly, these Dolphins are being trained to initialize Hayes-compatible modems...
Any sufficiently well-organized community is indistinguishable from Government.
Koko has been a. . . [v]ery quick learner, but they found that her (I think) intelligence was quite limited.
Well, I should think that someone thinks it's interesting that her learning curve is extremely steep but with a low upper limit.
Intuitively (i.e., out of my ass), I'd expect steep learning curves to be associated with high upper intelligence limits.
Assuming your statements are accurate, of course :)
Any sufficiently well-organized community is indistinguishable from Government.
Speaking as a former major in animal psych, this is an intensely parochial definition of intelligence. Are you saying that if you get talking with a dolphin and it can solve puzzles, beat you at chess, understand the microsoft case and help you with your love life* you won't consider it "intelligent" because they don't have the oppossable thumbs or (in most cases) any need for tool use? (If you are counting on tool use for your sense of superiority, you better not read anything on it. Unless you want to consider chickens smarter than dolphins) The presures and needs of their environment are entirely different than ours, so attempting to judge their true intellectual capacity by what we have done is just foolish.
With any luck we will establish cominication and find that from their point of view the little toys we build are all cute and clever, but until they can help us learn to navigate the world by ultrasonic landmarks, they won't be able to "really consider us intelligent".
*"ah, just get some of your buddies together and gang rape a shark. You'll feel better."
Kahuna Burger
...will work for Chick tracts...
Is this a universal sign of intelligence, or an application of inteligence to a species specific desire? It is VERY tricky to judge levels of inteligence cross species, especially since humans always set themselves up at the top of the pile and look for tests to confirm their assumptions. (the history of animal intelligence testing is rife with examples of tests that were dismissed as "inaccurate" judgments of intelligence because they gave the "wrong" answer in where they ranked humans.)
Its also important not to confuse cultural accomplishments with signs of species level inteligence. There is little reason to believe that our biological ability to reason has evolved significantly since the stone age, and no reason to imagine that a "tribe" of modern children raised without the cultural buildup of knowlege would progress in their lifetimes to even a bronze age level of technology (silly Ayn Rand stories aside). Don't let a lucky choice of your number and kind of ancestors lull you into a false sense of superiority.
Taking our environment with us is one way in which humans have applied their intelligence. I'd never rank it as an acid test that could be applied to another species unless we knew A LOT more about its psychology. Experimental/cognitive psychologists will make a judgement they have been training and studying to make, and the rest of us will say "oh".
Kahuna Burger
...will work for Chick tracts...
From my tour of the Living Seas (Epcot, research, not training, 1997) I also recal some of the researchers describing situations where the dolphins would use tools if they were in a situation where the materials were present and needed. The whole tool thing is a little bit of a red herring since a dolphins natural habitat is a tool poor environment, while homonids evolved in a tool rich environment. (early tools were found objects that could be thrown or used to extend reach, modifying and actually producing tools came later.) From a research paper I did several years ago on tool use, I don't recal any purely ocean dwelling animals* that used tools, while many "low intelligence" land animals did. Hence my opinion that spontaneous tool use as a intelligence criterion is parochial.
I liked your link, BTW. I suspect that dolphins are one step better than merely inteligent and will be found to be artistic (song, etc). Sigh, if only I'd stuck with the PhD program...
*shore dwellers like sea otters had tool use, but there are comfortable on land as well as in the water.
Kahuna Burger
...will work for Chick tracts...
At least they're thankful for all the fish.
Do we really need to find out about the impending armageddon any sooner than necessary?
Not Tetris...PENGO BABY!!!
All your fish are belong to us! :-)
segfaulteq@home.com
....if they used bells as well.
But really, we are simply talking about conditioning, not communicating here. This is no more then a wet version of Pavlov's experiments with his dog.
I wish I could think of a witty Sig. Sigh!
What's next, monoliths?
Just in case you missed it, and weren't actually being sarcastic there, exhibit A and exhibit B. Arthur Clarke, a Nostradamus For The Twenty-Fifth Century. Be afraid =)
// zyqqh
Huh.... is it related to This?
--- Metamoderating abusive downgraders since my 300th post.
>> For dolphins, the primary route to assimilate
>> information is via sound.
>
> Perhaps they could use blind people.
Insightful=2
--
mrBlond
CowboyNeal for president!
"Hit any user to continue."
Kudos to zephc for giving the print friendly link. It's not quite Alertbox, but much better than the default crap page "design" we've become accustomed to. "The vast majority of web 'designers' should be shot." - JatTDB
--
mrBlond
CowboyNeal for president!
"Hit any user to continue."
The underwater touchscreen is the first of its kind. It's made up of an infrared beam grid mounted onto the tank window and a monitor screen that faces the dolphins.
Maybe a dolphin is posting to this thread. No mouse mentioned, but slashdot does load (rather badly) on lynx...
--
I'm not sure I understand your assertion that evolutionary advancement is a better qualifier for animal protection than intelligence.
I would assert that a good qualifier for animal protection is the animal's capacity for empathy. Eating tuna is a means of survival for us, and many other creatures. I doubt that the tuna 'miss' or have any remorse for the tuna that get caught. This is not true of Dolphins.
This despite the fact that many of these projects have produced astonishing results. I was especially fascinated by the work of Dr. Roger Fouts and his colleagues, who have tried to teach the American Sign Language to chimpanzees -- and succeeded. Not only did the chimps communicate with them over food and life in general, they also taught the sign language to their children. And more precise than you might imagine: Instructions like "Tickle me, then bring me one of those bananas. Oh, and I would like to watch some TV" are not at all uncommon ;-)
Find more info at their Institute, I especially recommend the book "Next to Kin". I really wish such projects could be funded through micropayments. If every Slashdot reader donated a dollar to this research, they'd be much farther than they are now.
--
I'm all for it as long as the first conversation doesn't go like this:
....
In A.D. 2101
War was beginning.
Captain: What happen ?
Mechanic: Somebody set up us the bomb.
Operator: We get signal.
Captain: What !
Operator: Main screen turn on.
Captain: It's You !!
Cats: How are you gentlemen !!
Cats: All your base are belong to us.
Cats: You are on the way to destruction.
Captain: What you say !!
Cats: You have no chance to survive make your time.
Cats: HA HA HA HA
Captain: Take off every 'zig' !!
Captain: You know what you doing.
Captain: Move 'zig'.
Captain: For great justice.
If Mr. Edison had thought smarter he wouldn't sweat as much. --Nikola Tesla
Yes, the chimps learned to tell them that they were hungry. However, a dog can do that just as well, and nobody claims that they're actually using language. Communicating a concept such as "I'm hungry," "I want that toy," or "Tickle me" is a long way from actual language or conversation.
How can we continue to believe in a just universe and freedom to eat crackers if we have no ale?
Source.
Uhh, that looks OK. We haven't seen that number yet.
Right now, all they can do is get dolphins to reproduce some of the introduced whistles...there's no communication, or transfer of information between humans and dolphins. This kind of thing has been tried before, and hasn't gone anywhere.
Also it's documented that dolphins communicate just as much through whistles as they do through movement.
While a simplified signing language has worked with an ape, remember that apes communicate similarily to humans; dolphins do not...
Uhh, that looks OK. We haven't seen that number yet.
If that's the case, there are only a handful of truly intelligent humans in all of existence.
"If I were to ask you a hypothetical question, what would you like it to be about?"
On the other hand, speaking as a Hawai'i boy who has, in his life, pulled a reasonable number of ahi and akule out of the water (mmm... good eating!), and who has a reasonable familiarity with their internals, I have to say there is a point to the nerve complexity angle. Not much there in the ahi skull... and those are some of the big, and relatively clever, tunas. clever in the sense of put up a good fight... survival instincts.
I've never met a cognizant fish. Yes, I value conciousness, in some degree, at least, much more highly than respiration, much less cell division. Yes, I'd place a marginally self aware computer higher on the deserves-consideration-for-not-being-killed scale than an essentially automated organic. No, I don't consider killing individuals with self awareness inherently immoral. Someone who intends to kill me, and cannot be dissuaded by other means, dies. Someone who kills, or deliberately hurts or tortures someone I care about, or who is obviously willing to kill with malice without reason of defense or fear, dies. I find this in no way ethically reprehensible. Killing self aware, nearly sentient life forms for no better reason than a few dollars in profit and a cheaper can of tuna, I think, falls into the reprehensible category.
-- Still waiting for the Nike endorsement
hehe.. damnit you beat me to that post =\
Envision this:
A small wearable computer designed to be worn on a diver's back. Unit could either fit under a wet/dry suit or attached to the SCUBA gear.
Unit has input and output devices for humans and dolphins:
Human input: Microphone (will require specially adapted head unit)
Human output: Earphones
Dolphin input: hydrophones
Dolphin output: underwater speakers
Human to dolphin communication:
Human speaks into microphone -> Speech recognition software processes input into intermediate symbols -> dolphin interface software takes intermediate symbols, translate into squeaks, whistles, pops, etc. -> output is feed to the underwater speakers -> Dolphin hears, and hopefully understands!
Dolphin to human will be by a similar process, with the input from the hydrophones and the output going to the earphones.
Issue to workout:
Dolphin software will obviously take the most work. Do dolphin speak via a standarized language? Does each pod have it's own dialect? Is the language regular or irregular? Context based or context free? In addition, software updates need to be worked out, ultimately leading to processes that learn new dialects or phrases in real-world use.
Hardware needs to be small, sturdy, waterproof, have enough power to last the time of a dive. Should have sufficient processor power and memory to support translations in at least near-real time.
Dophins are social creatures - remove them from their socierty and their language becomes meaningless. I think the only way to discover their language would be to follow them around and record their communications and try to decipher that. If they are indeed as intelligent as a monkey or more, then there is no reason not to suspect that they have a rich culture and philosophical tradition. Why would they care to surf the web? Technology only serves to imprison and humiliate them - the ones who are later released must seem completely insane to the "wild" dolphins out there.
[pink beam of light]
I've considered this question at length, and have finally developed a system to determine which animals I can or cannot kill:
Unique data content.
Ants are perfect genetic copies of each other; their brains can only carry a few bytes of unique data at a time. I can kill ants with impunity.
Cows are genetically distinct (containing more than a few megabytes of distinct data), but their brains are virtually identical. I wouldn't go on a mad cow-slaughtering spree, but I wouldn't necessarily feel guilty about eating a cheeseburger on a fresh, thick kaiser roll.
Apes? Dolphins? African Grey Parrots? Dogs? Octopi? To all appearances, these animals possess not only unique genetic data, but also a certain amount of reasoning ability and memory. As they contain unique psychic data, I'd definitely have some qualms about killing them for any reason. In fact, I might go so far as to suggest that apes, dolphins, and African Greys be treated as almost human -- we don't really know how smart they are, and until we know, we should be treating them well.
Which brings us to people. People contain BIGNUM amounts of unique data apart from their genetic data. People are far more important than ants, bacteria, and even dogs. All effort should be expended to keep them alive and kicking.
I'd recognize a dolphin troll anywhere. Sadly for you, net-mush, I know the truth.
Actually, at least one parrot can understand human speech and answer questions. You show him something red and wood, and ask what color it is, he answers (red) or what it's made of, and he answers 'wood'. He is not just 'Clever Hans'ing it.
See the previous discussion on Slashdot and other links such as the Alex project home page.
Humans: Greetings, we come in peace.
Dolphin: All your base are belong to us.
One of the most interesting scientific minds in the modern era, Dr. John C. Lilly, is also the pre-eminent researcher on dolphin interspecial communication. The inventor of the Sensory Deprivation tank, the inspiration for the films Day of the Dolphin and Altered States, as well as one of the first researchers into the therapeutic potential of LSD and Ketamine, this man is quite a character. Interested parties are directed to certain bios.
(2,3-Benzopyrrole)
Imagine if you were a dolphin, being about as smart as you are, but trapped in a fishlike body, unable to do much but swim around
Imagine if you were a human, being as smart as you are, but trapped in a mammal-like body, unable to do much but walk around. Think about it.
10 bucks says the first message we receive from a dolphin is "stop leaving warm spots in the water".
- I don't care if they globalize against free speech. All my best free thoughts are done in my head.
Second, the emotional pleas: "If you cut tuna, do they not bleed?" (As a poster above noted, no they don't, they don't have blood).
And as several posters have noted since, Tuna DO have blood, as do most animals.
Enigma
Enigma
I wonder if they have developed any understanding of mathematics, beyond simple counting. Math is fairly abstract, so it probably wouldn't suffer as much in translation as other ideas which are grounded in either species' primary means of perception.
Bugrit! Millenium hand and shrimp!
we have found such creatures: http://www.koko.org/world/ Koko has been hold ing conversations for quite some time by the looks of it.
From the article:
Marten, who has been working with three dolphins at the park, says the dolphins already recognize and repeat the artificial whistles he has devised.
However, they have yet to relate the whistles to the objects they refer to -- this will be the next goal of the research. "The second stage is to see if the dolphins recognize what the whistles stand for..."
And then they claim that:
"We'll be able to ask questions and they will be able to answer in very simple terms."
All they have so far are dolphins mimicking sounds- no evidence that the dolphins can understand it at all. Like parrots.
Seems vaporous to me. Or maybe I'm just cynical.
-skip
"More fish, please." "Could I have the keys to the gate tonight, Dad." "Stop that whistling or I'll flipper your ass!"
"My hesitation is that dolphins are primarily acoustic animals while humans are primarily visual animals. In humans, the most-used sense is vision; we use it to process data."
I remember reading something about Dolphins that they couldn't distinguish images on a TV, and that was part of the problems that came with working with them.
George II -- Spreading Freedom and American values, one bomb at a time.
Ok, people, this is quite obviously a troll. It's written as if the author had the Troll-HOWTO sitting on his desk while he did it.
First, notice the subject material - the morality of killing animals. Clearly intended to stir up unendable controversy by posing a question that has no agreeable answer. Second, the emotional pleas: "If you cut tuna, do they not bleed?" (As a poster above noted, no they don't, they don't have blood).
And third, and most telling, the way it starts off normal and well-reasoned, then drifts into absolute lunacy at the end (because moderators only read the first couple paragraphs). At the beginning, it's a perfectly reasonable discussion of intelligence and the relative worth of species, at the end, he's trying to suggest using dolphins for undersea exploration. Hello! Wake up, moderators. This is utterly impossible because A) communication will never be at the point where dolphins can give scientific reports and B) dolphins can't handle the pressure 10,000 feet under the surface any more than we can.
With moderating like this, it's no wonder slashdot is becoming a joke.
If it ain't broke, you need more software.
The "homo" in "homosexual" is not Latin homo "man" as in Homo sapiens, it's Greek homo "same" as in "homogeneous," so "homosexual" would be an appropriate term. If the "homo" in "homosexual" meant "man," then wouldn't straight women be homosexual?
Pedantics aside, good point.
If it ain't broke, you need more software.
The trainer made a hand motion and the whale came partially out of the water onto a dock so we could pet it. As the whale did so the trainer blew a whistle and said that was used as a reward. A couple of times the whale slid off the dock and was motioned back up by the trainer, but this time the whale gave a whistle that sounded identical to the trainer's (at least to my sonically-naive ears). When asked, the trainer said that the whale knew she was being good and was rewarding herself.
While it doesn't have anything to do with language, it does seem to me that it is a behavior that implies a lot more self-awareness than most of the things animals are taught to do.
I don't see what's so amazing about this, they've been researching dolphin communication for decades. I remember one time they were using DSP gadgetry to convert human syllables into dolphin-like squeals, and had managed to develop a reliable communication path with the dolphins by studying the dolphins' reactions to each syllable. This practice dates back from the mid 70's, back when that DSP processor took up a whole room. I'm afraid I don't have refences to back it up, but all I can say is that I saw this as a little kid on PBS or something.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
As much as I love your optimism, we humans cannot even get along with ourselves. I think that most people do understand that we do not own the world. But that does not keep people from trying to take it from others, and all the evil that comes from doing that.
I would bet that most adjectives are sight based (red, dark, round, fuzzy, far, near, etc.). Translating these concepts to a non-sight oriented creature may be difficult.
So, a blind researcher would not have a significant advantage, except that they might be able to determine, perhaps, which parts of langauge biased. e.g., a blind person would say that they have no idea what the words 'bright' and 'red' really mean. But such things are pretty obvious to a sighted person as well (a sighted person would not be blinded to the bias in the language, pun intended).
A dolphin may indeed be able to tell you that something sounds round, but thats a very different thing than looking round.
That is EXACTLY what I do...
/. I guess I just got lucky..
Well, not really. I had actually just finished up installing some new drivers for my video card (in Windows, for the mad Counterstrike action), and after rebooting I pulled up some
47.5% Slashdot Pure(52.5% Corrupt)
I predict the first message will read something like this...
"So long, and thanks for all the fish."
Sorry, I just couldn't resist it.
47.5% Slashdot Pure(52.5% Corrupt)
"A few atoms won't even light a match" - Dr Jones, 1933
Yes, I have found that I have donated far more than I ever have in the past. This year, so far, I have donated $300.00, and plan to get to $1,200 by the end of the year. I have never donated in the past.
I blame PayPal. {;D}=
Luckily, the site you linked to didn't support PayPal; I'd be out another $5.00 if they did..!
What I have discovered, is that when you donate to projects, you give them much more than the little money you give them. That little bit of money allows them to do a whole lot more work.
Let's suppose someone has put 100 hours of work of their personal time into a project, but they're stuck now. They need $250.00 for some task. I don't know, web hosting for a year, or something like that. They've reached a wall, in terms of how much further they can go. When you pay that $250.00, not only are you paying for just removing that wall, but you are also getting a boatload of free work out of them! They may put in another 100 hours of work and enthusiasm, from your $250. If there were no obstacles, you just paid someone 2.50 an hour for a cause that you really believe in, and everyone's happy with it. I strongly believe that online donations are going to make the world a significantly better place.
A common language has the potential to finally force mankind to stop treating the earth as its own, and realize that we share it with many other creatures - some perhaps as advanced as we are.
Perhaps dolphins are intelligent, but it is very unlikely that they are as advanced as we are. Whether is it good or bad, there are definite signs of an advanced intelligence. For example, humans are no longer constrained to certain environments; we can now take our environments with us. Dolphins still seem to exist within their environment.
big deal, the navy already figured this one out. but what the article failed to mention is that the noises actually kill the dolphins. maybe theyd rather us not talk to them hehe the onion covers this one pretty well: Dolphin's Evolve Opposable Thumbs 'Oh Shit,' Says Humanity
NEWS: cloning, genome, privacy, surveillance, and more!
NEWS: cloning, genome, privacy, surveillance, and more!
Yeah, like "Why does my dog sniff my crotch?"
jeb.
There's a good exposition of this topic here.
It makes no sense to me that we might be able to understand something that dolphins know.
I think the answer to this depends on how strictly you mean "understand" or "know". For example, dolphins may well have very different visual systems than humans do. So in a strict sense, we will never understand or know what it is that dolphins really "see". On the other hand, we do possess a wide range of technologies that allow us to simulate or create analogies to many things -- so even though we might not be able to experience sight in the same way that dolphins do, we could perhaps understand or relate to it. Of course, there are some physiological differences that will be really difficult to understand -- what does it feel like to have fins instead of legs? -- but those kind of things are impossible to understand even among humans. Try explaining sight to someone born blind, or how menstruation feels to a man. There's a hardware difference that can't be bridged...
"Biped! Good cranial development. Evidently considerable human ancestry."
By contrast, I had an experience the other day that reminded me just how amazing human language capabilities are. I was visiting my brother-in-law's place and playing with his 2.5-year-old son. At some point we were kind of tickling each other, and he pouted and said "I don't like anymore, so I going sit my chair" and did just that. I don't have kids, but I was kind of shocked that a 2.5-year-old could put together such a coherent and nuanced thought (even if the grammar wasn't perfect, his intentions were entirely clear). And I can tell you that this utterance is more complicated by an order of magnitude than anything any researcher has ever managed to coax from any non-human primate (again, unless there have been big developments since I last examined this research).
By the way, I'm not arguing that chimps are not very, very smart. They can learn to distinguish themselves in mirrors (I think they are the only species ever to have been shown to be able to do so); they can plan ahead; they can practice deception (which for some reason the academic papers always refer to as "prevarication"). They have complex social structures, some tool use, and some evidence of "culture" (i.e., learned traditions that differ from tribe to tribe and are passed from generation to generation). But they don't appear to have, or be capable of learning, language in anything like we as humans understand it.
It may be that chimps and other non-human apes simply lack the cortical structures required for this -- humans do contain very highly specialized and localized language structures in the brain. The specialization of this circuitry becomes clear when you look at cases of people who have small lesions or other damage affecting a particular point in their language centers: They may lose the ability to speak, but not to understand; they may lose the ability to process nouns, but not verbs; they may lose the ability to process abstract nouns but retain the ability to process concrete nouns. If chimps don't have brain structures that can perform these language functions, it's extremely unlikely we'll ever be able to simply "teach" them language as we understand it. And it's unlikely that evolution would have given them such incredibly specialized brain structures if they weren't using them, which they clearly aren't.
Personally, if I wanted to "uplift" a species, I'd focus less on language and more on tool use. I wonder if you could teach chimps to flake rocks to make simple stone-age knives, and then take those knives and bind them to a shaft to make axes... such things would seem to be within the mechanical and cognitive ability of chimps, and if they could learn those skills and pass them to their children, who knows where that would lead... maybe researchers who did that with chimps in the wild would come back 1,000 years later to discover that they were building simple huts and learning how to tame fire, that critical step on the way to the iron age. Then again, maybe I've just watched 2001 a few too many times.
"Biped! Good cranial development. Evidently considerable human ancestry."
...there's also documentation of dolphins engaging in sexual activity with same-sex partners. (I'd call it "homosexual" behavior, except that dolphins aren't Homo like we H. sapiens.) Anyway, that's a bit of trivia to throw at your homophobic friends next time they claim that same-sex activity is "unnatural".
"Biped! Good cranial development. Evidently considerable human ancestry."
As for straight women being homosexual by my botched definition, I suppose that would be true, but I figured that it was probably one of those words coined by men in an era when they didn't really consider women peers, and then it ended up being applied to them later.
"Biped! Good cranial development. Evidently considerable human ancestry."
Translation: Douglas Adams is a twit!
That said, language without tool use is like writing a Perl script without an interpreter: it does nothing. Until dolphins can create their own tools, either through us really uplifting them or a la the oft quoted Onion article, we can't really consider them intelligent.
God invented whiskey so the Irish would not rule the world.
All your FISH are belong to us.
Why?
If a being is extremely intelligent, one would think it would learn very quickly - i.e. have a very gentle learning curve.
That is, if by steep and gentle learning curves that a person with a steep learning curve is very difficult to teach and one with a gentle curve is very easy to teach.
My other sig is extremely clever...
Why send email? Why post things on slashdot? Why put a premium on intelligent animals?
Because: most human beings like to communicate with other sentient beings. It's satisfying. Even having a horse or dog is nice if you're out on the trail for weeks w/o human company. I just spent 5 mere days traveling w/o really speaking more than a few sentences to anybody, and I was soooo glad to get home to where I could talk to somebody.
Intelligent animals are held in high regard because the level of interaction and communication can be higher, and most humans value this. Not to mention, of course, the mystery of what something that really is different from us could tell us if we knew how to talk with them.
--
Libertarianism is rich wolves and poor sheep playing gambler's ruin for dinner.
In other words, there just isn't very much information that can be extracted (in an information-theory sense) from dolphin sonic signals, regardless of what those signals mean. It's as if we can see that they have (e.g.) a 6 word vocabulary, and never use more than 4 words in a sentence, and never speak in paragraphs. No matter what they're saying, that would limit them to communicating no more than 24 thoughts total -- period.
Hmmmm. I realize this is nitpicking -- since languages are almost never so effecient as to make use of a different meaning for every possible symbol/bit (though, in context, they're effecient enough to apply multiple meanings to the same symbol). But...
6 symbols and 4 slots would actually give you
6*6*6*6 = 1296 possibilities. Even puting a "no duplicate word" rule in would give you 360 different possibilities.
--
Libertarianism is rich wolves and poor sheep playing gambler's ruin for dinner.
Maybe now we can get a better insight into the animal thought process and their communication levels. This may finally give us the answers to many puzzling questions.
There's always sufficient, but not always at the right place nor for the right folks.
Perhaps they could use blind people.
There's always sufficient, but not always at the right place nor for the right folks.
Except for one item: "...if [intelligence] were more valuable, then it would be selected for, and more species would have it."
Actually, a few days ago I argued a similar position, but I'm not so sure I was right. Let me try the opposite stance here and see what happens.
Every species exploits at least one ecological "niche". For instance, trees use sunlight. But the existence of trees creates a new niche--tree bark. So there evolved insects to eat the tree bark. This creates a new niche: tree-bark eating insects. So we get woodpeckers. Then there are bird droppings on the ground so we get dung-beetles. Etc.
Once there is a significant amount of relatively intelligent life (lions, elephants, etc) there is a new niche based on out-thinking. We are able to eat buffaloes, etc because we are able to outthink them. We've also outthought grass (aka grains) by planting it in large patches, removing competition (weeds) and then harvesting in big truck loads.
Now we get to the crux of my point: Is there any more room in our niche? At the beginning (several million years ago) there may have been more than one semi-intelligent mostly-ape. But since part of our nature seems to be warfare, they've been wiped out. Then our numbers exploded to the point where our niche is almost OVER-populated--there's no selection pressure for other animals to take advantage because there's little or no surplus "out-thinking" for them to take advantage OF. Thus, no other intelligent animals.
--
Non-meta-modded "Overrated" mods are killing Slashdot
Non-meta-modded "Overrated" mods are killing Slashdot
(Hey Ryan! Here's your proof!)
"For instance, elephants, dolphins, and apes all definately communicate in some manner, this stuff *is* hardwired...but it simply isn't the verbal "language" we are accustomed to. They're not teaching dolphins to speak English, they are just piggy backing on the dolphin's natural communication methods, to try to communicate with them."
You seem to have a very impoverished view of human language. Fish in water, no doubt.
Language is more than vocabulary. There are rules for creating words: Darwin. Darwin-ian. Darwin-ism. Even simpler: One wug, two wugs. There are rules for displaying meaning through grammar: "Dog bites man." vs "Man bites dog." Recursiveness: Darwin-ian-ism-s. "Do you think that the person who dumped the bucket could be the brother of Mary who chipped his tooth?"
Delve deeper into English (or look superficially at some other languages) and you'll find even more interesting items.
Compare that to an ape screech indicating (maybe) "Danger!"
--
Non-meta-modded "Overrated" mods are killing Slashdot
Non-meta-modded "Overrated" mods are killing Slashdot
(Hey Ryan! Here's your proof!)
"That apes and dolphins are capable of using language is not in question. "
Yes, it is. I know of no scientific study that shows that apes OR dolphins "understand" more than simple words ("ball" "round" "go" etc). Can you give pointers to scientists (not animal trainers like Koko's Penny Marshall) who have published controlled studies (not anecdotal, "I swear the cat knows what I'm saying" evidence) in peer-reviewed journals (not Time magazine)?
--
Non-meta-modded "Overrated" mods are killing Slashdot
Non-meta-modded "Overrated" mods are killing Slashdot
(Hey Ryan! Here's your proof!)
I'm no Luddite, I'd love to be able to talk to dolphins and/or apes...but you can't teach language to apes and dolphins. Language isn't just a matter of brute processing power of the brain. It requires innate wiring created to handle it. Consider cases of otherwise intelligent people who because of stroke, disease, injury, genetic impairment, etc are unable to process language. Conversely, think of disorders where the subject is able to converse on quite a sophisticated level but has an IQ of around 50.
If apes or dolphins had anything approaching a human-level ability at language, we'd observe them spontaneously using it. Check out "The Language Instinct" by Steven Pinker for more info on this topic.
--
Non-meta-modded "Overrated" mods are killing Slashdot
Non-meta-modded "Overrated" mods are killing Slashdot
(Hey Ryan! Here's your proof!)
The same technique was used to attempt to communicate with John Carmack of id Software
Johns remarks:
Vertex programs aren't invariant with the fixed function geometry paths. That means that you can't mix vertex program passes with normal passes in a multipass algorithm. This is annoying, and shouldn't have happened.
In light of these statements the efforts were seen as a failure, we may never know if anyone will ever understand Carmack.
Scientists are attempting to begin conversation with patent lawyers through a series of "duh" "dur" "hyuck" and "golly"'s. While they admit that there is no hope for intelligent reponses, their goal is to debunk the myth that patent lawyers are completely unintelligent. Good luck with that one, O Brave Scientists.
Information is the catalyst for revolution
dear god, don't these people read the onion?!
reech bee-yond ur clip-0n
What is wrong with use-value as a measurement of worth? Why should we support the perspective that every animal has value?
Surely, every species plays a role in the ecosystem. That's not to say that that role should outweigh the potential human benefit that could come from taking an action that might threaten a member of a species.
For example, if we were to let up a little bit on the regulations that retard the growth of power plants in california we would not be seeing the potential explosion in consumer costs and direct heating costs. Who is to say that the benefit of cleaner air is not worth less to the actual citizenry than the benefit of cheaper power?
Let them decide, not your ideology.
Goat sex free since 2001
Well, first of all, killing and inducing suffering are two very different things. Let's think of the ramifications of each:
Killing:
Causing suffering:
Which of these outcomes is tolerable under various circumstances depends very much on the being in question.
If someone/something has a brain deficiency or natural lack of capacity which makes it impossible for them to experience pain, then it's not particularly horrible to poke them with sharp needles (as long as they're clean, I guess).
Most of the time, however, I think it's the other way around. Hence the tradition of humanely terminating animals that are so wounded they're in extreme pain and will never walk again.
Putting it all together, based on the ramifications itemized above, I think that as intelligence rises, killing the being becomes increasingly "more worse" than causing it to suffer. Both are bad, of course, bu they're not the same.
"Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it." -- GBS
I'd hope that once we get things worked out with the dolphins, they display more sophisticated reasoning ability than that. Why exactly aren't dolphins more important than other animals? Because they are more intelligent, and that's nothing special. Why isn't it special? Because it just isn't. I see.
High intelligence is far rarer than almost any other animal characteristic. It represents the fruits of more evolution, and in studying it we see the reflections of more complex processes and detailed natural history than in simpler traits.
From reading your post, I can't tell whether you're the sort who would cry for days upon rubbing your hands and inadvertently killing some bacteria, or the type who would gleefully kill monkeys for fun. Both possibilities flow from your argument. In either case, I'm not impressed.
"Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it." -- GBS
But how do you think this scientific venture will change the way people approach this?
Intelligence isn't even an evolutionarily important characteristic: just look at how few species possess it -- if it were more valuable, then it would be selected for, and more species would have it. Which species do have it? Squids, spiders, and other predators. Intelligence has evolved at each stage in animal evolution (cephalopods, arachnids, mammalia, etc.) but only as a means of furthering predation. Where's the morality in that?
If any animal has worth, then they all have worth. If we're squeamish about killing any one kind of animal (a "higher-order" "intelligent" animal), then we should be squeamish about killing all animals, since intelligence is just another characteristic and not a particularly important one at that. This absurdity is well illustrated by the author's final point: It's been said before, but it needs repeating: what about the tuna? Why worry about killing all those dolphins when we're so intent on killing the damn tuna? If you cut tuna, do they not bleed?
I can only think of one really good reason why we should be studying dolphin communication and that's so we can learn from their experience with other sea creatures. We've been to the moon and back, but there are parts of our own ocean that we've never explored, depths we've never plumbed. If we could communicate with dolphins and ask them what they've seen of our aquatic universe, then maybe we'd know a lot more about what goes on beneath the surfaces of our placid lagoons. Dolphins provide a perfect solution to the dangers and expenses of manned and unmanned submarine exploration -- let's not reinvent the wheel by reinventing the dolphin.
Read the rest of this comment...
Let say for example that they are able to communicate with us, Do I want to know ( or am I scared to listen ) to the damage we have done to them.
Dolphins speaking to us would be an awakening. I'm just a bit frightend by the outside chance that there first thing they would say to us is " save us please "
The other point on this is how the church would take a stance after the dolphins say HI
I am not an enviromentalist
so don't flame me
spambait e-mail
my web site artistcorner.tv hip-hop news
please help me make it better
if you see me, smile and say hello.
They should first create an entire language, not just four words. Then build a universal translator into a Diamond Rio and embed it in the mouth of a mama dolphin or maybe they should use a robot for this (they could get Universal Studios to build it). Then they just kidnap a couple of baby dolphins and have the mama/robot teach them the made up language instead of their native language.
My other sig is a Haiku
Dolphins are the second most intelligent being on Earth. (First being the pan-dimentional mice, of course)
-Trucidation
(Yet another first message recieved from the dolphins): Imagine a beowulf cluster of us.
--
Dolphinsex.org. (Don't worry.. there are no dodgy pictures, just text)
"moo" - cow 3, 1906
You know, if they could get the dolphins to respond to say, multi-tone whistling at a very high rate, maybe they could hit something like 300-1200 baud ... think about it. :-)
I think if Dolphins could read this /. they would say something along the lines of "Oh God, not another fish comment!"
:)
Fuzzy Knights: New RPG Strips Tuesday and Friday!:
http://www.fuzzyknights.com
the navy and dolphins issue is also very interesting, a good summary can be found here.
When will we see an Ocean War.. the intelligent dolphins in groups of 1000's hitting all the US navy's submarines and ships, because the first message of a human to a dolphin will be "We own the oceans" we will finally stop to hear from IRAQ in the news.
Someday, my friends, you will by H4X3D by a dolphin.
I, frankly, don't see the point of constructing a new language for use only in dolphin-human interactions. Human languages are all very similar (there are linguistic elements actually built into us genetically), and I can't imagine it being possible for us to create a new language without relying too much on our own linguistics. We try to teach dolphins how to say "fish," well I wouldn't doubt that dolphin-speak may lack nouns. Can anything be learned from teaching dolphins a new language, besides the fact that dolphins can learn a new language? It's the equivilent to meeting a primitive human tribe somewhere and getting them all to learn esperanto to communicate with us. If we want to learn about dolphins, we have to learn what dolphins are saying... not what we are teaching them to say. But I bet that park in Hawaii is getting a lot of new visitors, and subsequently revenue ;)
All they have so far are dolphins mimicking sounds- no evidence that the dolphins can understand it at all. Like parrots.
I guess you haven't seen this article about parrots. Check it out! It's about a parrot that can understand English and answer simple questions!
[me@localhost]$ prolog
| ?- god.
! Existence error in god/0
main(c,r){for(r=32;r;) printf(++c>31?c=!r--,"\n":c<r?" ":~c&r?" `":" #");}
For years, both scientists and fiction writers have assumed that contact with an intelligent species would come from the stars. Perhaps they've been wrong all along.
Test given to dolphins indicate a high degree of both spatial and linguistic intelligence - a combination that was once thought to be the exclusive domain of human beings. Further, dolphins demonstrate highly structured social orders, and variations in culture between dolphins from different geographical regions.
A common language has the potential to finally force mankind to stop treating the earth as its own, and realize that we share it with many other creatures - some perhaps as advanced as we are.
- qpt
--
Domine Deus, creator coeli et terrae respice humilitatem nostram.
this reminds me of that simpsons episode when all the dolphins came walking out of the ocean and took over springfield. originally they had lived on land and we humans ran them into the sea and now they were back for revenge. the townspeople tried fighting back but eventually Homer and the family ( along with the town ) were run into the sea to live forever. sure its funny on tv....but now its starting to happen...and that my friends - is serious. we must stop this dolphin uprising!
How is this different to training a cat to respond to a "dinner call" by banging a teaspoon on a tin. It's pretty simple really... There is a thing called "homeostasis". Good things get rewarded.. thou must strive after these. Bad things you will get punished for... avoid these at all costs. I don't see what ground-breaking revolution has been discovered here.....
Dolphins, on the other hand, will bleed if cut. Dolphins evolved from land-based mammals, which needed blood to emulate the salt water of the fish from which they evolved.
In other words, fish are barely plants in terms of their evolutionary development, and if you need some deeper, "more essential" quality to babble over in your pot-soaked hippie philosophical non-discussions then try thinking about how likely some creature with so little sensory perception available to it and so little processing power to back it up could possibly have a consciousness connected to it.
If you want to whine about how killing dolphins might be no worse than killing tuna then you might argue that cutting the grass when you mow your lawn is a horrible atrocity. And, you could continue that cutting grass is like killing people. Grass doesn't bleed when you cut it, either.