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Evidence of Chimp Developing "Spoken" Language
testcase writes "The New Scientist has an article describing a bonobo who appears to have developed a simple vocabulary. Researchers who have analyzed recordings of the chimp have been able to identify four sounds he makes in different contexts indicating 'banana, grapes, juice and yes.'"
This is a real problem, which affects other areas of research as well, e.g. AI.There is a pseudo-religious, notably unscientific meme that basically says,...
While I won't deny that is part of it, that is not the whole story, especially when it comes to AI. There is also "Well, hmmm, we did that and it wasn't half as good as we thought it would be. That's not truly thought."
Same for animals; the fact is these "researchers" won't ever win because we are what we are, and we are the only ones we are. No matter how many parlor tricks a chimp or ape may learn, they still aren't as good as humans, or they would effectively be humans. Same for dolphins and everything else.
The primate researchers need to be realistic and realize they are never going to convince anybody that the other primates are just as smart as us, because they aren't. If they were there would be little or no debate. I assume that's the "bar" the person in the article was bitching about, because it's the only one I can think of and the only one they might get frustrated over.
(It's worth pointing out that at least part of the reason dolphins will never outsmart us anytime soon without our help is their bodies. Bodies are intricately tied to intelligence; without the ability to manipulate their environment easily in significant ways, plus being in a technilogically hostile environment, an ocean-born dolphin could have twice our brainpower in some theoretical sense and still not stand a chance in any practical intelligence test. Change their bodies without changing their brains significantly, to the extent that makes sense biologically (it's not like there are "brain" genes per se), and the matters may change a bit. Brains aren't enough. The other primates face disadvantages in this arena too, though they are not as pronounced. There's a bit of a catch-22; the brainpower (mostly through a larger head, apparently) to use the enhanced body need to develop roughly at the same time. Neither are necessarily useful on their own; an input-starved brain will turn its neurons to other tasks, where, say, an opposable thumb without a brain to effectively use it is also useless. This is somewhat simplified.)