What language even is, is a good question. I read it once demonstrated as this; some species of monkey has a specific call they do when they see a panther, and it results in all the monkeys who hear it to run up their trees. Now what does this call mean? It could mean "jaguar alert!", pointing to a very specific concept-- a certain animal is here and we all know they're dangerous.
It could also mean "I'm scared!", and maybe it's just monkey see monkey do. It could also mean something more abstract, like a blood curdling scream-- there's no one thing that it means, but as humans we instinctively know that people don't scream like that unless something legitimately awful is happening. So maybe the call communicates emotion rather than an intellectual concept-- it's a call of fear that makes other monkeys who hear it also scared.
Just breaking down what animal language even _is_, is a challenge. I'm not optimistic on hearing any oral histories of whales, or even that they record history. I mean humans only started recording history for its own sake like 2000 years ago with herodotus. Before then we have tablets to keep track of stock, letters, and murals which were often made to depict the strength of the reigning emperor and the foes he vanquished. So maybe if we talk to whales it'll be a little like if aliens came to ancient Egypt to talk to the pharaoh; we'll just get a dictator whale telling us about all the other whales he's killed and how he's the greatest.. haha probably not that, though.
After seeing that poor monkey spending his life learning sign language just to ask for more bananas and never asking a tough question, Im a bit pesimistic.
Nice water over here
Loads of food here
I'm down to F, anyone else?
Do we really have any evidence that suggests it'll be anything else?
No. You’re lonely!
The other side to this is that communication is mostly non-verbal. For example, chimpanzees, perhaps the most communicationally-advanced animals, besides us, do have a few different "verbal" signals they use. But there is also a richness of non-verbal communication (body language, facial expression, using their hands, etc.). And then these signals have to be also interpreted by other chimpanzees, thus training them to develop new mental models about these signals (and leading way to complex communication).
Whereas all whales really have are clicks, whistles, and "pulsed calls." Along with a tail with much less dexterity than a hand (but is still used in communicating amongst themselves). The richness of their communication is much less than the chimp, so so far it seems they can only use it for rudimentary purposes (mating, hunting/intelligent organization and navigation, and figuring out who is part of the "tribe"/pod).
But in that vein, they're still closer to a chimp than they are to us. Humans have evolved such complex mental models for the world and other humans within it, that all animals are basically on the same, much lower level in comparison.
On a less relevant topic, whales are social animals that stick together, make close bonds with family, and do have a certain "culture" that gets passed down, and is constantly morphing a la "whale songs." It almost pains me to think about what emotions a whale would feel (if it even does) about friends and family that have been hunted to death.
Somehow I pictured whales as the engineers in this sentence. It makes it even better.
Of course, in order to talk, you have to spend a lot of time listening first. And what they say cannot often be translated to human talk.
In order to make friends, you have to give first. Our society teaches us to stay away from nature and leave it be, so you have to break past that.
The rewards are breathtaking and totally worth the effort.
This is not a valid concept. What would the "equivalent of the LHC for communication between ordinary Americans and the Twitter API" look like? What uses would it have?
There's nothing out there that can receive arbitrary messages. Communication -- of any kind, with anything -- is limited to messages that the other party is capable of receiving.
I imagine a center for cross species communication research would coordinate scientists across a couple important fields also interested in the question and allocate their resources to the research which seems most promising to make progress. Just like any other institute.
I imagine the fields would be biology zoology linguistics computation and probably since experts for the specific target species.
Because I want you to tell me what you think communication between a human and the Twitter API would look like. I have taken the position that you've produced a bunch of words without bothering to think about what those words are supposed to mean, with the result that in fact they have no meaning and you're attempting to refer to a concept that cannot actually exist.
A general theory of cross-species communication is significantly more of an ill-defined problem than a specific theory of human-Twitter API communication, but it must include the human-Twitter API case, so it's a useful example to think about.
> I imagine a center for cross species communication research would coordinate scientists across a couple important fields also interested in the question and allocate their resources to the research which seems most promising to make progress. Just like any other institute.
Ah, just like any other institute.
Certainly you can have people dress up as scientists and act like they're scientists -- just like any other institute! -- but this is only a good idea if you think they can accomplish something by doing it. What you're describing is a pure cargo cult. Their only goal is to appear to be similar to other, more useful people.
We already have many experts in cross-species communication. We call them animal trainers.
Just like we make much more powerful CPU chips in the same volume of silicon as before.
And it could be that it just isn't necessary for whales to optimize brain density, like it is for humans and crows.
http://mitp.nautil.us/feature/227/the-paradox-of-the-elephan...
We started as basic primates, started cooking our food, getting more nutrition, allowing our guts to shrink, allowing us to spend more energy on our brains, growing more and more neurons in the important bits, at which point things spiraled away using our new language and technology to make better technology.
(Not a real biologist)
What makes you think they'd have oral histories?
Whales have the capacity to communicate. Stories are more effective than unadorned facts at being remembered (for humans anyways). Remembering important facts is a huge advantage in almost any context. The biggest jump imo is the second one, but I find it unlikely that whales would have a radically different memory storage and retrieval model than humans
Humans are very good at two things, seeing patterns and projecting their own feelings/experiences on other living creatures (or inanimate objects even). We're the exception, not the norm.
You can't "guess" or rely on intuition for these topics, that's how we got religions, the geocentric system, &c.
Its also hilarious to me that you call out my guess and then make your own unsubstantiated claims, which I'm sure feel "intuitive" to you.
Understood normally, the raw input also includes the software installed in the whale's brain. This limits the potential capability of whales.
If you were to overwrite that with software of your own design, you'd have a robot in the body of a whale, but not an actual whale.
As has been discussed in a couple of articles linked on HN recently, it might not even be useful to think about brain function as computation.
Sure, and man is the only animal with no instincts, ensouled cells are metaphysically different from soulless cells, and fossils were placed in the ground as a test of your faith.
Everything was idyllic in the before times. Then the human ships arrived and ruined everything. Some of them killed us. Others ignored us but polluted the ocean with noise so we couldn't hear each other's whale songs anymore.
1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sperm_whale#Relationship_with_...
Perhaps they're hungry. Perhaps they're pissed. No one knows.
Historically, orca attacks on humans - outside of captivity - have been very rare.
Tangent time. If you do a cursory search of how smart whales are, you'll get nonsense about how humans are much smarter because the size of the brain isn't relevant, its the ratio of the brain size to the body size. But somehow that argument doesn't apply to squirrels. Or to a 7 foot human vs. a 4.5 foot human. Whales probably aren't as smart as humans, but its due to the environmental pressures selecting for intelligence, not raw capability. Whales have the capability to far outstrip humans in intelligence (if you accept that neuron count and neuron connections are the raw inputs). Lets get some whale engineers working on the hard problems please.