Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

A parrot has a question for humans

nautil.us

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 75 posts

Re: A parrot has a question for humans

#11

Post by ggambetta »

Razengan wrote: post #4
ggambetta wrote: post #2

> If humans ever detect the Arecibo message being sent back to Earth, they will know someone is trying to get their attention. Pretty much the plot of Contact (or at least its inciting incident). Both the book (by Carl Sagan) and the movie (with Jodie Foster and Matthew McConaughey) are really good.

We often miss all the ways animals right here on Earth try to get our or each other's attention. A truly alien species might communicate in ways we cannot even detect, or think of detecting, like say magnetic fields or some other medium that almost nothing on Earth uses. Furthermore, even if they used the same "channels" and frequencies as us, their minds may just be too different. Even fundamental concepts like time…

Dolphins seem particularly promising!

Re: A parrot has a question for humans

#12

Post by blarg1 »

jcims wrote: post #7
jhbadger wrote: post #6

Parrots get the attention because they are the classic imitators of human voices, but among birds, corvids (crows and their relatives) are the ones that have been shown to have mammalian-level intelligence.

They aren’t bad speakers either. https://youtu.be/AfsnHVaScjg

Also this one

https://youtu.be/BbRS9K4rZ8Y

Re: A parrot has a question for humans

#14

Post by dTal »

jhbadger wrote: post #6

Parrots get the attention because they are the classic imitators of human voices, but among birds, corvids (crows and their relatives) are the ones that have been shown to have mammalian-level intelligence.

They are so smart that it seems rather unfair to term it "mammalian-level intelligence". Most mammals are not as smart as crows.

Re: A parrot has a question for humans

#15

Post by DonHopkins »

From Richard Stallman's Rider:

https://github.com/ddol/rre-rms/blob/master/rider.txt

>If you can find a host for me that has a friendly parrot, I will be very very glad. If you can find someone who has a friendly parrot I can visit with, that will be nice too.

>DON'T buy a parrot figuring that it will be a fun surprise for me. To acquire a parrot is a major decision: it is likely to outlive you. If you don't know how to treat the parrot, it could be emotionally scarred and spend many decades feeling frightened and unhappy. If you buy a captured wild parrot, you will promote a cruel and devastating practice, and the parrot will be emotionally scarred before you get it. Meeting that sad animal is not an agreeable surprise.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3159210

https://secure.mysociety.org/admin/lists/pipermail/developer...

Re: A parrot has a question for humans

#16

Post by jatsign »

kaliatech wrote: post #10
jatsign wrote: post #5

The author, Ted Chiang, recently released his book of short stories, Exhalation. This story is included in the book. It's good, but not as good as his first book, imo, "Story of Your Life and Others". Story of Your Life was the inspiration for the movie "Arrival". That book was amazing.

The first story though, in Exhalation, "The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate", is one of my favorites. It's also available standalone.

That is a really good story. I think I kind of downgraded "Exhalation" a bit because I'd read that story before so it wasn't new to me.

Re: A parrot has a question for humans

#17

Post by vermilingua »

close04 wrote: post #8
Razengan wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We often miss all the ways animals right here on Earth try to get our or each other's attention. A truly alien species might communicate in ways we cannot even detect, or think of detecting, like say magnetic fields or some other medium that almost nothing on Earth uses. Furthermore, even if they used the same "channels" and frequencies as us, their minds may just be too different. Even fundamental concepts like time…

I think we're hoping (even if it's a double edge sword) that the aliens are smart enough to communicate with us not the other way around. We have been unable to fully decipher the "language" of dogs beyond some body language. And they have lived with us for millennia. Obligatory xkcd: https://xkcd.com/638/

I doubt many dog owners would agree with you that we have not deciphered the language of dogs. We viscerally understand how they communicate, it’s simply hard to systematically describe it.

Re: A parrot has a question for humans

#18

Post by hindsightbias »

Razengan wrote: post #4
ggambetta wrote: post #2

> If humans ever detect the Arecibo message being sent back to Earth, they will know someone is trying to get their attention. Pretty much the plot of Contact (or at least its inciting incident). Both the book (by Carl Sagan) and the movie (with Jodie Foster and Matthew McConaughey) are really good.

We often miss all the ways animals right here on Earth try to get our or each other's attention. A truly alien species might communicate in ways we cannot even detect, or think of detecting, like say magnetic fields or some other medium that almost nothing on Earth uses. Furthermore, even if they used the same "channels" and frequencies as us, their minds may just be too different. Even fundamental concepts like time…

Derrick Jensen touches on this in A Language Older Than Words with his experiences running a farm.

Re: A parrot has a question for humans

#19

Post by tapland »

DonHopkins wrote: post #15

From Richard Stallman's Rider: https://github.com/ddol/rre-rms/blob/master/rider.txt >If you can find a host for me that has a friendly parrot, I will be very very glad. If you can find someone who has a friendly parrot I can visit with, that will be nice too. >DON'T buy a parrot figuring that it will be a fun surprise for me. To acquire a parrot is a major decision: it is likely to outlive you. If you don't know how…

I love birds. Volunteered at a wild bird rescue, wish I had 100 of them, love visiting any place with parrots when travelling.

But I would never buy a bird. Offering a better place for one who no longer has anyone to take care of it is great, but promoting breeding and sales of captive intelligent animals feels very wrong.

Re: A parrot has a question for humans

#20

Post by Scarblac »

PaulHoule wrote: post #3

If I had billions I would retreat to an island somewhere and try to bring back the dinosaurs by breeding super ostriches or something like that.

Ostriches are dinosaurs. You don't need to do any special breeding on them, if that's the kind you're after.

Obligatory XKCD: https://www.xkcd.com/1211/

Post reply on HN