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Scientists have 20-minute "conversation" with a humpback whale

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Re: Scientists have 20-minute "conversation" with a humpback whale

#21

I’m missing how this is groundbreaking or even a “conversation”. They played audio recordings of other whales to the whale and it replied the way whales reply to one another. The scientists didn’t know what they were saying, other than since the target whale appeared to stick around it probably wasn’t completely gibberish.

Whether this is groundbreaking or not depends on what the whale thought of it.

If it got the notion that humans are now actually trying to talk to it in its language, I'd call that a win.

Re: Scientists have 20-minute "conversation" with a humpback whale

#23
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Terrible article. The crucial info that's missing from the article is that they used AI to translate whale language to human, and then from human to whale again. So there was, in fact, a conversation, mediated by AI; a lot like using Google Translate to talk to a whale. Wait for a better article on it.

The paper is linked in the article: https://peerj.com/articles/16349/ (also has a PDF download)

Ah woops I posted this in the main thread before I saw this comment, thanks

Re: Scientists have 20-minute "conversation" with a humpback whale

#25
post #3

Does anyone have a link to the actual “conversation”? Is there a transcript?

The first part of the transcript was "Hoooow aaarrrreeee youuu dooooing? IIIIII'mmmm aaaaa sciiiientiiiist." :-p

Weeee'reeeeee looooookkiiiiingggg foooooor Syyyyyyydneeeeeeeeeey

Re: Scientists have 20-minute "conversation" with a humpback whale

#27
post #3

Does anyone have a link to the actual “conversation”? Is there a transcript?

Paper linked above https://peerj.com/articles/16349/ links to .wav sound files in the Data Availability section https://datadryad.org/stash/dataset/doi:10.5061/dryad.ht76hd... and 20 minute .mp4 files https://zenodo.org/records/8247515 (and R code in a PDF) and a "Timeline of Interaction" PDF. Seems that's the closest to a "transcript".

Re: Scientists have 20-minute "conversation" with a humpback whale

#28
"In the past the whales had been able to sing to each other across whole oceans, even from one ocean to another because sound travels such huge distances underwater. But now, again because of the way in which sound travels, there is no part of the ocean that is not constantly jangling with the hubbub of ships’ motors, through which it is now virtually impossible for the whales to hear each other’s songs or messages.

So fucking what, is pretty much the way that people tend to view this problem, and understandably so, thought Dirk. After all, who wants to hear a bunch of fat fish, oh all right, mammals, burping at each other?

But for a moment Dirk had a sense of infinite loss and sadness that somewhere amongst the frenzy of information noise that daily rattled the lives of men he thought he might have heard a few notes that denoted the movements of gods."

-- Douglas Adams

Re: Scientists have 20-minute "conversation" with a humpback whale

#29
I wonder where this whale Twain got its name? assuming the whale-namers named a bunch of whales (at once or over time) it's really appropriate that this particular whale participated in this particular landmark conversation.

One of the most popular, distinctly-American authors of all time, humorist Samuel Clemens, wrote under the pen-name "Mark Twain". He was very skilled in his use of language for communicating his musings, and the "sound" of Twain's phraseology is quite pleasing.

his pen-name comes from the phrase "mark twain" which was shouted by sailors on riverboats as part of their measuring the depth of the water, mark twain (2) referred to 2 fathoms (12 feet, 4 meters-ish but it was measured with a weighted stretch of rope, so is "twine" a stretch?)

Measuring the depth of water is alternatively called "sounding", and not even because of sonar, but because nautically speaking a sound is also the name for a small but deep enough to be navigable body of water. Whales dive into the depths of water, and that is also called the whale sounding.

But of course, this communication is using the audible sounds of whale vocalization. A connection between two parties communicating could be called "where the twain (2) shall meet". or if it's groundbreakingly successful moving forward, e'er the twain shall meet. (compare "ne'er the twain shall meet")

I can't imagine all these literary allusions were part of the naming decision, unless she/he was named as part of the experiment, so I think it's just a fun sequence of collisions.

Re: Scientists have 20-minute "conversation" with a humpback whale

#30

how is this different than me meowing at my cat and her meowing back? a “conversation” didn’t happen. Also, the scientific community is very resistant to the idea of categorizing any non-human communication as “language” (language is pretty much defined as being done only by humans) despite many cetaceans clearly showing signs of having this ability.

The tendency of the scientific community to cling to ignorant and clearly false notions about the intelligence of animals just baffles me. Its maliciously dissonant.
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