Isn't there a single video of it?
A whale who tried to mimic human speech (2014)
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Re: A whale who tried to mimic human speech (2014)
#12It seems to me more and more like the biggest, only real difference between most animals and humans is their lack of sophisticated communication. Certainly they communicate; but they do not have access to our rich verbal symbols with which we can convey anything imaginable. Perhaps you could add the lack of a prehensile thumb and deft fingers to build tools with, but I think communication is even more fundamental for…
> Certainly they communicate; but they do not have access to our rich verbal symbols with which we can convey anything imaginable. I mean, this whale seems to be doing about the same thing I do with my cats. I don't really see how you can derive any directionality here about how 'rich' their communication is from that. It's likely cats are intrigued and also baffled by what we're 'saying' when we do this. That's not…
There's been some research on coyotes or similar animals, can't remember. They managed to figure out about 30 "words". Interestingly one of that tiny budget was for a human and another one for a human with a gun.
Re: A whale who tried to mimic human speech (2014)
#13Earlier quoted context omitted.
You may be interested in this Youtube channel, wherein a dog owner has been teaching the dog to use a gradually expanding set of talking buttons: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iXy7NTGHAyQ There's another channel where someone's been doing the same with some measure of success with a cat: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ooCEYMaNL8I
You seem to have accidentally pasted the same youtube link twice? I'm definitely curious about the cat one and haven't seen that before :)
The duplicated link is now fixed.
Re: A whale who tried to mimic human speech (2014)
#14Isn't there a single video of it?
There's an audio recording in the story.
Re: A whale who tried to mimic human speech (2014)
#15It seems to me more and more like the biggest, only real difference between most animals and humans is their lack of sophisticated communication. Certainly they communicate; but they do not have access to our rich verbal symbols with which we can convey anything imaginable. Perhaps you could add the lack of a prehensile thumb and deft fingers to build tools with, but I think communication is even more fundamental for…
This is precisely why I’ve transformed my eating habits. I realized that while I can’t prove these animals have a conscious experience like mine (or one I would value as I do the human conscience, I suppose), I also can’t prove that they don’t. We can all read and likely have many experiences indicating that animals, in many circumstances, actually behave much like humans do. And for all the arguments that animals do…
Occams razor tells me that other animals probably do have a concious experience just like ours.
Sure, they could have all the same internal organs as us (at least with mammals, and reptiles/birds to a slightly lesser extent), a similarly structured brain, be evolved from the same common ancestors and exhibit all the same outward signs of being conscious and self aware but somehow be totally different from humans.
But that would be much more complicated than the simple explanation that they are just like us, but less intelligent.
Re: A whale who tried to mimic human speech (2014)
#16It seems to me more and more like the biggest, only real difference between most animals and humans is their lack of sophisticated communication. Certainly they communicate; but they do not have access to our rich verbal symbols with which we can convey anything imaginable. Perhaps you could add the lack of a prehensile thumb and deft fingers to build tools with, but I think communication is even more fundamental for…
There are a lot of components needed for civilization. In the case of humans, agriculture was a big one, as it led to the feasibility of cities and specialization of labor. Absent specific adaptations to agriculture, tool making is essential for it. Advanced civilization is greatly helped by written communication (although human history shows we can get pretty far without it), which again depends on tool making. Without the ability to make tools there is only so far a species can get.
Human superiority also depended on non-intelligent traits. Without evolving the ability to sweat, we might never have had the opportunity to develop civilization.
Regarding brain size, larger animals need larger brains just control their bodily functions, so looking at brain size without controling for body size does not tell you much.
If you look at brain:body ratio, humans are pretty high up, but not a crazy outlier [0] (figure 7.13), and not the best [1].
A simple ratio probably not the best test, and seems to favor small animals. A more advanced measure exists [2], but suffers from a bit of a fine tuning problem.
There is also an implicit assumption that "intelligence" is a single dimensional value, which is simply not the case. For instance, beyond being a tool for communication, language seems to be a tool for thinking as well, but is clearly not a result of a general "intelligence" we have. Our overall intelligence is likely the result of a bunch of specialized systems within the brain
[0] https://lweb.cfa.harvard.edu/~ejchaisson/cosmic_evolution/do...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brain-to-body_mass_ratio#Compa...
Re: A whale who tried to mimic human speech (2014)
#17It seems to me more and more like the biggest, only real difference between most animals and humans is their lack of sophisticated communication. Certainly they communicate; but they do not have access to our rich verbal symbols with which we can convey anything imaginable. Perhaps you could add the lack of a prehensile thumb and deft fingers to build tools with, but I think communication is even more fundamental for…
> It seems to me more and more like the biggest, only real difference between most animals and humans is their lack of sophisticated communication. Certainly they communicate; but they do not have access to our rich verbal symbols with which we can convey anything imaginable.
How do you know all that? There is ample evidence that whales, and in particular orcas, have complex intelligence and communication. If you can't understand what a whale is talking about, I'm not sure how you can make these claims.
Re: A whale who tried to mimic human speech (2014)
#18Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is precisely why I’ve transformed my eating habits. I realized that while I can’t prove these animals have a conscious experience like mine (or one I would value as I do the human conscience, I suppose), I also can’t prove that they don’t. We can all read and likely have many experiences indicating that animals, in many circumstances, actually behave much like humans do. And for all the arguments that animals do…
Occams razor tells me that other animals probably do have a concious experience just like ours. Sure, they could have all the same internal organs as us (at least with mammals, and reptiles/birds to a slightly lesser extent), a similarly structured brain, be evolved from the same common ancestors and exhibit all the same outward signs of being conscious and self aware but somehow be totally different from humans. But…
> Occams razor tells me that other animals probably do have a concious experience just like ours.
For most mammals, everything is so similar...including responses to stimuli like light, sound, temperature, pain, pleasure, even predictive behavior (knowing when they have done something to provoke a human response) that the same principle leads me to believe it's likely they have a very similar experience.
Re: A whale who tried to mimic human speech (2014)
#19Worst mobile webpage of all time. Cant read anything because it constantly jumps around loading ads and pop ups. I would expect this from the daily news not something like the smithsonian.
Re: A whale who tried to mimic human speech (2014)
#20It seems to me more and more like the biggest, only real difference between most animals and humans is their lack of sophisticated communication. Certainly they communicate; but they do not have access to our rich verbal symbols with which we can convey anything imaginable. Perhaps you could add the lack of a prehensile thumb and deft fingers to build tools with, but I think communication is even more fundamental for…
Not sure why my morality has to change, doesn't matter if pig turn out to have conscious experience like mine, I will still eat it.
Ok, I’ll bite (no pun intended): if it were socially acceptable to eat people, would you?