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A whale who tried to mimic human speech (2014)

smithsonianmag.com

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Re: A whale who tried to mimic human speech (2014)

#131

Post by rotexo »

JoeDaDude wrote: post #113

I am reminded of the case of Alex the Parrot [1]. We all know parrots can mimic human speech very well, but the case made for Alex is that he was using actual language to convey meaning and not just parroting (pun intended) what he heard. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alex_(parrot) In my wild imagination, I imagine parrots being taught to communicate with humans, being let loose into the jungle, and the passing o…

On a tangent: if humanity ever found themselves in a children of men-style situation, I think an excellent use of the final generation’s resources and effort would be building a system of fully automated luxury communism for the corvids and parrots of the world. Automated seed farms, drones that carry birds with broken wings to safety and treat their wounds, self-cleaning nesting boxes, etc.

Re: A whale who tried to mimic human speech (2014)

#132

Post by Ancalagon »

jobigoud wrote: post #121
JoeDaDude wrote: post #113

I am reminded of the case of Alex the Parrot [1]. We all know parrots can mimic human speech very well, but the case made for Alex is that he was using actual language to convey meaning and not just parroting (pun intended) what he heard. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alex_(parrot) In my wild imagination, I imagine parrots being taught to communicate with humans, being let loose into the jungle, and the passing o…

There is also the case of these dogs that have grown up using sound boards to communicate with their humans (sound on): https://www.instagram.com/p/CMuXy3mBcVw/

Wow that is fascinating, thank you for sharing

Re: A whale who tried to mimic human speech (2014)

#133

Post by monocasa »

Gauge_Irrahphe wrote: post #102
monocasa wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's strong implications that we as humans have dedicated wetware hardware for streaming out speech from the data structures in our mind. That hardware seems to be bandwidth constrained to about 39 bits per second. https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/09/human-speech-may-hav... It makes sense that other animals may be able to cargo cult some of the underlying mechanical representations of speech, but would lack th…

I see no reason for that, it seems more like a pragmatic choice of reliability over capacity. (in other words to make speech comprehensible in noise)

There are other studies that show we can understand speech at a much higher rate. The critical bandwidth constraint seems to be on stream out, not stream in.

Re: A whale who tried to mimic human speech (2014)

#134

Post by monocasa »

brigandish wrote: post #88
monocasa wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's strong implications that we as humans have dedicated wetware hardware for streaming out speech from the data structures in our mind. That hardware seems to be bandwidth constrained to about 39 bits per second. https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/09/human-speech-may-hav... It makes sense that other animals may be able to cargo cult some of the underlying mechanical representations of speech, but would lack th…

Isn't it the absence of hands that has held them back? (from dominance) Having hands plus less of or less good neural hardware means less dominance, as we see with our simian cousins, yet having the greatest brain on the planet wouldn't provide dominance without the ability to fabricate things.

Bears and raccoons have very dexterous hands.

Re: A whale who tried to mimic human speech (2014)

#135

Post by Gauge_Irrahphe »

monocasa wrote: post #133
Gauge_Irrahphe wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see no reason for that, it seems more like a pragmatic choice of reliability over capacity. (in other words to make speech comprehensible in noise)

There are other studies that show we can understand speech at a much higher rate. The critical bandwidth constraint seems to be on stream out, not stream in.

In good listening conditions though. Not in listening conditions in which speech needs to be regularly understood. Rap God is nearly 10 syllables per second at some point and a few more recent songs go even a big higher, so that doesn't seem to be the limit either, only that people don't normally need to learn to talk faster than they do.

Re: A whale who tried to mimic human speech (2014)

#137

Post by monocasa »

Gauge_Irrahphe wrote: post #135
monocasa wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are other studies that show we can understand speech at a much higher rate. The critical bandwidth constraint seems to be on stream out, not stream in.

In good listening conditions though. Not in listening conditions in which speech needs to be regularly understood. Rap God is nearly 10 syllables per second at some point and a few more recent songs go even a big higher, so that doesn't seem to be the limit either, only that people don't normally need to learn to talk faster than they do.

I mean, Rap God is an example of the upper limit of stream out that took a lot of practice on his part and is trying to prove that he's one of top people in the world at that art, and I can understand it just fine.

It also doesn't seem to be achievable with on the fly statements, only memorized oration. Notice how my citation interestingly shows that the 39 bits per second isn't a count of syllables, but of semantic information. Some languages have faster, simpler syllables, but the overall information bandwidth flow ends up being the same. You probably can bypass that 39 bit with practice and memorization, essentially applying higher level tags to large bodies of what you're saying via practicing repeated phrases.

That seems to prove where the bandwidth constraint is, on the stream out side.

Re: A whale who tried to mimic human speech (2014)

#138

Post by brigandish »

monocasa wrote: post #134
brigandish wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't it the absence of hands that has held them back? (from dominance) Having hands plus less of or less good neural hardware means less dominance, as we see with our simian cousins, yet having the greatest brain on the planet wouldn't provide dominance without the ability to fabricate things.

Bears and raccoons have very dexterous hands.

Interesting, but they also don’t have the brain of a dolphin. We’re the ones who happened to get both.

Re: A whale who tried to mimic human speech (2014)

#139

Post by eek04_ »

KronisLV wrote: post #98
colechristensen wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you really want to breed half-sentient predators that survive just fine in the wild and human settled areas? Your cute little buddy living a hard life after a few feral generations after being bred for intelligence... I don't know most people live lives almost completely sheltered from wildlife, but let me tell you, wild dogs can be scary.

Yes, definitely. Because most of the dogs that would actually be looked after would be great for a variety of other tasks - everything from being service dogs, dogs that check for illegal substances by smell, police dogs, dogs who can herd animals and a variety of other tasks. Even new tasks that people still haven't been able to offload to canines. If the animals can provide more value to humanity and will be allowe…

I've lived in Norway (>30 years), Ireland (>10 years) and in California (3.5 years). There's extreme differences in culture around dog ownership in different areas. In the time I lived in Norway, nobody I knew had abandoned a dog. Getting a dog is a commitment for the lifetime of the dog; the only cases I've heard of relocation of dogs from anybody I knew has been for medical reasons (e.g. discovering somebody in the family has an allergy). In Ireland, it is similar, though people don't seem to take quite the same commitment (based on known several people that got dogs from shelters). In my relatively small social circle in California there were two families that got and handed off dogs in the 3.5 years I was there. It was just not seen as a big deal.
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