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For a long time, people have banged on about how smart
whales and dolphins are. "Oh they're so smart - if only
we
simple humans could learn to understand them", they
say.
Yeah, right.
Personally, I think whales and dolphins are pretty thick,
and that this is the barrier to communication.
But how
to
test this?
The answer is simple. First, we find the thickest person
we can find. I will leave it to [8th] to suggest that this
person could be drawn from the ranks of politicians. No
matter - what we need is a person so thick that they
barely
qualify as having human intelligence.
Next, we put them in a box. With them, in the box, we
have about a dozen buttons which, when pressed,
produce
a variety of whoops, whistles and clicks; the sounds are
relayed to a speaker outside the box, which is otherwise
soundproof. An observer, outside the box, has a similar
set
of buttons driving a speaker inside the box. Hence, the
only available means of communication is a series of
whoops, whistles and clicks.
The observer now tries to establish communication with
the thicko.
This will be very difficult for the thicko, but I would be
willing to wager that within a few days they will work
out a
way to say "I need food!"
In this way, we can satisfy ourselves that even a
minimally-
intelligent human can learn how to communicate with
another human using dolphin-speak. We will then have
no
choice but to accept that actual dolphins - who have
failed
for years to accomplish this - are just irredeemably
thick.
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This could also be framed as a Turing/Dolphin test, where a person has to determine whether the box contains a person or a dolphin |
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That's easy. The one with the dolphin emits squeaks; the one with the human emits thumps, bubbling noises and the sound of desperate struggling, followed by silence. |
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Then there would be no response whatsoever, and tester would report that they were interacting with a Microshit software package ... |
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Only if you open the box ... |
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This Idea is failing to take into account that much of the
sounds that dolphins make is ultrasonic and cannot be heard
by human ears. Do you suppose you could learn a foreign
language if you never heard every 3rd syllable? |
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Well, clearly, you ask for references from other
dolphins. |
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//Well, clearly, you ask for references from other dolphins//
Maybe we should check with the calves first. More mentally plastic. |
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A language always needs another line of information transfer to set up the language. |
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