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.
-- MaxwellBuchanan, Apr 10 2018

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
-- hippo, Apr 10 2018


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.
-- 8th of 7, Apr 10 2018


Then there would be no response whatsoever, and tester would report that they were interacting with a Microshit software package ...
-- 8th of 7, Apr 10 2018


You could ask the cat.
-- MaxwellBuchanan, Apr 10 2018


Only if you open the box ...
-- 8th of 7, Apr 10 2018


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?
-- Vernon, Apr 10 2018


Well, clearly, you ask for references from other dolphins.
-- RayfordSteele, Apr 10 2018


//Well, clearly, you ask for references from other dolphins// Maybe we should check with the calves first. More mentally plastic.

A language always needs another line of information transfer to set up the language.
-- wjt, Apr 13 2018



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