4 ms·

I'm far from convinced. On the one hand, their shape and their environment explains why they never copied the concept of technology from us. On the other, it do

I'm far from convinced. On the one hand, their shape and their environment explains why they never copied the concept of technology from us. On the other, it does nothing to prevent them having art, literature, math, or creating a pidgin and talking to us. And on the third hand, we anatomically modern humans spent our first 150,000 years doing essentially sod all, so we can hardly complain. I would want evidence of bidirectional conversation before calling them "people". Otherwise, I think they're "almost-people". Maybe near-future science can uplift them the rest of the way.

jacquesm 17y ago
By your standards plenty of disabled people would not qualify as people.
- JulianMorrison 17y ago
  Absolutely the opposite - disabled people are a perfect illustration of why humans are definitely "people". We work around our difficulties. Can't hear? Use sign language. Can't speak? Write it down. Human minds in dolphin bodies would quickly work out similar hacks. The fact that dolphins don't is what makes it hard to qualify them as people.
  - jacquesm 17y ago
    > I would want evidence of bidirectional conversation before calling them "people". There are plenty of people that are not capable of that in any way that most people would recognize. The dog analogy comes to mind: Dogs are smarter than people because they understand us but we do not understand them. edit: We seem to place the onus of proving your intelligence and your ability to communicate on others before giving them the moniker 'sentient' or 'intelligent'. By laying an arbitrary ('good enough for you') marker and saying 'jump over that and I'll accept you) we judge everybody by our own norms, whereas that is not a good way to look at any of these issues at all. A nice example from the animal kingdom would be the ant, the bee or the termite. As a single individual they're not going to pass an intelligence test by human standards any time soon. But as a collective they exhibit very complex behaviour that could possibly qualify as intelligent. To put up a barrier for Dolphins to prove they're intelligent makes intelligence a linear affair, cross the threshold and you're 'in'. But plenty of people exist that could not cross that same threshold, even by employing the tricks you mentioned. For instance, there is a state of being called 'locked in'. A person is 100% aware of their environment but also 100% paralyzed. By your standards these people would not qualify as people because they are wholly incapable of communication. see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Locked-in_syndrome http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Locked-in_syndrome
    - randallsquared 17y ago
      David Brin starts off one of his articles talking about this: http://www.crackaddict.com/~nalgas/David_Brin-Dogma_of_Otherness_Intro.html http://www.crackaddict.com/~nalgas/David_Brin-Dogma_of_Other...
      - jacquesm 17y ago
        That's a really good read. It's interesting how in his interaction with his audience people have an enormous problem letting go of their usual frame of reference. The Dolphin example is a great one because just like with chimps (or pigs!) there is obviously some modicum of intelligence there, it's an alien one because of the lack of shared references but it comes with all the ethical issues that the discovery of an extra-terristrial species of similar capability would have. I'm pretty sure that there are some ethical lines that you probably shouldn't cross with any creature, intelligent or not, and we're a long way away from even establishing those boundaries (as per our imagined feelings placing ourselves in the shoes of the subject). Dolphins are mammals, have adapted to living immersed in a 3D salt water environment, I wonder how we'd feel if they would be able to communicate and declared that henceforth ships are to pay toll or else :) It would be a sad day for biologists and there would be a glut of Dolphin steak if our past with other species is any lesson.
        philk 17y ago
        I'm not sure you can beat up on humans alone for exterminating species, after all, species have gone extinct before humanity. We are substantially better at wiping out other species but that's more due to our technological advancement than any extra maliciousness on our part.
        rms 17y ago
        It would be dolphin steak mislabeled as some other kind of meat... because of their place at the top of the food chain, dolphin meat is dangerously high in mercury.
    - elblanco 17y ago
      > The dog analogy comes to mind: Dogs are smarter than people because they understand us but we do not understand them. Having owned a dog, a cat and numerous small animals, I can say that I think that at times I was definitely able to have a two-way conversation with most of the higher animals, but not the lower. I think the Guinea Pig I had when I was 8 was about as low down the evolutionary scale as I could have any understanding at all (lots of squeaks meant "hungry"). My Gerbil was a black box, I fed him and cleaned his cage and he ran around for a few years, but other than that, not a lot to say. My cat and dog, on the other hand, most definitely told me when he wanted outside, or didn't like this brand of food, or needed his litter box changed, or was unhappy when we moved, was cold, needed into a room and the door was closed, was happy to see me after a long trip, etc. All it took was a little bit of observation. Research into Apes and Dolphins seems to have revealed very similar levels of two-way interaction. I'm not saying they were particularly interesting conversations, but there was definitely an effort to communicate something by both parties and we managed to understand each other I think a fair amount of the time.

jacquesm 17y ago

By your standards plenty of disabled people would not qualify as people.

JulianMorrison 17y ago
Absolutely the opposite - disabled people are a perfect illustration of why humans are definitely "people". We work around our difficulties. Can't hear? Use sign language. Can't speak? Write it down. Human minds in dolphin bodies would quickly work out similar hacks. The fact that dolphins don't is what makes it hard to qualify them as people.
- jacquesm 17y ago
  > I would want evidence of bidirectional conversation before calling them "people". There are plenty of people that are not capable of that in any way that most people would recognize. The dog analogy comes to mind: Dogs are smarter than people because they understand us but we do not understand them. edit: We seem to place the onus of proving your intelligence and your ability to communicate on others before giving them the moniker 'sentient' or 'intelligent'. By laying an arbitrary ('good enough for you') marker and saying 'jump over that and I'll accept you) we judge everybody by our own norms, whereas that is not a good way to look at any of these issues at all. A nice example from the animal kingdom would be the ant, the bee or the termite. As a single individual they're not going to pass an intelligence test by human standards any time soon. But as a collective they exhibit very complex behaviour that could possibly qualify as intelligent. To put up a barrier for Dolphins to prove they're intelligent makes intelligence a linear affair, cross the threshold and you're 'in'. But plenty of people exist that could not cross that same threshold, even by employing the tricks you mentioned. For instance, there is a state of being called 'locked in'. A person is 100% aware of their environment but also 100% paralyzed. By your standards these people would not qualify as people because they are wholly incapable of communication. see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Locked-in_syndrome http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Locked-in_syndrome
  - randallsquared 17y ago
    David Brin starts off one of his articles talking about this: http://www.crackaddict.com/~nalgas/David_Brin-Dogma_of_Otherness_Intro.html http://www.crackaddict.com/~nalgas/David_Brin-Dogma_of_Other...
    - jacquesm 17y ago
      That's a really good read. It's interesting how in his interaction with his audience people have an enormous problem letting go of their usual frame of reference. The Dolphin example is a great one because just like with chimps (or pigs!) there is obviously some modicum of intelligence there, it's an alien one because of the lack of shared references but it comes with all the ethical issues that the discovery of an extra-terristrial species of similar capability would have. I'm pretty sure that there are some ethical lines that you probably shouldn't cross with any creature, intelligent or not, and we're a long way away from even establishing those boundaries (as per our imagined feelings placing ourselves in the shoes of the subject). Dolphins are mammals, have adapted to living immersed in a 3D salt water environment, I wonder how we'd feel if they would be able to communicate and declared that henceforth ships are to pay toll or else :) It would be a sad day for biologists and there would be a glut of Dolphin steak if our past with other species is any lesson.
      - philk 17y ago
        I'm not sure you can beat up on humans alone for exterminating species, after all, species have gone extinct before humanity. We are substantially better at wiping out other species but that's more due to our technological advancement than any extra maliciousness on our part.
      - rms 17y ago
        It would be dolphin steak mislabeled as some other kind of meat... because of their place at the top of the food chain, dolphin meat is dangerously high in mercury.
  - elblanco 17y ago
    > The dog analogy comes to mind: Dogs are smarter than people because they understand us but we do not understand them. Having owned a dog, a cat and numerous small animals, I can say that I think that at times I was definitely able to have a two-way conversation with most of the higher animals, but not the lower. I think the Guinea Pig I had when I was 8 was about as low down the evolutionary scale as I could have any understanding at all (lots of squeaks meant "hungry"). My Gerbil was a black box, I fed him and cleaned his cage and he ran around for a few years, but other than that, not a lot to say. My cat and dog, on the other hand, most definitely told me when he wanted outside, or didn't like this brand of food, or needed his litter box changed, or was unhappy when we moved, was cold, needed into a room and the door was closed, was happy to see me after a long trip, etc. All it took was a little bit of observation. Research into Apes and Dolphins seems to have revealed very similar levels of two-way interaction. I'm not saying they were particularly interesting conversations, but there was definitely an effort to communicate something by both parties and we managed to understand each other I think a fair amount of the time.