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Years and years ago, there was an aol live chat with Koko, the gorilla who could sign. An early experimental cross species AMA. The crowd mostly asked question

Years and years ago, there was an aol live chat with Koko, the gorilla who could sign. An early experimental cross species AMA. The crowd mostly asked questions like "is there a god?" The ape generally replied that she was bored and wanted food. Gray parrots and corvids and dolphins and squids are exceptionally fascinating and worth studying. They aren't the same as the mythologized first contact people are hoping for. The precise expectations we have for such an exchange may say something about the Fermi paradox. Very similar intelligences can still be so different as to render communication, a real exchange of ideas, impossible.

crookshanked 7y ago
Thanks for your post. Reading about the Fermi paradox brightened my morning.
542458 7y ago
On Koko... Koko's not all she's cracked up to be. Although there is a lot of non-scientific media that talks about her language abilities, there actually aren't very many scientific/peer reviewed articles on her, something that is the source of some contention. With Koko/many other talking apes the handler does a LOT of interpretation for the sign language, to the point that it starts to feel a bit like reading tea leaves. With Koko, I often feel that the handler goes way too far in this. For example: Interviewer: Koko, do you feel love from the humans who have raised you and cared for you? Ely35150 asked that. We'll see what she says! Dr. Patterson: She's reading a birthday card. Koko: lips, apple give me Dr. Patterson: People give her her favorite foods. Koko: love, browse drink nipple Dr. Patterson: Browse is like... the little foods/snacks we give them. Koko: koko loves that nipple drink, go Dr. Patterson: She's kissing her alligator. Koko: lights off good At one point Koko signs "nipple", which her handler interprets as "people" since they rhyme. Seeing as how Koko can't speak english, the idea that she understands english rhymes feels like more than a bit of a stretch to me. Many other scientists have approached the ape speaking thing through a bit more of a skeptical lens, and produced (IMHO) much better work. The work on Nim Chimpsky in particular is interesting - they found that while Nim could associate words with concepts (forming phrases like "give food me eat"), anything resembling syntax, creating new phrases, or a sustained conversation was simply out of his reach.
- blarg1 7y ago
  how koto speaks reminds me of how I would speak to my cousins in Mandarin when my other cousins had taught me a bunch of words
- 12elephant 7y ago
  I don't think the researcher means to imply Koko understands rhymes. Rather her hearing is not fine-tuned enough to hear the subtle difference between the sounds "nipple" and "people". So she uses them interchangeably.
- jcranberry 7y ago
  What about new words? I remember reading an account online of someone who owned an African Grey parrot, who claimed that they called apples some word that was half banana, half cherry, because it looked like a combination of them (to the parrot).
gambiting 7y ago
Stanisław Lem's Sci-Fi focused on that concept a lot - that yes, we might find intelligent life in the universe, but it might be so completely different, so alien to us, that any form of communication is not as much impossible, but simply pointless.
- nosianu 7y ago
  Stanislaw Lem 1921-2006 https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/weekly-standard/stanislaw-lem-1921-2006 https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/weekly-standard/stanislaw... > Lem's IQ, as he mentioned in passing in an autobiographical essay (it was measured when he was in high school), was above 180, but no one who read many of his books needed that datum to conclude that here was an unusually powerful and wide-ranging intelligence. The son of a physician, Lem was trained in the sciences. Biology was his field, but in his mid-twenties he became a research assistant at what he described as a "kind of clearinghouse for scientific literature" in many disciplines coming into Poland from around the world. Examples, I think especially are - "Eden" -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eden_%28Lem_novel%29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eden_%28Lem_novel%29 Not as extreme as the other two in highlighting the impossibility of meaningful contact. Lem becomes much more skeptical later in his career. Because they actually do make contact to one individual alien and communicate with it. In Fiasco there is some communication but it turn out to be all completely different than expected base don human assumptions (and it all ends in the humans destroying everything, of course all from good intentions). In "Solaris" there is no meaningful communication at all, one can't even say there are misunderstandings. - "The Invincible" -- "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Invincible" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Invincible" This is about non-biological self-replicating swarming alien micro-robotic life forms. - "Solaris" -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solaris_%28novel%29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solaris_%28novel%29 > Solaris chronicles the ultimate futility of attempted communications with the extraterrestrial life inhabiting a distant alien planet named Solaris. The planet is almost completely covered with an ocean of gel that is revealed to be a single, planet-encompassing organism. Terran scientists conclude it is a sentient being and attempt to communicate with it. - "His Master's Voice" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/His_Master%27s_Voice_%28novel%29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/His_Master%27s_Voice_%28novel%... > The novel is written as a first-person narrative, the memoir of a mathematician named Peter Hogarth, who becomes involved in a Pentagon-directed project (code-named "His Master's Voice", or HMV for short[2]) in the Nevada desert, where scientists are working to decode what seems to be a message from outer space (specifically, a neutrino signal from the Canis Minor constellation) - "Fiasco" -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiasco_%28novel%29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiasco_%28novel%29 > The book is a further elaboration of Lem's skepticism: in Lem's opinion, the difficulty in communication with alien civilizations is cultural disparity rather than spatial distance. The failure to communicate with an alien civilization is the main theme of the book.
whatshisface 7y ago
Why would anyone expect an ape to be thinking about anything that's not food or, you know, ape-level? I mean come on, if you asked a random human you wouldn't get an insightful answer to "is there a God." If you wired up a fish to a computer so it could talk you would find out it was thinking about fish stuff.
simcop2387 7y ago
This is something that the later books in the enders game series starts to look at, with the natives of a planet, their origins and even the Formica. They're not quite like the first two books in the series which is why I've seen a number of people not like them (if you want more of that, the bean side series is better) but they're really good still.

crookshanked 7y ago

Thanks for your post. Reading about the Fermi paradox brightened my morning.

542458 7y ago

On Koko... Koko's not all she's cracked up to be. Although there is a lot of non-scientific media that talks about her language abilities, there actually aren't very many scientific/peer reviewed articles on her, something that is the source of some contention. With Koko/many other talking apes the handler does a LOT of interpretation for the sign language, to the point that it starts to feel a bit like reading tea leaves. With Koko, I often feel that the handler goes way too far in this. For example: Interviewer: Koko, do you feel love from the humans who have raised you and cared for you? Ely35150 asked that. We'll see what she says! Dr. Patterson: She's reading a birthday card. Koko: lips, apple give me Dr. Patterson: People give her her favorite foods. Koko: love, browse drink nipple Dr. Patterson: Browse is like... the little foods/snacks we give them. Koko: koko loves that nipple drink, go Dr. Patterson: She's kissing her alligator. Koko: lights off good At one point Koko signs "nipple", which her handler interprets as "people" since they rhyme. Seeing as how Koko can't speak english, the idea that she understands english rhymes feels like more than a bit of a stretch to me. Many other scientists have approached the ape speaking thing through a bit more of a skeptical lens, and produced (IMHO) much better work. The work on Nim Chimpsky in particular is interesting - they found that while Nim could associate words with concepts (forming phrases like "give food me eat"), anything resembling syntax, creating new phrases, or a sustained conversation was simply out of his reach.

blarg1 7y ago
how koto speaks reminds me of how I would speak to my cousins in Mandarin when my other cousins had taught me a bunch of words
12elephant 7y ago
I don't think the researcher means to imply Koko understands rhymes. Rather her hearing is not fine-tuned enough to hear the subtle difference between the sounds "nipple" and "people". So she uses them interchangeably.
jcranberry 7y ago
What about new words? I remember reading an account online of someone who owned an African Grey parrot, who claimed that they called apples some word that was half banana, half cherry, because it looked like a combination of them (to the parrot).

gambiting 7y ago

Stanisław Lem's Sci-Fi focused on that concept a lot - that yes, we might find intelligent life in the universe, but it might be so completely different, so alien to us, that any form of communication is not as much impossible, but simply pointless.

nosianu 7y ago
Stanislaw Lem 1921-2006 https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/weekly-standard/stanislaw-lem-1921-2006 https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/weekly-standard/stanislaw... > Lem's IQ, as he mentioned in passing in an autobiographical essay (it was measured when he was in high school), was above 180, but no one who read many of his books needed that datum to conclude that here was an unusually powerful and wide-ranging intelligence. The son of a physician, Lem was trained in the sciences. Biology was his field, but in his mid-twenties he became a research assistant at what he described as a "kind of clearinghouse for scientific literature" in many disciplines coming into Poland from around the world. Examples, I think especially are - "Eden" -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eden_%28Lem_novel%29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eden_%28Lem_novel%29 Not as extreme as the other two in highlighting the impossibility of meaningful contact. Lem becomes much more skeptical later in his career. Because they actually do make contact to one individual alien and communicate with it. In Fiasco there is some communication but it turn out to be all completely different than expected base don human assumptions (and it all ends in the humans destroying everything, of course all from good intentions). In "Solaris" there is no meaningful communication at all, one can't even say there are misunderstandings. - "The Invincible" -- "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Invincible" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Invincible" This is about non-biological self-replicating swarming alien micro-robotic life forms. - "Solaris" -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solaris_%28novel%29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solaris_%28novel%29 > Solaris chronicles the ultimate futility of attempted communications with the extraterrestrial life inhabiting a distant alien planet named Solaris. The planet is almost completely covered with an ocean of gel that is revealed to be a single, planet-encompassing organism. Terran scientists conclude it is a sentient being and attempt to communicate with it. - "His Master's Voice" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/His_Master%27s_Voice_%28novel%29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/His_Master%27s_Voice_%28novel%... > The novel is written as a first-person narrative, the memoir of a mathematician named Peter Hogarth, who becomes involved in a Pentagon-directed project (code-named "His Master's Voice", or HMV for short[2]) in the Nevada desert, where scientists are working to decode what seems to be a message from outer space (specifically, a neutrino signal from the Canis Minor constellation) - "Fiasco" -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiasco_%28novel%29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiasco_%28novel%29 > The book is a further elaboration of Lem's skepticism: in Lem's opinion, the difficulty in communication with alien civilizations is cultural disparity rather than spatial distance. The failure to communicate with an alien civilization is the main theme of the book.

whatshisface 7y ago

Why would anyone expect an ape to be thinking about anything that's not food or, you know, ape-level? I mean come on, if you asked a random human you wouldn't get an insightful answer to "is there a God." If you wired up a fish to a computer so it could talk you would find out it was thinking about fish stuff.

simcop2387 7y ago

This is something that the later books in the enders game series starts to look at, with the natives of a planet, their origins and even the Formica. They're not quite like the first two books in the series which is why I've seen a number of people not like them (if you want more of that, the bean side series is better) but they're really good still.