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Whale share a significant part of their developmental history, genetics and brain chemistry with us humans. They don't really qualify as alien in any of the int
by shkkmo 6y ago
Whale share a significant part of their developmental history, genetics and brain chemistry with us humans. They don't really qualify as alien in any of the interesting ways that were mentioned.
- ironmagma 6y agoThey’re biologically related to us, and yet we still can’t communicate with them. That should show how motivated or able we are to figure out language with other species.
- sidlls 6y agoSo? Whales are (relative to humans) quite dumb. Communicating with an intelligent alien species isn't the same--in any way.
- ironmagma 6y agoThat’s going to need a citation, because it’s not what a lot of researchers say. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16270270 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16270270 [2] https://www.orcanation.org/2019/10/10/the-social-intelligence-of-orcas/ https://www.orcanation.org/2019/10/10/the-social-intelligenc...
- sidlls 6y agoIt's a bit of a stretch to go from basic imitation of simple words to intelligence on par with homo sapiens.
- ironmagma 6y agoIt’s not basic imitation if they can communicate using the language of another species [1] nor is it that big of a stretch when they have larger brains than us. [1] https://www.zmescience.com/science/biology/killer-whale-dolphin-24102014/ https://www.zmescience.com/science/biology/killer-whale-dolp...
- shkkmo 6y agoI don't think you can generalize the level of motivation. If we had aliens to communicate with, there would be much higher levels of effort deployed than we have put into whale communications. However, it might give us a clue about how hard cross species translation can be.