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I once read that whale's songs could be used to transmit a 3d image from one whale to another which doesn't sound so crazy considering that echolocation can act

I once read that whale's songs could be used to transmit a 3d image from one whale to another which doesn't sound so crazy considering that echolocation can activate the visual cortex. I don't remember the article and anyway there wasn't much more detail but I always found this idea quite interesting. Could be that looking for words, sentences or grammar in a whale's song is a misguided and anthropocentric approach to the problem. They may instead have a visual language that just so happen to be transmitted by sound. Like, do you see what I mean? But, literally.

pyinstallwoes 3y ago
Cymatics is very interesting.
dinkleberg 3y ago
That is a fascinating idea. We do have a tendency (understandably) to try and understand the universe through our own lens. Our thinking is heavily tied to our sensory input, so it is challenging to imagine what having echolocation or magnetic senses might be like. But there is no reason we should expect other species to communicate and think in the same way we do.
- totetsu 3y ago
  It’s hard even to imagine how other humans, from another time or culture think. While we have similar sensory apparatus we the world we experience is constructed within our own consciousness, with all kinds of emotions and memories mixed in with the senses. If you think about your own mammalian physiological and emotional .. affective experience .. how it feels to run fast, be surprised, see something you want to eat.. then I think we can start to appreciate what it is like to think like a whale or a bat. Even though their sensory input is vastly different to use, they still construct their world with the same kind of equipment that we do
  - glandium 3y ago
    It's hard even to imagine how other humans, from our time and culture think. I have no clue how people experience life with aphantasia or no inner monologue. Yet these people exist, right now, among us.
    - Etrnl_President 3y ago
      [flagged]
    - boppo1 3y ago
      I think the 'no inner monologue' thing is overblown. I often don't have one as I go about my business because thinking in words would slow me down at ${task}. But if I'm driving or walking, then I will converse with myself at length. I'd be more likely to describe it as a dialogue though, because the way I perceive it, I'm talking to an imagined second party. It's still obviously me, but therf's a back-and-forth between different personalities.
      - tempaccount420 3y ago
        I don't think parent is talking about you then? You have an inner monologue.
- WalterBright 3y ago
  > But there is no reason we should expect other species to communicate and think in the same way we do. The reason is how far back their line diverged from ours. The nearer the point of divergence, the more reasonable it is to apply how things work for us.
- firecall 3y ago
  Which reminds that I once read there is a tribe in of people who conceptualise the future and past differently to western society… The past to them is physically looking straight ahead, as that is what they can observe. The future is conceptually and physically them looking over their shoulder behind them, as that is what they can’t see. I might be mangling it somewhat! :-)
  - mcswell 3y ago
    They conceptualize the past and future exactly the same as you do; the past is something they remember (some of), the future is something they can only guess about. Their language talks about it differently, that's all.
  - ChainOfFools 3y ago
    Although it is not built into the grammar of our language I've come across a description very similar to this, by CS Lewis, describing his perception of time as that of a passenger on a train who's riding with their back to the engine. analogies develop further from there, such as events being passed at the moment moving very quickly, and large in one's field of view, and to some extent one js able to see around them and order their importance by size and speed with respect to one's own position. But they're moving fast and it's hard to take in all the detail at once, and being so close the more proximal ones obscure your view of the ones further away though the latter may actually be in fact larger or more significant. Only as they all recede into the distance of the past does their relative significance with respect to each other become more evident.
engineer_22 3y ago
That's fascinating! In the thread of this thought, to search for intelligent life off-planet sort of misses the point, doesn't it? Here we have an intelligent species with a common ancestor, which we may assume to be easier to communicate with than an extra-terrestrial being. And we have hardly begun to attempt to communicate with our earthly neighbor in a meaningful way, but we have projects probing the cosmos for signals from space.
- proamdev123 3y ago
  Following that thought even further, if dolphins or whales were as intelligent as humans would they even be capable of developing the ability to make instruments that can transmit electromagnetic signals? Given the limitations of their physical bodies, would they even be capable of developing any sophisticated instruments at all? Point being, intelligence may not be the limiting factor for extraterrestrial communication at all.
  - smallkitten 3y ago
    Why would you assume that sophisticated instruments are required for extraterrestrial communication?
    - proamdev123 3y ago
      I’m not quite sure what you’re asking. We were talking about searching for signs of extraterrestrial life by looking for electromagnetic signals that they may have sent through space. Are you asking why I’d assume that they don’t have the biological ability to send electromagnetic communication signals? If that’s not what you’re asking, I don’t understand how else they’d send signals through space without sophisticated instruments capable of transmitting powerful signals. Please clarify.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
mjan22640 3y ago
The shrew like common mammalian ancestor was a night animal and could echolocate. The 3d perception could have been the driving force behind the evolution of the large brain.
Figs 3y ago
I remember commenting on an article related to that here so I went digging through my comment history and found this post about dolphin visual language: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3314056 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3314056 Given that that was all the way back in 2011 and didn't lead to any big world changing events I assume it was just cranks being cranky and a lot of people getting their hopes up.
rcme 3y ago
Don’t words transmit 3D images?
- Retric 3y ago
  They are no more optimized for 3D images than taste or smells. Try and describe your chair or oddly shaped rock as a 3D object without referring to it by classification and ask yourself how many people would have used the same sounds in the same order. There’s no direct mapping between 3D objects and the sounds used to describe them,
  - rcme 3y ago
    First, words aren’t really related to sound. You and I are using words without sound, are we not? Language is an encoding. One of the things it encodes is shape. And even if you wanted to describe a chair without using the word “chair” you could do so using a series of precise measurements. It doesn’t matter that people wouldn’t use exactly the same words to describe it. In the end, everyone would understand each other.
    - chimineycricket 3y ago
      >You and I are using words without sound, are we not? Nope! You're sounding the words out in your head (or out loud) when you read it.
      - lisper 3y ago
        Not necessarily. Deaf people can read, even ones who are deaf from birth.
        chimineycricket 3y ago
        Exceptions don't make the rule. Generally, people sound words out. Even if the language doesn't have an alphabet of sounds like Mandarin.
goatlover 3y ago
There are visual thinkers among humans. Temple Grandin being a famous one. She's written about how she thinks in pictures and had to learn to translate that to words growing up. Also how she believes animals think in pictures. Although I wonder if smell might be more the case for some like dogs.
- twobitshifter 3y ago
  People without sight can also use echolocation. With the right head location sensors and a set of headphones you could describe objects to them with sound. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=lAtVOK04XvA https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=lAtVOK04XvA
raincole 3y ago
Reminds me of Arrival (the movie).
nborwankar 3y ago
Here’s a thread from biology stackexchange about this which also refers to CETI. https://biology.stackexchange.com/questions/108499/can-whales-send-each-other-3d-images#:~:text=New%20research%20from%20the%20DAREWIN,friend%20using%20only%20your%20face https://biology.stackexchange.com/questions/108499/can-whale....
_nalply 3y ago
Interesting. I talk a Signed Language and I know how to give a 3d image, for example when asking for the location of the toilet, like this: go through this door, then you see the stairs to the left, go down there and then from your point of view return but just one leve lower and the door will be to the right (from your point of view of now). When asking for directions I am sometimes frustrated by the inability of people to tell me detailed directions. I know their language has limits and they just can't. Another example, when my boy got on a chairlift the first time, I could tell him in detail what will happen including the change in speed and could include even the typical rattling when taking off. He was then very confident in taking the chairlift. But I have difficulty imaging how whales communicate 3d situations... Probably by imitating what they experience by sonar and simplifying to the essentials?
- BiteCode_dev 3y ago
  We convey meaning using words, but it doesn't have to be that way. They may have sounds that map directly into spacial descriptions in a way that light works for us.
  - _nalply 3y ago
    Yeah, for whales by mimicking sonar (caveat emptor). In Signed Language you can point into a 3D space. If you define a mapping of the world into the 3D space available to Signed Language then you have the world at your fingertips.
    - blamestross 3y ago
      I love sign language for it's "pronoun" system and spatial features, but the reality is we could just a easily "annotate" spoken english with similar spatial context, sign language just does a good job of teaching all parties how to do that be default. By not teaching ASL to everybody who speaks english, we are really missing out on more bandwidth (for detail and redundancy) in communication.
- fouc 3y ago
  That's really cool, I'm curious if other people that speak in ASL or other signed languages are good at that in general? I feel like even if I was fluent in sign language I wouldn't necessarily be as descriptive but perhaps I'm wrong there.
d-lisp 3y ago
I heard the same about dolphins few years ago but alas I cannot source scientifical evidences yet. I heard also that while the major part of our brain is dealing with semantics, dolphins brain is dealing with acoustics; some kind of study was sourced in the radiophonic show I was listening which was telling about the different eras of brain growth in the history of humans and dolphins, trying to find some comparison points to better explain how similar cerebral masses could be specialized into different operations and a lot of different things I don't remember.
ilkke 3y ago
I read this speculation about dolphins. I'm oversimplifying here, but they use their nostrils independently to produce 2-channel sound and some measurements consistent with 3D transformations have been observed.

pyinstallwoes 3y ago

Cymatics is very interesting.

dinkleberg 3y ago

That is a fascinating idea. We do have a tendency (understandably) to try and understand the universe through our own lens. Our thinking is heavily tied to our sensory input, so it is challenging to imagine what having echolocation or magnetic senses might be like. But there is no reason we should expect other species to communicate and think in the same way we do.

totetsu 3y ago
It’s hard even to imagine how other humans, from another time or culture think. While we have similar sensory apparatus we the world we experience is constructed within our own consciousness, with all kinds of emotions and memories mixed in with the senses. If you think about your own mammalian physiological and emotional .. affective experience .. how it feels to run fast, be surprised, see something you want to eat.. then I think we can start to appreciate what it is like to think like a whale or a bat. Even though their sensory input is vastly different to use, they still construct their world with the same kind of equipment that we do
- glandium 3y ago
  It's hard even to imagine how other humans, from our time and culture think. I have no clue how people experience life with aphantasia or no inner monologue. Yet these people exist, right now, among us.
  - Etrnl_President 3y ago
    [flagged]
  - boppo1 3y ago
    I think the 'no inner monologue' thing is overblown. I often don't have one as I go about my business because thinking in words would slow me down at ${task}. But if I'm driving or walking, then I will converse with myself at length. I'd be more likely to describe it as a dialogue though, because the way I perceive it, I'm talking to an imagined second party. It's still obviously me, but therf's a back-and-forth between different personalities.
    - tempaccount420 3y ago
      I don't think parent is talking about you then? You have an inner monologue.
WalterBright 3y ago
> But there is no reason we should expect other species to communicate and think in the same way we do. The reason is how far back their line diverged from ours. The nearer the point of divergence, the more reasonable it is to apply how things work for us.
firecall 3y ago
Which reminds that I once read there is a tribe in of people who conceptualise the future and past differently to western society… The past to them is physically looking straight ahead, as that is what they can observe. The future is conceptually and physically them looking over their shoulder behind them, as that is what they can’t see. I might be mangling it somewhat! :-)
- mcswell 3y ago
  They conceptualize the past and future exactly the same as you do; the past is something they remember (some of), the future is something they can only guess about. Their language talks about it differently, that's all.
- ChainOfFools 3y ago
  Although it is not built into the grammar of our language I've come across a description very similar to this, by CS Lewis, describing his perception of time as that of a passenger on a train who's riding with their back to the engine. analogies develop further from there, such as events being passed at the moment moving very quickly, and large in one's field of view, and to some extent one js able to see around them and order their importance by size and speed with respect to one's own position. But they're moving fast and it's hard to take in all the detail at once, and being so close the more proximal ones obscure your view of the ones further away though the latter may actually be in fact larger or more significant. Only as they all recede into the distance of the past does their relative significance with respect to each other become more evident.

engineer_22 3y ago

That's fascinating! In the thread of this thought, to search for intelligent life off-planet sort of misses the point, doesn't it? Here we have an intelligent species with a common ancestor, which we may assume to be easier to communicate with than an extra-terrestrial being. And we have hardly begun to attempt to communicate with our earthly neighbor in a meaningful way, but we have projects probing the cosmos for signals from space.

proamdev123 3y ago
Following that thought even further, if dolphins or whales were as intelligent as humans would they even be capable of developing the ability to make instruments that can transmit electromagnetic signals? Given the limitations of their physical bodies, would they even be capable of developing any sophisticated instruments at all? Point being, intelligence may not be the limiting factor for extraterrestrial communication at all.
- smallkitten 3y ago
  Why would you assume that sophisticated instruments are required for extraterrestrial communication?
  - proamdev123 3y ago
    I’m not quite sure what you’re asking. We were talking about searching for signs of extraterrestrial life by looking for electromagnetic signals that they may have sent through space. Are you asking why I’d assume that they don’t have the biological ability to send electromagnetic communication signals? If that’s not what you’re asking, I don’t understand how else they’d send signals through space without sophisticated instruments capable of transmitting powerful signals. Please clarify.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

mjan22640 3y ago

The shrew like common mammalian ancestor was a night animal and could echolocate. The 3d perception could have been the driving force behind the evolution of the large brain.

Figs 3y ago

I remember commenting on an article related to that here so I went digging through my comment history and found this post about dolphin visual language: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3314056 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3314056 Given that that was all the way back in 2011 and didn't lead to any big world changing events I assume it was just cranks being cranky and a lot of people getting their hopes up.

rcme 3y ago

Don’t words transmit 3D images?

Retric 3y ago
They are no more optimized for 3D images than taste or smells. Try and describe your chair or oddly shaped rock as a 3D object without referring to it by classification and ask yourself how many people would have used the same sounds in the same order. There’s no direct mapping between 3D objects and the sounds used to describe them,
- rcme 3y ago
  First, words aren’t really related to sound. You and I are using words without sound, are we not? Language is an encoding. One of the things it encodes is shape. And even if you wanted to describe a chair without using the word “chair” you could do so using a series of precise measurements. It doesn’t matter that people wouldn’t use exactly the same words to describe it. In the end, everyone would understand each other.
  - chimineycricket 3y ago
    >You and I are using words without sound, are we not? Nope! You're sounding the words out in your head (or out loud) when you read it.
    - lisper 3y ago
      Not necessarily. Deaf people can read, even ones who are deaf from birth.
      - chimineycricket 3y ago
        Exceptions don't make the rule. Generally, people sound words out. Even if the language doesn't have an alphabet of sounds like Mandarin.

goatlover 3y ago

There are visual thinkers among humans. Temple Grandin being a famous one. She's written about how she thinks in pictures and had to learn to translate that to words growing up. Also how she believes animals think in pictures. Although I wonder if smell might be more the case for some like dogs.

twobitshifter 3y ago
People without sight can also use echolocation. With the right head location sensors and a set of headphones you could describe objects to them with sound. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=lAtVOK04XvA https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=lAtVOK04XvA

raincole 3y ago

Reminds me of Arrival (the movie).

nborwankar 3y ago

Here’s a thread from biology stackexchange about this which also refers to CETI. https://biology.stackexchange.com/questions/108499/can-whales-send-each-other-3d-images#:~:text=New%20research%20from%20the%20DAREWIN,friend%20using%20only%20your%20face https://biology.stackexchange.com/questions/108499/can-whale....

_nalply 3y ago

Interesting. I talk a Signed Language and I know how to give a 3d image, for example when asking for the location of the toilet, like this: go through this door, then you see the stairs to the left, go down there and then from your point of view return but just one leve lower and the door will be to the right (from your point of view of now). When asking for directions I am sometimes frustrated by the inability of people to tell me detailed directions. I know their language has limits and they just can't. Another example, when my boy got on a chairlift the first time, I could tell him in detail what will happen including the change in speed and could include even the typical rattling when taking off. He was then very confident in taking the chairlift. But I have difficulty imaging how whales communicate 3d situations... Probably by imitating what they experience by sonar and simplifying to the essentials?

BiteCode_dev 3y ago
We convey meaning using words, but it doesn't have to be that way. They may have sounds that map directly into spacial descriptions in a way that light works for us.
- _nalply 3y ago
  Yeah, for whales by mimicking sonar (caveat emptor). In Signed Language you can point into a 3D space. If you define a mapping of the world into the 3D space available to Signed Language then you have the world at your fingertips.
  - blamestross 3y ago
    I love sign language for it's "pronoun" system and spatial features, but the reality is we could just a easily "annotate" spoken english with similar spatial context, sign language just does a good job of teaching all parties how to do that be default. By not teaching ASL to everybody who speaks english, we are really missing out on more bandwidth (for detail and redundancy) in communication.
fouc 3y ago
That's really cool, I'm curious if other people that speak in ASL or other signed languages are good at that in general? I feel like even if I was fluent in sign language I wouldn't necessarily be as descriptive but perhaps I'm wrong there.

d-lisp 3y ago

I heard the same about dolphins few years ago but alas I cannot source scientifical evidences yet. I heard also that while the major part of our brain is dealing with semantics, dolphins brain is dealing with acoustics; some kind of study was sourced in the radiophonic show I was listening which was telling about the different eras of brain growth in the history of humans and dolphins, trying to find some comparison points to better explain how similar cerebral masses could be specialized into different operations and a lot of different things I don't remember.

ilkke 3y ago

I read this speculation about dolphins. I'm oversimplifying here, but they use their nostrils independently to produce 2-channel sound and some measurements consistent with 3D transformations have been observed.