5 ms·

Here's a story I was told by a dolphin researcher about 20 years ago. They had a man pretend to be drowning in the open ocean near some dolphins. A dolphin ca

Here's a story I was told by a dolphin researcher about 20 years ago. They had a man pretend to be drowning in the open ocean near some dolphins. A dolphin came to rescue the drowning man. They repeated the experiment. After the third or so repetition, the dolphin, instead of saving the man, smacked him around and bruised him up pretty good.

xenophanes 17y ago
And then they did a repeatable, controlled experiment to confirm that dolphins can learn about humans faking drowning. Then they published it. Cite? Or they didn't. If it's real, why not prove if it's real?
- jhancock 17y ago
  Well, I did start my narrative by saying I was told this story 20 years ago. I was told this by the researcher that was part of the experiment. I had no reason to doubt his words.
  - xenophanes 17y ago
    Science works by doubting everything, and doing repeatable experiments to make sure no one made a mistake. Mistakes are common and steps must be taken to suppress them. If it was part of an experiment published 20 years ago, and it was conclusive that dolphins can think, presumably we would have heard of it by now.
    - gord 17y ago
      upvote, with the disclaimer that science also acknowledges that some experiments are non-repeatable either in theory or practice.
      - xenophanes 17y ago
        If dolphins are intelligent, surely some repeatable experiment can be designed to show this. And btw, while I'll accept the point in theory, do you have any realistic examples of unrepeatable experiments in mind? Besides ones involving people, I guess.
        gord 17y ago
        the big bang.
        Shamiq 17y ago
        maybe the opposite of the big bang -- destroying everything. When exists==nothing....
        gord 17y ago
        the possibility exists that : 1) its impossible to annihilate everything without also recreating a universe in the process 2) that logic itself [as the refinement of inter-cusp physical experience] is not applicable to the start and end of universes.
        techiferous 17y ago
        The possibility also exists that possibility, reality and other existence-based terms as we use them are not applicable to the start and end of universes.
      - NathanKP 17y ago
        Yes sadly with some of these experiments (really smart dolphins, talking parrots, extra intelligent apes) it is that particular animal which is above average. Other animals can't learn everything that the one "high IQ" animal can. So when that animal dies the experiment cannot be repeated and the research is pretty much over until they find another smart animal to work with. So many of these animal experiments are very non-repeatable both in theory and in practice.
    - RiderOfGiraffes 17y ago
      I'd be interested to know if you personally believe that dolphins don't think, or if you are simply pointing out that the people doing research on dolphin intelligence aren't doing what you think of as "proper science." Another anecdote to the mix: A researcher wanted to do extensive, repeatable tests with dolphins to test their abilities in communication using a symbolic language. He'd gone to a lot of work designing a board that dolphins could "read" using echo-location, and designing a language (in the technical sense) with syntax, grammar and semantics. When he described and demonstrated his experiment to the dolphin keepers, they were encouraging and supportive, but said it wouldn't work. When asked why, they said the dolphins would get bored and stop participating. The researcher tried anyway, and initially got a great deal of success. Early results were promising, but needed repeating to make sure there were no statistical flukes (if you'll pardon the pun) or coincidences. When he tried to repeat the experiments the dolphins refused to cooperate. When he tried harder to get them to cooperate, they physically swam under him, liften up, and pushed him out of the pool. The dolphin keepers had successfully predicted the dolphins' behavior. They had a theory, which let them make predictions, which the researcher inadvertently tested and showed to be accurate. Did it get written up? No. The researcher thought his experiments were a failure because he couldn't get the repeatability. The dolphin keepers weren't scientists, they didn't write anything up. All this was reported by the keepers in a TV show I saw over 10 years ago, but it suggests several things. People who keep dolphins believe them to be intelligent. That belief leads to correct behavioral predictions. Some researchers have trouble doing experiments, because the dolphins appear to refuse to cooperate on boring tasks.
- radu_floricica 17y ago
  I'd guess they stayed away from experiments which end in bruising when successful.
- frig 17y ago
  If dolphins have that much personality there's not much guarantee any two dolphins would act the same way in the same scenario. Additionally, given that dolphins can apparently teach each other behaviors the entire batch of dolphins they've got in their research tank is contaminated by the first dolphin. Designing experiments to determine if your test subjects are smart enough to mess with you is hard and it's harder if they all live together and gossip between sessions.

xenophanes 17y ago

And then they did a repeatable, controlled experiment to confirm that dolphins can learn about humans faking drowning. Then they published it. Cite? Or they didn't. If it's real, why not prove if it's real?

jhancock 17y ago
Well, I did start my narrative by saying I was told this story 20 years ago. I was told this by the researcher that was part of the experiment. I had no reason to doubt his words.
- xenophanes 17y ago
  Science works by doubting everything, and doing repeatable experiments to make sure no one made a mistake. Mistakes are common and steps must be taken to suppress them. If it was part of an experiment published 20 years ago, and it was conclusive that dolphins can think, presumably we would have heard of it by now.
  - gord 17y ago
    upvote, with the disclaimer that science also acknowledges that some experiments are non-repeatable either in theory or practice.
    - xenophanes 17y ago
      If dolphins are intelligent, surely some repeatable experiment can be designed to show this. And btw, while I'll accept the point in theory, do you have any realistic examples of unrepeatable experiments in mind? Besides ones involving people, I guess.
      - gord 17y ago
        the big bang.
        Shamiq 17y ago
        maybe the opposite of the big bang -- destroying everything. When exists==nothing....
        gord 17y ago
        the possibility exists that : 1) its impossible to annihilate everything without also recreating a universe in the process 2) that logic itself [as the refinement of inter-cusp physical experience] is not applicable to the start and end of universes.
        techiferous 17y ago
        The possibility also exists that possibility, reality and other existence-based terms as we use them are not applicable to the start and end of universes.
    - NathanKP 17y ago
      Yes sadly with some of these experiments (really smart dolphins, talking parrots, extra intelligent apes) it is that particular animal which is above average. Other animals can't learn everything that the one "high IQ" animal can. So when that animal dies the experiment cannot be repeated and the research is pretty much over until they find another smart animal to work with. So many of these animal experiments are very non-repeatable both in theory and in practice.
  - RiderOfGiraffes 17y ago
    I'd be interested to know if you personally believe that dolphins don't think, or if you are simply pointing out that the people doing research on dolphin intelligence aren't doing what you think of as "proper science." Another anecdote to the mix: A researcher wanted to do extensive, repeatable tests with dolphins to test their abilities in communication using a symbolic language. He'd gone to a lot of work designing a board that dolphins could "read" using echo-location, and designing a language (in the technical sense) with syntax, grammar and semantics. When he described and demonstrated his experiment to the dolphin keepers, they were encouraging and supportive, but said it wouldn't work. When asked why, they said the dolphins would get bored and stop participating. The researcher tried anyway, and initially got a great deal of success. Early results were promising, but needed repeating to make sure there were no statistical flukes (if you'll pardon the pun) or coincidences. When he tried to repeat the experiments the dolphins refused to cooperate. When he tried harder to get them to cooperate, they physically swam under him, liften up, and pushed him out of the pool. The dolphin keepers had successfully predicted the dolphins' behavior. They had a theory, which let them make predictions, which the researcher inadvertently tested and showed to be accurate. Did it get written up? No. The researcher thought his experiments were a failure because he couldn't get the repeatability. The dolphin keepers weren't scientists, they didn't write anything up. All this was reported by the keepers in a TV show I saw over 10 years ago, but it suggests several things. People who keep dolphins believe them to be intelligent. That belief leads to correct behavioral predictions. Some researchers have trouble doing experiments, because the dolphins appear to refuse to cooperate on boring tasks.
radu_floricica 17y ago
I'd guess they stayed away from experiments which end in bruising when successful.
frig 17y ago
If dolphins have that much personality there's not much guarantee any two dolphins would act the same way in the same scenario. Additionally, given that dolphins can apparently teach each other behaviors the entire batch of dolphins they've got in their research tank is contaminated by the first dolphin. Designing experiments to determine if your test subjects are smart enough to mess with you is hard and it's harder if they all live together and gossip between sessions.