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Computer Org
Skeptic Friend
392 Posts |
 Posted - 05/07/2002 : 13:45:04 [Permalink]
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quote:
Pulled out of Slater's post:
Computer Org what is it that you find so depressing about humanity in this instance?
I suppose it's that it's as follows.
The reseacher had recognized and sought out two old co-workers--workers with whom he had developed a communicative-relationship much like people on a B.B. who have been co-posting for years. Then:
Firstly, he didn't even recognize that the Chimps had most-likely been suffering for years as subjects of medical experimentation. Who [cheerfully; casually] asks "How're you?" to an old friend who has been suffering for years at the hands of his fellows? I'm not faulting the researcher;--I might well have [thoughtlessly] done exactly the same. It's that it's systemic: Just the way things are.
Secondly, there almost certainly was nothing that the researcher could have done even if he had wanted to--and tried to. That, to my mind, is a sad commentary on our society--our civilization.
Finally, I suppose, there is the entire generalized view of how we humans treat others who we have not only recognized as having some sort of intelligence but have actually accurued an ability at co-communication.
In my post trying to answer the quiz of this thread, I said that there weren't enough choices. Given how we treat those who we know possess a certain degree of intelligence, why would any alien (--off Earth--) species let us know that they exist?
Do thou amend thy face, and I'll amend my life. --Falstaff |
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Lars_H
SFN Regular
Germany
630 Posts |
Posted - 05/07/2002 : 14:01:25 [Permalink]
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quote:
One of the debates in interspecies communication revolves around our learning very little of the ape language (and yes they have what could technically be called simple language and there are any number of people who speak it) and even less dolphin. When the animals learn to speak to us (and they absoultely have to at a very early age or it just doesn't work) it changes them. 'Schrondingers chimp' some wag called it.
Are you saying that there are people who can speak or at least understand the communications of dolphins and apes? I thoght that was mostly something out fiction like Tarzan Dr. Dolittle.
Sure ther is basic stuff in the behaviour of animals that is easy to translate. Feed me, leave me alone and so on, but actually understnading the languange of a being that is as alien to us as a dolphin does not seem possible.
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Lars_H
SFN Regular
Germany
630 Posts |
Posted - 05/07/2002 : 14:10:10 [Permalink]
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What is your suggestion CompeterOrg?
'Human'-rights for apes? Human-rights for everything that passes some sort of test regardless of species?
Voting rights for dolphins?
If you think that aliens would avoid letting us know that they exist because they are smart, then you are assuming an intelligence far beyond any ever observed in any species on earth.
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Lars_H
SFN Regular
Germany
630 Posts |
Posted - 05/07/2002 : 14:29:24 [Permalink]
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quote:
I don't know the end of that story but it left me feeling very depressed about my own species: Humanity. 
Just a quick quote from Douglas Adams "Last Chance to See" about the topic. He makes several observations along those lines in the book, but I found this one summarizes the whole problem best.
quote:
It occurred to me that we had spent a day rapt with wonder watching the mountain gorilla, and being particularly moved at how human they seemed, and finding this to be one of their most engaging and fascinating features. To find afterwards that a couple of hours spent with actual humans was merely irritating and a bit confusing.
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Computer Org
Skeptic Friend
392 Posts |
Posted - 05/07/2002 : 14:29:45 [Permalink]
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quote:
What is your suggestion CompeterOrg?
'Human'-rights for apes? Human-rights for everything that passes some sort of test regardless of species?
Voting rights for dolphins?
If you think that aliens would avoid letting us know that they exist because they are smart, then you are assuming an intelligence far beyond any ever observed in any species on earth.
When I mentioned Brown Bears in my first post, it was from reading a book by a naturalist who specialized in Brown Bears.
He noted that many times the Brown Bear ["Grizzly"] he was following would discover that he was being followed, and would find a vantage point from which to observe the trail (--the Bear's own tracks--) over which the biologist had to travel.
On one occasion, the Bear went up a small bluff, backtracked, and was physically above the trail waiting for the naturalist to pass,--presumably to observe said naturalist at close range without the Bear's being seen. The biologist, following the Bear's tracks, continued down the trail, climed the low bluff, and ended up a few feet above the trail he had just travelled;--standing where the Bear had stood as in an observation post.
(It's been several years since I read the book.)
That's an Earthly Brown Bear. I don't assume much intelligence on the part of any hypothetical aliens. Oh, well: Maybe the intelligence of a Brown Bear. 
As to your questions, Lars, I have no ready answers.
Do thou amend thy face, and I'll amend my life. --Falstaff |
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Lars_H
SFN Regular
Germany
630 Posts |
Posted - 05/07/2002 : 14:44:07 [Permalink]
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Well Bears can be pretty smart, but what you described was an isolated incident.
To continually avoid detection all members of the group would have to smarter then the average human being. So it would only work if either the dumbest member of their species was smarter then that or if they only send a small group of elite specialist to earth and did not have any form of political authority that interferred in their decisions.
So maybee Bigfoots exist and are smart enough not to allow us to hunt them to extinction.
On the intelligence of bears I found this in a joke of the day cookie the other day:
"Campaigns to bearproof all garbage containers in wild areas have been difficult because as one biologist put it, 'There is a considerable overlap between the intelligence levels of the smartest bears and the dumbest tourists.'"
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Chippewa
SFN Regular
USA
1496 Posts |
Posted - 05/07/2002 : 14:47:05 [Permalink]
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quote:
What is your suggestion CompeterOrg?
'Human'-rights for apes? Human-rights for everything that passes some sort of test regardless of species?
Voting rights for dolphins?
If you think that aliens would avoid letting us know that they exist because they are smart, then you are assuming an intelligence far beyond any ever observed in any species on earth.
Hi there,
Don't know what ComputerOrg will say, but I'd like to add, yes - chimps and gorillas can learn sign language, read symbols (invented by humans,) and invent new phrases, and symbol combinations. They can also form sentences and communicate amongst themselves. They appreciate decoration and expression by arranging objects and placing flower on themselves (their art forms). Chimp communities can wage war on other chimp "nations" thereby exploding the myth that only humans kill other humans for political reasons. They can make tools (such as altering and fashioning reeds into tubes for inserting into termite mounds). To the best of my knowledge, they have not formulated a spoken language that we recognize, but people can communicate with them through sign language. They also seem to understand some verbal communication (as do cats by the way). This has all been documented. What I haven't mentioned is the whole body of research and observation of chimp social behavior that has similarities and differences with us. People spend years studying that!
Dolphins are believed to be highly intelligent and communicate amongst themselves. They seem to have a language of high frequency pitches with repeated patterns and alterations that are more complex than birds do. Other than fiction (Day of the Dolphin), I know of no one who speaks "dolphin."
As for "Human -rights for apes" -- How about "Ape rights for Apes"?
I think we humans have to get over this idea that we are the only form of consciousness and intelligence on Earth. Animals are just as capable of intelligence (of their own) and stupidity (of their own). I think if we ever meet an alien intelligence, we'll be in for a rude awakening based on our misconception of what intelligence is.
"Speaking without thinking like shooting without aiming." - Charlie Chan |
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Computer Org
Skeptic Friend
392 Posts |
Posted - 05/07/2002 : 15:10:35 [Permalink]
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quote:
Lars commented in part:
To continually avoid detection all members of the group would have to smarter then the average human being. So it would only work if either the dumbest member of their species was smarter then that or if they only send a small group of elite specialist to earth and did not have any form of political authority that interferred in their decisions.
I think that there are two parts to be addressed here: The hypothetical alien species on their home world and the hypothetical alien species who are in the Earth's system (Earth + Moon).
We have a fair technological ability yet even the best stuff we've got (Hubble Space Telescope) can see almost no detail. Even our probes which actually go and visit another world can see only very, very coarse detail.
I was always astounded at the NEAR mission to Eros when they would report that the smallest, tiny blot on the photograph was, say, 10 meters across. Ten meters wide! And NEAR was only kilometers above the surface of the asteroid Eros!
I don't think that their avoiding our detection while on their home world is any problem at all. This is all the more true if they know that we are looking for them and take some measures to be secretive;--or if they happen to live below the surface.
Now: If they have actually gotten to the Earth's system (Earth + Moon), then I think that it's pretty safe to say that they would be among the brightest that their species has. It's not hard to hide right here on Earth. With the Moon almost unexplored and half of it in a perpetual "blind-zone". . . .
If, if, if there are aliens out there and if they know how we treat our fellow Earthly species, I think that we will NOT know they exist until they are ready to be found. (--And if I were them, I'd be sure that I had plenty of weaponry--just in case we decided to treat them as we treat our own fellow Earthly-species.)
Do thou amend thy face, and I'll amend my life. --Falstaff |
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Slater
SFN Regular
USA
1668 Posts |
Posted - 05/07/2002 : 18:05:52 [Permalink]
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Are you saying that there are people who can speak or at least understand the communications of dolphins and apes?
Yes, to a degree.
Dolphins don't communicate the way we do. Their "words" are not abstractions like ours are. This is because their sonar puts sound images directly into their brains the same way our eyes do with light images. Dolphin speech is mostly the inputting of these direct images into other dolphins minds. This doesn't work in the air and dolphins have developed a more rudimentary speech of clicks and whistles that works in the short time they spend at the surface. Dolphins are chatter boxes, they never shut up. The Atlantic bottlenoses who live at the Kewalo Basin Marine Mammal Laboratory have taught Dr. Matthias Hoffmann-Kunt a small vocabulary. It's entirely action based, so that he always gets the same response to the same words. The dolphins apparently think that's all he can handle. He demonstrated this to me and it certainly looked and sounded like verbal communication. I tried but couldn't make myself understood. Perhaps my Irish accent affected my whistles and clicks. They did follow my hand signals though so they weren't just being petulant towards me. Matthais works with Louis Herman, they are the leading researchers in Echolocation.
I thoght that was mostly something out fiction like Tarzan
I was out to dinner not with Tarzan but with Jane a few months back. Jane Goodall that is (friend of my wife) and she was telling me that she speaks chimp quite fluently after all of these years with them. She proceeded to demonstrate much to the delight of the other patrons. The Gombe dialect of Chimpspeak is very primitive mostly concerning food and emotions. You can say "I'm upset, we're in danger" But there is no way to say "I'm upset, we're in danger look to the left there's a leopard coming." But you can tell your friends verbally what's a banana and what's a nut. When it comes to their stomachs the vocabulary gets more precise.
Feed me, leave me alone and so on, but actually understnading the languange of a being that is as alien to us as a dolphin does not seem possible.
Not quite impossible. The University of Hawaii is supposed to be getting new banks of computers that the Japanese were building for them that should make it a reality, with any luck, by fall. Hey it's only been a few years since they figured out the sonar/speech connection, the progress is pretty good.
The part that always stuck me as strange is that chimps and gorillas (I can even speak a few words of gorilla myself and it isn't my field) learned human first.
So who's really the more intelligent primate, us or them?
But think of it in relation to outer space aliens, 40 years ago we didn't even know dolphins could speak and they have been with us on Earth from the beginning. When we find intelligence will we even know it?
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My business is to teach my aspirations to conform themselves to fact, not to try and make facts harmonize with my aspirations. ---Thomas Henry Huxley, 1860 |
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PhDreamer
SFN Regular
USA
925 Posts |
Posted - 05/08/2002 : 06:04:06 [Permalink]
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quote:
I was out to dinner not with Tarzan but with Jane a few months back. Jane Goodall that is (friend of my wife) and she was telling me that she speaks chimp quite fluently after all of these years with them.
This is like, the coolest thing I've read in months. I have always been awestruck by this woman.
Generally speaking, the errors in religion are dangerous; those in philosophy only ridiculous.
-D. Hume |
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Chippewa
SFN Regular
USA
1496 Posts |
Posted - 05/09/2002 : 17:04:49 [Permalink]
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quote:
ComputerOrg wrote:
"...I don't know the end of that story but it left me feeling very depressed about my own species: Humanity.
Me too!
Chip
"Speaking without thinking like shooting without aiming." - Charlie Chan |
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Slater
SFN Regular
USA
1668 Posts |
Posted - 05/09/2002 : 18:51:34 [Permalink]
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A word of reality about chimps.
They are dangerous as hell. An adult male is at least as strong as any five adult human males. And they have really nasty teeth, very short tempers and quick reflexes. If they don't get what they want and they've been around humans long enough to know that our strength doesn't match our size, we are the ones who are in trouble.
They are really cute when they are little and they are very smart...but when they grow up--look out!
Something to keep in mind when looking for ET intelligence. Smart does no always equal nice. Before we contact them with SETI it would be a good idea to find out what they eat.
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My business is to teach my aspirations to conform themselves to fact, not to try and make facts harmonize with my aspirations. ---Thomas Henry Huxley, 1860 |
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Lisa
SFN Regular
USA
1223 Posts |
Posted - 05/09/2002 : 20:31:17 [Permalink]
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Insert Twilight Zone's "How to Serve Man" joke here:________________.
Lisa
If you're not living on the edge, you're taking up too much room. |
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Chippewa
SFN Regular
USA
1496 Posts |
Posted - 05/10/2002 : 01:16:16 [Permalink]
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quote:
"...Something to keep in mind when looking for ET intelligence. Smart does no always equal nice. Before we contact them with SETI it would be a good idea to find out what they eat."
This may sound naive to someone who hasn't worked with primates, but it is actually very sound advice. With regard to SETI, if we ever make contact, we may indeed end up being thankful that light years separate us and our messages. Yet another chilling thought eh?
"Speaking without thinking like shooting without aiming." - Charlie Chan |
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Donnie B.
Skeptic Friend
417 Posts |
Posted - 05/10/2002 : 06:28:36 [Permalink]
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A lot of S-F readers were shocked that the Pioneer spacecraft included a plaque that gave the location of the solar system. Open invitation to invasion?...
-- Donnie B.
Brian: "No, no! You have to think for yourselves!" Crowd: "Yes! We have to think for ourselves!" |
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