Using iPads to bridge communication gap with dolphins
arstechnica.com
arstechnica.com
Chris Foresman elaborates in the comments: The gist is that scientists are convinced that when one dolphin communicates with another, it is transmitting three-dimensional imagery, as opposed to speaking a "verbal" language as we think of it.
This really reminded me of Grenouille, from the novel Perfume, who could think in "scent sentences." He lived his entire life isolated and frustrated with humanity, since he could not have a two way conversation with anyone in his language of scents.
Strange to think that human communication represents only a small portion of what's possible.
But humans can communicate 3d scenes and imagery in words. Perhaps inelegantly. But universal turing machines do lots of things inelegantly and it doesn't really matter. English is universal language (taking into account its ability to define new words), so we're not missing out on anything fundamentally important (and nor are, e.g., the French missing out on anything fundamental by not speaking English: French is universal too).
They're universal languages for people; for brains that specifically evolved to swing through trees, pick bugs out of our friends' fur, and to chase down antelopes. It's software that's pretty specific to the hardware.
What if we just don't have enough in common with a critter that evolved in a fully 3D environment with no hands?
English can also, of course, incorporate 1s and 0s and thus express anything that could be put into a computer (including a dolphin's brain, which is a computer). This would be horribly inelegant and slow, and I don't think it would ever come to that, but English is capable of doing it.
Just like a universal computer is quite a simple and minimal thing, so is a universal language. This is a common theme about universality: as soon as you start to get a reasonable amount of generality in a system, you often find you've reached universality even if you didn't intend to.
Universality will be discussed further in David Deutsch's upcoming book _The Beginning of Infinity_ which I highly recommend. The book also addresses the particular issue of the circumstances of evolution of our brain and whether that fundamentally limits us.
Dolphins use such high-pitched and information dense communication that it's highly possible they are communicating raw data that is directly converted into a 3d map or image by the receiving dolphin's brain. Listen to a dolphin's speech, then think of what a 56k modem sounds like... not too far off huh? Now imagine that dolphins could communicate actual 3d maps or sonographic images using sound, rather than just describe them.
A universal language can express anything that can be expressed in language. If qualia are outside the realm of language, that wouldn't make English less universal.
You may say dolphins use a language, and then feel qualia in response. Similarly, we can imagine a human who is genetically engineered for his skin to pinch when he hears certain sounds, so that he would feel the pinching quale. I think in neither case should triggering hardware features by sound be considered language. A nice example is "clap on" devices -- surely that's not language.
This is sort of like the difference between playing a text game like Zork or a 3D MMO like World of Warcraft. English only descriptions leave the details up to your imagination. 3d graphic imagery communicates the actual picture.
Further, really detailed and well written prose can describe 3d scenes -- and help the reader visualize them -- better than everyday photographs, 3d computers renderings, what dolphins have, etc... There is no limit to how much detail prose can include.
As a practical matter, we do not use English to its full capacity, and it's inefficient for some things, but still it is universal.
If someone had faith in this area of research, you'd think they would have been able to find funding for the construction of a specialized device in that time frame.
> "a complete language interface between humans and dolphins."
Soon enough dolphins will improve on Socrates? Or if they can't understand philosophy -- i.e. much of English is inaccessible to them -- then how exactly will it be complete?
Complete means different things in different contexts. I don't think the researcher was implying that dolphins might someday understand (or advance) philosophy.
Just about any undamaged human is capable of understanding some kind of philosophy, but I suspect that not even 1/2 of all humans are capable of understanding many particular philosophies.
Questions: What are the problems with the above? Is it precisely worded? How many of those observations also apply to the parent-post assertion?
Only a quite limited amount is known about how knowledge is created at a hardware level.
At a higher level (epistemology -- my specialty), there only exists one viable theory of how knowledge is created: by conjecture/guessing and refutation/criticism. This trial-and-error is an evolutionary process (literally, not metaphorically).
This process of knowledge creation is universal in character. Something either can do it, or can't. It does not conveniently allow for any limits.
Your assertion about limited and varied capacity for learning is clear, but to be compelling it would need some philosophical backing, in particular it'd need a theory of how knowledge is created that it's compatible with.
I think the issue your theory attempts to address is that a lot of people are dumb. If they have universal capacity, why don't they use it? However, this issue can be answered in other ways, e.g. by discussion of creativity-supressing memes.
Which is exactly what I wanted to talk about when I read "is capable" in your previous post.
Here is something relevant I wrote, about changing emotions (raw emotions aren't memes, but ways of interpreting and reacting to them are memes. emotions can also be triggered by ideas or memes.):
http://fallibleideas.com/emotions
The basic, overall problem is that parents and educators are extremely coercive and destroy the ability of (most) children to think for themselves (to a good approximation -- again, it's possible to recover). If you'd like to discuss that more, I'd urge you to come post your thoughts or questions on this list and I will reply (HN is not a suitable forum for longer discussions):
If they can can communicate about Finite State Machine and a couple of stacks...
iPad + home screen wallpaper that says, "Don't Panic" = HHGG