So if I drum my fingers on the table, and my colleague gets visibly annoyed by it, these researchers think I am "talking" to him ?
The storyteller uses some very impressive body language; it's great to see. It made me wonder if this is a particular strength of deaf storytelling, given that the audience has to be watching closely anyway.
Similarly, 99% of people will not appreciate an expressive signer as much as a vocalist.
That is just reality. I doesn't mean it is without value.
"But look, there are tons of people who speak English but still use Spanish to communicate with others who only or mostly speak Spanish"
"99% of those people would not be interested in Spanish if they or a loved one did not have problems speaking English".
Are you claiming everyone can "easily appreciate" a Spanish language singer as much as one they actually speak?
"Hearing folks can as easily appreciate a talented and expressive signer as a vocalist. " is a silly claim.
If that were the case everyone would be going to sign language concerts they dont understand.
Lots of folks feel similarly about opera.
It sounds like you've formed these opinions without ever exposing yourself to the things you have opinions about.
Like I said in my original response, that's ok. It can be a valid art form with less mass appeal. More people like swift than Miles Davis. That doesn't invalidate Miles Davis.
There are very strong opinions within the deaf community that it is not a handicap or disability and should be viewed more as a culture [1].
Sign languages are for humans. Even those of us with sharp hearing can learn to take greater advantage of the bandwidth available to us.
What they have actually shown - that cuttlefish react to another cuttlefish waving its tentacles - is clearly not showing that tentacle waving "serves as a communication system between cuttlefish.
The communication isn't the waving in "reaction" (it's not clear it's simply a reaction, but let's assume it is) to the original wave, but the original wave itself.
And the fact that it's also triggered by videos indicates it's not just a mechanical reaction (like some of the research about how plants "communicate" is which are essentially mechanical responses to stimuli).
However, this doesn't necessarily mean that the communication is meaningful. It just shows that a means of communicating exists.
That is my point. No confusion here.
They state that tentacle waving serves "as a communication system between cuttlefish."
Merely showing that a thing reacts to another thing doing something in a certain way is NOT showing the existence of a communication system between them.
You can drum your fingers because you are bored, not to signal to the outside that you are bored. Strictly speaking me picking up on your boredness because you drum your fingers makes it communication anyways I think :).
A better example would be waving at someone, communicating "hello / look at me / I see you / here / I'm happy to see you / goodbye"
I do wonder if some of these people realize they may not be neurotypical, even if just slightly. A huge amount of human behaviors and communications are encoded how we move and how our face reacts. If for some reason you can't pick up on or interpret this, then human behavior can be quite confusing.
Even if someone were deliberately trying to convey they were bored via finger drumming, that communication only works in a social framework where we've mutually established a meaning to that behavior. If an alien were finger drumming on a table that would not necessarily indicate they were bored nonetheless that they wanted to convey that they were bored.
(some ai said this, but I think AI should be perfect for defining common words :)