Hacker News Reader

Comment by mtrimpe | Hacker News Reader

Dolphins are exactly why I feel SETI is such a misguided (in a sweet way) effort.

Here we are, searching for extraterrestrial intelligence while we can't even communicate with the other intelligent species on our own planet.

Glad to see we're making progress though!

View on HN

Parrots call each other by names as well[1] and crows have been shown to speak in two different dialects depending if they are with a group or among individuals[2]. In the same link about crows, they have also been seen using tools in the wild and in experiments using "meta tools", something that only primates have been observed doing (using one tool to reach another tool that will be used for their end goal [generally food]).

It's quite amazing how much we take the animals around us for granted sometimes since all of this, like the dolphins is really new research that has only hit the tip of the iceberg.

The documentary about crows from PBS is quite insightful (full episode is at the link below if your region allows it). I was never much of a fan of crows and considered them kind of an annoyance. However, after watching it, I gained much more respect for their intelligence and complexity.

[1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ed9A4HPdXgQ

[2] http://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/episodes/a-murder-of-crows/fu...

edit: the OP link actually mentions those particular crows and their tool usage in one of the slides.

Modern culture is filled with prejudices towards non-human forms of life. Not only are animals taken for granted and exploited for the well-being of the human species, which is wrongfully considered a "superior" life form, but life itself is taken for granted. Realizing just "now" that non-human life forms are more complex than we thought is simply because our ability to even be open minded about that possibility was completely suffocated by the hubris of humanity.

Indeed. I'd say a mixture of people having more time to study such things as well as people getting over the idea that we have nothing to learn from animals. I study animal intelligence as sort of a hobby in my free time and have focused on birds lately since they seem to get less recognition for intelligence than mammals or other animals that dominate television shows. Everyone knows parrots can mimic, but little mainstream news goes beyond that. Corvids (jays[1], crows[2], starlings, etc) can actually mimic in a similar manner. Birds in general are quite misrepresented and phrases like "eat like a bird" or "bird brained" are quite incorrect.

We all come from the same basic building blocks through evolution, so it would be quite weird to say that we don't share traits with our fellow animals.

[1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3T6pUxthClw

[2] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cgTCoTD3BWI

Not just modern culture, but really for the history of civilization. In fact, discoveries like these are starting to make us more empathetic, finally. During the 18th century, not only were all non-humans considered mindless automatons, many humans were too. The early descriptions of indigenous people by the European whites are pretty appalling.

It's ironic in its own way, given how many (not all, but many) of the indigineous groups treated animals and their ecosystems with more respect than they were given by other humans. In a lot of ways, it seems like we're having to relearn a lot of the values that cultures with longer histories have known for hundreds of years.

Let's be careful about "values from cultures with longer histories". They may have had good values but that did not prevent them from slaughtering each other all the same. Some american indians were known to be very violent yet very much in harmony with nature. So, what good does it do in the end?

> So, what good does it do in the end?

Adopt the good ideas of the past and avoid (and learn from) the mistakes of the past so we do not repeat them. One can respect the environment and animals without smashing heads. Pretty much every culture has had a violent past at some point, even cultures like the Romans and the Greeks were rather barbaric by modern standards (especially the Romans). Our descendants will probably think the same about us to a point as well in a couple hundred years.

You do not have to go back very far to find barbary even in our civilization (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert-Fran%C3%A7ois_Damiens) and this happened in the same century as the human rights philosophers. That was just a few generations ago.

Heh, that's funny, I was just watching a 3 part BBC Documentary on Versailles[1] (part 1 Louis XIV, part 2 Louis XV, part 3 Louis XVI). They talked quite a bit about Louis XV's attempted assassination and Damiens. From what was said, most other countries were appalled at the execution style.

I'd still say The Terror and Great Terror during the French Revolution were far more barbaric while masquerading in the name of enlightenment though. Even someone like Robespierre, who initially despised the death penalty and was seen as a champion of free thinking ended up being tyrant responsible for the deaths of thousands and restricted basic human freedoms like the press and speech.

[1] http://docuwiki.net/index.php?title=Versailles_(BBC)

> I'd still say The Terror and Great Terror during the French Revolution were far more barbaric while masquerading in the name of enlightenment though

Totally agree with you, and I certainly despise the national celebration of that hideous genocide (and there is no other word for it) called "the revolution" although I am French myself.

By the way, Robespierre was not the only one responsible (Marat, St-Just and others come to mind), and even Danton who was considered as a more moderate representative certainly did not do anything to stop the ongoing massacers and also used the "comite de salut public" to arrest and guillotine political opponents as well.

Yet, you still find streets, avenues, boulevards, schools wearing the name of such butchers all over France.

Yep, all very true and totally agree. Never just one individual responsible, I just dropped the name of the biggest one for the sake of briefness. I think it was Danton that said something like, "My only regret is to go before that rat Robespierre" when he was giving his last words after being arrested for realizing how screwed up the revolution had become with his and other's control of The Committee of Public Safety.

Also pains me to see (at least at the time, not sure if it's true anymore [perhaps you can elaborate on the public view of Marat now for me] ) that Jean-Paul Marat was made out to be a martyr on his death instead of despised for his role in fueling the flames. I'm not French (some day I will visit when I can), but I do have a large interest in French History (and European History in general) as well as revolutions and how people act during them. Revolutions kind of serve as a reminder of how little human nature changes during a time period that is meant to change humanity for the better. It unfortunately seems to repeat itself with nearly every revolution since, which is ashame.

> Jean-Paul Marat was made out to be a martyr on his death instead of despised for his role in fueling the flames.

Very true. He was well known to be claiming "100 000 tetes doivent tomber" (100 000 heads must fall) in order to get rid of the so-called "internal enemies". Interestingly, while he had a "martyr" image, so did Charlotte Corday (who killed him) at least in the eye of numerous writers post-Revolution.

If you are really into the story of the french revolution, I would really, absolutely recommend you watch the movie "La Revolution Francaise" made in 1989, in two parts of 3 hours each. It's very faithful to the spirit of the time, the actors are all excellent and you can really see how everything spins out of control progressively. Brilliant movie, sadly only distributed in France as far as I know. Contact me (check my profile) if you are interested.

I'd love to see it actually. Tried to contact you via your website form, but it wasn't working. I'll just send a tweet instead.

There should be my email somewhere in the profile, no? (check again, just added in profile)

I'd say the Russians pulled the same trick a century later. There were other butchers much more recently, but communism is the most recent example of butchery masquerading as enlightenment.

A Murder Of Crows was done in concert w/ CBC, though they may have done their own post-production work (I've only watched the PBS version). Canadians should probably look to the CBC[1] to watch it. There's also an interesting blurb from the director here[2].

[1]: http://www.cbc.ca/documentaries/natureofthings/2009/murderof...

[2]: http://www.cbc.ca/documentaries/natureofthings/2009/murderof...

Wow, that second link was a really good article. Thanks for sharing. I didn't realize crows were that camera shy or observant that people were watching them back.

Makes sense though they they would be paranoid when someone or some thing is paying them too much attention as 99% of the time it means something bad will come next.

Once I cornered a rabbit in my ally. The usual way out was blocked, and the rabbit was frantically searching the far wall for another escape while I watched. After a bit I was momentarily distracted, and the rabbit choose that moment to dash past me.

Apparently the rabbit knew my attention had turned. As would a crow. They don't need our special mental abilities -- language and lambdas -- to model the mental states of those around them.

(In other words, even the rabbits could tell last Saturday's party sucked as soon as they entered the room. Which is why none of them stayed.:)

I guess what just surprised me was crows would be that alert when they really have the advantage on us when it comes to escaping and being aware from having the high ground and ability to fly (well unless a person is hunting them, which is unlikely in a city). That combined with their communication with each other of potential threats.

I grew up on a farm around lots of wild animals and you're correct about rabbits though from my times of trying to catch them or saving baby bunnies from the cats. They're very observant, but I always figured they had much more reason to be from being alone and also limited to the ground without the ability to climb trees.

I've seen some birds that have little awareness (mourning doves and some sparrows). Sometimes they don't even realize you're almost on top of them until you're right next to them and then they freak out and fly away.

Same way cats can detect whether you focus your attention at them or not.

Eyes are very popular organ and seeing eyes and recognizing what they are looking at is very useful skill. I think animals get this skill as soon as they have enough physical computing power to achieve this task.

Around here there is a saying that crows can count to 2. So as the story goes: If you are going to hunt crows from a shed you should walk 4 men into the shed and then 3 should leave. Then the crow will count one, two, many men went in and many men went out and will consider the shed empty. I don't know if it is real but I have heard it from farmers/ around where I grew up.

Then again: Crows aren't too intelligent, the ladder trap seems to be effective around the world - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LZLYiOn83Po

I wouldn't call some crows falling for a trap a clear indication of not being intelligent as there are probably many that also avoid it. Even humans fall for obvious traps again and again that many of us also avoid (phishing, Nigerian scams, pyramid schemes, link jacking, etc).

Not trying to be a defender of animal intelligence, just playing devil advocate for the sake of good, intelligent conversation :)

> Not trying to be a defender of animal intelligence, just playing devil advocate for the sake of good, intelligent conversation :)

And I really enjoyed it. : )

  Greasemonkey Gerbil
  Looking at the mouse trap.
  Looking at the spring, thinking 'bout the bait.
  Understands everything.
  But not the link.

We communicate with dolphins, gorillas, elephants, etc. all the time.

SETI is looking for technological species.

SETI is about finding alien signals, not necessarily understanding them. However, it's likely that any extraterrestrial intelligence capable of sending out signals powerful enough to reach us, will have an understanding of science and mathematics, which is more than we have in common with dolphins.

That sounds very intriguing. However, it's likely that any extraterrestrial intelligence capable of maintaining life on it's home planet, will have an understanding of their fellow life forms, which is more than we have.

What makes you say that? It doesn't take too much knowledge to maintain a biosphere, otherwise it would have collapsed long before humans arrived on Earth. It seems more to do with how cautious you want to be, how far a race is willing to push the environment in return for faster progress.

I also suspect that any extraterrestrial intelligence capable of making a signal detectable by our equipment would have given up its biological roots a long time ago, as life as we know it is badly adapted for space travel.

> It doesn't take too much knowledge to maintain a biosphere, otherwise it would have collapsed long before humans arrived on Earth.

Well. It did. Multiple times.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extinction_event

It's just that things tend do kick back in if you give them few millions of years.

> However, it's likely that any extraterrestrial intelligence capable of maintaining life on it's home planet, will have an understanding of their fellow life forms, which is more than we have.

That's quite the assumption. Right now, our sample size of one shows the opposite.

There's no reason we can't pursue multiple lines of research in parallel. It's probably more efficient too.

SETI is not misguided. We've known for a long time that Earth was hospitable to intelligent life (us). That there are other species with similar levels of intelligent just makes Earth more awesome.

But it would be a complete mindfuck if we found other intelligent life in space, where before there were mainly only stars, rocks, and interesting formations of liquid and gas somewhere in between. It would change everything.

The thing about SETI is that it is not really a search for intelligent life, it's a search for "intelligent life that broadcasts radio waves of a frequency and power that we can detect in a pattern and on a timescale similar enough to our own communications that we can recognize it".

Fermi's paradox basically boils down to: if intelligent life is at all common, it should be everywhere we look, and yet we don't see any. The traditional position is that therefore if we don't see intelligent life, it must be because it's too rare, or communication across interstellar distances is impossible. But the other possible answer is that intelligent life is everywhere, and we just don't understand or even recognize it as such.

The fact that we've been living with dolphins for millions of years and actively studying them for decades and have only just worked out a pretty basic fact -- they have names for each other -- despite the fact that they share most of their genes with us and live under the same environmental conditions exactly, suggests that we are probably really really bad at recognizing intelligent life that isn't exactly like our own.

It is also possible that we haven't found intelligent life yet because we define both intelligence and life in very specific ways that we as humans can relate to. For example, there can be an intelligent microorganism species out there where each individual microorganism leads a life as complex as a human. They may have invented all sorts of things in the micro scale, but chances are we might never find them simply because we are not looking for intelligent life in such a micro context.

I think SETI will be much more fruitful once we master neutrinos for communication.

Radio waves are probably in the same bucket of technologies as smoke signals for civilizations few hundreds years more advanced than us.

I'd say having a meaningful conversation with a dolphin would be a much bigger mindfuck.

For all we know we could be discussing how the transition to Kantian philosophy played out slightly different for them in a few years.

Dr. Irene Pepperberg has had meaningful conversations with an African Grey parrot.

It was pretty cool. It gives me hope for a future of being part of a society with other sapient species in it.

But it wouldn't be quite the "whoa, on large enough scales the universe _really is_ the same, everywhere" type feeling that humans having meaningful conversations with, say, Fookin' Prawns would.

"it would be a complete mindfuck if we found other intelligent life in space, where before there were mainly only stars, rocks, and interesting formations of liquid and gas somewhere in between. It would change everything."

Given that the Milky Way alone has at least 100 billion planets (17 billion which are Earthlike)[1], it would actually be a far greater shock for there not to be intelligent life in space.

[1] http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2013-01/billions-and-b...

SETI isn't about communication though, at least not the conversational type; the speed of light is a cruel mistress.

This is a healthy sentiment that shows respect for the otherness of the other. I do think SETI is still necessary only because the empirical platform that all life shares is universal -- the radio spectrum, physics -- it's the same for all species. But this thread still clearly deserves some quotes from Stanislaw Lem:

"We don't want to conquer the cosmos, we simply want to extend the boundaries of Earth to the frontiers of the cosmos."

"We are only seeking Man. We have no need of other worlds. We need mirrors. We don't know what to do with other worlds."

An intelligent species is different from a technological one, by a huge magnitude. That's not to say that dolphins aren't worthwhile to communicate with but there will never be a dolphin shakespeare, or pythagoras, or einstein, or da vinci. The options for being able to communicate with a technological species are astronomically greater than with a non-technological intelligent species.

SETI are one of the biggest supporters of research into dolphin vocalisations. Laurance Doyle, who is at SETI, is one of the pioneers of the field.

http://www.tusker.com/tusker-trips/eclipse-trips/archaeo/art...

I feel the same way about projects looking into habitation of foreign planets. The science and the engineering behind the endeavor is interesting, but why seriously not start thinking about and practicing sustainability in places like Antarctica?

Colonizing another planet is a hedge against a destructive event (asteroid, bomb, etc) completely extinguishing the human species.

Colonizing another planet would be a speciating event. Alpha Centurians would become a different species anyway, just like a population of birds that gets stranded on a remote island becomes a different species.

SETI isn't about communicating with alien lifeforms, it's about detecting signs of other intelligences than ourselves. Studying these aspects of dolphins is actually the same endeavour, just looking in different places.

I think what really excites most people about SETI is not just the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, but extraterrestrial life that's more advanced than we are.

Not sure what 'advanced' means though :)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com