
Why dolphins are deep thinkers (2003) - rcarmo
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2003/jul/03/research.science
======
hencq
A long time ago I came across this question [1] (probably through Hackernews):
"What do you believe is true even though you cannot prove it." I found the
question hugely fascinating. For me one answer is that some attributes which
we think of as uniquely human, such as intelligence or consciousness, aren't
actually so unique. I believe at least many mammals and possibly other animals
(birds? some fish?) have some form of (perhaps basic) intelligence.

Of course there is always a big risk in anthropomorphizing behavior and there
are huge challenges in designing replicable experiments. However, ultimately
humans are just apes so it shouldn't be too surprising if some of our human
attributes actually evolved much earlier. In any case I find research like
that mentioned in the article immensely interesting. There is still so much we
can learn on this front.

[1] [https://www.edge.org/annual-question/what-do-you-believe-
is-...](https://www.edge.org/annual-question/what-do-you-believe-is-true-even-
though-you-cannot-prove-it)

~~~
AnIdiotOnTheNet
You can go deeper than this. Attempt to define "intelligence" in any
philosophically meaningful way and you might find that it isn't clear that a
coffee table isn't intelligent on some level, or alternatively that a human
being isn't just a sufficiently complicated coffee table. "Consciousness", in
the philosophical meaning, is even more interesting because it is entirely
non-empirical; it can't be measured in any objective sense.

Any deeper implications of this are left as an exercise for the reader.

~~~
naasking
> "Consciousness", in the philosophical meaning, is even more interesting
> because it is entirely non-empirical; it can't be measured in any objective
> sense.

Don't mistake "don't know how" with "cannot". The fact that we currently don't
know what consciousness is, doesn't entail that we won't one day.
Consciousness will likely one day be considered a some physical process, which
means it will one day be measurable.

The difficulties surrounding qualia require a resolution, but it's a mistake
to just take some people's word that physicalism can't account for our
qualitative perceptions.

~~~
AnIdiotOnTheNet
No. You are incorrect.

Let us say that we have a computer system so complicated that it is capable of
mimicking a human being with perfect accuracy. You would probably say that
that computer is not a being that has consciousness, because it is merely
doing calculations to replicate behavior. Problem is, you could easily say the
same about any given human being. There is, quite literally, no way to tell
the difference through objective measurement.

We can measure responses to stimuli, we can determine the complexity of a
system, but we have no way of determining if a system _experiences_ anything
or is simply running a program, and we never will.

~~~
naasking
> Let us say that we have a computer system so complicated that it is capable
> of mimicking a human being with perfect accuracy. You would probably say
> that that computer is not a being that has consciousness, because it is
> merely doing calculations to replicate behavior.

I have no problem considering such a system conscious and intelligent. What's
the difficulty exactly?

> Problem is, you could easily say the same about any given human being. There
> is, quite literally, no way to tell the difference through objective
> measurement.

Exactly, which means there is no difference.

Consciousness will turn out to be a functional process, which means any system
with the same structure will exhibit consciousness. This would be an objective
measurement.

~~~
AnIdiotOnTheNet
Then how can you make a statement to the effect that we may one day know how
to measure consciousness, which you have just agreed is fundamentally
unmeasurable?

~~~
naasking
> which you have just agreed is fundamentally unmeasurable?

Where did I do that?

~~~
AnIdiotOnTheNet
Looks like you added a line to clarify, or I missed it on first reading:

> Consciousness will turn out to be a functional process

Here's where I disagree. In order to know what kind of physical structure
produces consciousness, you need to know what consciousness is, and we have no
way of doing that. You can define some arbitrary criteria, say, having the
ability to make metatools, but that is meaningless in this context,
"conscious" will just be another word for "can make metatools".

In an effort to clarify, let me ask you this: why do you care what is and is
not conscious?

~~~
naasking
> In order to know what kind of physical structure produces consciousness, you
> need to know what consciousness is, and we have no way of doing that.

I don't see how this is different than any other empirical fact we didn't know
before we started exploring the world. In what way could we properly
characterize fire, or stars, or bacteria before we had any conception of such
things? Yet, I don't think anyone sensible would disagree that we largely
understand these concepts now.

Similarly, consciousness is an amalgamation of different information processes
that we have yet to disentangle, and all we have is a catch-all term
"consciousness" to describe our ignorance.

> In an effort to clarify, let me ask you this: why do you care what is and is
> not conscious?

I care about anything that is not yet explained.

~~~
AnIdiotOnTheNet
> I don't see how this is different than any other empirical fact we didn't
> know before we started exploring the world.

We didn't know that bacteria existed, but we knew what disease was. Once we
had the concept of bacteria, showing it to be related to disease was a matter
of testing. How do you test if something has a consciousness? I know that
consciousness exists because I experience it, but for all I know you don't,
and I have no way of knowing any different because experiences are, by
definition, subjective.

You've probably seen this old XKCD about color [1]. It's like that. We can
both perceive a wavelength of light and have labeled it "blue" for the
purposes of communication, but we cannot possibly know eachother's experience
of it. The very question is meaningless in an empirical model of reality.

> Similarly, consciousness is an amalgamation of different information
> processes that we have yet to disentangle, and all we have is a catch-all
> term "consciousness" to describe our ignorance.

I disagree. You describe what I would call "mind". The kind of consciousness
I'm talking about could be described as "the experience of being". We all
_know_ what it is, but we get our communication about it confused with
concepts like intelligence, mind, and complexity. I suspect this is because we
grew up with a scientific worldview and have difficulty allowing ourselves to
believe something non-objective can exist, so we entangle it with concepts
that are objective to force it into our model of reality.

> I care about anything that is not yet explained.

Ok, fair enough. I asked because this sort of discussion usually takes place
in the context of people having already come to the conclusion that human
beings (and maybe some animals) are special and trying desperately to find a
line of reasoning that allows for them being conscious, but not computers or
plants or other such things. Some of my earlier arguments presumed this
context and that may have been a source of mutual confusion.

[1] [https://xkcd.com/32/](https://xkcd.com/32/)

------
okket
See also discussion from 8 years ago:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=917128](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=917128)
(28 comments)

~~~
delinka
Since we can't continue the older discussion, I'd like to comment here on the
new thread.

I'm discouraged by the topmost thread. In every case of (anecdotal?)
experiments, the researcher was attempting repeatability with the _same group_
of dolphins. I'd like to suggest that, given the 'negative' results and the
predictions of dolphin keepers, repeatability should be attempted with a
different group of dolphins.

~~~
gerbilly
The other implication of testing this on "another group of dolphin" is the
ethical dimension.

Some people believe it's unethical to imprison dolphins in a small pool.

I'd argue we certainly don't need to capture more dolphins to 'prove' they are
intelligent.

I also never understood why the barrier is set so high for giving any other
species but ourselves credit for being intelligent.

~~~
AnIdiotOnTheNet
> I also never understood why the barrier is set so high for giving any other
> species but ourselves credit for being intelligent.

It is our tendency to believe things that we want to believe, and we want to
believe things that align with our self interest.

Since human moral understanding has come around to the concept that all human
beings have inherent value, so therefore we can't just torture and kill them
because they're not part of the tribe, we've had to keep inventing reasons why
that same behavior is acceptable towards animals. If we were to decide that
animals deserve the same moral considerations as ourselves, then we have to
accept that many of the foundations for our comfortable lifestyles are
immoral, and if we did that we'd have to consider giving them up.

~~~
flavor8
> we'd have to consider giving them up.

Just this week there's been a round of articles on the scientific consensus
that fish feel pain. Read [https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/fish-
feel-pain...](https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/fish-feel-
pain-180967764/), for example, and see if the final third of the article
leaves you comfortable about eating fish. I've always thought the "catch and
release" practice (and the accompanying justification that fish don't feel
pain, so that it's harmless sportsmanlike fun) to be bewilderingly shallow
thinking - but despite that fish is a much more significant part of my diet
than avian or mammal meat. I'm also deeply hypocritical about mammal meat
eating; every time I go to an Indian restaurant (but never otherwise) for
example, I'll order lamb, just because it's tastier than saag or tofu. As
another example, I don't eat pork, with the notable exception of cured meats,
which are also too damned tasty. I probably could go wholesale vegan,
especially with some of the better fake-meat protein sources, and yet perhaps
I don't want to enough, and/or I enjoy eating meat a few times a month too
much to do so. That's hardly a well justified moral position to take, and yet
I suspect it's not uncommon.

[Also, the dividing line between animals and plants - while of course clearly
defined - may be softer than we've assumed.
([https://www.pri.org/stories/2014-01-09/new-research-plant-
in...](https://www.pri.org/stories/2014-01-09/new-research-plant-intelligence-
may-forever-change-how-you-think-about-plants)). In 25 years will we talking
about eating lab grown food only instead of farmed plants?]

I suspect our moral systems are still reeling from 1000+ years of Christianity
completely dominating our societal thinking - even if your parents weren't
religious, or theirs, their inherited "firmware" (societal norms picked up in
early years of learning) probably has a lot of irrationally derived
foundations. Our attempts at scientific derived moral systems haven't had
particularly great results so far, but perhaps we'll get there in time.

------
cetalingua
Dolphins are truly fascinating creatures. They have extremely sophisticated
brain architecture that definitely supports at least some degree of sentience.
Some species like humpback whales, orcas (but curiously not Tursiops) have von
Economo neurons (VENs)that have been connected to vocal learning, language and
even theory of mind.Cetacean cortical surface area is quite large
([https://twitter.com/Cetalingua/status/932631255165886464?ref...](https://twitter.com/Cetalingua/status/932631255165886464?ref_src=twcamp%5Eshare%7Ctwsrc%5Em5%7Ctwgr%5Eemail%7Ctwcon%5E7046%7Ctwterm%5E0)
and brain architecture in general is amazing, like visual cortex being next to
the auditory cortex
([https://twitter.com/Cetalingua/status/901590689091387393?ref...](https://twitter.com/Cetalingua/status/901590689091387393?ref_src=twcamp%5Eshare%7Ctwsrc%5Em5%7Ctwgr%5Eemail%7Ctwcon%5E7046%7Ctwterm%5E0))

Add to that conscious breathing, unihemispheric sleep, cognitive preparation
and fully conscious control of cardiovascular system, conscious planning and
preparation for dives. Some species (pygmy sperm whales) have magnetite
crystals in their brains and probably have some sort of magnetoreception for
navigation, and the list goes on and on.

Our challenge is to make sense of it all, and how can we even do it, our
auditory cortex is nowhere near our visual cortex.

~~~
gech
At what point in embryonic development are these magnetite crystals formed,
and how? Amazing

~~~
cetalingua
In pygmy sperm whales, magnetite crystals appear to be concentrated in the
rostroventral dura, but we know next to nothing about how they function or are
used, let alone about how they are being formed.

------
debt
I feel bad for Dolphins. They evolved from land animals and seemingly got much
smarter underwater; only by the time their brains came online, they were,
like, stuck underwater.

And then us land mammals evolved to hunt them and accidentally destroy the
oceans. That sucks.

They seem like a really chill species that we seem to have a lot in common
with. They have language and stuff.

------
drKarl
So long, and thanks for all the fish!

------
fallingfrog
Let's reverse the question. It's very enticing to believe that dolphins might
be sentient. But what's the evidence to the contrary? There must be some.

~~~
cetalingua
Well, they seem to not understand that they can jump over the net and escape
the capture. They (wild cetaceans especially) are not very interested in
establishing contact with another sentient species ( us). In all experiments
on non-human intelligence, only Alex, the grey parrot, actually asked the
question.

Having said that, we need to realize that we still do not have sufficient
knowledge to argue either way. We are dealing with species who rely on sound
more than humans ever would. We still do not fully understand what is going on
there, echolocation has been studied for 60 years, last year new echolocation
clicks types were discovered. Do not also forget that our knowledge is mostly
about bottlenose dolphins, but there are many other species. Last year it was
also reported that humble harbor porpoises are not as asocial as they thought
to be, and in fact, communicate with each other via pulsed signals produced at
higher frequencies not audible to their predators.

~~~
fallingfrog
I suppose that if the situation were reversed and I was in a cage surrounded
by dolphins, I'd probably spend most of my time trying to communicate,
imitating the sounds they made, trying to establish vocabulary.. and if I
worked out that I wouldn't be punished, I'd probably refuse to perform tricks
until they reciprocated. So, if they are intelligent they're very different
behaviorally from us.

------
vadimberman
More examples of cetacean intelligence here in the last section:
[https://techcrunch.com/2016/12/31/reverse-engineering-the-
un...](https://techcrunch.com/2016/12/31/reverse-engineering-the-universal-
translator/)

Apparently, dolphins have an equivalent of names and the entropy of their
communication is similar to that of the human speech.

------
cobbzilla
From an economic perspective: "The dolphins are not only gaming the system
they are saving and using a capital structure to increase total output." [1]

[1]
[http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2018/01/dol...](http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2018/01/dolphin-
capital-theory.html)

------
ncmncm
Not to take anything away from cetaceans, but this article slights elephants
and crows. Both recognize themselves in mirrors, and invent tools.

~~~
fenwick67
Pigeons do this too, believe it or not.

[http://science.sciencemag.org/content/212/4495/695](http://science.sciencemag.org/content/212/4495/695)

------
msiyer
Any species that has survived for a considerable period has to be intelligent.

------
PinkMilkshake
I recommend the latest episode of Sam Harris' podcast Waking Up. It's a 3 hour
discussion about consciousness between him and Anil Seth, it's quite good and
probably warrants multiple playbacks.

