Are dolphins as smart as people? And if so, shouldn't we be treating them a bit better than we do now?
Who decided the prerequisite for whether or not a species should treated well depends on how close it comes to matching human intelligence? Sorry all the rest of you creatures, come back in million years when your brains have evolved a little further and we'll talk, until then you can stay in that cage.
A few of the conclusions of the article are misleading. Or rather, they have not been put in proper context.
Dolphins brains are large, but they are made mostly of glial cells which insulate the dolphins brain from the cold ocean water.
They shown many signs of intelligence, however, that is not as rare as people think in the animal kingdom. For example, Donkeys can count better than dolphins. Most of us have witnessed a dog or cat solving a problem in the world around it. Vampire bats have a system of social 'accounting' keeping track of which bats donate blood to the group and which don't. The examples continue.
Their has been a 'movement' in human thinking for some time that dolphins are our counterparts of the sea. There were many experiments by a Dr. Lily (creator of the deprivation tank) to show the intelligence of dolphins. His studies showed little evidence, but made bold claims. Ever since then I believe there has been a 'buzz' around the intelligence of dolphins. Which is substantial but over exaggerated.
The overall theme of the article, should humans take animal intelligence more seriously is a valid claim. Intelligence is rampant in the animal kingdom and it deserves an examination. A great book on the subject is, "Dragons of Eden" by Carl Sagan, although he focuses on human development.
Douglas Adams (loosely paraphrased): Humans believed themselves to be the most intelligent species on Earth because they developed machines of war and New York City. Dolphins knew they were more intelligent because they did build machines of war or New York City. All they did was eat fish and play all day.
It will be interesting to see how these thoughts play out in the future, specifically the idea of how we treat dolphins. The line between "person" and "animal" doesn't seem to be as clearly defined as we had initially thought.
This article reminded me of when I was in elementary school and tried arguing that fire met the characteristics of having life.
I think this kind of discussion is a prerequisite to joining any large scale interplanetary cultures that may or may not exist. Perhaps that's only scifi, but we as a species need to become comfortable at accepting and working with different sizes and shapes of intelligence before that even makes sense. We have a long ways to go; we've only relatively recently accepted that other kinds of humans count as full people - and that isn't even a globally accepted concept yet. :/
I've been thinking a lot about this kind of thing, specifically how insane it is that people so widely believe that humans are some sort of apex of evolution and even don't recognize that we are just animals with tons of limitations and animal traits.
It's entirely and easily conceivable that there could be another species that looks at us and wonders whether we are intelligent or persons according to their standards of intelligence and personhood. After all, manipulating our environment might not be proof enough; it could be argued that we still do it as an automatic response, simply working together as a species to propagate the species and still ultimately motivated in all our actions by innate, animalistic desires. It can easily be argued that the only fundamental difference between humans and other animals is simply the complexity of our interactions with our environment. Even the things we hold up as proof of transcendence from the animal world are likely just adaptations, eg, what we consider an impulse to develop ethical systems is just an adaptation of the brain to keep individuals working in the interest of the species.
Furthermore, imagine these hypothetical creatures had a better understanding of what we consider "souls," death and even pain. They could theoretically see no ethical issue with causing humans pain, suffering and death since, from their perspective, we don't really understand what's happening and our reactions are just automatic self-preservation.
I think the intelligence part of the discussion is science fiction.
Intelligence only lets us know whether or not we can do things, not whether we should do things when it comes to matters of morality. Intelligence tells us how to capture the dolphin and keep it captive not whether what we are doing is right. Intelligence tells us how to exploit other people not whether it is right.
I think you are spot on that accepting other life on this planet is a prerequisite to accepting life on other planets (I think this is illustrated beautifully in District 9, BTW), but intelligence has got nothing to do with it. It takes a great amount of intelligence to mobilize a genocide effort but you would need to ignore some of our universally accepted morals.
For a person or species that possesses great intelligence but little wisdom, empathy, and other attributes that enables us to do what is "right" self-preservation and exploitation is likely the default.
Excellent comment. We are most likely dolphins compared to some other species.
But I don't think the scale is smooth. There are sharp divisions: the use of tools, the understanding of death, the use of language, the use of language to describe abstract concepts, the use of oral history, the use of written history, the creation of artificial intelligence aides, etc.
I absolutely agree that having a bigger picture than just "people are special" is a prerequisite for first contact, I just also think that going to the other extreme, that all intelligences are mostly the same, is probably much worse than just having a human-bias. Instead we'll need a graduated system with different privileges and rights depending on where species appear on the scale. Such a graduated system will be the basis to determine whether or not we're being treated fairly by E.T., if/when they ever show up.
I have always found this subtopic to be interesting. My perhaps optimistic musing has been that a species sufficiently advanced to compare to humans as humans compare to dolphins would also have some way of measuring/estimating/scoring the level of consciousness (for want of a better term) of a lower species, which seems close to your thinking.
The interesting thing is that traditionally such distinctions have been religious, not scientific. That is, it was religion that eventually persuaded western civilization that all humans deserve to be treated equally, not some sort of logical or ethical argument.
If true, that leads me to think that we'll need some sort of version 2.0 of some of the major religions that deal with varying levels of sentience. This will probably happen after contact and not before, so it should be a very traumatic event for everybody concerned.
I can't find a source for this, but I remember reading that dolphins are the only other animals besides humans that craft sex toys. Monkey find little sticks and use them, but dolphins will actually rub themselves against coral to sand it into an appropriate shape.
By always framing such issues in this way (is a dolphin similar to us in some ways) we keep maintaining the age-old attitude that we should only care about those who are like us.
If it has the tendency to run away if you try smacking it with a baseball bat, person on not, it is more sensible leaving it alone if possible.
In Brazil they've filed Habeas Corpus claims on behalf of chimpanzees.
Just last week, animal protection groups filed a motion to have Jimmy released on grounds of Habeas Corpus, arguing that he is being denied his rights to freedom of movement and to a decent life, in Rio's Criminal Court.
While most of us are familiar with "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" and most of us enjoy making silly jokes, this comment fits better at reddit than here.
I realize my comment was in wildly poor taste because Hacker News is an Extremely Serious site where only very serious people talk about very serious things. (For example, about how we are all going to get dollar-sign-lotto rich by working 18 hour days for startups).
But talking down to me and pretending to explain why it is a bad comment ('it fits better on reddit' doesn't tell me anything) will only cause me to become incensed at how unjust it is that a website called 'hacker news' is completely full of people with sticks shoved deeply up their asses.
Who decided the prerequisite for whether or not a species should treated well depends on how close it comes to matching human intelligence? Sorry all the rest of you creatures, come back in million years when your brains have evolved a little further and we'll talk, until then you can stay in that cage.