A radically different intelligence might not be graspable by us as an intelligence, or as an individual, or as anything at all. Perhaps termite mounds are intelligent, but in such a different dimension that we just can’t appreciate it.
What you seem to want is an intelligence that is non-human but still close enough to human that we can communicate with it. Although it’s not clear what we’d have to talk about, once we get past the Pythagorean theorem.
I always wonder why we don’t seem to be making more of an effort to communicate with the larger, intelligent animals? Like, we had Koko the gorilla and the chimp (whose name I forgot) that learned sign language, and since then I haven’t really heard of … similar projects? But if we’re going to work on trying to imagine intelligence that isn’t human, I feel like there are things to learn there. Also, if we can get the animals to learn … words (?), maybe we can get them to blog or vlog regularly, which is much easier and cheaper than in Koko’s time.
Yep, exactly! But also they don’t have to speak. They can just press buttons that mean stuff, which seems a lot easier to fund nowadays. We are all drowning in tablets and ipads!
Hmmm. You make an excellent point; it looks like an experiment worth trying.
The animal in question will, of course, have been raised by humans, raised—in effect—in a human mindset, which rather limits the difference from a baseline human mind that’s possible. Even so, though, one expects that there might be some differences...
I actually do agree that other animals, especially mammals, will probably turn out to be annoyingly similar to humans. So if we’re looking for a completely alien race we might be pretty disappointed. But they might have some interesting differences we don’t anticipate precisely because we haven’t really tried looking yet?
Also, I bet it’s pretty different to be an octopus. Even a human-raised octopus! (Although we would need textured buttons so ipads won’t help there. And they might turn out to not be smart/cooperative enough.)
The consensus on the results seems to be that they learned hundreds of words of ASL, but do not seem to be able to learn to combine them with any sort of grammar other than grouping situationally-related words close together in time. More a series of single-gesture associations and exclamations than sentences. Our language and communication faculties don’t have much of a counterpart in there.
As they matured they also appeared to become aggressive and uncontrollable. Though perhaps that has something to do with being fully physically mature by age 11 after entering puberty at age 7...
Nim wasn’t raised for very long in that environment, though—they transferred him to a laboratory at a young age and he was very undersocialized compared to Washoe.
I’m not sure to what degree you’d call Washoe aggressive and uncontrollable. I know a few people who met her (a journalist, a primatologist, a psychologist and sign language interpreter) and even interacted freely with her and all of them found her to be rather charming; all in circumstances where, while her surrogate parent was certainly present, he could hardly have stopped her if she’d decided to inflict harm or just felt threatened for some reason.
(Washoe is also said to have taught her son much of what she knew before her death—he was raised only by the sign-using chimps in that community, not humans, and the human handlers only ever used seven signs around him. Her vocabulary was also double-blind tested.)
Thanks for the more direct input—popular accounts no doubt follow a few scripts in their descriptions. I’d imagine socialization would make a huge impact indeed, and that a good deal of interpretation of ‘agression’ could come from the fact that its much more disconcerting to us to have a nonhuman making various displays than a human, possibly combined with faster maturation.
The teaching of sign language is interesting… have adult chimps taught each other sign language?
The teaching of sign language is interesting… have adult chimps taught each other sign language?
I’m not sure, but I know Kanzi, a Bonobo, is claimed to have picked it up from video of Koko the Gorilla (he was not ever trained to sign, but began quoting some of her signs verbatim. He normally communicates with lexigrams; it’s been discovered that he’s vocalizing, albeit at much too high a pitch but with approximate articulation, the English word he hears whenever he selects a lexigram. Chantek, an orangutan (who has had several outside observors interview him, and was raised-as-human basically full time like Washoe) has not taught his current, non-signing female roommate what he knows, and it has been attested that he seems to consider his use of sign something unique; he refers to himself as an “orangutan-person”, while roomie is just an “orangutan” and his handler is “person.”
(Randomly, I’m also reminded—though I can’t track down which ape this was at the moment, will poke it later—of an experiment with one well-socialized chimp who, faced with a “pictures of humans, pictures of chimps, here’s your picture, where does it go?” puzzle insistently placed his picture with the humans, and seemed rather upset to be corrected. This may’ve been Kanzi, so substitute bonobo in that case...)
It may be that a particularly intelligent bonobo can transcend the expected limitations of his species; consider, for example, Kanzi (whose wikipedia article I have just now come across—I have no idea how much of that is exaggeration).
Thanks for hunting down the links! The Nim story sounds really sad. =/
I kinda feel like that experiment was trying too hard to teach Nim to think like a human, rather than find out what/how Nim thinks. I’d be pretty impressed with combinations of words without grammar from other animals, considering that’s less than we currently have.
But they might have some interesting differences we don’t anticipate precisely because we haven’t really tried looking yet?
Very probably. Take lions, for example; how does having a tail, no hands, and a pure-meat diet change one’s outlook on the world?
Also, I bet it’s pretty different to be an octopus.
...now, octopi are interesting. A 2012 Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness, they’re very probably conscious—if a little alien in morphology. Wikipedia describes them as having keen eyesight but limited hearing, which may lead to a few practical problems with communication (nothing insoluble; their aquatic environment might cause more problems).
And octopi apparently show great problem-solving ability; especially when the problem is question is how to get out of the secure tank that it is in and into the secure tank containing crabs (or other food) that is just over there.
So the octopus learning experiment (Olex?) looks like it might have a pretty good chance of success.
I was watching this video about octopi and the lady says they “taste” stuff with their suckers? I can’t tell if if she means that literally or how she knows. (Button design idea?) But it definitely looks like octopi have a lot to ‘say’. =]
I did hear about octopi stealing crabs from neighboring tanks and then closing their own lids after themselves! The problem-solving skills might make it hard to design good experiments. The octopus might figure out how to maximize its food output without meaning anything it says. (It will start talking about consciousness?)
Can we get the Singularity Institute to fund Olex? I bet we can cap the cost pretty low and monetize the cute factor. Octopus friend t-shirts and autographs!
Also, this elephant randomly start saying Korean words.
There are records and footage, but considering he died in 1993 in Kazakhstan, you’d probably have to speak Kazakh or Russian to even be able to search them down effectively. It was long enough ago that they might never have been released to the public internet. According to the Wikipedia article they’re kept at Moscow State University. The listed publications might be worth pursuing if you want to investigate it further.
I was watching this video about octopi and the lady says they “taste” stuff with their suckers? I can’t tell if if she means that literally or how she knows.
A bit of googling reveals several pages (including one from Scientific American) that repeat the claim that “octopi taste with their suckers”. As far as I can find, the claim seems to date back to a paper by MJ Wells, published in 1963.
I haven’t read that paper.
The problem-solving skills might make it hard to design good experiments.
But that’s exactly what makes them such interesting experimental subjects!
The octopus might figure out how to maximize its food output without meaning anything it says.
Ah, the Chinese Box problem. Tricky. Though technically we could apply the same question to humans...
That would certainly be a good way to maximize food output, but I think that in order to successfully do that well enough to fool even researchers looking for it, the octopus would have to have at least enough complexity in it’s brain to actually be conscious.
Which is, in fact, the same problem with the Chinese Room; the notecards need to be drawn up by an actual Chinese speaker.
And if we look at evolutionary history, it looks like in evolutionary terms, actually being conscious was a better strategy than pretending to be conscious…
…or it could be that we’ve just retroactively defined “consciousness” as the thing humans do when they try to fake consciousness. :p
That would certainly be a good way to maximize food output, but I think that in order to successfully do that well enough to fool even researchers looking for it, the octopus would have to have at least enough complexity in it’s brain to actually be conscious.
I suspect that octopi are more-or-less as conscious as dolphins are, as a rough approximation.
or it could be that we’ve just retroactively defined “consciousness” as the thing humans do when they try to fake consciousness. :p
I’m not sure it’s possible to confirm or deny that question without being able to define, once and for all, exactly and precisely what consciousness is.
I’m imagining tasting where other people have been walking, and I can see a possible market for octopus shoes. Especially if other people haven’t been cleaning up after their dogs.
Of course, it might just be that I’m squeamish because I’m not used to it. (But an octopus civilisation might choose the material from which to make their paths based on the taste thereof...)
I think you’re right. That squeamishness is very much a product of you having grown up as not-an-octopus.
Most creatures taste with an organ that’s at the top of their digestive tract, it’s fairly sensible that they have an aversion to tasting anything that they would be unhealthy for them to consume.
A species that had always had a chemical-composition-sense on all of it’s limbs? Would almost certainly have a very different relationship with that sense than we have with taste.
Hmmm. Fair enough. But even if they’re not squeamish about it, it would make sense for them to select the material from which they make their walkways according to flavour (among other factors, such as strength and durability).
I think this might be the bias in action yet again.
Our idea of an alien experience is to taste with a different part of our bodies? That’s certainly more different-from-human than most rubber-forehead aliens, but “taste” is still a pretty human-familiar experience. There are species with senses that we don’t have at all, like a sensitivity to magnetism or electric fields.
A radically different intelligence might not be graspable by us as an intelligence, or as an individual, or as anything at all. Perhaps termite mounds are intelligent, but in such a different dimension that we just can’t appreciate it.
What you seem to want is an intelligence that is non-human but still close enough to human that we can communicate with it. Although it’s not clear what we’d have to talk about, once we get past the Pythagorean theorem.
I always wonder why we don’t seem to be making more of an effort to communicate with the larger, intelligent animals? Like, we had Koko the gorilla and the chimp (whose name I forgot) that learned sign language, and since then I haven’t really heard of … similar projects? But if we’re going to work on trying to imagine intelligence that isn’t human, I feel like there are things to learn there. Also, if we can get the animals to learn … words (?), maybe we can get them to blog or vlog regularly, which is much easier and cheaper than in Koko’s time.
Something along the lines of Alex the parrot?
Yep, exactly! But also they don’t have to speak. They can just press buttons that mean stuff, which seems a lot easier to fund nowadays. We are all drowning in tablets and ipads!
You may be interested to hear that there are real pet owners doing this nowadays. https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/zbqLuTgTCu365MNu9/your-dog-is-even-smarter-than-you-think
Hmmm. You make an excellent point; it looks like an experiment worth trying.
The animal in question will, of course, have been raised by humans, raised—in effect—in a human mindset, which rather limits the difference from a baseline human mind that’s possible. Even so, though, one expects that there might be some differences...
I actually do agree that other animals, especially mammals, will probably turn out to be annoyingly similar to humans. So if we’re looking for a completely alien race we might be pretty disappointed. But they might have some interesting differences we don’t anticipate precisely because we haven’t really tried looking yet?
Also, I bet it’s pretty different to be an octopus. Even a human-raised octopus! (Although we would need textured buttons so ipads won’t help there. And they might turn out to not be smart/cooperative enough.)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washoe_(chimpanzee) “Washoe was raised in an environment as close as possible to that of a human child, in an attempt to satisfy her psychological need for companionship.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nim_Chimpsky “Nim at 2 weeks old was raised by a family in a home environment by human surrogate parents”
The consensus on the results seems to be that they learned hundreds of words of ASL, but do not seem to be able to learn to combine them with any sort of grammar other than grouping situationally-related words close together in time. More a series of single-gesture associations and exclamations than sentences. Our language and communication faculties don’t have much of a counterpart in there.
As they matured they also appeared to become aggressive and uncontrollable. Though perhaps that has something to do with being fully physically mature by age 11 after entering puberty at age 7...
Nim wasn’t raised for very long in that environment, though—they transferred him to a laboratory at a young age and he was very undersocialized compared to Washoe.
I’m not sure to what degree you’d call Washoe aggressive and uncontrollable. I know a few people who met her (a journalist, a primatologist, a psychologist and sign language interpreter) and even interacted freely with her and all of them found her to be rather charming; all in circumstances where, while her surrogate parent was certainly present, he could hardly have stopped her if she’d decided to inflict harm or just felt threatened for some reason.
(Washoe is also said to have taught her son much of what she knew before her death—he was raised only by the sign-using chimps in that community, not humans, and the human handlers only ever used seven signs around him. Her vocabulary was also double-blind tested.)
Thanks for the more direct input—popular accounts no doubt follow a few scripts in their descriptions. I’d imagine socialization would make a huge impact indeed, and that a good deal of interpretation of ‘agression’ could come from the fact that its much more disconcerting to us to have a nonhuman making various displays than a human, possibly combined with faster maturation.
The teaching of sign language is interesting… have adult chimps taught each other sign language?
I’m not sure, but I know Kanzi, a Bonobo, is claimed to have picked it up from video of Koko the Gorilla (he was not ever trained to sign, but began quoting some of her signs verbatim. He normally communicates with lexigrams; it’s been discovered that he’s vocalizing, albeit at much too high a pitch but with approximate articulation, the English word he hears whenever he selects a lexigram. Chantek, an orangutan (who has had several outside observors interview him, and was raised-as-human basically full time like Washoe) has not taught his current, non-signing female roommate what he knows, and it has been attested that he seems to consider his use of sign something unique; he refers to himself as an “orangutan-person”, while roomie is just an “orangutan” and his handler is “person.”
(Randomly, I’m also reminded—though I can’t track down which ape this was at the moment, will poke it later—of an experiment with one well-socialized chimp who, faced with a “pictures of humans, pictures of chimps, here’s your picture, where does it go?” puzzle insistently placed his picture with the humans, and seemed rather upset to be corrected. This may’ve been Kanzi, so substitute bonobo in that case...)
I imagine that that chimp (or bonobo), if presented with a copy of Tarzan, and if able to read, would immediately identify with the hero.
It may be that a particularly intelligent bonobo can transcend the expected limitations of his species; consider, for example, Kanzi (whose wikipedia article I have just now come across—I have no idea how much of that is exaggeration).
Thanks for hunting down the links! The Nim story sounds really sad. =/
I kinda feel like that experiment was trying too hard to teach Nim to think like a human, rather than find out what/how Nim thinks. I’d be pretty impressed with combinations of words without grammar from other animals, considering that’s less than we currently have.
Very probably. Take lions, for example; how does having a tail, no hands, and a pure-meat diet change one’s outlook on the world?
...now, octopi are interesting. A 2012 Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness, they’re very probably conscious—if a little alien in morphology. Wikipedia describes them as having keen eyesight but limited hearing, which may lead to a few practical problems with communication (nothing insoluble; their aquatic environment might cause more problems).
And octopi apparently show great problem-solving ability; especially when the problem is question is how to get out of the secure tank that it is in and into the secure tank containing crabs (or other food) that is just over there.
So the octopus learning experiment (Olex?) looks like it might have a pretty good chance of success.
I was watching this video about octopi and the lady says they “taste” stuff with their suckers? I can’t tell if if she means that literally or how she knows. (Button design idea?) But it definitely looks like octopi have a lot to ‘say’. =]
I did hear about octopi stealing crabs from neighboring tanks and then closing their own lids after themselves! The problem-solving skills might make it hard to design good experiments. The octopus might figure out how to maximize its food output without meaning anything it says. (It will start talking about consciousness?)
Can we get the Singularity Institute to fund Olex? I bet we can cap the cost pretty low and monetize the cute factor. Octopus friend t-shirts and autographs!
Also, this elephant randomly start saying Korean words.
There’s another elephant, Batyr, who did this and was famous for it:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Batyr
I’ve heard of this one too, but I believe there’s no records/footage?
Must … upvote … all … elephants.
There are records and footage, but considering he died in 1993 in Kazakhstan, you’d probably have to speak Kazakh or Russian to even be able to search them down effectively. It was long enough ago that they might never have been released to the public internet. According to the Wikipedia article they’re kept at Moscow State University. The listed publications might be worth pursuing if you want to investigate it further.
A bit of googling reveals several pages (including one from Scientific American) that repeat the claim that “octopi taste with their suckers”. As far as I can find, the claim seems to date back to a paper by MJ Wells, published in 1963.
I haven’t read that paper.
But that’s exactly what makes them such interesting experimental subjects!
Ah, the Chinese Box problem. Tricky. Though technically we could apply the same question to humans...
That would certainly be a good way to maximize food output, but I think that in order to successfully do that well enough to fool even researchers looking for it, the octopus would have to have at least enough complexity in it’s brain to actually be conscious. Which is, in fact, the same problem with the Chinese Room; the notecards need to be drawn up by an actual Chinese speaker.
And if we look at evolutionary history, it looks like in evolutionary terms, actually being conscious was a better strategy than pretending to be conscious… …or it could be that we’ve just retroactively defined “consciousness” as the thing humans do when they try to fake consciousness. :p
I suspect that octopi are more-or-less as conscious as dolphins are, as a rough approximation.
I’m not sure it’s possible to confirm or deny that question without being able to define, once and for all, exactly and precisely what consciousness is.
Okay, that sounds like a totally alien experience. Imagine tasting your floor! And like … doorknobs and things.
I’m imagining tasting where other people have been walking, and I can see a possible market for octopus shoes. Especially if other people haven’t been cleaning up after their dogs.
Of course, it might just be that I’m squeamish because I’m not used to it. (But an octopus civilisation might choose the material from which to make their paths based on the taste thereof...)
I think you’re right. That squeamishness is very much a product of you having grown up as not-an-octopus.
Most creatures taste with an organ that’s at the top of their digestive tract, it’s fairly sensible that they have an aversion to tasting anything that they would be unhealthy for them to consume.
A species that had always had a chemical-composition-sense on all of it’s limbs? Would almost certainly have a very different relationship with that sense than we have with taste.
Hmmm. Fair enough. But even if they’re not squeamish about it, it would make sense for them to select the material from which they make their walkways according to flavour (among other factors, such as strength and durability).
Yup! I agree completely.
If you were modeling an octopus-based sentient species, for the purposes of writing some interesting fiction, then this would be a nice detail to add.
I think this might be the bias in action yet again.
Our idea of an alien experience is to taste with a different part of our bodies? That’s certainly more different-from-human than most rubber-forehead aliens, but “taste” is still a pretty human-familiar experience. There are species with senses that we don’t have at all, like a sensitivity to magnetism or electric fields.
You’ve never licked a doorknob just to see what it tastes like?
I guess I figured they’d taste like cheap spoons, except with more bacteria. Am I missing out?
Nope, that’s a pretty accurate description of my sensory memory of the experience. :p