Kyle,
“but I’d rather we dumped the funds from our space exploration and focused instead on the oceans of Earth. We’ve got enough aliens and unexplored frontier right here on two-thirds of our pale blue dot”

Sigh. Why space exploration? Why is it always NASA&co that people target when they want their pet project funded.

Not once have I ever heard a space advocate bemoan the funding of Earth/Ocean Science. Not once have I heard them criticise research into animal language/behaviour. So why is our respect for other research rewarded by making us the target of contempt?

“The question is not Can they reason? nor Can they talk? but, Can they suffer?”

The link here is that is it that much easier to show that they can suffer if they can talk.

I won’t hesitate to point out that if intelligence or language is the currency by which we weigh moral value, than you inevitably leave out many members of the human community, such as newborn infants and the severely mentally disabled (excluding extremes like embryos and the irreversibly brain-dead). It also poses interesting thought-experiment problems for transhumanists, if unenhanced humans ever had to plead the case for their continued existence and autonomy before skeptical “intellects vast and cool and unsympathetic”.

To comment on something else, I have also noticed and been annoyed by scenes, such as Han Solo’s dialogue with Jabba the Hutt, in which the human can understand alien and the alien can understand human, and they both can pronounce each others’ words, and yet Han still speaks Basic and Jabba still speaks Huttese.

I wonder if they’ll ask us to let them out of their cages and
back into the ocean?

It’s unfortunate the author did not mentioned Seaquest DSV. There were mentions of alien-based scifi movies, but not the most relevant scifi tv show. I’m confused when writers jump to popbuzz alien references, instead of sticking with the references to the very animal subjects of their articles. I understand why it’s done, for effect, but it’s easier for me to understand points when one makes mention to the proper entertainment sources that help the points be better understood.

http://tvacres.com/fish_dolphins_darwin.htm
(I loved this show each week and wanted to be the tech for the talking
[robot] dolphin. Plus, the dolphin was a good listener and had good jokes.)

I’ve worked on three different communications projects over the years, not the least of which was Project JANUS in the 1980′s. This is just a rehash of Lilly’s work [ and most every other research on this since then ]. The idea was good, but computers of the time just weren’t up to the task to properly sample the dolphins sounds. Still there was a working 20+ word vocabulary the dolphins understood and would respond to, despite the poor quality of sound. Matching sounds was difficult as the system only did 512 samples a second. A lot for the day but no where near enough to properly analize the dolphin’s range of frequencies. Modern computers are more up to the task and there are new approaches to try.

The real problem is the lack of overlap in used frequencies. John Kurt’s [ a co-researcher of Lilly's ] approach at the time actually got a better reaction from the dolphins than JANUS did with the system he was using. If current technology was applied using a newer method I’ve come up with, which allows each to use their native frequencies, we could be actually talking to them. It’s not so much about creating a new language as it is overcoming the frequency differences, which can be done with current technology. In fact the equipment needed to do this already exists, it just hasn’t been applied to this area of research.

What might not be so easy to overcome is the social/religious impact that having another intelligent species on the planet would have. It throws a monkey wrench at some long held, deeply ingrained beliefs. I wonder if the human species is ready for that.

Malcolm is right, Lilly has left a bad taste in some peoples mouths, but he was the first to work this field back in the 1960′s, and yet a lot of current “new research” is founded on some of his basic work.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alex_%28parrot%29

The two biggest hurdles to get past are first, for the targets to realize you’re trying to communicate with them; second, to establish baseline concepts to build upon.

“There is a second, equally interesting problem. Think about your favorite science fiction series populated by aliens (for me, that’s a toss up between Star Trek and Mass Effect). At some point in that series, an alien has introduced itself as having a very un-alien name, like “Grunt.” The reason? “My real name is unpronounceable by humans.” That is rarely an actual problem, because as it always works out the other alien species (why do we refer to aliens as “races” btw?) can pronounce our human words. One of the only films I can think of that doesn’t have this common sci-fi fallacy is District 9.”

I don’t get this as a fallacy. “Grunt” may be able to speak his own language as well as English (or whatever language the human is using). However, that doesn’t mean the human could repeat Grunt’s native name; it also doesn’t mean that Grunt’s native name could be translated reasonably into any human language. So unless he introduces himself as Grunt, how are humans supposed to refer to him, or call him?

This actually happens a lot within human linguistics. Asians in particular may choose to Anglicize their names, or choose a nickname that English speakers can pronounce, when moving to the US, for example.

But for chrissake, if you’re going to mention Lilly’s name around any marine mammalogists or cognitive psychologists, be prepared to either fight or run. He made their professional lives hell, to hear them tell it.

It is also possible to speak/understand dog and cat with varying degrees of success. The thing is, these two languages have a large non-verbal component. Try blinking slowly at a cat and then looking away or bowing to a dog and then looking over your shoulder.

All I can say is that when a human does that, the dolphin gets very excited. They’ve finally found a research subject that’s not stupid, after all! It might be worth a try, at least to pique their interest.

Considering how minuscule a budget our space exploration efforts have, I would say both outer and inner space research could easily be funded. Just buy fewer stealth bombers and invade fewer countries.

Herzing and her team are in the midst of revamping their system. The link to the full academic article is at Acta Astronautica (just search Herzing’s last name). From my understanding, the goal is to avoid precisely the problems you describe. Part of the reason sign language is good but not great is that, ultimately, it is anthropocentric. How do you communicate “this device is for communication” to a species? Close Encounters of the Third Kind offers a pretty good suggestion-just start talking and as they talk back, develop a custom vocabulary.

Unlike sign language, which required Koko to generate new symbols, whistle language will have words and syntax the dolphins already grasp among themselves. Star Trek played around with this in the episode “Darmok” . Neither Picard nor the Tamarian captain with whom he is attempting to communicate can understand one another, but by being able to make sounds the other could understand, Picard was able to gather meaning. I think, and I may be wrong, but the big advantage is that as the technology progresses, dolphins will be able to teach us their syntax and vocabulary in their own language. The tool is not so much so that dolphins can push a button and get a ball, but so the dolphin could correct us and say “whistle 8 plus a click” is ball, not “whistle 1.” Koko didn’t have a “correct” symbol for kitten, so she could only accept what the trainer gave her in ASL.

Great questions. I’m not sure myself, but that this project is “open-ended” and founded on the premise that dolphins already have their own language gives me a strong suspicion that Herzing and her team are taking these issues into serious consideration.

I mean, I see what they’re doing – they’re taking a symbol concept that we have designed, pairing it up with a sound that dolphins can make, and then using those to reference a physical object. But…does the whistle really add anything? Is she using arbitrary whistle noises, or is she using ones that the dolphins make naturally?

If the whistle noises are arbitrarily chosen and have no natural meaning to dolphins, then that’s really no different than us making funny finger shapes to apes and monkeys and associating that shape with an object. To us those shapes might be sign language, sure, but to a monkey it’s just a funny shape. It’s contextless and meaningless to them.

If the noises are chosen from sounds that dolphins already make…does that really mean anything useful? Imagine this poor confuse dolphin thinking “Every time I try to warn them about the impending volcanic disaster that’s coming, they throw a ball at my head!”

I guess what I’m getting at is that it feels to me like they’re going to an awful lot of effort to decontextualize something that has no real context for the animal subjects. I’m guessing I’m seriously overthinking this, or more likely underthinking this. If someone can clarify for me I’d be grateful >.<