posted
Wait a minute... Don't eat turtle if it's endangered, but veal is A+ #1 awesome? So, the theory here is that it doesn't matter how you treat an animal, so long as there are plenty more where it came from?
Registered: Mar 1999
| IP: Logged
posted
I think he's just against eating endangered sea animals. I foloow Snay's philosiphy: anything you can bag with your car is fair game and good eatin!
quote:Originally posted by Topher: That's an interesting concept. Although I'd imagine that the replicators would be hardwired to not replicate meat from any member races of the UFP...
I brought this up when we were discussing transporters as weapons: Guys like the Romulans would likely just knock out an opposing ship's shields, reduce the crew to their component protien patterns and have a nice steak dinner at their enemies expense.
Practical, deadly and tasty!.
-------------------- Justice inclines her scales so that wisdom comes at the price of suffering. -Aeschylus, Agamemnon
Registered: Aug 2002
| IP: Logged
The scientists stop well short of calling it a language, of course, but it's interesting to know that dolphins create and recognize whistles and clicks that will correspond to a specific creature.
posted
I heard that Usul no longer needs the weirding module.
I think most animals recognize individuals, and even dogs recognize their (admittedly human bestowed) names. What's interesting to me is that the study implied that two dolphins can use names to talk about another dolphin not directly involved. Though won't we all be disappointed if the first phrase translated is "click-whistle-whistle-beep is such a brownnose!"?
Registered: Sep 2000
| IP: Logged
posted
Biiig deal- Wasps (with a brain the size of a pin-head) can recognise other wasps they know on sight- and will always kill any they dont know.
Plus they- like many insects use chemical language that can last months.
It's an amazing world of communication out there, but it's not at all what we consider "language".
Good for theory on how something alien may communicate though- lets see Hoshi run pheremone and sweat salts through the 'ol Universal Translator.
-------------------- Justice inclines her scales so that wisdom comes at the price of suffering. -Aeschylus, Agamemnon
Registered: Aug 2002
| IP: Logged
quote:Originally posted by bX: ...and even dogs recognize their (admittedly human bestowed) names.
Well, sort of. The recognise them in a "that sound means something that I should pay attention to" sort of way, not a "I am Rover, that is my name" way.
-------------------- Yes, you're despicable, and... and picable... and... and you're definitely, definitely despicable. How a person can get so despicable in one lifetime is beyond me. It isn't as though I haven't met a lot of people. Goodness knows it isn't that. It isn't just that... it isn't... it's... it's despicable.
Registered: Mar 1999
| IP: Logged
"What's interesting to me is that the study implied that two dolphins can use names to talk about another dolphin not directly involved."
Not only that, but the fact that they assign the names themselves. I mean, it would be one thing to teach a group of dolphins that "a-a-a-aa-a" = dolphin #1, while "a-a-a-a-aa" = dolphin #2. But the fascinating thing about this is the idea that they already started naming each other all on their own.
Registered: Mar 1999
| IP: Logged
-------------------- Justice inclines her scales so that wisdom comes at the price of suffering. -Aeschylus, Agamemnon
Registered: Aug 2002
| IP: Logged
posted
Congratulations, your eternal afterlife now entails hundreds of their sharp little teeth and your naughty areas. Salt water.
It is cool that they come up with the names themselves. I imagine these might be somehow descruptive of the individual to whom they refer. "Long nose", "Deep warble", "Mackarel breath" that sort of thing. With regards to a larger language or communication, I would suspect that each pod would tend to have its own dialect and that different families might have different levels of sophistication and abstraction.
Have you ever had a conversation with someone with whom you do not share a spoken language or with only a limited grasp? There was this older Dutch guy in Paris and we were trying to figure out the network topography where we were staying. His English was much better than my Dutch, but my Dutch is none so that's not saying anything. We could both get by in French, but he didn't know shit about computers. It was interesting how much we were able to communicate with a common frame of reference and similar goals. Of course it probably helped being the same species.
Registered: Sep 2000
| IP: Logged
posted
I've found that many parts of understanding between people are non-verbal- as example, I have no major difficulties dealing with a deaf man that frequents my work (most credit to him and his experience communicating with hearing people, of course). If he were wearing a mask, I dount I'd grasp half of what he was trying to communicate.
A lot of the underlying meaning to what we want expressed is visual body language- doubtless the same is true (or far moreso) in the animal kingdom. Dolphins may have diffrent "inflections" with diffrent visual cues, just as we have so many maenings for "fuck".
People are even adept at non-verbal language with other species we're familliar with: everyone knows a mean dog from a nice one without it having to wag it's tail or growl at you.
-------------------- Justice inclines her scales so that wisdom comes at the price of suffering. -Aeschylus, Agamemnon
Registered: Aug 2002
| IP: Logged
posted
I think the definition of language is getting slightly twisted here, not that I can provide a nontwisted one. But an interpretation of signs does not by itself constitute language. Something is being communicated when a piece of meat rots, but that doesn't mean that the meat is communicating, if you see my meaning.
Anyway, as far as the dolphins go, I think we always need to be careful when we go about assigning content to signals such as these. For this to constitute a language, at least in my (incredibly uneducated, I need to point out) opinion, they would need to be located in some larger symbological context. Like, say I snap my fingers three times and we all agree that three fingersnaps represents Jason. That doesn't mean that we have invented a language of fingersnaps.
Registered: Mar 1999
| IP: Logged
Printer-friendly view of this topic
