turner (02/16/83)
#N:ucbesvax:1800004:000:1318
ucbesvax!turner Feb 15 20:30:00 1983
The subject of cetacean intelligence has not come up here, that I
have seen. This is surprising, since it is an issue which involves
many of the same questions. How do we know that something is intelligent?
is one. How would we communicate? How different might it be?
I have a project for you: whales migrate globally, but do they know
that the world is round? How would you find out whether they knew this?
A tricky problem, given the possible semantics of a concept which, for
them, might be hundreds of thousands of years old, and for us, only
a few hundred (with many gaps).
Some Russian investigators have estimated dolphin I.Q. at being
roughly that of a human 7 year old. Cultural bias may plausibly be
suspected here. (Not that 7 is so bad: chimps don't get much past
age 2 in human terms.) It is hard to imagine a human 7 year old
wholly believing (much less inferring!) that the world is round, but
maybe it would after forty years of circling the globe, and many
millenia of racial experience behind it.
So how would you TEST this? Imagine a fleet of appropriately-
equipped boats at your disposal for ten years, if you must. More
elegant solutions are much more welcome, however.
Flunking the Turner Test,
Michael Turner