HPM@S1-A@sri-unix.UUCP (07/23/83)
From: Hans Moravec <HPM@S1-A> Dolphins have brains as big as ours, and have had them for 30 million years, while ours have been this big for only about three million. Sperm whales' brains, the biggest in the world, are between five and ten times as big as ours. Killer whales and elephants have larger brains than we. Nevertheless, I think humans have the upper hand intellectually. At least since the dawn of civilization (maybe a mere twenty thousand years ago) our intelligence has not been limited by our brains. Since the advent of record keeping, and its more elaborate offspring, writing, we could memorize and recall more things more accurately, and communicate them over longer distances and times, than with our unaided brains. We could also maipulate the symbols more precisely in written for than in our minds, and thus accomplish mental feats otherwise impossible. The ability to make permanent records which can be read later and by others was like adding a tape to a finite state machine, turning it into a universal Turing machine. The finite state mechanism of whales may be larger, but without a tape their accomplishments are probably strongly circumscribed. On the other hand, I see no reason why dolphins can't be given access to books and computers (as John Lilly's human-dolphin institute is attempting), and perhaps getting spectacular returns. A possible problem is that Dolphins have had their brains for so long and may thus be so well adjusted to them and their way of life that they no longer have the flexibility to enter in radically different ways of thought and action. Humans have been in an evolutionary and cultural turmoil for the last few million years, which is probably a major explanation for the oft bemoaned "human condition", but it has left us open to new possibilities and permited our intellectual growth.