[HN Gopher] If parrots can talk, why can't monkeys?
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If parrots can talk, why can't monkeys?
Author : belter
Score : 66 points
Date : 2023-04-03 21:22 UTC (1 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (english.elpais.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (english.elpais.com)
| rmellow wrote:
| > There was also a communications problem. Though they had an
| equivalent IQ of sixty, and could understand several hundred
| words of English, they were unable to talk. It had proved
| impossible to give useful vocal chords either to apes or monkeys,
| and they therefore had to express themselves in sign language
|
| - Rendezvous with Rama (1973)
|
| Guess it's more fiction than science fiction now.
| catchnear4321 wrote:
| It would be impossible to give them useful vocal cords. Just
| not because of the vocal cords.
|
| There should be a category specifically for invalidated science
| fiction. Things found to be unpossible in any timeline,
| assuming consistent laws of nature.
| triggerwarn wrote:
| [dead]
| [deleted]
| owenpalmer wrote:
| Parrots can't talk
| earleybird wrote:
| Parrots parrot parrots?
| withinboredom wrote:
| Parrots parroting parrots parodying parrots.
| bhawks wrote:
| Obviously we are the smart ones with our wonderfully clear,
| expressive, and concise language. /s --kind of.
|
| We really need to be aware of our own biases and biological
| limitations if we actually want to study and understand the
| ability of other animals to have complex communications.
| Birds experience reality differently than we do - they see
| more of visible spectrum, they can make multiple sounds at
| once, etc. I wouldn't be surprised that what they can hear
| and how they perceive things like time is very different
| then us. Anyone observing parrots, crows, and other highly
| social avians can see they have complex relationships.
| capableweb wrote:
| Guess it depends on what you mean exactly with "talk". They can
| articulate phrases, isn't that enough?
| cactusplant7374 wrote:
| It's not language. It's basically mimicking humans.
|
| Noam Chomsky on Nim Chimpsky and the Emergence of Language:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a39vcatTCVU
|
| Chomsky has a few other interviews where he addresses this.
| withinboredom wrote:
| You don't need a language to communicate (ask my cat -- or
| any cat/dog). You also don't need words, but colloquially,
| "talking" means using words, not using language. Someone
| talking to you with random noises you can reproduce would
| still be called "talking" whether or not it was a language.
|
| In other words a baby saying "milk" because it wants milk
| doesn't mean you should ignore it because it isn't using a
| "language."
| TexanFeller wrote:
| > It's not language. It's basically mimicking humans.
|
| I owned a parrot for a few years. The speech she had was
| like a tape recorder, she could mostly only play back what
| she heard in an identical manner. But she was able to play
| back pieces of appropriate snippets in the right context to
| express herself to a level that I'd call it talking. It's
| not normal "speech", but if you gave an otherwise normal
| human with damaged speech centers in their brain a tape
| recorder it's very much like that.
| withinboredom wrote:
| [deleted due to unintended double-entendre]
| ggm wrote:
| Parrots talk to each other.
| krackers wrote:
| Only stochastically.
| jedberg wrote:
| They can certainly communicate their wants and needs with
| words.
|
| Some have shown the ability to communicate abstract thoughts
| and feelings.
|
| Why do you say they can't talk?
| WakoMan12 wrote:
| yes i can
| junon wrote:
| I have a parrot. He can talk, both contextually and randomly
| (the former much less often, but does still happen).
|
| Not sure what your criteria for "talking" are but, by all of my
| own measures, my parrot sounds pretty much exactly like me in
| most cases, and like a child in most others. The words are
| clearly distinguishable, understandable, and in multiple
| languages (he lives in a multi-language household).
|
| So, yes. Parrots can talk. Can they converse? Sometimes
| loosely, usually not at all. But they can very much talk.
|
| If you mean that parrots do not understand the words and
| construction they are speaking, sure. But at that point you're
| splitting hairs. My parrot says "do you want it?" when he wants
| a treat. He says "good night" when he wants to go to bed. He
| says "c'mon!" when he wants me to come to him. He absolutely
| talks.
|
| Weird hill to die on.
| Izmaki wrote:
| My parrot will on every occasion that it stumbles, let out a
| surprised "Oh!" followed by a "Good boy!" when he gets back
| up again. I didn't sit around all day teaching him to say
| "Oh!" whenever I pushed him off the branch and praise him
| when he got back up again. I also don't tell myself I'm a
| "Good boy!" whenever I get back up from a stumble (which
| thankfully doesn't happen often at home to begin with). I'm
| sure my parrot doesn't know what "Oh!" or "Good boy" means,
| that is what the words mean in a human context. I'm also sure
| that he doesn't know what _snapping finger noise_ followed by
| a stern "Ah-ah!" means, but he has used that on one occasion
| when he was mad at me and wanted to tell me to back off if I
| treasured the skin on my hands. (A learned behaviour from his
| first and previous owner).
|
| ...but at the end of the day, speech is in many ways "just" a
| series of correct sounds at correct times in correct
| situations, right? Does my parrot have a conversation with
| me? Well yes, sometimes, but not with words. Does my parrot
| mimic human words and phrases? Also yes, and sometimes in the
| most perfect situations possible.
| ggm wrote:
| Infrasound aside, it seems that it's neural after all. Apes
| scream and grunt, so vocalisation follows gross mood. (I don't
| know if anyone has tested apes for ultra low frequency
| communications)
| IIAOPSW wrote:
| I don't follow why screams and grunts can only encode gross
| mood. Presuming I can differentiate them enough to have some
| amount of vocabulary, why can't I make a well reasoned and
| abstract grunt?
| sdenton4 wrote:
| According to birds, we just emit a bunch of low pitched
| grunts and noise all day.
| IIAOPSW wrote:
| Honestly, when you speedup or slow down the playback to be
| in proportion to their size, all animals sort of sound the
| same. This goes for whales all the way up to birds. Whale
| sounds sped up are hilarious btw.
| pcrh wrote:
| It's interesting to compare this "sound-talk" that parrots can
| easily accomplish with the obviously greater intelligence of
| apes, who can't reproduce human sounds, with the debate over
| whether chatGPT is intelligent or not. Note that Koko was
| obviously a greater communicator than any parrot ever was.
|
| Is mimicking human behaviour a necessary, or even sufficient,
| criteria for demonstrating cognition and intelligence?
| tokyolights2 wrote:
| The short story "The Great Silence" by Ted Chaing feels very
| relevant here.
|
| > The humans use Arecibo to look for extraterrestrial
| intelligence. Their desire to make a connection is so strong
| that they've created an ear capable of hearing across the
| universe. But I and my fellow parrots are right here. Why
| aren't they interested in listening to our voices? We're a
| nonhuman species capable of communicating with them. Aren't we
| exactly what humans are looking for?
| PKop wrote:
| I'm not sure how obvious it is; that story seems just as likely
| to have been fraudulent as true.
| [deleted]
| Chinjut wrote:
| I believe there is significant scientific skepticism as to
| whether Koko was communicating to the degree popularly
| portrayed.
| [deleted]
| osamagirl69 wrote:
| A very interesting read, which describes how for ~50 years the
| community was lead astray by a seemingly simple oversight:
| studying dead animals instead of living ones!
|
| >Charles Darwin theorized that monkeys had the vocal anatomy
| needed for speech, but lacked the necessary neural mechanisms.
|
| >This was the most popular hypothesis until 1969 [when] Lieberman
| studied the vocal anatomy of a monkey corpse and concluded that
| other primates could not produce as many vowels as humans because
| of the position of their larynxes [which] cemented the idea that
| a descended larynx is a prerequisite for speech.
|
| >Towards the end of the 20th century, evolutionary biologist W.
| Tecumseh Fitch realized a crucial fact - all the existing
| evidence was based on the anatomy of dead primates. Surprised
| that this had not been done before, Fitch used x-ray imaging to
| study the vocal tracts of live animals while they were voicing
| sounds. He was amazed to observe that their larynxes at rest
| remained high and then descended during vocalization to a
| position very similar to the human larynx.
|
| >All these studies indicate that apes have all the anatomical
| characteristics necessary for speech. The reason they don't is
| purely neural. Humans have much better control of the larynx, not
| because of its position, but because of the neural connections
| that connect it to the brain. Parrots don't even have a larynx,
| but they have wonderful control of their speech organ, which
| enables them to articulate intelligible words and phrases.
|
| Fascinating
| nico wrote:
| So human = monkey + LLM ?
|
| Can we teach monkeys to use an LLM?
|
| Could a multimodal model communicate with apes via sign
| language or just showing images/video/sounds?
| HopenHeyHi wrote:
| I hate every ape I see. From chimpan-a to chimpan-z,
| No, you'll never make a monkey out of me.
| nico wrote:
| Ok, struck a nerve. Very strong reactions.
|
| Some identities feel threatened.
|
| Understood.
|
| Thank you for being vulnerable here. I do hope you feel this
| is a safe space to share your feelings.
| PKop wrote:
| A few simple replies to your statement and you fall apart
| like this? Have you never engaged in an argument or what?
| aylmao wrote:
| Or, you know, maybe your comment is the conclusion of the
| article at all.
| traject_ wrote:
| There's no reason to believe that LLMs are necessarily
| similar to humans. Just think of flight; both birds and
| planes can fly despite being very different. It's
| understandable that because humans are our main reference for
| intelligence that we see LLMs speaking language as a proof of
| similarity but there's no concrete reason to assume that.
| Archelaos wrote:
| Here is a cognitive experiment were chimpanzees perform
| better than humans:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MKvX9PPmI-Q
| behringer wrote:
| Planes and birds do operate on the same principles though,
| but instead of power through propellers birds are powered
| via wings.
|
| There's no reason to think an LLM would not work for a
| monkey. Even if it is a different structure than how things
| work in humans a parallel structure could offer more or
| less the same benefits.
|
| Anyway I buy the whole LLM thing, consider a baby, they
| can't talk at all and only become coherent when you talk to
| eachother just about non stop for 2 or 3 years.
| rcme wrote:
| That's not the conclusion at all. The article says monkeys
| can understand and produce words (via signs). They can't talk
| because they don't have control of their larynx. They're mute
| essentially.
| ConanRus wrote:
| [dead]
| causality0 wrote:
| "If parrots can speak, why can't monkeys?" would be a more
| accurate headline.
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