From: roberts@CMR.NCSL.NIST.GOV (John Roberts)
Newsgroups: sci.space
Subject: Re: Whales (SETI)
Date: 28 Jul 92 03:55:00 GMT
Organization: National Institute of Standards and Technology
	formerly National Bureau of Standards


-From: rwallace@unix1.tcd.ie (russell wallace)
-Subject: Re: Whales (SETI)
-Date: 26 Jul 92 23:19:22 GMT
-Organization: Trinity College, Dublin

-By that argument, you could suggest that chairs are intelligent, but for
-reasons we do not understand choose not to reveal that intelligence, and
-instead let humans sit on them and push them around. I would suggest
-that there is absolutely no reason to believe whales are intelligent,
-and that furthermore they definitely do not do certain things that can
-reasonably be regarded as showing intelligence, such as using it to
-preserve their lives (when humans evolved intelligence, this was the
-*first* thing we use it for), and that therefore it is reasonable to
-conclude that whales are not intelligent, unless and until we find some
-evidence that they are.

(Everybody uses chairs as an example - I know folding lawn chairs are
sometimes considered to be diabolically clever, but isn't that carrying
it a little far? ;-)

By this line of reasoning, people who score high on IQ tests but refuse to
wear seat belts are not intelligent, as are those who fear airplanes and
thus choose less statistically safe modes of travel. Similarly, passing on
one's genetic heritage is an aspect of survival, so more intelligent people
must in general be more successful at breeding than less intelligent people,
and insects are more intelligent than either.

By a slight extension, the ability to acquire wealth must be a measure of
intelligence, so professional basketball players are more intelligent than
mathematicians, and people born in India couldn't be too bright, otherwise
it would be a wealthy nation. :-)  :-)

While I agree there's plenty of indication that there are a lot of stupid
whales out there, I'm concerned about the extremely binary nature of your
reasoning - 1=intelligent, 0=non-intelligent, and either all whales are
intelligent or no whales are intelligent.

You also neglect environmental, physiological, and cultural considerations.
Human intelligence is *much* more closely bound to human biology than most
people think. And much of what we consider intelligent behavior is the result
of thousands of years of evolution of our culture. If whales have brains
that are individually capable, but their culture has less ability to evolve
(for instance, they don't appear able to read and write), then that could
account for some of the seeming lack of intelligence.

There have been countless papers written on the subject of what defines
intelligence. I'm not sure the question has ever been satisfactorily
answered. Animal intelligence is even more confusing - remember that even
a mouse brain is more complex in many ways than the biggest artificial 
computer ever built.

-(You make suggestions about aliens judging humans by a few religious
-fanatics. It isn't just a few whales that have been killed by whaling
-ships, it's thousands of whales, of many different species, in areas
-separated by thousands of miles.)

If it's numbers you want to go by, remember that the number of human religious
fanatics has always been much greater than the number of whales killed by
humans. :-)

John Roberts
roberts@cmr.ncsl.nist.gov

Newsgroups: sci.space