Talking to Cetaceans

One of the great pleasures of living in California is being able to enjoy the ocean all year round. And one of the greatest gifts when spending time in the water is interactions with our native dolphin population - sitting in the lineup waiting for a wave, they come surprisingly close. They’re curious, beautiful, and kind of scary.

I’ve been fascinated by cetaceans since I was a kid, but then I read John Lilly’s work.

Cetacea have had larger brains than humans for 15 million years. Homo arose about 3 million years ago, and modern homo sapiens with our large brains has only been around for about 300,000 years. So cetaceans have had human sized brains for 50 times longer than us. It stands to reason that they may have developed a lot in the way of intelligence over that time period.

This is like imagining what human consciousness might look like in 14.7 million years.

We already know they’re highly intelligent creatures with language, complex social structures, tool use, and symbolic understanding. If we want to understand the nature of consciousness, it stands to reason we should be investing far more resources in communing with them.

In evolutionary timespans we are close relatives - learning to communicate with them is likely to be far easier that engaging with an alien intelligence, so this seems like it would be a natural pre-requisite. CETI is undertaking AI enabled research in this field and The Wild Dolphin Project has spent 40 years interacting with a pod of free ranging Atlantic spotted dolphins.

What about dolphin society and dolphin religion? What about dolphin war and dolphin politics? What about cetaceans as a country unto themselves, natural geopolitical allies who have mastered the sea?

What about dolphin science and technology? What if we enabled another non-human intelligent species with tools and trades?

What kind of new sensing or experiences could we unlock in us, if we better understand how they interact with the world? What can their consciousness help us learn about ours?

I’d like to fund researchers and conduct some of my own. I’m not saying we need to give dolphins LSD….but it might not be the worst idea.