11 KiB
A rational deconstruction of talking animal movies [DC]
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Author: u/forrestib Project Freelancer*
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URL: https://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/3hdclu/a_rational_deconstruction_of_talking_animal/
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Score: 12
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Created: 2015-08-17T22:19:34
Post:
In the conventional talking animal story, dogs, cats, rats, birds, even insects can all communicate with each other with perfect clarity... But not with humans. They can only understand us, not speak to us. In addition, most if not all animals display near-human levels of intelligence, approximately equivalent to a child of 8-14. Worth noting, however, is that they almost never have any technology of any kind.
With these things in mind, there are a few things that require explanation. Firstly, why don't humans know that animals are so intelligent? A conspiracy is the most obvious answer, but also far from the simplest. Why are the animals hiding? What do they have to gain from feigning idiocy? Any help in this area would be much appreciated.
Secondly, how did this circumstance come to pass? The simplest answer is that it's just always been this way, throughout the history of the earth. All animals speak a Universal Language (possibly telepathic) that all animals can understand, and intellect runs rampant.
But then that brings up the question, what makes humans different? Why can't we understand the Universal Language, especially if we still speak it enough to be understood? The only other thing unique about humans is our use of technology and tools. So what if we adapted the part of our brain that handled UL comprehension into the "spark" of invention that made us what we are? Trading cooperation for independence.
If that's the case, it gives unique historical context to many ancient mythological tales of animals speaking, or people who could talk with beasts. There could be a very rare kind of person who still has minor UL capacity, at the cost of some other intellectual disorder, such as dyslexia or autism. It's also possible many people of these special people lose the ability later in life, as their brain plasticity decreases.
So, here's my story. Sometime in the late 60s-80s, an escaped farm goat starts a revolution against humanity. The first major joint venture among near every species against a common threat since the extinction of the dinosaurs. The animals do what they can without exposing themselves, and then go to war. It's likely this ends with a mass extinction event, one way or the other.
Comments:
u/turbinicarpus [+24] (2 hours later)
My headcanon for Disney's Little Mermaid is that sapience is contagious over time, at least for merfolk. Short-term interactions produce short-term increases in intelligence, which fade after the interaction is over; while long-term interaction results in the "uplift" sticking, and the creature even being able to "uplift" others.
For example, interacting with Ariel over a long time "uplifted" Flounder (the blue and yellow fish), while the shark they encounter is just a fish with shark-level intelligence. Similarly, Sebastian (the crab), by working closely with King Neptune and other merfolk on musical and dancing arrangements over a long time, is "uplifted" to the point where he is as "contagious" as any merperson, so by ordering around other creatures, he endows them with short-term sapience, letting him set up impromptu musical ensembles.
The merfolk don't, generally, understand this mechanism, which leads to cultural miscommunication between them and humans: the fish with whom merfolk interact are, generally, sapient (because merfolk interact with them), so King Neptune naturally despises humans for eating fish; but human sapience is not contagious, and since almost all the fish that humans encounter aren't merfolk-influenced, they have no way of learning that fish could possibly be sapient.
u/ArgentStonecutter [+10] Emergency Mustelid Hologram (2 hours later)
Let's look at Watership Down.
The animals verbal intelligence is human-level, but one-on-one their problem-solving ability is in the scale observed in smart dogs, rarely chimp level.
In groups, they coordinate better than any non-verbal animals.
The most likely answer is that they are the beneficiaries of a simplistic uplift process that has installed verbal language subsystems that hook into the underlying animal mind, and provide a modest boost in the problem solving abilities of animals no smarter than dogs, but are not themselves any more conscious than SHRDLU or Eliza. Almost as if an advanced alien (or post-singularity human) high-school student had hooked together a bunch of off-the-shelf open-source AI modules, with a conversational interface, and released it as a virus.
u/LiteralHeadCannon [+6] (2 hours later)
Note that it's a common situation in talking animal movies for there to be an occasional species - typically a dangerous apex predator - incapable of using language or all that much intelligence.
u/forrestib [+1] Project Freelancer (4 hours later)
That's very true. But which creatures are unintelligent varies wildly between stories. And I'd personally rather explore the societal implications of intelligent creatures eating each other than downgrade a significant portion of the predator population. And it also makes explaining the intellect more difficult if not everyone has it. The way it is now, humans are the only special case. More special cases means a less elegant rationalization.
u/MugaSofer [+2] (23 hours later)
In carnivores, talking with your prey might be an evolutionary disadvantage; you'd have to develop additional mechanisms to allow you to be sociopathic towards prey animals without compromising the rest of your goal structure.
There are various solutions to this problem; but one of them is to be a big, physically-capable predator that can kill prey without needing to rely on language skills.
(Or you might become lone, sociopathic "tricksters", or form close-knit tribes that only have loyalty within the group, or have particularly good facility at rationalization and social skills lion-king style.)
u/forrestib [+1] Project Freelancer (23 hours later)
I'm not sure it's necessary. Humans often don't have too much trouble killing each other, even if they can understand each other. And we don't need each other for food. The biological incentive is there. The psychological rationalizations and dissociations are nothing new. The group dynamic is even present among cultures such as the Vikings or the Mongols, where preying on the weak and innocent is a societal way of life. With food among the prizes and a whole species of peers, thriving happily in such a life will only be even easier.
u/MugaSofer [+1] (a day later)
Humans often don't have too much trouble killing each other, even if they can understand each other.
You'd be surprised. And they don't have to do so multiple times a day or they spontaneously die, either. That sort of thing takes quite a toll.
Still, you may be right about that ... it'd be hard to find a case study that confirms it either way.
u/artifex0 [+4] (7 hours later)
I'm not sure that a genocidal war against humanity on the part of sentient animals would actually make any sense. The animals we mistreat the most- chickens, cows and pigs- are so heavily modified as a result of breeding that I don't think they could survive in the wild. For them, an end to humanity would mean extinction.
Wild animals might want to destroy humanity over the destruction of habitat, but in 2015, that's something that would apply mostly in South America, Africa, and in the ocean. Believe it or not, forests have actually grown in America and Europe over the past half century due to more sustainable logging and expansions to national parks. Also, it would raise the question of why wild animals would only act now, when habitat destruction is far from new.
Furthermore, if wild animals did decide to wage a massive war on humanity, how would they eat? If the animals just stayed in their habitats and attacked humans on sight, that would cause some chaos in the sort term, but it wouldn't come anywhere near to ending civilization. To actually have a chance of winning the war, the animals would need to heavily concentrate their forces and strike in an organized way. So, lets say you have an army of thousands of dogs, all ready to run into machine gun fire in the hopes of taking some fortified airport or power plant. Would you also have a supply line of thousands of starving rabbits and squirrels, all willing to be eaten to keep the dogs healthy while they moved into position? Would that even be sustainable if the war lasted more than a few weeks?
I think that if animals were secretly sentient, their best bet for dealing with humanity would be an intellectual revolution, not a military one. They'd want to bring their best minds together and work out a way to decipher human language. Once they could communicate with humanity, they could use a threat of a limited war- or strikes, in the case of domesticated animals- to negotiate for better treatment, without the risk of complete extinction in a giant, apocalyptic war.
On top of that, being able to communicate with humanity would allow sentient animals to participate in civilization, which I think they'd find preferable to nature for exactly the same reasons we do.
u/ArgentStonecutter [+8] Emergency Mustelid Hologram (9 hours later)
On top of that, being able to communicate with humanity would allow sentient animals to participate in civilization, which I think they'd find preferable to nature for exactly the same reasons we do.
u/forrestib [+2] Project Freelancer (23 hours later)
That's a lot better. I'll probably alter it to where they still try and stay under the radar for a while. Going public is a big enough event to save for halfway through the story, I think. Maybe the "cold revolution" has already been going on for a few decades, slowly growing. The modern boom in animal domestication could be a largely controlled effort to increase sympathy.
u/ArgentStonecutter [+5] Emergency Mustelid Hologram (9 hours later)
BTW, as /u/artifex0 reminded me, Rick Griffin's strip HousePets! plays with all the creepy edges of the "talking animals" trope.
Hey, I'm gonna eat your innards! At least get a little indignant!
u/sir_pirriplin [+3] (4 hours later)
Sometime in the late 60s-80s, an escaped farm goat starts a revolution against humanity.
That sounds a little like Animal Farm, but without having to follow the history of the Soviet Union, it could go to interesting places.
u/MugaSofer [+3] (23 hours later)
If that's the case, it gives unique historical context to many ancient mythological tales of animals speaking, or people who could talk with beasts. There could be a very rare kind of person who still has minor UL capacity, at the cost of some other intellectual disorder, such as dyslexia or autism
That would explain a lot of Disney protagonists.