The Art of Listening

A Science for Detecting Sentience

Humans are particularly bad at identifying intelligence. We minimize evidence that might lead to recognizing ‘Others,’ while elevating folks that perhaps shouldn’t be celebrated.

Is it possible to overthink a thing? The 1979 movie Being There is essentially Forrest Gump. Humans are so smart that they think everything a person who is clearly challenged does is just genius level insight. More and more, science has come around to realizing there is more going on even in a single cell than they imagined. Cells are not just tiny robots making simple binary statements about the world. In many instances, it has taken AI technology to reveal the obvious to humans- this is not as simple as we make it. How will we determine an alien intelligence when we can’t find ‘Other’ intelligence that lives with us daily?

Take dolphins for example. We know that they have language. You would expect different species to have a different language, if language making is species specific. We know that the same species, but different pods, each pod has its own language. Just like humans, there are many variations in language! We also know different species, different pods, each with their own unique language…