From: Dickey, Michael F (michael_f_dickey@groton.pfizer.com)
Date: Mon Apr 29 2002 - 13:09:49 MDT
> (Hal Finney <hal@finney.org>):
>> I am continuously amazed to see such fallacies trotted out as sensible
>> arguments. Just because a chimp can communicate at the level of a
>> three-year-old, does not make that chimp the moral equivalent of a
>> three-year-old.
"Not to mention that the "if" there is complete nonsense anyway.
Even after decades of research attempting to teach chimps, gorillas,
and other apes something resembling "language", none of them, at any
age, after years of work, have acheived skills that any 18-month-old
human infant acheives spontaneously with no effort."
Really? I have read accounts of Chimps creating new words (calling other
chimps the symbol for feces and combining it with 'bad') and politely asking
researches to leave the rooms when they figured out that the researches were
interfereing in there candy/treat winning excersize (these were relayed in
Carl Sagan's Dragons of Eden) Its hard to believe that no chimps have ever
even achieved rudimentary language skills, considering how similiar they are
to us physiologically. Humans in thier first 80,000 years probably resorted
to a few basic syllaballes of grunts and shouts, and not much more.
Michael
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