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Despite living in a supposedly less varied environment than ours, I'm starting to think that dolphins' language is richer and more detailed than ours, after reading this. Kinda like Egyptian pictographs, but motion 3d video broadcast right into your brain in real time, 'steada carved in rock. i wonder just how detailed thier mental sonograms are. I bet they rawk and rawk hard.
The tie-in to SETI at the end really makes me think...what would an announcement signal look like to our radio telescopes that comes from a dolphinlike ET that has no need or concept of symbolic language? Their idea of what constitutes an "obvious" announcement signal might be so different from ours that despite our shared assumptions about things like the 21cm band, monochromatic broadcasts etc, that we could pick something up that sounds just like static but is in fact the encyclopedia galactica we've been looking for. Crikey maybe they find monochromatic broadcasts far too limiting.
...what would an announcement signal look like to our radio telescopes that comes from a dolphinlike ET that has no need or concept of symbolic language?
Ha. Maybe the universe is the message, and we just haven't picked up on it yet. :) But, my guess is that if there is a message that we can pick up on, it's right here, but we just haven't developed the ability to detect it yet. As for dolphins, I have to wonder how assuming less for communication affects social interactions. If no one is likely to misunderstand you, is everyone more mellow? I also have to think that they must modify these images to enhance the message. Maybe if you are mad at Sam, you project his image with a big nose." Or, maybe you exaggerate: "That shark was like, THIS BIG!" I wonder how they deal with abstract concepts, like distance or time.
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"I wonder how they deal with abstract concepts, like distance or time."
Since studies have shown that we cannot even think without turning to symbols, I don't know if we could ever know the answer. Maybe that's (one of) the next steps in this translation effort