Reply #122: Lilly didn't create magical thinking. And you misread my post. [View All]

[Cetacea]

It's not his fault that new agers think that dolphins are angels from another planet or what have you.

And I do apologize for referring to you as an idiot. You are too politically astute to be an idiot. You realize that the best and most powerful way to "neutralize" somebody is to destroy their credibility by referring to them as a "quack" (or any other variation of the word).

You have me writing that "dolphins know more about our language than we do". ( Lol) .Wrong. I wrote "a species that understands more about our language than we do theirs". What that means is that they understand English better than we understand "delphenise". Capish?

As part of your attempt to be clever or insulting you wrote of the fictional movie, "Day of the Dolphin" in which a scientist ,played by the late George C Scott, with funding from the government, teaches dolphins to speak English. lol.

Now what isn't silly about the film is that Lilly did find that dolphins will, in the presence of humans, attempt to use their blowholes in ways totally unnatural to them in order to attempt human speech. But the film had them speaking clear English, which is ridiculous, though that bit of creative license did help drive the plot of a very good movie.

And of course the bit in the plot about using dolphins as weapons turned out to be quite prophetic. Who was it that said all science fiction eventually becomes science fact?


Lilly sued the director, Mike Nicols, as the resemblance to Lilly and his research center was obvious. The bit of nonsense about dolphins speaking English made Lilly's real work look ludicrous and Lilly knew it would provide fodder for skeptics like your self.

He and Nicols eventually became friends and Nicols later helped finance some of Lilly's post government funded research.

"I'll bet you think that a horse trained to stamp their hooves in response to cues from their trainer are superior in math too." No, I don't. And nothing in my post suggests that I do.

I don't know about the mathematical skills or lack thereof in horses but I do know that dolphins can retain more numbers and recall them at a faster rate than humans do, and exhibit a lot less anxiety than humans when doing so. (they also exhibit superior impulse control over humans and monkeys when in pain)

Now how would researchers know this fact if dolphins didn't understand at least some of our language, alien as it (probably) is to them?


How much do we understand about the dolphin clicks , whistles,and air borne vocalizations? Very little. We know that each dolphin has a "signature whistle" and all dolphins have distress whistles. Some Japanese fisherman understand the distress calls very well. If you nail a dolphin to the side of a boat with his head under water he or she will put out a distress call and all of those bleeding heart liberal dolphins will (tragically) attempt to come to his aid...


I'm curious as to why you'd think I was going to post links "to that quack, John Lilly". Do I know you? Lilly may have pioneered the area known as Inter-species Communication but was certainly not the last to pursue it. I highly recommend you acquaint yourself with the ongoing research of Dr. Louis Herman. I believe the dolphins working with him are up to several hundred words based on a form of sign language and he has demonstrated that they understand syntax, display self-awareness, and are capable of abstract thinking. Some of his work not only reinforces some of Lilly's own results, it also validates what many people who work with dolphins already know.

Nearly everything known about dolphin behavior, brain anatomy, communication methods, sonic output, sonar, and so on comes from the discoveries and work of Lilly. Little progress has been made in the pursuing years as no other scientist has had the US Government helping out as Lilly did, with the exception of Louis Herman and the Navy. I should add that his lab was built for Lilly by the Navy, possibly as a thank you for his inventions that aided high altitude pilots. And while he was being a quack he also invented the Peak Flow Meter, that little tube you one blows into to measure lung capacity. (if you have not had to use one I can assure you that you know someone who has). So that "quack" has presumably saved and/or helped untold millions of people just from that inventon alone. Being the good public servant that he was, he was neither compensated for or recognized for that achievement.

And of course there was the brain mapping and discovering a method to painlessly probe the brain...The list of discoveries and data he compiled are truly extraordinary. There was a good reason why he ws given due recognition for "Outstanding Contributions To Science". I would add medicine and a few other areas as well but that will happen in due time. ( From your response I gather that you already know this, which makes your attempt to neutralize him even more puzzling.)


I believe it was either Carl Sagan or Richard Feynman who said that Lilly was "the only person I know whose M.D. was the weakest part of his resume."

And it should be mentioned that his LSD experimentation took place under the auspices of the National Institute of Health, another government agency that I suppose thought he was a quack. You're attempt at neutralizing his brilliant career(s)and especially his dolphin research by quoting something silly he wrote while experimenting with LSD is really a cheap shot and intellectually dishonest, albeit politically astute.

You should know that after Lilly freed his dolphins , the US NAVY picked up his dolphin communication research but went classified with it, and it should be noted that the work continues as I write this...



Cheers