Would they become citizens? Would we give them rights and votes? Would they have to pay taxes?
My friend has a dog and a board with big paw size buttons that the dog can push. When the dog pushes a button, the board speaks a word. Thus the dog can speak.
For example, last night the dog came to her and pressed the buttons and said " fix bed". It turns out there was a tortilla chip laying in the middle of the dog’s bed and he wanted it removed.
So there you go dogs can talk. And maybe other animals can talk. They just need a little device to do it. Like a special kind of cell phone maybe.
This is real. It might be the new big thing.
We’d still keep them locked up and eat them. The farmers would just cut their tongues out right after birth to make it less awkward.
Jesus that’s dark.
I was just contemplating whether civility stems from respect or force. I guess that answers that.
Next time I’ll ask, “what if we gave all the animals machine guns?”
Then we’d send them to the front as drone fodder. We humans really do not have a good track record with the treatment of animals, regardless of how intelligent or sentient they are.
Bold of you to assume wed survive.
I once read a science fiction story. It was hundreds of years after ww whatever. All the animals were dead except for humans. So we differentiated our species into humans and cattle. The cattle humans were, as you might expect, beastile. There was even a sex scene.
Probably Philip Jose Farmer.
Uh huh. Anyway, I guess someone has to link this: https://static1.srcdn.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/Far-Side-Dog-Translator.jpg
What kind of dog requests a tortilla chip to be removed rather than eating it? I’ve only had labs. You’re lucky if they don’t eat the bed as well for having once been near a chip.
Depends what you count as “animals”. Because if ants get the vote, then we are all now vassals of one of the supercolonies.
For better or worse, relatively few animals live to the national voting age.
Hmm. An ant colony might count as a single organism. But I see your point.
There would be an imminent civil war over veganism. 🐮🥩🤠
Did you see that recent tv show Pluribus? They were basically Jains. Radical nonviolence.
I’m thinking it would be gesture controlled. Wifi tracking of the tongue or somesuch.
is this c/shower_shitposts?
You really shouldn’t shit in the shower.
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I misspoke. Sorry.
No worries!
Good lord, can you imagine the things that cows would have to say?
and chickens.
/SHUDDER
Ya I was thinking along those lines too. Or biological testing.
And what if you were a diehard “they’re just animals”, and then they spoke. Would you hang yourself?
OMFG… the biological testing…
The dog cannot speak. I’ve seen videos like this and I don’t believe them.
He can certainly associate buttons with things that happen, just like other “nonverbal” actions he takes. Or like how he can associate words and commands spoken by people with things.
But he doesn’t understand the words in the same way people do. If the buttons didn’t make any sounds at all he could develop the same associations.
It may not be “speaking” but it is communicating (relatively) complex concepts.
Dogs with buttons can associate them with people, actions, locations, and emotions, and use those buttons to express those connections, which is by definition communication.
Any dog owner knows they also communicate these things non-verbally by nosing at their leash, pawing at the door, wagging their tail, or dropping a ball in your lap.
What’s extra interesting about the dogs with buttons is they will sometimes clearly and communicate emotional ideas without expectation of reward, like
FIDO,HAPPYorMOM,GOODbefore just laying down to mind their own business.Sure, they dont understand the context of the Latin root of the word your saying, and they can’t read Shakespeare, but they can still communicate ideas, and respond to your actions, like someone learning Chinese for the first time and only picking up every 12th word and relying on context clues.
Their capacity for vocabulary isn’t infinite, but it’s clearly there.
If the buttons didn’t make any sounds at all he could develop the same associations.
By that logic would you say deaf people communicating in sign language are not speaking?
How about Stephen Hawking? You could swap all of the buttons on his computer with Japanese, or a series of beeps and he would eventually figure out how to get the same message across, does that invalidate him using English as his main language of communication?
All those examples of people you gave are still using language. Language can be spoken, written, signed, and more. Maybe my original comment wasn’t clear enough when I said “dogs can’t speak.” Dogs can certainly communicate, as many organisms can, but they can’t use language.
Well I don’t know if you understand words the way people do either. It’s a gray area.
But I’ve seen it and it sure looks like real speaking to me.
But how about the title question. You got anything to say about that? Riots? Shame-induced mass suicide?
