[zoogeny]

Not directly related, but one of those stories that is so bizarre you almost can't believe it isn't made up.

There was a NASA funded attempt to communicate with Dolphins. This eccentric scientist created a house that was half water (a series of connected pools) and half dry spaces. A woman named Margaret Howe Lovatt lived full-time with the Dolphins attempting to learn a shared language between them.

Things went completely off the rails in many, many ways. The lead scientist became obsessed with LSD and built an isolation chamber above the house. This was like the sensory deprivation tanks you get now (often called float tanks). He would take LSD and place himself in the tank and believed he was psychically communicating with the Dolphins.

1. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/jun/08/the-dolp...

[meindnoch]

>A woman named Margaret Howe Lovatt lived full-time with the Dolphins attempting to learn a shared language between them.

She also had sex with a male dolphin called Peter.

>He would take LSD and place himself in the tank and believed he was psychically communicating with the Dolphins.

He eventually came to believe he was communicating with a cosmic entity called ECCO (Earth Coincidence Control Office). The story of the Sega game "Ecco the Dolphin" [1] is a tongue-in-cheek reference to this. I recommend watching the Atrocity Guide episode on John C. Lily and his dolphin "science" [2]. It's on par with The Men Who Stare at Goats (the non-fiction book [3], not the movie).

He has a website that looks like it's been untouched since his death, 2001: http://www.johnclilly.com/

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecco_the_Dolphin

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UziFw-jQSks

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Men_Who_Stare_at_Goats

[maebert]

arguably the best episode of Drunken history has duncan trussel retelling this story: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p7ruBotHWUs

Paraphrasing carl sagan: "You don't go to Japan and kidnap a Japanese man start jking him off, give him fing acid, and then ask him to learn English!"

[amy214]

It's funny you were thinking that, because I was thinking, "how would you teach a japanese man english?." The obvious answer is to jerk him off and give him high doses of LSD first. I immediately came to the same conclusion with this AI-dolphin stuff. Have they tried jerking off the dolphin and giving it LSD first? Apparently - yes.

[trollied]

Remember the game Ecco The Dolphin? Related... https://www.vice.com/en/article/the-ketamine-secrets-of-sega...

[srean]

Know the story. Such a tragic end.

[zeroping]

And it's a story that haunts the marine biology field. Imagine having to explain that one every time someone asks about it.

[nandomrumber]

Oh yeah, imagine having to explain an experiment you had nothing to do with, that happened before you were born.

Imagine having to explain dragnet surveillance every time someone finds out you know how to code.

Imagine having to explain the Exon Valdez every time someone asks you about your car.

Roll out the reparations!