this post was submitted on 19 Nov 2025
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Asklemmy
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Haha imagine trying to explain that to people.
"I have a superpower, I can speak to animals they just can't speak back"
"But everyone has that superpower, I can do that too"
"Yeh but I'm actually really talking to them, like in their language that they can understand"
"How do you know?"
"..."
I mean, you can ask an animal to do some arbitrary action specified by the other person, and then the animal (hopefully) does it. This side effect isn't great, but it definitely still leaves some real usefulness.
Telling my dog as I go to the garage, "I'll be back in literally one minute." and being understood would rock.
But the thing is, if they do the thing you asked in a way where it's noticeable that they only did it because you asked, then they are signalling to you that they understood, which is a form of communication and the word used was "communicate" with animals.
First, the use of "communicate" in the original superpower description is presumably referring to communication that couldn't happen without the power - and the side effect uses the same term. As it stands, my dog can tell me she understands I intend to walk her by jumping off the back of the couch and being excited at the door.
So if the superpower only refers to novel communication, I'd interpret that to mean anything more than I could reasonably communicate to my dog, and more than she could communicate to me (confirmation of understanding).
If the side effect, despite using the same verb, actually renders animals LESS able to communicate with me than they already can, that seems an especially uncharitable interpretation.
Alternatively, I can ask the animal to wait until I was out of the room before performing the action for the third party. At that point, only that third party would end up communicating having seen the comprehension/performance.
Well thought out lol. You should get a genie, I think you'll be prepared.
I appreciate the sentiment, but probably not. The genie would just scoff af my argument and say nothing was guaranteed to be "fair" about the situation. My only saving grace in talking about it here is that fellow humans are more likely to share a similar base point for reasoning.