The Lord of Steel (Ch. 35)
New
Hyphen (Pokemon Emerald)
It's true that the overwhelming majority of pokemon species are not sapient. However, psychic types generally, and Abra/Ralts specifically, are probably exceptions to that rule. I mean, you can't just take a crocodile and "raise" it to be sapient, even over thousands of years; a creature has to have the capacity for thought before you can teach them to make use of it. And it's not a boolean thing, either; intelligence is a sliding scale with many dimensions. Pokemon like Treeko and Mawile, even if not "sapient", are noticeably smarter than, say, Magikarp. And one pokemon species might have the necessary brain structure to learn English, while another might be smart enough to discover how to cook their food, but those might not overlap.
Yes, but that Gardevoir was herself sapient. It's likely that she had above-average intelligence for her species (at least at the time), but the Abra line must have had some capacity for thought in the first place for her to have successfully learned language, etc. from humans, let alone taught it to others. It seems to me like wild Ralts (before The Ancestor's tampering, and possibly unaltered populations elsewhere) were probably closer to cavemen than to chimpanzees, and that may be true of Abra (and some other psychic lines) as well.
If I had to guess which species of (non-legendary) pokemon have a level of intelligence that could be considered "sapient" it would probably be these ones in addition to Abra/Ralts:
- Mime jr./Mr. Mime/Mr. Rime
- Smoochum/Jynx
- Slowking (but not Slowpoke/Slowbro; a Slowpoke's brain needs the Shellder's poison to kick into high gear, and the brain of the Shelder on Galarian Slowking requires similar stimulation)
- Metagross (but not Beldum/Metang; their intelligence explicitly only increases on their final evolution)
- Gothita/Gothorita/Gothitelle
- Elgyem/Beheeyem
- Blipbug/Dottler/Orbeetle
- Hatenna/Hattrem/Hatterene
That actually just gave me a thought: it would probably be borderline impossible for a human to find a psychic type pokemon that doesn't want to be found. One of the first things Astra learned about humans was that they think loud; humans are intelligent but most have no sense of psychic perception, so a human trying to hunt one down would be like a deaf person who doesn't realize that they're making a huge ruckus while stomping through the underbrush. We already know that humans are wrong about there being no sapient pokemon around; perhaps they actually exist all over the world, and humans are just especially bad at finding them? (And maybe some psychic trainers are aware of their existence, but keep them secret?)
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Iris-Iven-Ibis
Interested-Idiot-Immortal
- Location
- You know
This makes me want to weep
Here lies a big boy.⁸
A good boy.
Rest well, Aggron.
Your progeny endures to this day.
Art by heartlessMushroom. (Twitter)
(this is a compliment!)
I think the big breakpoint is probably more cultural - potentially sapient pokemon exist in the listed high intelligence types, but they don't think like humans, they think more like high intelligence, emotionally sophisticated pokemon with more pokemon oriented priorities.
The example cases is a high level psychic that has been raised culturally human and proceeding to propagate this culture, to raise their young like humans do and make use of tools and permanent structures.
They always had the capacity.
- Location
- America
This is amazing, but I imagined it bigger, like, 'a small village could live inside it's corpse' bigger
- Location
- Detroit, Michigan
I think that's a trick of perspective. Astra is on a ledge in the foreground, but there really isn't anything to establish the scale of things down where she's looking at.
- Location
- America
Ah, I didn't notice that, in that case- Amazing drawing, 5/5 hidden pokemon villages!
So I was trawling through older posts in the thread (I only started reading this story earlier this year), and one of them jumped out at me.
--Holy shit, even the taller Kirlia are straight-up giants (compared to humans), never mind the Gardevoir. I'm half-thinking the Gardevoir aren't actually that tall, because there currently aren't any in Astra's village so the statement might not apply to them. Also, now it makes total sense Astra could pass as a young human, a Ralts here is well within young human height ranges. (Though probably not 10-year-old ones.)
(I know this is kinda an old post, but like I said it jumped out at me.)
Now, my brain is very math-oriented, so I reflexively jumped into calculating how this would turn out. Canonically, Ralts are 40 cm tall and double in height with each evolution, so Kirlia are 80 cm and Gardevoir are 160 cm. Therefore, assuming the statement provided gives the range of heights for those born in Astra's village, a Ralts will be 80-120 cm, a Kirlia will be 160-240 cm, and a Gardevoir will be 320-480 cm. For filthy Imperialist scum like myself, that works out to 2'7"-3'11" (Ralts), 5'3"-7'10" (Kirlia), and 10'6"-15'9" (Gardevoir).
--Holy shit, even the taller Kirlia are straight-up giants (compared to humans), never mind the Gardevoir. I'm half-thinking the Gardevoir aren't actually that tall, because there currently aren't any in Astra's village so the statement might not apply to them. Also, now it makes total sense Astra could pass as a young human, a Ralts here is well within young human height ranges. (Though probably not 10-year-old ones.)
(I know this is kinda an old post, but like I said it jumped out at me.)
Dermonster
The Shittiest Wizard
Pfft.
Yeah, Ralts start out at 4'4'' and gain 8 inches with every evolution. 5'0 KIrlia, 5'8'' Garde.
For other refence, May is 5'7'' and Brendan is 5'11''.
Okay, yeah, that's considerably more sane. Thanks for un-breaking my brain. (Though I'm not sure whether I should thank you when you're the one who broke it to begin with... /jk)
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I won't doubt that some pokemon species are smarter than others. But Echo, just this chapter, talked about how they aren't sapient. Dermonster's even said it out of character. Dermonster mentioned on SB that Hoenn's ralts are more intelligent. I've pointed out that the inability to speak does not make one unintelligent, and Dermonster just said that pokemon in Hyphen just aren't as intelligent as humans and directly stated that Roxanne was correct. I had directly brought up Alakazams and Slowkings. There are some that are smarter and some that are less.
Psychic pokemon probably have an easier time of it than most, but the implication that I have gotten is that pokemon can learn to speak because of how adaptive they are. Any pokemon can become sapient, but they need to learn sapience. Echo needed to learn sapience. But Astra did not need to learn sapience. She needed to be taught yes, but she naturally developed it.
I don't think that phrasing meshes very well with what I know about feral children, who demonstrate that humans need to learn that sort of thing too. But I can't speak with confidence about developmental psychology.
Dragonite might have an easier time learning languages too.
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Dermonster
The Shittiest Wizard
A good wording on my part in the SV post about teaching your Alakazam to talk was that you'd want to do it 'while they're still an Abra'.
It's never impossible, but the earlier the better. For a given amount of better, that is.
Also 'twenty years' is probably hyperbolic, but I refuse to put any more hard numbers on the matter. The readers preconceptions of 'sufficiently unreasonable timeframe' shall have to do.
It's never impossible, but the earlier the better. For a given amount of better, that is.
Also 'twenty years' is probably hyperbolic, but I refuse to put any more hard numbers on the matter. The readers preconceptions of 'sufficiently unreasonable timeframe' shall have to do.
Wingding Names (Ch. 36)
New
Dermonster
The Shittiest Wizard
Nobody brought it up this time, so in case anyone was wondering, here are the wingding 'names' of the various Kadabra:
☹︎︎♋︎︎⬧︎︎⧫︎︎ ☜︎♍︎︎♒︎︎□︎︎ - Last Echo: The last surviving Kadabra. Caretaker. The children must survive.
💧︎♒︎♓︎❍︎❍︎♏︎❒︎♓︎■︎♑︎ ❄︎♋︎⬧︎⧫︎♏︎ - Shimmering Taste: Cook. Taste is an art, not a science. Denied even their refuse.
👌︎□︎◆︎●︎♎︎♏︎❒︎ ☞︎♓︎⬧︎⧫︎ - Boulder Fist: Rock-carving expert. Theatrical and boisterous. His hopes and dreams came crashing down around him.
💧︎♒︎♋︎❒︎♏︎♎︎ ☟︎♏︎♋︎❒︎⧫︎ - Shared Heart: Dispute resolver. A good friend. Failed Aron domesticator. Still smiling.
🕆︎■︎⧫︎□︎●︎♎︎ ✋︎■︎⧫︎❒︎♓︎♑︎◆︎♏︎ - Untold Intrigue: Puzzlemaker. Lookout and Scout. Loved to surprise others. Didn't see it coming.
💣︎♋︎❒︎❒︎□︎⬥︎ 💧︎♒︎♋︎⧫︎⧫︎♏︎❒︎ - Marrow Shatter: Hunter. Barrage Champion. Avatar of Vengeance. Made them feel every bit of pain they could. They walked away.
👎︎♏︎◻︎⧫︎♒︎ 💣︎♏︎❍︎□︎❒︎⍓︎ - Depth Memory: The second-to-last Kadabra. Lorekeeper and Storyteller. Left her all alone.
☝︎●︎♋︎♍︎♓︎♋︎●︎ 💧︎◻︎♓︎🙵♏︎ - Glacial Spike: Early gen Kadabra, explored and hunted on the surface during the Long Winter. Tried to ignore the sounds on the wind.
☹︎︎♋︎︎⬧︎︎⧫︎︎ ☜︎♍︎︎♒︎︎□︎︎ - Last Echo: The last surviving Kadabra. Caretaker. The children must survive.
💧︎♒︎♓︎❍︎❍︎♏︎❒︎♓︎■︎♑︎ ❄︎♋︎⬧︎⧫︎♏︎ - Shimmering Taste: Cook. Taste is an art, not a science. Denied even their refuse.
👌︎□︎◆︎●︎♎︎♏︎❒︎ ☞︎♓︎⬧︎⧫︎ - Boulder Fist: Rock-carving expert. Theatrical and boisterous. His hopes and dreams came crashing down around him.
💧︎♒︎♋︎❒︎♏︎♎︎ ☟︎♏︎♋︎❒︎⧫︎ - Shared Heart: Dispute resolver. A good friend. Failed Aron domesticator. Still smiling.
🕆︎■︎⧫︎□︎●︎♎︎ ✋︎■︎⧫︎❒︎♓︎♑︎◆︎♏︎ - Untold Intrigue: Puzzlemaker. Lookout and Scout. Loved to surprise others. Didn't see it coming.
💣︎♋︎❒︎❒︎□︎⬥︎ 💧︎♒︎♋︎⧫︎⧫︎♏︎❒︎ - Marrow Shatter: Hunter. Barrage Champion. Avatar of Vengeance. Made them feel every bit of pain they could. They walked away.
👎︎♏︎◻︎⧫︎♒︎ 💣︎♏︎❍︎□︎❒︎⍓︎ - Depth Memory: The second-to-last Kadabra. Lorekeeper and Storyteller. Left her all alone.
☝︎●︎♋︎♍︎♓︎♋︎●︎ 💧︎◻︎♓︎🙵♏︎ - Glacial Spike: Early gen Kadabra, explored and hunted on the surface during the Long Winter. Tried to ignore the sounds on the wind.
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Oh, for sure. But just to clarify, "sapient" doesn't necessarily mean "thinks like a human". In this context, it would mean "can think as well as a human". When it comes right down to it, no two humans think exactly the same! Ralts and Kadabra may have entirely different ways of looking at the world, but as long as they're able to function as well in it as a human, they would be just as sapient as a human.
So I'm not disagreeing, but there is one thing I'd point out: the necessary thing for the story isn't that "pokemon are never sentient", but "humans believe pokemon are never sentient". Even in the canon of the games, pokemon are shrouded in mystery, with new species being discovered all the time, with even the most decorated researchers admitting that what they know is dwarfed by what they don't know.
Astra and Echo are both living evidence that one of Roxanne's presuppositions was wrong. The only question is, how wrong? Are their two colonies the only instances of sapient pokemon out there? Or are there more, possibly the pokemon equivalent of cryptids for the lack of publicly known and/or scientifically documented information on them? Basically, the scenario described in the Virtuoso omake; they exist, but as yet are unknown to humans, possibly because, like Astra's village, they are afraid of humans and actively hiding themselves.
I think we might be getting a couple of wires crossed here? It's not that feral children are non-sapient, it's that they can appear that way to humans who've had a normal, healthy upbringing. They can learn to speak in adulthood, for example, but face all the same struggles (and a few extra) that any adult trying to learn a foreign language does; a brain that's still in the process of growing has an easier time reconfiguring itself for a new language than one that's finished. You could say that it's a nature vs nurture thing: all humans are sapient by nature, but they might not be getting their money's worth from it if their upbringing fails to give them the knowledge and experience they need to actually use their brain to its full potential. Likewise, I don't think that just any pokemon can do it; no matter how patient you are in your teaching, no matter how badly it wants to, you're never going to teach a Magikarp to do calculus. It is just completely beyond the biological capabilities of their brains.
Abra clearly need more intellectual stimulation than Ralts do to trigger their evolution, so I think you could say that Abra "aren't sapient" (in the same way you could argue that a newborn human "isn't sapient"; and the same is likely true for newly-hatched Ralts). But I don't think the same can necessarily be said of Kadabra and other high-intelligence candidates without exploring other possibilities. For example, humans are clearly biased to believe that pokemon, no matter how intelligent, are still just animals unless they can "speak". However, Echo demonstrated that this bias might go both ways...
... I wouldn't be surprised at all if both sides generally saw the other as "smart enough to be dangerous, not smart enough to be reasoned with". Their natural methods of communication are so dissimilar that they've both made the (incorrect) assumption that the other just isn't capable at all. And that's with a Kadabra that does have a decent grasp of (psychically-spoken) English; imagine how much higher that barrier would be for one who's never learned to speak it at all; one who's only other communicated with other Kadabra via high-density psychic information packets.
A Kadabra's ears might not even connect to their brains the same way a human's do; the language-processing center might have evolved under the assumption that all meaningful communication will come through telepathy, and when they hear actual human speech they assume that it's random noise that just so happens to accompany the faint brainwaves (carrying the same information) humans emit when they're talking! But then they try to respond across that same channel, accidentally do it too "loud", human has a one-way ticket to migraine-town, thinks the Kadabra's attacking, Kadabra thinks humans just can't understand speech... If this is a common pattern for psychic pokemon, then it would be no wonder that humans don't think there are any sapient pokemon in the world, and almost no pokemon thus far have even been aware of that misconception, let alone taken steps to rectify it!
Diplomacy's difficult even when you aren't a hunter-gatherer trying to survive in the woods, occasionally stumbling across an unknown, violent species that feels pain when you talk and has a habit of capturing creatures like you in little balls and spiriting them away to arceus-knows-where... Better to just avoid them altogether.
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I'm not arguing that. Humans don't even believe that. Occasionally humans will teach pokemon to be sapient, like the Kantonian Meowth Roxanne mentioned.
Roxanne wasn't wrong. She did not say that a community of pokemon was impossible. She said it would only be self-sustaining if someone spent hundreds of years continuously teaching Pokemon language and intelligence. That happened. The Ancestor spent thousands of years driving the entire village to be sapient, refusing to let even mortality stop her. If Astra told Roxanne her village's history, what would shock her is the millennia old Gardevoir, not the village of intelligent pokemon. Well, it would, but once she got over that, it would fit humanity's understanding of pokemon.
I brought up feral children for a couple reasons. I had misremembered the devlopmental timeline.
Humanity has psychic pokemon. It surely has intelligent psychic pokemon. The problems you posit about humans detecting sapience in pokemon aren't going to be major roadblocks. Even Echo would say that in her experience, and the experience of the Granite Caves, that the majority of Abra are not sapient. Even considering the deleterious effects of the Great Dwindling. The Kadabra created the puzzles in large part to stimulate the Abra so they could pick which ones would get the push to be sapient. And since the Kadabra of the Granite Caves didn't lay eggs... the 'egg move' sapience doesn't get passed on like it did with Astra's village.
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Kai Merah
Hound Hearted Hedonist
- Location
- Somewhere in the corners of my imagination
This made me deeply crave the AU fixit fic where Last Echo falls through a time rift or something, back to just before humans started building a city near their habitat, and all her friends are still alive.
Dermonster
The Shittiest Wizard
I'm unsure if we're all using the same definitions for things. That said, I'd probably hazard that pokemon are generally more sapient than Earthly animals.
But I am also unsure if I know what I even mean by sapient. They'd be able to recognize themselves in a mirror. They ask questions. They communicate relevent information to their friends. Roxanne mentioned that a Meowth in Kanto became able to speak through some unmentioned series of presumably strange occurances. (*cough* Team Rocket's blasting off again! *cough*). Is a Meowth less sapient than an Abra? The Whismur in Rusturf tunnel recognized that the Aqua grunt was trying to cause a big ruckus and tried to calm down his Exploud patriarch. They didn't 'talk', but that's pretty cognizant of a situation, yeah?
The difference between Astra and a wild Ralts from Unova is an insane amount of effort and time dedicated to generations of baking speech into Astra's entire collective lineage. If you'd have dropped Astra's egg into the north side of the forest and she went untaught and got caught by Wally, she'd be an absolutely devastating 'mon who might be able to passively pick up a couple words, to general astonishment and acclaim. The Abra only got a small portion of that; they aren't really any better at learning it, they just have Kadabra that are culturally and existentially obliged to try to teach them.
Humans have a highway leading their children to proper communication. They've been building it for two hundred thousand years. Some may have good cars, or have to bike, or even crawl along the railing on the sidewalk. Some face darker paths still. There's even a nifty yellow bus! (Apparently the Yellow School Bus is a United States only thing.)
But for all of them, the path ahead is crystal clear.
In front of every other pokemon, that same pathway is a horrible, thorn-filled jungle leading up to a daunting cliff face with an ill-defined reward at the top. No they can't fly or anything, shut up it's a metaphor. Maybe some are better suited to making an attempt, but they still have to do it. Most don't even know the mountain is there; in the other direction is a pathway uncounted millions of years old that simply teaches them how to survive and Fight Good. It is multitudes easier than even the human's Speech Highway. There isn't even a choice, really.
Sometimes a kindly human takes a pokemon through that jungle, though the vast majority stop not that far in. Rarely, events may conspire to bring a pokemon through fully, but freak chance is irreplicable.
The Kadabra, with their teacher gone early, individually carried each Abra they taught through that jungle and across those dizzying heights. Those Abra made it through, but it didn't make the trip there any easier in the future. And the trip is so hard. Best to pick an Abra that looks like it could at least walk beside you as you go. (Read: is at least a little bit more intelligent and capable of learning than their peers.)
The Ancestor faced that jungle, saw that mountain, and in a hundredth of the time it took Humanity she burned that jungle to ash and cleaved that mountain to the bedrock for her entire local species.
They have a road now. They can walk it quite fast. Maybe even teleport a little bit.
I think it's a little unfair to compare other pokemon's ability to fully communicate with an uplift project so long in the making.
TL;DR I've spent too long editing this post and am now anxious. Am I just repeating myself? Do I even remember what we're talking about? Did I completely forget an entire topic or section of the conversation? I dunno man I just work here. Procrastinating on college assignments.
But I am also unsure if I know what I even mean by sapient. They'd be able to recognize themselves in a mirror. They ask questions. They communicate relevent information to their friends. Roxanne mentioned that a Meowth in Kanto became able to speak through some unmentioned series of presumably strange occurances. (*cough* Team Rocket's blasting off again! *cough*). Is a Meowth less sapient than an Abra? The Whismur in Rusturf tunnel recognized that the Aqua grunt was trying to cause a big ruckus and tried to calm down his Exploud patriarch. They didn't 'talk', but that's pretty cognizant of a situation, yeah?
The difference between Astra and a wild Ralts from Unova is an insane amount of effort and time dedicated to generations of baking speech into Astra's entire collective lineage. If you'd have dropped Astra's egg into the north side of the forest and she went untaught and got caught by Wally, she'd be an absolutely devastating 'mon who might be able to passively pick up a couple words, to general astonishment and acclaim. The Abra only got a small portion of that; they aren't really any better at learning it, they just have Kadabra that are culturally and existentially obliged to try to teach them.
Humans have a highway leading their children to proper communication. They've been building it for two hundred thousand years. Some may have good cars, or have to bike, or even crawl along the railing on the sidewalk. Some face darker paths still. There's even a nifty yellow bus! (Apparently the Yellow School Bus is a United States only thing.)
But for all of them, the path ahead is crystal clear.
In front of every other pokemon, that same pathway is a horrible, thorn-filled jungle leading up to a daunting cliff face with an ill-defined reward at the top. No they can't fly or anything, shut up it's a metaphor. Maybe some are better suited to making an attempt, but they still have to do it. Most don't even know the mountain is there; in the other direction is a pathway uncounted millions of years old that simply teaches them how to survive and Fight Good. It is multitudes easier than even the human's Speech Highway. There isn't even a choice, really.
Sometimes a kindly human takes a pokemon through that jungle, though the vast majority stop not that far in. Rarely, events may conspire to bring a pokemon through fully, but freak chance is irreplicable.
The Kadabra, with their teacher gone early, individually carried each Abra they taught through that jungle and across those dizzying heights. Those Abra made it through, but it didn't make the trip there any easier in the future. And the trip is so hard. Best to pick an Abra that looks like it could at least walk beside you as you go. (Read: is at least a little bit more intelligent and capable of learning than their peers.)
The Ancestor faced that jungle, saw that mountain, and in a hundredth of the time it took Humanity she burned that jungle to ash and cleaved that mountain to the bedrock for her entire local species.
They have a road now. They can walk it quite fast. Maybe even teleport a little bit.
I think it's a little unfair to compare other pokemon's ability to fully communicate with an uplift project so long in the making.
TL;DR I've spent too long editing this post and am now anxious. Am I just repeating myself? Do I even remember what we're talking about? Did I completely forget an entire topic or section of the conversation? I dunno man I just work here. Procrastinating on college assignments.
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- Location
- Canada, probably
Canada, too. Some other parts of the anglosphere as well, according to Wikipedia.
I think the explanation makes sense. I like the metaphors, they do help quite a lot.
Dermonster
The Shittiest Wizard
Thank you, I tried.
Next up: My explanation on how Kadabra are semi-conceptually Fantasy High Magic Elves. Adolescent for a long time and low population, but grow into powerhouses. They just didn't have the usual fantasy trope of having previously dominated a large portion of a continent for ten thousand years somehow, and instead were locked into a single extensive cave network for an eighth of that. In this metaphor Astra's a half-elf (except her lineage contains no humans or elves...) while humans are still just Tallmen.
Iris-Iven-Ibis
Interested-Idiot-Immortal
- Location
- You know
You've been watching and/or reading delicious in the dungeon good choice
Oof, right in the feels.
That kind of bias is in fact everywhere in real life too, look at every time the scientist community was surprised by learning that *a non primate species is sapient* partially because the *standard tests* are anthropocentric.
Test of the mirror? I have seen several people pointing out that it presuppose they care about the same thing as us, so is not a good indicator.
Usage of tools? Well, what do you consider as such though, and do they even need it in their natural environment?
So on and so forth.
In fact, I have also seen a video about QI pointing out that it is so strongly biased towards modern living the results are not reliable for any other kind of intelligence, despite people always thinking of it as able to.
So, almost if not all of them are sapient?
(I do believe most animals are.)
For a lot of time, of in fact even today, that would be more than enough to consider every single one sapient, particularly the mirror test.
Though, humans are so biased towards speech that the assumption of pokemons not being sapient despite the rest still holds up quite well.
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And Astra, being able to speak too, would probably inherit the same bias, so also thinks other pokemons aren't sapient.
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I'd also note that a lot of the human or higher intelligence pokemon are either solitary or have very steep evolution requirements to get there(which makes them socialized as solitary by the time they get there). Beldum are famously about as bright as a dumbbell, a lone Metagross is going to find it far more interesting talking to itself than the juniors. Same goes for tool use and permanent construction - by the time they get there any tool thats not the product of an entire civilization long logistics chain is just inferior to using their powers to do it.
Even if they thought like humans it'd very rarely be passed on down because of how hard it is to raise one.
Even if they thought like humans it'd very rarely be passed on down because of how hard it is to raise one.
Agreed, there's definitely at least a bit of confusion here. (And the dictionary definition is profoundly unhelpful, lol.) Just to clarify, when I say "sapient", I'm meaning "at or near the same level of intelligence humans have", or in other words, "is intelligent enough to warrant being treated as a fellow person, not a mere animal". This is most likely accompanied by traits like the following:
- Language (telepathic communication counts as long as it can express the same amount of info)
- Tool creation/use
- Theory of other minds (i.e. ability to recognize that some other creatures are also able to think)
- Ability to think logically about their goals and how to achieve them
- etc.
Um. That's definitely not how I read what she said. The way I interpreted that was that "pokemon are still animals" meant "anatomically modern pokemon lack the necessary intelligence to be humanity's peers". (And never will without some serious long-term intervention in the form of intelligence-increasing genetic modification a la Planet of the Apes, possibly via breeding programs) The vagueness with which she referred to Team Rocket's Meowth made it sound like she thought he was either an urban legend, a trick like Clever Hans, or some sort of exceptionally smart mutant (which would make sense from the canon; IIRC Meowth was kinda seen as a "freak" by others of his species) and the other experiments sounded like Koko the gorilla (who, while able to speak and understand some rudimentary sign language, was still far below humans; her vocabulary was only ever about the same as a 3-year-old human) where even if you see some marginal improvement, are still so far below humans that introducing them to society is a pipe dream.
Would it, though? That's like saying "because humans were able to imagine Planet of the Apes, it would be unsurprising to find a village of intelligent, metalworking chimpanzees in the middle of the jungle somewhere IRL". Even if it's not physically impossible, it's so outlandish that it's barely even worth considering, immortal magical eugenics manager notwithstanding.
... Except that it was. It was a major factor in the collapse of granite cave: the inability of the Kadabra to find a way meaningfully communicate with the humans, and the humans' assumption that the Kadabra were non-sapient and thus didn't even try to initiate communication themselves. The psychic pokemon owned by humans may be "intelligent" by the standards of wild animals, but are they known to be as intelligent as humans? It seems like the answer is almost always "no", otherwise the conversation with Roxanne would have been quite different.
Yeah, by this metric, I'd assume that the Whismur are at least as smart as a dog (who will actually do the same thing sometimes; I saw a video once of a dog pulling a cat away from another by its collar as the two were gearing up to fight), but probably still well short of a human. (And Team Rocket's Meowth may have been the brains of the trio, but all three of them were famously stupid by human standards, lol).
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A highway?!?! The savagery! What better sign could there be of the barbarism of man that your comparison of our ability to be is a highway rather than a proper and civilized rail track!
By sapience I was referring to self-awareness and of others. Along with the ability to communicate, advanced plan making, abstraction, ect.
That is not what Roxanne said. She said that pokemon can speak human languages with years of training, or extraordinary circumstance. Dermonster has mentioned frequently outside of the stories that pokemon can learn that. Dermonster compared it to egg moves. A pokemon who can speak languages will have children who can learn languages slightly more easily. But fundamentally it is just an individual maybe two. A curiousity.
Just right on this page Dermonster said that humans will occasionally guide pokemon to language and 'civilization', but it's hard as hell and generally not worth the effort. Look at the Kadabra of the Granite Caves. They never managed to grow their number, though part of that was them not contributing their intelligence back into their children.
Yes, I said it would shock her and once she got over it, it would fit the pokemon community's understanding of pokemon. Her statement about how a community of intelligent pokemon would come to pass was completely correct. There'd be proof of a community of intelligent Ralts! A millennia-old gardevoir is much more out there.
Yes, but you were saying that psychic pokemon in general were intelligent. You said that you wouldn't be surprised if psychic pokemon didn't view humans as too unintelligent and dangerous to communicate with. A single cavern of Kadabra whose first instincts were to hide from humans is not something that will be noted by the scientific community. But psychic pokemon in general possessing human level intelligence is something that can't be ignored. They would demonstrate that intelligence. And there'd be reasons for the community to try to communicate with such a large population! And neither would the captured pokemon or the free pokemon be able to dismiss the signs of human intelligence. And neither could wild intelligent pokemon consider humans to be unintelligent. The ones who get captured obviously wouldn't think that, and centuries of existing alongside them would prove that wrong.
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