There’s a philosophy of science, commonly called “Occam’s Razor”, that says something like this:
If you have a body of observed evidence, and some competing theories to explain that evidence, your best bet is to go with the simplest of those theories. No need to accept a theory that is more complicated than necessary. Such a theory might explain even more than the observed data, and is more likely to prove all wrong.
Now, human intelligence is quite complex, and so any theory attempting to explain human intelligence much be quite complex. There certainly seems to be a lot of “O” in human SOR behavior. Nobody really disputes that.
Now, what about dolphins? We’ve already come to the point of believing that dolphin behavior, elaborate as it is, must have a lot of “O” too. But anything similar to human “O”?
Well, consider this. Dolphin behavior is not only complex, but seems highly “relatable” to a lot of people. We see a lot of high-level dolphin behavior and a lot of it seems very similar to how a person might act, sometimes in very detailed ways. (At the risk of dominating this thread even more that I already am, I might post some examples.)
One would think, that if dolphin “O” was elaborate but very different from human “O”, then the complex responses to complex stimuli would be… well, complex, but very different. And yet, we see dolphins doing a lot of things similar to humans (thinks like playing with toys or playing obvious practical pranks on the trainers – Yes, I have anecdotes!)
One wonders, then: How could it be that dolphins, if their “O” were very different from human “O”, would behave in complex ways that humans find recognizable, instead of behaving very differently. (Contrast, for example, with the things octopuses do.) It seems hard to believe that dolphins could have evolved an internal consciousness that is utterly alien to humans, yet which produces such similar behaviors.
This leads us to propose that dolphins internal “O” must actually be a lot like human “O” at least to some degree of similarity, and that this is actually the most simple theory, compared to any alternative. Thus, an anthropomorphic theory that dolphins are similar to humans actually becomes the Occam’s Razor preferred theory! This view, once highly rejected, has come to be much more accepted lately.