He was obviously a brilliant man but the hubris that comes from that often leads to folly.

As to the dolphin communication -- it seems like LLMs would be the perfect tool to study that now. A search came up with these active projects (courtesy of Gemini):

Scientists are actually using LLM architectures to decode animal communication right now. Here are the three main projects to explore:

* DolphinGemma -- https://deepmind.google/models/gemma/dolphingemma/): Google and the Wild Dolphin Project are training AI to predict dolphin sounds and attempt two-way communication using an underwater device.

* Project CETI -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_CETI: An initiative using machine learning to decode sperm whale clicks, recently discovering a phonetic alphabet and rudimentary syntax.

* Earth Species Project -- https://cloud.google.com/blog/transform/can-generative-ai-he...: A non-profit using generative AI to map the communication of multiple non-human species, searching for universal language structures.

pstuart covered the cetacean bit better than I could have.

On the simulation question... Not much, but we have a long way to go before any answers arise there. I could offer my insight on the subject, but aside from being sicker than usual today, it's a tough subject to speculate on and the environment here is not necessarily hospitable, so I'll just say fair question.