Category: Uncategorized
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Machines Can’t Be Domesticated
In Lewis Mumford’s Technics and Civilization the author writes that the machine was unique in that it was a human creation that could exist outside our own existence. For a while I thought that machines were simply a subset of language, but it seems there’s a differentiation worth making here. Humans encapsulate recursion into language,…
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There Is No Bridge to Human Language
The standard model roughly goes along these lines: chimpanzees have hoots and grunts for conveying information, and so our shared, last common ancestor (LCA) evolved cognitively due to some external stimuli, allowing them to communicate more detailed information, producing human language’s words and symbols. Edward Gibson recently said on Lex Fridman that we invent words…
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A Minimal Theory of Autism (and Schizophrenia)
I have an interest in finding a minimal property of Autism. Here’s my best guess: Autism is aversion to mimicry to retain ownership of the ego. Ego is formed by loading the “intent” of the world around you – people, animals, etc. The ego then inverts memories to convince the subject that he originated his…
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The Anti-Social Religion
I’m just now finishing Deacon’s The Symbolic Species and have to comment on what he says near the end. First, note that Deacon’s theory of language rests on a set of hypotheses: 1. Humans evolved symbolic language due to some limited set of external, ecological stimuli, such as better group coordination for resources, assisting in…
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AI Poisoning
Perhaps the reason driverless cars are “uncanny” is because the average person can’t merge with a car. When we drive a car, we are using a tool which has, as a result, our linguistic expression. We can detect hesitation, anger, happiness, etc. while watching how another’s car moves. It allows us to predict flows of…
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New Violence Levels Put Higher Demands on Linguistic Memory
While reading Steven Pinker’s Language Instinct, he poses an interesting rule about English, which is very picky about word and phrase order. One can say, “He gave the girl that he met in New York while visiting his parents for ten days around Christmas and New Year’s the candy,” but this is a “top-heavy” sentence.…
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When Recycled Plastic Is Your Language
CES always has a theme. Back when I attended for the first and last time in 2019, the theme was VR, but now, 5 years later, I only know 2 or 3 people who have a VR headset. This year, it’s AI and robotics. It’s going to have a bigger future than VR, because almost…
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Quilt-man
My mother taught me to mourn at death, my grandma taught me to be nice to dogs, my grandpa how to empathize with the disabled. These lessons and many others have formed a strange Quilt-man comprised of ideas and sentiments, which is with me at all times. He moves with a soft awkwardness. He could…
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Media Adulthood
This morning I received various notices informing me that I had uploaded and used a handful of images without permission. This was done 3-15 years ago. The notices also state that, even after I delete them, I owe financial damages for their use. I’ve since deleted everything on this website except a few images. The…
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All images are gone now
I’ve removed all the images from my blogs, except for a few that I own. I expect to cull the whole site at some point into something more cohesive. Here’s proof. And more proof.