Tag: linguistics
-
ROBA as Human-Exclusive Recursion
Steven Pinker was recently on EconTalk with Russ Roberts, who (shameless plug) featured me some years ago and urged me to write my book. Thanks Russ. Pinker tackles the problem of how humans acquire cultural knowledge, which he describes as an infinite regression (recursion) of beliefs. A quick summary: at 1:51 Pinker describes the Finite…
-
Cut Stones as Ancient Medium of Exchange
I’ve written previously about how ancient handaxes might have originally been modified stones for the purpose of exchange, not for utility. If reciprocal, object-based aggression (ROBA) is the base system of human combat, then every stone is a potential weapon, every person a potential combatant, and the entire world a potential graveyard. The original act…
-
Do Linguistic Declensions Influence Pantheons?
I’m reading through some Indian myth right now, and I’m blown away by the number of gods that just represent the sun. There are multiple gods and goddesses representing the earth. There are many war gods (principally Indra, but also Soma). The Indian pantheon has been quoted as numbering the millions, but this probably assumes…
-
How to Re-define Violence
I’ve lamented multiple times about how poor our language is when it comes to describing violence. People will say that soldiers killing each other in battle is “murder,” that a man walking toward a police officer with knife in hand “wasn’t doing anything,” that “silence is violence,” or that abortion is “child sacrifice” (in child…
-
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…
-
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…
-
The ROBA Chip – A Pi-sized AI Model
A question for anyone who understands AI: are there any AI companies which have a coherent theory of human language? Or are all AI companies just force-feeding massive amounts of data into their training systems? Because the latter is not a theory on language. My hypothesis is that no AI company has a coherent theory…
-
The First Word Might Have Required Object-based Intimidation
What exactly caused the bridge between object-usage and combat which gave rise to ROBA in humans, which (per my hypothesis) produced human, recursive language? Apes have the capacity to “reach” for combat using objects. As seen in the 1980s macaque studies, apes’ axions extend outward when given a tool, and then the axions retreat once…
-
Testing the Simulation Hypothesis with the ROBA Hypothesis
Elon Musk recently joked that the reason that the James Webb telescope experienced delays because the computers were busy trying to render what the planets looked like, since the programmers who created the simulation we’re currently living in failed to anticipate that we humans would have been able to see these stars. It’s a fun…
-
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…