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Recursive language and modern imagination acquired 70k years ago: hypothesis
- lordnacho 7y agoSo if it happens as in the synopsis, it would have been pretty weird to grow up as one of the first kids with recursive language? And I guess the gene takes over the world because well, you want to mate with other people who understand prepositions.
- apocalypstyx 7y agoIn certain society what we would call mental illness was often looked at as people being touched by the gods, that they had some special insight. So depending on the society they were born into, they could have be highly regarded indeed.
- pharke 7y agoThey may have had other reasons for being highly regarded, or feared. Non recursive language does not allow you to give commands more complicated than "you do this", for instance saying "tell X to do this thing at this time in this location" is impossible without recursion. You might be able to get as far as "tell x to do this" since you are essentially just saying "repeat these words to X" but you have no way of providing context such as the time or circumstances when X should be told or when X should be told to perform the action. All organization and command would have to be done spur of the moment. There would be no possibility of planning in advance or communicating abstract concepts and thoughts to others. Even a small group of people with this ability facing another group without it would have an overwhelming advantage, they could deceive, plot revenge, strategize, distract, and confound their opponents with their seemingly magical ability to know what members of their own group were to do and say before they did it. They could conceptualize solutions to problems that the others could not even begin to imagine. They could invent new objects in their mind and then execute those plans or tell others about them. They could create new words and concepts in language through combination and juxtaposition. They would quite literally be super-human, every one of them a Napoleon and an Einstein and a Da Vinci and a Shakespeare at once.
- ltbarcly3 7y agoBeing able to conceptualize does not depend on language, many of us don't think in language at all.
- simiones 7y agoThere is no proof of that. Even if you experience speaking and thinking as separate sensations, it may still be that they are actually "implemented" by the same structures in the brain. There is in fact a theory that language is a tool for thought first, and for communication only secondarily.
- blevo 7y agoOne may not think in a common language used to communicate (e.g. English) but the way one thinks could be considered a language regardless, only specific to one's own mind. Take for instance Google's translation AI. It developed its own intermediary language[1] which facilitated translation between languages and enabled it to even translate languages it had not specifically been trained on.[2] [1]e.g. It had a "word" for dog that wasn't part of any existing language. [2]e.g. it could translate Spanish -> French even though it was only trained on Spanish -> English and English -> French
- ltbarcly3 7y agoThis is a very sneaky argument that misses the point I think, you are effectively defining any sharing of information as a language, then using that definition.
- pharke 7y agoI'm not talking about language here. The discussion is about _recursion_ which has vast implications for both language and thought.
- Scriptor 7y agoThe article goes on to mention that it likely developed gradually over several generations. The first kids with the mutation would have never been taught recursive language by adults. Instead, they probably developed some semblance of it from speaking with siblings/cousins their age. While this would be pretty weak, it probably gave them enough of an advantage over others. Once they themselves had kids they would be able to teach them their imperfect version of recursive language. This probably continued and amplified over generations. It's a pretty interesting case of nature and nurture combining. The mutation is a prerequisite, but largely useless unless there's enough "nurture" happening during the critical period.
- rjf72 7y agoAs the article mentions it's only 70k years ago that we start seeing unambiguous indicators of intelligence. The normal figure for this indicator, the upper paleolithic revolution, is 50k years. In any case that's where we first start seeing significant and then rapidly widespread signs of intelligence - fishing, extensive adornment, wide artifact collections, burial ceremony, and much more. The point here is that the archaeological record seems to indicate that it's like one day we simply 'woke up.' Whomever was fortunate enough to experience such a mutation first would have had a tremendous competitive advantage. The degree in intellectual advancement is such that they would have probably been significantly better at just about everything -- most importantly in surviving and spreading their genes. Now take this person and what would likely have been their vast number of offspring. They could effectively take over the world. And I suppose, in a manner of speaking, they did.
- xenadu02 7y agoIt is entirely possible the capacity for this existed but was not being used. That would explain why it spread so rapidly... perhaps most humans already had the capacity?
- pickdenis 7y agoI think it's implied that the capacity was there, just no impetus.
- erikpukinskis 7y ago> the archaeological record seems to indicate that it's like one day we simply 'woke up.' Either that or the kinds of artifacts we look for simply don’t last longer than 70k years on a planet like this. Or, it’s just rare enough that, when combined with the cost of excavation and the fact that scholarship builds on scholarship, it’s just not the kind of evidence scholars are going to dig far past we’ll established boundaries to find. Lots of possible explanations for the data.
- pantalaimon 7y agoThis all reminds me of the Bicameral Mind hypothesis, although that dates that point of 'waking up' much later.
- pbar 7y agoI wonder about similar future change in imagination. Almost certainly possible since there's precedent for it happening, but the hard part is imagining what sort of thought it would enable.
- de1978st 7y agoJust like the dark ages, particularly in medicine, practitioners followed text from hundreds of years prior, without any perceptions without. Only memorizing and being SME on past thought was relevant.
- arbitrage 7y agoI imagine the next cognitive leap is toward greater empathy to the other, and de-emphasizing the self.
- arthev 7y agoHow many artefacts that show imagination and will survive >70k years have you made lately? Are you intelligent?
- Smithalicious 7y agoPretty sure I've written some "temporary hacks" that will still be in production 70k years from now. Not sure if those demonstrate intelligence, though.
- whatshisface 7y agoMost people in this thread have taken part in the production of non-biodegradable trash. A huge fraction of ancient artifacts were trash, so don't feel bad about your legacy - it's typical. ;)
- mxcrossb 7y agoThis Rio Journal seems to pride itself on letting you publish non traditional papers. In this case, we have something that seems clearly marked as a hypothesis. I won’t comment on the value of such an approach. But I will say that it’s frustrating that such a publisher would take a speculative article like that, and pick a title like “recursive language and modern imagination were acquired 70k years ago”
- cryptonector 7y agoIn science we only have hypotheses -- disproven and as-yet-not-disproven. Granted, some hypotheses are less supported by data, often due to lack of data, and this one might be such a hypothesis, but, in science rejecting an idea as a hypothesis is oxymoronic.
- uryga 7y agoyeah but presenting a hypothesis as fact (as the title does) is misleading at best. something like "A new hypothesis re: the development of recursive language" would be better
- cryptonector 7y agoThe second paragraph of TFA starts with "This new hypothesis" and goes from there. Titles are titles -- they've been clickbait since before we had mice to click on links with.
- DEADBEEFC0FFEE 7y agoEvery newspaper headline ever, is a form of clickbait.
- xamuel 7y agoTitles are usually chosen by the author, not the publisher.
- jdormit 7y ago> To understand the importance of PFS, consider these two sentences: "A dog bit my friend" and "My friend bit a dog." It is impossible to distinguish the difference in meaning using words or grammar alone, since both words and grammatical structure are identical in these two sentences. Am I missing something here? Those two sentences are absolutely distinguishable grammatically - in one of the them the subject is "a dog" and the object is "my friend" and in the other the subject is "my friend" and the object is "a dog". I realize this is kind of nitpick, but at the very least this is a very bad example to use to demonstrate the importance of this PFS concept.
- chowells 7y agoYou're confusing semantics with grammar. They have identical grammar. "(A dog) bit (my friend)." "(My friend) bit (a dog)." Both parse as "(compound subject) verb (compound object)." Both "my" and "a" function as adjectives modifying the single noun after them. The sentences have identical parse trees, even when considering the types of the nodes. They are grammatically identical.
- riffraff 7y agoAre they though? Isn't 'a' an indeterminate article and 'my' a pronoun? I get the point of the example, but it seems different at the grammatical level too. Subject/object should be at a different level above grammar.
- mannykannot 7y agoSubstitute 'my' for the 'a's?
- kazinator 7y agoYou can't be randomly substituting words for other words (let alone ones with different lexical categories) and keep claiming that you have the same parse tree!
- coldtea 7y agoDoes that mean that Scheme and other languages with TCO help make more imaginative programmers?
- chowells 7y agoThis is talking about recursion in the grammar of the language. I can't think of a common programming language that doesn't have at least some recursive elements. Nested arithmetic operations are a common example.
- coldtea 7y ago>This is talking about recursion in the grammar of the language. I know, it talks about early humans development. I just wanted to extend it (semi-jockingly) to programming. >I can't think of a common programming language that doesn't have at least some recursive elements Sure, but recursion is more idiomatic/powerful in some languages than others. In nested arithmetic operations it is barely apparent.
- GolDDranks 7y agoI wonder if John von Neumann would have had some toddler friends of similar level of genius, would they have invented a twin speak for a "new level" of humanity.
- whatshisface 7y agoIntelligence variations in modern times seem pretty big, but they're nothing compared to the difference between a person who can talk and one who can only make indicative noises.
- clumpthump 7y ago"PFS" sounds a lot like the MERGE operation of minimalist (natural language) syntax, which Chomsky has similarly linked to behavioural modernity. https://www.brainpickings.org/2012/06/20/noam-chomsky-the-science-language/ https://www.brainpickings.org/2012/06/20/noam-chomsky-the-sc... (not too much info here, but the best I can find at the moment)
- anon44 7y agoBut some races were likely separated for longer than that, so these mutations are likely uneven across populations. Very disturbing if true.
- gingabriska 7y agoOr they seperated after having this mutation since we've no evidence that any specific ethic group (I assume you used race for this?) has inability of learning a recursive language.
- anon44 7y ago"ethic group (I assume you used race for this?)" Yeah I mean biological race in the darwinian sense. Some groups have been separated with little gene flow for 100-200K years.
- Hasknewbie 7y agoI had the same question while reading TFA. The Khoisan ethnic group split from the main population an estimated 150k years ago, and although their clicking language is peculiar I don't think they have any issue with recursive grammar.
- danans 7y agoIts hard for humans today to visualize higher dimensional physical spaces, even though after study, we can easily reason about them mathematically. I wonder if that's analogous to the barrier that was crossed 70k years ago according to the theory in the article. However, we routinely visualize high dimensional information spaces without even realizing it (though probably through some heavy dimensionality reduction). It's almost like we have the hardware for high dimensional reasoning, and some software to apply it to physical dimensions (the language of math), but no drivers to accelerate the latter with the former.
- marcosdumay 7y agoI don't think we visualize high dimensional information spaces. We have tools for dealing with them, but of a completely different nature.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- danans 7y agoI should have said we humans process high dimensional information, like the 5 conscious senses, plus subconscious sensory input, and symbolic representations, like language and images.
- filoeleven 7y agoI understand visual perceptions and descriptions to be literal mappings of high-dimensional information spaces. Smooth vs rough vs rippled vs grainy, fuzzy vs hairy vs spiky, striped vs mottled, etc. We get a lot of understanding of a material’s properties by looking at it, coupled with prior experience with similar-looking ones. There’s even more richness involved when you take human cultures and other senses into account. I’d be surprised if I tried to turn what looks like a doorknob and it didn’t wiggle even a little; every locked one I’ve met does. I’d be shocked if my hand passed right through it instead. And when applied to other people, my God! It’s usually easy to tell when someone is angry or bored, often even if it’s aimed at us vs some third party—how many dimensions does that encapsulate? Many animals are clearly capable of this too. The language appears to be the leap. It makes me wonder even more about crows talking to each other about which humans feed them, and what a shotgun looks like and can do.
- dharma1 7y agoQuite remarkable a single mutation gave us the tools to dominate the earth. I guess the ability to make plans, communicate and execute them and reflect on what worked and what didn't to improve the plan making endows us with significant predictive power compared to the rest of the planet. Perhaps in similar ways AI will endow some people (or itself) with predictive power beyond our own, allowing those who yield it to dominate the rest
- lawlessone 7y ago>Perhaps in similar ways AI will endow some people (or itself) with predictive power beyond our own, allowing those who yield it to dominate the rest Hasn't that already happened? Bezos Gates Zuckerburg Musk?
- toasterlovin 7y agoA problem that this hypothesis has to contend with is that there are populations of humans (Khoi san and African pygmies) who split off from the rest of humanity > 70k years ago, yet who seem pretty modern.
- trevyn 7y agoThe mutation allowed certain individuals to invent recursive language, which could then be taught to individuals without the mutation during a critical period in childhood.
- foldr 7y agoWhat could be more "modern" in this case than existing at the present moment?
- erikpukinskis 7y agoFrom Wikipedia: As an analytical concept and normative ideal, modernity is closely linked to the ethos of philosophical and aesthetic modernism; political and intellectual currents that intersect with the Enlightenment; and subsequent developments such as existentialism, modern art, the formal establishment of social science, and contemporaneous antithetical developments such as Marxism. It also encompasses the social relations associated with the rise of capitalism, and shifts in attitudes associated with secularisation and post-industrial life (Berman 2010, 15–36).
- toasterlovin 7y agoI meant modern in the sense that the person you're responding to was using it. I'm not sure what their point was; as far as I can tell they were agreeing with me. The Khoi San diverged from the rest of humanity roughly 200k years ago. Yet they are basically compatibly with modern humans. As far as I am aware, they have recursive language and normal imaginations. My point was that this theory would have to deal with the fact that human populations who split much, much longer ago than 70k years ago appear to have the same basic brain functionality as the rest of humanity. I guess, based on what someone else said, the theory is positing that people with the mutation could bootstrap the process in people who don't have it. I dunno, in light of the Khoi San, things start to diverge pretty far from what I would describe as a parsimonious explanation. Plus we're talking hypothetically about what was going on in the minds of people who lived 70k years ago. There are a lot of theories that could be correct, since we have literally no direct evidence of the presence of recursive language (or the lack thereof).
- waserwill 7y agoTo suggest that modern imagination and the recursive thinking necessary for language evolved _after_ humans started making complex tools (which required hierarchical recursive processes to make) is, to me, dubious. The tool-creation/language similarity was commented upon recently [0]. [0] https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10.1098/rstb.2017.0052 https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10.1098/rstb.201...
- mannykannot 7y agoThe article mentions one such tool - needles with eyes. As this innovation is mentioned, I imagine the time of its invention is consistent with the hypothesis. Do you have in mind specific tools from before 70kya that seem to require recursive thinking? I am not sure what would constitute recursion in tools - maybe something like an atlatl, sling or bow, where a tool is applied to another tool? These particular examples do not seem to challenge the timing of the hypothesis.
- jhorsager 7y agoOther species have the ability for tool making, some of it relatively complex. So clearly there are other factors. Language is obviously one of them. The differentiator described here is PFS secondary to a genetic (evolutionary) change in the prefrontal cortex. Tool making to me implies sequential processes, not the juxtaposition of mental objects. I'm not clear on what you mean by toolmaking as a recursive process.
- Merrill 7y agoThere seem to be counterexamples. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feral_child#Raised_in_confinement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feral_child#Raised_in_confinem... "Isabelle (1938) was almost seven years old when she was discovered. She had spent the first years of her life isolated in a dark room with her deaf-mute mother as her only contact. Only seven months later, she had learned a vocabulary of around 1,500 to 2,000 words. She is reported to have acquired normal linguistic abilities."
- b6840442 7y agohttps://www.npr.org/sections/krulwich/2012/10/22/163397584/how-human-beings-almost-vanished-from-earth-in-70-000-b-c https://www.npr.org/sections/krulwich/2012/10/22/163397584/h... -- also happened about 70k years ago. Very interesting time to be a human
- bgorman 7y agoIf anyone is interested in early human development/the onset of civilization I highly recommend the book "Sapiens". Really compelling pop-science book if you are interested into that kind of thing.
- barking 7y agoHadn't people spread out from Africa, longer ago than that?
- bookofjoe 7y agohttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20613863 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20613863
- photojosh 7y agoI have a little Romulus & Remus & wolf statue at home, from my wife's grandfather when he passed. I wanted it because of its ties to Girard's mimetic theory. Now I have a 2nd reason.
- pjdorrell 7y agoThis is quite similar in some ways to my own theory that I posted recently at https://whatismusic.info/blog/HypothesisMusicWasALanguageSystem.html https://whatismusic.info/blog/HypothesisMusicWasALanguageSys..., because it postulates a sudden transition from non-recursive language to recursive language. The one difference in my theory is that I assume that the original non-recursive language was musical (with one tune equals one meaning). And musical language could not evolve into a more efficient and expressive recursive form of language - it had to be replaced.