8 ms·

On Mind, Language and Machines

115 points by 0x0f0f0f 7y ago

caleb-allen 7y ago
Wonderful essay! I've found myself going through a similar path in my own research and thinking. My hope is that an optimism of computation picks up over the coming decade and beyond; an optimism that computation can serve us at the individual level, beyond what others have created for us.
thekhatribharat 7y ago
A few days back, HN saw https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22193451 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22193451 which told us not everyone uses an internal monologue for their thinking process. Now this article hints evolution favored the internal monologue design of thinking process, over alternatives.
- 0x0f0f0f 7y ago
  I've read that post. It's still a mistery to me the fact that there are people without internal monologues that can speak without any sort of problem. Chomsky and Berwick hinted that recursive language may have evolved as "an internal monologue" in their "Why Only Us" essay, where they surely can explain their evolutionary point of view better than me. I guess if that there really are people without "the internal tool of thought", they should volunteer to be studied, especially with brain imaging and functional tests. They could help us understand more about where language comes from.
  - bunnya 7y ago
    It's less of a "do not have internal monologue" as experience them differently to those who have a stream of consciousness. Personally, I experience consciousness internally as a bunch of concepts and ideas, rather than actual verbose language. It doesn't proclude the generation of ideas or so on, and I definitely don't struggle with speaking.
    - 0x0f0f0f 7y ago
      I can only guess that one has a more verbal or visual imagination depending on his/her development, and it would be interesting if we knew more about the genomic factors taking place in the development of the stream of consciousness. Depending on the context I also have both verbal and visual streams of consciousness. A funny thing is that my verbal mental streams are far more fluid in English, which is not my fully native language, than in Italian. When I write in Italian my imagination is much more visual and less descriptive.
      - K0SM0S 7y ago
        Same here, my French got relegated to the back of my mind, English took over (that was of my own volition first, to learn best, but then it became habit). Sometimes I revert to writing in French; it takes a little time like bicycle to come back really well. It often framed my mind in a different way, provided I never thought of problem X in French. Weird. I'm more likely to speak in "poetic" terms in French, and more "logic" in English. Weird that my own abstractions shift like that. Real tangible things are not affected it seems. With other people it makes me a slightly different person (I suppose I mimic the cultural traits I attribute to each language, as if emotions or even volition got influenced by it).
        onemoresoop 7y ago
        Same here but with a different first language and English as a second. I tend to be more poetic with my first language but use it a lot more sparingly nowadays. As far as I am aware most of my internal monologue isn't verbalized but it does happen. Over all I wouldn't rely too much on my internal monologue, it feels that it slows down my thinking to put whatever abstract thought I have into words.
        K0SM0S 7y ago
        You just made me realize that we might all "skip the words" when we have internalized a concept. Case in point for me: math. For instance these days I'm working on geometric modelling, and when I see a wedge (exterior product of two 1D vectors = a 2D surface) I don't even read or say it, I just "see" the concept (not even a parallelogram, I don't visualize, it's just this abstraction for 2D which relates to number theory, physical spaces, etc). Then if I do something with this, I kind of navigate a map or graph (where e.g. gradients or dot products are sort of nodes). I'm gonna be 10x slower if I have to put words in it when talking to someone for instance. Does that begin to describe how non-verbal thinkers think about pretty much everything?
  - taneq 7y ago
    Maybe they're just not aware of it? That data stream still exists, it's just not hooked up to their audio centers so they don't hear it in their 'inner ear'?
  - K0SM0S 7y ago
    You make me wonder if language regions of the brain get activated when we "talk to ourselves" in the same way as when we talk to others. Edit: I love a downvote as much as the next guy, but if you're a neuroscientist who knows, please explain or share links?
    - code6fun 7y ago
      Yes I also wonder that, do you want to talk about this? tweet me @LeibGruber
  - goatlover 7y ago
    Not everyone’s brain works the same way. Read some stuff by Temple Grandin or Oliver Sacks. As for how evolution may have done anything is just a guess until there is empirical data backing up that hypothesis. It’s more likely that Chomsky just assumes everyone’s mind worked like his and used that to tell a just so evolutionary story.
    - coldtea 7y ago
      >Not everyone’s brain works the same way. Read some stuff by Temple Grandin or Oliver Sacks Yes, but these study outliers. Most everybody's brain works the same way (or in a few, finite, ways)
      - pjc50 7y ago
        We assume brains work in the same way, but we lack any kind of tooling for examining this other than fMRI. All this high level stuff like conceptualisation and visualisation relies on subjective self-reporting. I don't think we've even proved whether or not Chomsky's "universal grammar" hypothesis is correct.
        coldtea 7y ago
        >We assume brains work in the same way, but we lack any kind of tooling for examining this other than fMRI Yes, but it's also kind of a no-brainer. We're the same species, with mostly the same wiring...
  - onemoresoop 7y ago
    "Deaf" people have a mind too and what would their internal monologue be since they never heard uttered words but learn signs that are not auditive internally? Is it abstract internal monologue? Why would it be called monologue? Are they missing the internal tool of thought or maybe there are more tools of thought and some of them don't require internal monologue?
  - yters 7y ago
    I don't experience my thought as either words or pictures. I experience my thought as ideas. Ideas are independent of both, since the same idea can be expressed with different words or pictures.
  - firethief 7y ago
    Meh, it bears a strong resemblance to the corn-eating-algorithm-correlation: https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/01/15/kernel-of-doubt-testing-math-preference-vs-corn-eating-style https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/01/15/kernel-of-doubt-testin... You can discover anything you look for with a leading-question survey.
- coldtea 7y ago
  Evolution doesn't prevail completely. It might favor a path (and thus see its population grow), but the other path is not guaranteed to be eclipsed already.
peterhj 7y ago
> Prof. Matsuzawa, through his cognitive research of chimpanzee Ai I had to do a double take there.
openfuture 7y ago
In the cultures with the abrahamic religions (especially, but also elsewhere) the 'language of the birds' is considered a mythical 'divine language', some characters in the 'holy books' who are famed for wisdom or considered prophets are supposed to have understood it. I'm sure this has motivated many to study birdsong and it's interesting that their language is regular, maybe birds are FSM like our computers :^) Edit: I guess that would mean their societies are petri nets / statecharts =þ

115 points by 0x0f0f0f 7y ago

Wonderful essay! I've found myself going through a similar path in my own research and thinking. My hope is that an optimism of computation picks up over the coming decade and beyond; an optimism that computation can serve us at the individual level, beyond what others have created for us.

thekhatribharat 7y ago

A few days back, HN saw https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22193451 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22193451 which told us not everyone uses an internal monologue for their thinking process. Now this article hints evolution favored the internal monologue design of thinking process, over alternatives.

0x0f0f0f 7y ago
I've read that post. It's still a mistery to me the fact that there are people without internal monologues that can speak without any sort of problem. Chomsky and Berwick hinted that recursive language may have evolved as "an internal monologue" in their "Why Only Us" essay, where they surely can explain their evolutionary point of view better than me. I guess if that there really are people without "the internal tool of thought", they should volunteer to be studied, especially with brain imaging and functional tests. They could help us understand more about where language comes from.
- bunnya 7y ago
  It's less of a "do not have internal monologue" as experience them differently to those who have a stream of consciousness. Personally, I experience consciousness internally as a bunch of concepts and ideas, rather than actual verbose language. It doesn't proclude the generation of ideas or so on, and I definitely don't struggle with speaking.
  - 0x0f0f0f 7y ago
    I can only guess that one has a more verbal or visual imagination depending on his/her development, and it would be interesting if we knew more about the genomic factors taking place in the development of the stream of consciousness. Depending on the context I also have both verbal and visual streams of consciousness. A funny thing is that my verbal mental streams are far more fluid in English, which is not my fully native language, than in Italian. When I write in Italian my imagination is much more visual and less descriptive.
    - K0SM0S 7y ago
      Same here, my French got relegated to the back of my mind, English took over (that was of my own volition first, to learn best, but then it became habit). Sometimes I revert to writing in French; it takes a little time like bicycle to come back really well. It often framed my mind in a different way, provided I never thought of problem X in French. Weird. I'm more likely to speak in "poetic" terms in French, and more "logic" in English. Weird that my own abstractions shift like that. Real tangible things are not affected it seems. With other people it makes me a slightly different person (I suppose I mimic the cultural traits I attribute to each language, as if emotions or even volition got influenced by it).
      - onemoresoop 7y ago
        Same here but with a different first language and English as a second. I tend to be more poetic with my first language but use it a lot more sparingly nowadays. As far as I am aware most of my internal monologue isn't verbalized but it does happen. Over all I wouldn't rely too much on my internal monologue, it feels that it slows down my thinking to put whatever abstract thought I have into words.
        K0SM0S 7y ago
        You just made me realize that we might all "skip the words" when we have internalized a concept. Case in point for me: math. For instance these days I'm working on geometric modelling, and when I see a wedge (exterior product of two 1D vectors = a 2D surface) I don't even read or say it, I just "see" the concept (not even a parallelogram, I don't visualize, it's just this abstraction for 2D which relates to number theory, physical spaces, etc). Then if I do something with this, I kind of navigate a map or graph (where e.g. gradients or dot products are sort of nodes). I'm gonna be 10x slower if I have to put words in it when talking to someone for instance. Does that begin to describe how non-verbal thinkers think about pretty much everything?
- taneq 7y ago
  Maybe they're just not aware of it? That data stream still exists, it's just not hooked up to their audio centers so they don't hear it in their 'inner ear'?
- K0SM0S 7y ago
  You make me wonder if language regions of the brain get activated when we "talk to ourselves" in the same way as when we talk to others. Edit: I love a downvote as much as the next guy, but if you're a neuroscientist who knows, please explain or share links?
  - code6fun 7y ago
    Yes I also wonder that, do you want to talk about this? tweet me @LeibGruber
- goatlover 7y ago
  Not everyone’s brain works the same way. Read some stuff by Temple Grandin or Oliver Sacks. As for how evolution may have done anything is just a guess until there is empirical data backing up that hypothesis. It’s more likely that Chomsky just assumes everyone’s mind worked like his and used that to tell a just so evolutionary story.
  - coldtea 7y ago
    >Not everyone’s brain works the same way. Read some stuff by Temple Grandin or Oliver Sacks Yes, but these study outliers. Most everybody's brain works the same way (or in a few, finite, ways)
    - pjc50 7y ago
      We assume brains work in the same way, but we lack any kind of tooling for examining this other than fMRI. All this high level stuff like conceptualisation and visualisation relies on subjective self-reporting. I don't think we've even proved whether or not Chomsky's "universal grammar" hypothesis is correct.
      - coldtea 7y ago
        >We assume brains work in the same way, but we lack any kind of tooling for examining this other than fMRI Yes, but it's also kind of a no-brainer. We're the same species, with mostly the same wiring...
- onemoresoop 7y ago
  "Deaf" people have a mind too and what would their internal monologue be since they never heard uttered words but learn signs that are not auditive internally? Is it abstract internal monologue? Why would it be called monologue? Are they missing the internal tool of thought or maybe there are more tools of thought and some of them don't require internal monologue?
- yters 7y ago
  I don't experience my thought as either words or pictures. I experience my thought as ideas. Ideas are independent of both, since the same idea can be expressed with different words or pictures.
- firethief 7y ago
  Meh, it bears a strong resemblance to the corn-eating-algorithm-correlation: https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/01/15/kernel-of-doubt-testing-math-preference-vs-corn-eating-style https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/01/15/kernel-of-doubt-testin... You can discover anything you look for with a leading-question survey.
coldtea 7y ago
Evolution doesn't prevail completely. It might favor a path (and thus see its population grow), but the other path is not guaranteed to be eclipsed already.

peterhj 7y ago

> Prof. Matsuzawa, through his cognitive research of chimpanzee Ai I had to do a double take there.

openfuture 7y ago

In the cultures with the abrahamic religions (especially, but also elsewhere) the 'language of the birds' is considered a mythical 'divine language', some characters in the 'holy books' who are famed for wisdom or considered prophets are supposed to have understood it. I'm sure this has motivated many to study birdsong and it's interesting that their language is regular, maybe birds are FSM like our computers :^) Edit: I guess that would mean their societies are petri nets / statecharts =þ