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Your point stands, but I want something wholly different from that. I want the equivalent of the LHC for cross species communication. You're telling me to go do

Your point stands, but I want something wholly different from that. I want the equivalent of the LHC for cross species communication. You're telling me to go do some communing with physics, because we've already got some good textbooks on quantum mechanics.

thaumasiotes 5y ago
> I want the equivalent of the LHC for cross species communication. This is not a valid concept. What would the "equivalent of the LHC for communication between ordinary Americans and the Twitter API" look like? What uses would it have? There's nothing out there that can receive arbitrary messages. Communication -- of any kind, with anything -- is limited to messages that the other party is capable of receiving.
- azeirah 5y ago
  This is Wittgenstein's argument about why we'll never communicate with lions (iirc) right?
- Misdicorl 5y ago
  I'm not sure I understand your complaint or why you've caught the Twitter API into it? I imagine a center for cross species communication research would coordinate scientists across a couple important fields also interested in the question and allocate their resources to the research which seems most promising to make progress. Just like any other institute. I imagine the fields would be biology zoology linguistics computation and probably since experts for the specific target species.
  - thaumasiotes 5y ago
    > I'm not sure I understand your complaint or why you've caught the Twitter API into it? Because I want you to tell me what you think communication between a human and the Twitter API would look like. I have taken the position that you've produced a bunch of words without bothering to think about what those words are supposed to mean, with the result that in fact they have no meaning and you're attempting to refer to a concept that cannot actually exist. A general theory of cross-species communication is significantly more of an ill-defined problem than a specific theory of human-Twitter API communication, but it must include the human-Twitter API case, so it's a useful example to think about. > I imagine a center for cross species communication research would coordinate scientists across a couple important fields also interested in the question and allocate their resources to the research which seems most promising to make progress. Just like any other institute. Ah, just like any other institute. Certainly you can have people dress up as scientists and act like they're scientists -- just like any other institute! -- but this is only a good idea if you think they can accomplish something by doing it. What you're describing is a pure cargo cult. Their only goal is to appear to be similar to other, more useful people. We already have many experts in cross-species communication. We call them animal trainers.

thaumasiotes 5y ago

> I want the equivalent of the LHC for cross species communication. This is not a valid concept. What would the "equivalent of the LHC for communication between ordinary Americans and the Twitter API" look like? What uses would it have? There's nothing out there that can receive arbitrary messages. Communication -- of any kind, with anything -- is limited to messages that the other party is capable of receiving.

azeirah 5y ago
This is Wittgenstein's argument about why we'll never communicate with lions (iirc) right?
Misdicorl 5y ago
I'm not sure I understand your complaint or why you've caught the Twitter API into it? I imagine a center for cross species communication research would coordinate scientists across a couple important fields also interested in the question and allocate their resources to the research which seems most promising to make progress. Just like any other institute. I imagine the fields would be biology zoology linguistics computation and probably since experts for the specific target species.
- thaumasiotes 5y ago
  > I'm not sure I understand your complaint or why you've caught the Twitter API into it? Because I want you to tell me what you think communication between a human and the Twitter API would look like. I have taken the position that you've produced a bunch of words without bothering to think about what those words are supposed to mean, with the result that in fact they have no meaning and you're attempting to refer to a concept that cannot actually exist. A general theory of cross-species communication is significantly more of an ill-defined problem than a specific theory of human-Twitter API communication, but it must include the human-Twitter API case, so it's a useful example to think about. > I imagine a center for cross species communication research would coordinate scientists across a couple important fields also interested in the question and allocate their resources to the research which seems most promising to make progress. Just like any other institute. Ah, just like any other institute. Certainly you can have people dress up as scientists and act like they're scientists -- just like any other institute! -- but this is only a good idea if you think they can accomplish something by doing it. What you're describing is a pure cargo cult. Their only goal is to appear to be similar to other, more useful people. We already have many experts in cross-species communication. We call them animal trainers.