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I would encourage you to look up the history of feral children, but the results are quite saddening (confounded, of course, by the fact that any child raised th

I would encourage you to look up the history of feral children, but the results are quite saddening (confounded, of course, by the fact that any child raised this way would by definition have grown up in an abusive environment). https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feral_child https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feral_child

vanderZwan 3y ago
Oliver Sacks argues in his book Seeing Voices (about sign language, and why it is important that we let the deaf speak it (which, yes, was controversial among the hearing up until a few decades ago)), that this is because our brain evolved to the point that it needs to acquire language from the human tribe we are born into to fully function. It is basically "incomplete" without it. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seeing_Voices https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seeing_Voices
- dsubburam 3y ago
  Ludwig Wittgenstein's no-private-language argument also applies here. He wrote that you can't make up your own words or concepts, absent any interaction with others, because there's nothing to stop you from changing your mind on what that word means the next day. (No "criterion for identity".) Sounded controversial to me when I first encountered it, but apparently accepted by modern philosophers as a legit argument. (That language is necessarily a public/communal thing.)
  - vanderZwan 3y ago
    > because there's nothing to stop you from changing your mind on what that word means the next day. Ok, that is interesting and I can kind of see it, but this is basically assuming you already have acquired language and talks about the actual act of using language. Otherwise it's a bit of a circular argument: consciously deciding what a word means, as opposed to intuiting its meaning from experience, context and memory, requires being able to consciously structure and organize thoughts. And for that you need to be able to categorize the thoughts, which requires labeling them, which already presupposes a rudimentary form of language. (Also, if I were to "make up a word with a meaning", use it in a sentence I write down, then read it again the next day, then there is something stopping me from changing my mind on what it means: making sense of my own past thoughts. But this is a bit of a cheat because "past me" and "current me" are arguably two different entities) The problem I have with Wittgenstein (and many philosophers) is that they rarely, if ever, seem to leave the domain of language and semiotics to consider the world outside of the signposts that the signposts actually point to. They're having too much fun with their language games. Meanwhile, Sacks is always trying to stay grounded in what we know from research and case studies. For example Seeing Voices describes accounts of the prelingual deaf who acquired sign language later in life, and therefore were able to describe what their experience of acquiring language was like (since childhood amnesia[0] did erase the memories of this process). I can't fully recall the details on the spot here, but living without language essentially is like suffering from an absence of mental "scaffolding", making it impossible to compose ideas together to build cohesive, complex lines of thought. So sacks also concludes that we need other humans to acquire language (really, to become human in general), but it's more of a matter of bootstrapping: in order to acquire language you need a dialogue, and you can't have that if none of the participants of the dialogue posses a language! [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Childhood_amnesia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Childhood_amnesia
    - dsubburam 3y ago
      I am not well-read enough to opine on your reaction Re: Wittgenstein, esp. since I haven't read Sacks' work. But you are the first person I've encountered who appears to have an internalized understanding of these ideas, and so am curious to continue the conversation: > So sacks also concludes that we need other humans to acquire language (really, to become human in general) I do agree with Sacks' conclusion, having first come across a version of it in Hegel's dialectic--the dialectic of self vs. other. Or in my interpretation, of personhood and relationship. i.e. Personhood is forged through relationships with other persons. Do you think this applies to AGI? That it needs to bootstrap itself by communicating and relating with other intelligences? This, and related concepts like free will, tend to be ignored in the scientific literature on the subject[1]. [1] https://arxiv.org/abs/2308.08708 https://arxiv.org/abs/2308.08708 Consciousness in Artificial Intelligence: Insights from the Science of Consciousness
      - vanderZwan 3y ago
        > Do you think this applies to AGI? That it needs to bootstrap itself by communicating and relating with other intelligences? This, and related concepts like free will, tend to be ignored in the scientific literature on the subject[1]. That sounds plausible. On the other hand, it might be another case our tendency to judge intelligence by the already existing intelligence that we know of, which is us. But we probably shouldn't assume that that is the only form of "intelligence" that exists. Related to that: these types of discussion tend to get rather fuzzy because most of the words involved ("intelligence" especially) aren't nearly as neatly defined as our gut feeling tends to make us believe. And depending on which interpretation people pick they can wildly talk past each other, or even confuse themselves by not realizing they're switching between which aspect of intelligence they're talking about in the middle of their argument without realizing it. Which is precisely why I don't really feel the urge to go deeper into what might be needed for AGI right now though, apologies. I think we maybe should put a bit more effort into understanding humans first.
        dsubburam 3y ago
        I find that a reasonable take, and also get your sentiment Re: AGI discussion; though I think we managed a good exchange. Cheers!

vanderZwan 3y ago

Oliver Sacks argues in his book Seeing Voices (about sign language, and why it is important that we let the deaf speak it (which, yes, was controversial among the hearing up until a few decades ago)), that this is because our brain evolved to the point that it needs to acquire language from the human tribe we are born into to fully function. It is basically "incomplete" without it. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seeing_Voices https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seeing_Voices

dsubburam 3y ago
Ludwig Wittgenstein's no-private-language argument also applies here. He wrote that you can't make up your own words or concepts, absent any interaction with others, because there's nothing to stop you from changing your mind on what that word means the next day. (No "criterion for identity".) Sounded controversial to me when I first encountered it, but apparently accepted by modern philosophers as a legit argument. (That language is necessarily a public/communal thing.)
- vanderZwan 3y ago
  > because there's nothing to stop you from changing your mind on what that word means the next day. Ok, that is interesting and I can kind of see it, but this is basically assuming you already have acquired language and talks about the actual act of using language. Otherwise it's a bit of a circular argument: consciously deciding what a word means, as opposed to intuiting its meaning from experience, context and memory, requires being able to consciously structure and organize thoughts. And for that you need to be able to categorize the thoughts, which requires labeling them, which already presupposes a rudimentary form of language. (Also, if I were to "make up a word with a meaning", use it in a sentence I write down, then read it again the next day, then there is something stopping me from changing my mind on what it means: making sense of my own past thoughts. But this is a bit of a cheat because "past me" and "current me" are arguably two different entities) The problem I have with Wittgenstein (and many philosophers) is that they rarely, if ever, seem to leave the domain of language and semiotics to consider the world outside of the signposts that the signposts actually point to. They're having too much fun with their language games. Meanwhile, Sacks is always trying to stay grounded in what we know from research and case studies. For example Seeing Voices describes accounts of the prelingual deaf who acquired sign language later in life, and therefore were able to describe what their experience of acquiring language was like (since childhood amnesia[0] did erase the memories of this process). I can't fully recall the details on the spot here, but living without language essentially is like suffering from an absence of mental "scaffolding", making it impossible to compose ideas together to build cohesive, complex lines of thought. So sacks also concludes that we need other humans to acquire language (really, to become human in general), but it's more of a matter of bootstrapping: in order to acquire language you need a dialogue, and you can't have that if none of the participants of the dialogue posses a language! [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Childhood_amnesia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Childhood_amnesia
  - dsubburam 3y ago
    I am not well-read enough to opine on your reaction Re: Wittgenstein, esp. since I haven't read Sacks' work. But you are the first person I've encountered who appears to have an internalized understanding of these ideas, and so am curious to continue the conversation: > So sacks also concludes that we need other humans to acquire language (really, to become human in general) I do agree with Sacks' conclusion, having first come across a version of it in Hegel's dialectic--the dialectic of self vs. other. Or in my interpretation, of personhood and relationship. i.e. Personhood is forged through relationships with other persons. Do you think this applies to AGI? That it needs to bootstrap itself by communicating and relating with other intelligences? This, and related concepts like free will, tend to be ignored in the scientific literature on the subject[1]. [1] https://arxiv.org/abs/2308.08708 https://arxiv.org/abs/2308.08708 Consciousness in Artificial Intelligence: Insights from the Science of Consciousness
    - vanderZwan 3y ago
      > Do you think this applies to AGI? That it needs to bootstrap itself by communicating and relating with other intelligences? This, and related concepts like free will, tend to be ignored in the scientific literature on the subject[1]. That sounds plausible. On the other hand, it might be another case our tendency to judge intelligence by the already existing intelligence that we know of, which is us. But we probably shouldn't assume that that is the only form of "intelligence" that exists. Related to that: these types of discussion tend to get rather fuzzy because most of the words involved ("intelligence" especially) aren't nearly as neatly defined as our gut feeling tends to make us believe. And depending on which interpretation people pick they can wildly talk past each other, or even confuse themselves by not realizing they're switching between which aspect of intelligence they're talking about in the middle of their argument without realizing it. Which is precisely why I don't really feel the urge to go deeper into what might be needed for AGI right now though, apologies. I think we maybe should put a bit more effort into understanding humans first.
      - dsubburam 3y ago
        I find that a reasonable take, and also get your sentiment Re: AGI discussion; though I think we managed a good exchange. Cheers!