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I guess the part that I could’ve been more explicit about is that I am thinking both complex language and complex language skills being necessary together to pu
by bumby 2y ago
I guess the part that I could’ve been more explicit about is that I am thinking both complex language and complex language skills being necessary together to push civilization forward. The takeaway I had from the articles communication discussion was that their communication, while unique, is focused directly on mating, and predation (or avoiding predation). Those goals seem to be the norm in the animal kingdom. While I think the argument could be made that the human demonstrations can be to the same ends, they are many more layers of abstraction in between which is what ends up creating complex civilization.
(Eg, status is a form of mating, but we humans have so many tangential levels of displaying status that technology like a Lamborghini can become a mating signal, rather than using pure dominance. The combination of complex social behaviors and communication are necessary before the technology develops)
- inkcapmushroom 2y agoI think we can very easily tell when they are communicating about mating or predation. We can read those signals in virtually any animal, there seem to be near-universal signals which we can easily talk about in research. Maybe when they are just having a chat, it might not look like anything to us, and we can only really tell what they're saying when they're "shouting". Or maybe we are missing lots of nuanced details being conveyed in the message. We think the tiger stripe aggressive pattern just means "back off", but maybe he's really "reading off" a detailed list of his feats of bravery to intimidate his opponent or spitting the cephalopod equivalent of a diss track!