4 ms·

What can singing mice say about human speech?

21 points by gmays 6mo ago

jimnotgym 6mo ago
And if you read the article there is no link to audio of them singing. Google has lots of very similar articles, with no singing. YouTube has videos of them with no singing. Wikipedia has a tiny excerpt of them singing a bit. Infuriating! First they tell you this mouse sings, then don't let you hear it??? Finally: https://youtu.be/eNc1PI4PkG0?si=LWCLU7AlXxqhM5pX https://youtu.be/eNc1PI4PkG0?si=LWCLU7AlXxqhM5pX I didn't find a duet like the article suggested
- vi_sextus_vi 6mo ago
  Duet: https://youtu.be/d8o75smN6w8?t=1m18s https://youtu.be/d8o75smN6w8?t=1m18s From the same guy, Arkarup Banerjee, postdoc to tenured
- autoexec 6mo ago
  Thank you! That's the kind of garbage journalism that pisses me off too. While I'm on the subject of pet peeves, here's the same link without tracking: https://youtu.be/eNc1PI4PkG0 https://youtu.be/eNc1PI4PkG0
dsign 6mo ago
> Speech is a crowning achievement of human evolution, the skill that separates us from every other animal. So, it would stand to reason that evolving this capability required some enormous leap in brain complexity. I have this theory that researchers and science journalists' internal bias is a gradation between the huge shadow projected by millennia of religious culture and the huge shadow projected by the things we have learned recently. The quote above, particularly the term "leap", evokes intelligent design. > Instead, evolution roughly tripled the number of neurons that connect the brain's mouth-movement control center with just two target regions. This, on the other hand, outright sounds like scaling the size of the model, which is on the opposite direction of the bias axis. FWIW, my own bias also tends in this direction.
- b3ing 6mo ago
  Prairie dogs have a language but it’s not as robust as ours as far as we know. But they have nouns verbs and adjectives
cainxinth 6mo ago
That was fascinating and has implications for AI. The mouse didn't have new brain structures, it just had triple the number of neurons connecting its mouth-movement center to its hearing and vocal structures. It's the bitter lesson in wetware.

21 points by gmays 6mo ago

And if you read the article there is no link to audio of them singing. Google has lots of very similar articles, with no singing. YouTube has videos of them with no singing. Wikipedia has a tiny excerpt of them singing a bit. Infuriating! First they tell you this mouse sings, then don't let you hear it??? Finally: https://youtu.be/eNc1PI4PkG0?si=LWCLU7AlXxqhM5pX https://youtu.be/eNc1PI4PkG0?si=LWCLU7AlXxqhM5pX I didn't find a duet like the article suggested

vi_sextus_vi 6mo ago
Duet: https://youtu.be/d8o75smN6w8?t=1m18s https://youtu.be/d8o75smN6w8?t=1m18s From the same guy, Arkarup Banerjee, postdoc to tenured
autoexec 6mo ago
Thank you! That's the kind of garbage journalism that pisses me off too. While I'm on the subject of pet peeves, here's the same link without tracking: https://youtu.be/eNc1PI4PkG0 https://youtu.be/eNc1PI4PkG0

dsign 6mo ago

> Speech is a crowning achievement of human evolution, the skill that separates us from every other animal. So, it would stand to reason that evolving this capability required some enormous leap in brain complexity. I have this theory that researchers and science journalists' internal bias is a gradation between the huge shadow projected by millennia of religious culture and the huge shadow projected by the things we have learned recently. The quote above, particularly the term "leap", evokes intelligent design. > Instead, evolution roughly tripled the number of neurons that connect the brain's mouth-movement control center with just two target regions. This, on the other hand, outright sounds like scaling the size of the model, which is on the opposite direction of the bias axis. FWIW, my own bias also tends in this direction.

b3ing 6mo ago
Prairie dogs have a language but it’s not as robust as ours as far as we know. But they have nouns verbs and adjectives

cainxinth 6mo ago

That was fascinating and has implications for AI. The mouse didn't have new brain structures, it just had triple the number of neurons connecting its mouth-movement center to its hearing and vocal structures. It's the bitter lesson in wetware.