Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

A linguist on Arrival's alien language (2016)

slate.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 178 posts

Re: A linguist on Arrival's alien language (2016)

#11

Post by maxxxxx »

cletus wrote: post #2

One big issue with communicating with aliens is sensory differences with humans. Humans perceive a sound range, the so-called visibl spectrum and certain limited smells (compared to man animals). Even here there are animals that perceive different spectra and the magnetic field. What's more human communication relies on a basic common wiring (e.g. Paus s between words seem to be basically universal regardless of lang…

This makes me wonder: is there a specific advantage in us being able to see the specific wavelengths we see or is it just a random thing and we would be fine if we could see only other wavelengths like UV or infrared?

Re: A linguist on Arrival's alien language (2016)

#12

Post by marcosdumay »

Johnbot wrote: post #6
cletus wrote: post #2

One big issue with communicating with aliens is sensory differences with humans. Humans perceive a sound range, the so-called visibl spectrum and certain limited smells (compared to man animals). Even here there are animals that perceive different spectra and the magnetic field. What's more human communication relies on a basic common wiring (e.g. Paus s between words seem to be basically universal regardless of lang…

That is certainly an interesting problem, one I first saw in a Hackaday post from a few years ago [1]. Personally, I've always wondered how any aliens would interpret the Arecibo message - if they could even decode it, that is. [1] http://hackaday.com/2015/10/06/electronics-for-aliens/

I always thought aliens would think the marks on the golden disk are as meaningful as the defects on the semiconductor chips. I can't imagine why they would wonder if it's a message.

Re: A linguist on Arrival's alien language (2016)

#13

Post by ageofwant »

cletus wrote: post #10
rubber_duck wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>So if an alien landed here what if they didn't perceive sound at all and saw only in the ultraviolet range? If they were capable of interstellar travel this would be a trivial problem to solve in comparison so yeah highly implausible plots.

Well this is the somewhat depressing part: interstellar distances just seem so vast one has to wonder if it's ever going to be feasible. This is worsened by the timescales just being hopelessly long for how long we live. It seems far more likely that AIs are more viable to send than living organisms.

We will not live in meat forever. Once strong AI happens, or maybe even before, human consciousness will be transcribable into more resilient matter. That type of consciousness could be hibernated for millennia in transit. Or play endless games in transit. Its a bit silly to imply "living organisms" a being somehow better, especially when the vast majority of future humanity will live their potential endless lives in smart-matter panels orbiting this and other suns.

Re: A linguist on Arrival's alien language (2016)

#14

Post by seewhatIsee »

The Himba tribe in Africa have an interesting perception of color which is believed to stem from their language[1]. For example, their language uses the same word for what westerners separately call green and blue. As a result, they cannot seem to distinguish the colors when presented to them.

[1] https://vimeo.com/120808489

Re: A linguist on Arrival's alien language (2016)

#15

Post by awinter-py »

I've never understood the core question of S-W. Is it that you can't have a word without having a concept for it? That seems like a no-brainer.

Neanderthals weren't able to build airplanes, and their language probably didn't have a word for airplane (presumably), but B wasn't the cause of A.

The vedic indians had flying vehicles in their literature and were also not able to build airplanes.

Most cultures that can build flying machines have one or more names for them.

I don't know what it would mean to have the concept for something without having a word (or a sentence) to describe it.

If the S-W claim is that 'it's more common for a concept to underly a word than for a word to exist for a concept', I don't agree with that either -- kids who read a lot will often know the part of speech for a word and its context but not much else.

Re: A linguist on Arrival's alien language (2016)

#16

Post by Robotbeat »

maxxxxx wrote: post #11
cletus wrote: post #2

One big issue with communicating with aliens is sensory differences with humans. Humans perceive a sound range, the so-called visibl spectrum and certain limited smells (compared to man animals). Even here there are animals that perceive different spectra and the magnetic field. What's more human communication relies on a basic common wiring (e.g. Paus s between words seem to be basically universal regardless of lang…

This makes me wonder: is there a specific advantage in us being able to see the specific wavelengths we see or is it just a random thing and we would be fine if we could see only other wavelengths like UV or infrared?

Visible is pretty smack dab in the middle of the Sun's peak spectrum: http://plantphys.info/plant_physiology/images/solarlight.gif

And there are other constraints, too. UV is blocked by water (and our lens material) and can induce chemical changes (read: damage) easier than visible light. Damaging sensitive retina. Not that this is an unsolvable problem (bees see UV), but it is a biochemical constraint. Infrared, especially far infrared, doesn't work too well without a cooled sensor. And the energy per quanta is less, which reduces your options for good, high-sensitivity biomolecules that can detect them, kind of the opposite problem of UV.

So yeah, there are a few reasons why visible light is visible light and why we can't see UV or infrared. It's not entirely arbitrary or random. But "seeing" with sound is also a viable evolutionary approach, but less effective in a low-density medium like air and more effective (even than light) in a medium like water.

Re: A linguist on Arrival's alien language (2016)

#17

Post by dudeonthenet »

It's also worth making the distinction between the movie and the impressive short story that the movie is based on, which the article completely fails to mention: Ted Chiang - Story of Your Life [1]

I've read Chiang's book about two years before the movie aired and it really is top-notch speculative fiction that I highly recommend to any Sci-Fi lover.

Even though Denis Villeneuve, Eric Heisserer and Ted Chiang himself did a wonderful job with the screenplay, while managing to convey the main ideas and emotion of the book, there are quite a few details about the process of translating Heptapod A and B that didn't make it into the movie, details which would have painted a more complete picture of the situation for the interviewed professor of linguistics that was interviewed in this article.

[1] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18626849-stories-of-your...

Re: A linguist on Arrival's alien language (2016)

#18

Post by adrianN »

maxxxxx wrote: post #11
cletus wrote: post #2

One big issue with communicating with aliens is sensory differences with humans. Humans perceive a sound range, the so-called visibl spectrum and certain limited smells (compared to man animals). Even here there are animals that perceive different spectra and the magnetic field. What's more human communication relies on a basic common wiring (e.g. Paus s between words seem to be basically universal regardless of lang…

This makes me wonder: is there a specific advantage in us being able to see the specific wavelengths we see or is it just a random thing and we would be fine if we could see only other wavelengths like UV or infrared?

The atmosphere and water are both reasonably transparent to visible light but a lot less transparent to other parts of the spectrum.

Re: A linguist on Arrival's alien language (2016)

#19

Post by pebblexe »

awinter-py wrote: post #15

I've never understood the core question of S-W. Is it that you can't have a word without having a concept for it? That seems like a no-brainer. Neanderthals weren't able to build airplanes, and their language probably didn't have a word for airplane (presumably), but B wasn't the cause of A. The vedic indians had flying vehicles in their literature and were also not able to build airplanes. Most cultures that can bui…

Are you kidding me?

Are you claiming the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis isn't true on ycombinator?

This is a forum famous for talking about blub languages and lisp. And if it's true for artificial languages, that's a strong indicator that it's true for human ones.

But sadly there are very few studies comparing programming languages and I've never seen one comparing human languages qualitatively.

Re: A linguist on Arrival's alien language (2016)

#20

Post by adrianN »

cletus wrote: post #10
rubber_duck wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>So if an alien landed here what if they didn't perceive sound at all and saw only in the ultraviolet range? If they were capable of interstellar travel this would be a trivial problem to solve in comparison so yeah highly implausible plots.

Well this is the somewhat depressing part: interstellar distances just seem so vast one has to wonder if it's ever going to be feasible. This is worsened by the timescales just being hopelessly long for how long we live. It seems far more likely that AIs are more viable to send than living organisms.

With time dilation the distances are not that vast. But even without, it is plausible to send biological matter in some form of hibernation across the galaxy in a space ship at ~0.3c. The energy requirements are pretty big, but you could use something like black hole star ships to efficiently convert matter into speed.
Post reply on HN