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I woke up unable to speak English

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Re: I woke up unable to speak English

#51

Post by RIMR »

p1esk wrote: post #47
wpietri wrote: post #2

This article is entirely plausible to me. I have dealt with two relatives with brain tumors. Between disease and treatment, I have seen some incredibly weird stuff. It makes me realize how little we understand how minds work. The best analogy I have is to think of your smartphone from the perspective of a normal user. You're used to it working fine. But suddenly it stops working fine. So a technical friend hooks up a…

minds are much more complicated It's actually not clear if brains are more complicated to understand than modern smartphones. Modern smartphones are designed using numerous abstraction levels - it makes it easier to design, but harder to understand if you don't know those abstractions. Brain, on the other hand, might have fewer fundamental algorithms/methods. In fact, most of the brain complexity could just be evolut…

I think you hit the nail on the head here.

The brain is perfectly understandable, it's just that we need to learn to understand more things about it before we get there.

We designed everything in a smartphone and can say with confidence that it works a certain way, and even explain why. The brain was designed by evolution, and while we mostly understand what it does, we aren't quite sure of the how and why yet.

Re: I woke up unable to speak English

#52

Post by RIMR »

novaleaf wrote: post #48
gspetr wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> b) they aren't designed It does seem like a reasonable statement, but when you take a bit of time to think about it, billions of people disagree with it. A sobering thought. > so there's no expectation that they should make sense under the hood What doesn't make sense is that at first you deny a religious explanation, then without skipping a beat you ascribe (what can ironically be described as divine) mysteriousne…

actually, if you believe in natural evolution, brains are designed. just because there isn't any intelligence involved, doesn't mean that the brain isn't a meticulously crafted piece of perfection.

Our brains evolved by having the features needed to keep us alive long enough to reproduce.

Ultimately we, as a species, designed our own brain.

Re: I woke up unable to speak English

#53

Post by RIMR »

meijer wrote: post #22
epicide wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The idea of a brain API is both amazing and terrifying.

One could argue that such an API exists. It even understands natural language!

Wildly different localized standards though, and nobody can write a transform that actually works.

Re: I woke up unable to speak English

#54

Post by RIMR »

Koshkin wrote: post #37
meijer wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One could argue that such an API exists. It even understands natural language!

... and then does the opposite of what it’s told.

It's an API. Nobody said the purpose was for it to do as it's told.

It accepts input and responds according to its own training. Disobedience is a feature.

Re: I woke up unable to speak English

#55

Post by SlySherZ »

If I remember correctly, when you learn a new language after age 10, the brain encodes the new language in a region adjacent to the one where your mother language is encoded, which means that any localized injury on this part of the brain may impact your ability to speak just one of them.

Source: Sapolsky's lecture about language: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SIOQgY1tqrU&list=PL150326949...

If you want to understand better how the brain works, I really recommend watching the whole course.

Re: I woke up unable to speak English

#57

Post by noonespecial »

klaudioz wrote: post #24

I've some weird type of a migraine which sometimes I'm not able to read or speak properly in English or Spanish (Always one of these combinations, fortunately). It's like I forgot how the words are "divided by syllables" and I'm not able to read or speak properly. Fortunately, it's for a few minutes and I got a migraine just one or two times a year. I went to the doctor and he said it's not dangerous and there is not…

I have migraines every once in a long while where I lose the ability to read. I can sound out words and recognize them but can't grok the meanings of the simplest sentences. Every thing else is fine. I can speak and reason perfectly. Just not read. It is the weirdest thing I've ever experienced. I definitely have more compassion for illiterate people making their way in life.

Re: I woke up unable to speak English

#58

Post by post_break »

hobls wrote: post #18
wpietri wrote: post #2

This article is entirely plausible to me. I have dealt with two relatives with brain tumors. Between disease and treatment, I have seen some incredibly weird stuff. It makes me realize how little we understand how minds work. The best analogy I have is to think of your smartphone from the perspective of a normal user. You're used to it working fine. But suddenly it stops working fine. So a technical friend hooks up a…

Absolutely agreed. Brains are bizarre. My mother-in-law once had what we (and her primary physician) believed was a serious flu. The moment we realized that it was much worse than that was when she started calmly speaking total nonsense. She appeared to think it was normal English, but each word was unintelligible, though it used plausible parts of speech. At that moment I picked her up and drove her to the E.R., aft…

Reminds me of the heavy bertations news caster. She knew what she was trying to say but it was coming out as jibberish and the scary thing is that her brain still recognized the fact that she wasn’t making sense. One of those things that scares me.

Re: I woke up unable to speak English

#59

Post by temetnosce »

SlySherZ wrote: post #55

If I remember correctly, when you learn a new language after age 10, the brain encodes the new language in a region adjacent to the one where your mother language is encoded, which means that any localized injury on this part of the brain may impact your ability to speak just one of them. Source: Sapolsky's lecture about language: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SIOQgY1tqrU&list=PL150326949... If you want to understa…

I grew up speaking Mandarin in my household and spoke English at school, but I also picked up Spanish in highschool and Japanese in college.

If I were to guess, my brain would probably place Mandarin and English in "mother language" part of the brain and Japanese and Spanish part in the adjacent region. I wonder what I would lose if I were to sustain an injury. Would I lose one group over another group?

On another note, as with many American highschool students learning Spanish, I fell out of practice and now I can't really communicate in Spanish at all. When I do attempt to speak Spanish, I notice that I sometimes replace words in Spanish with Japanese ones. Can't be sure whether or not it's because of phonological similarities of Japanese and Spanish, or maybe my Japanese overwrote some of my Spanish.

Re: I woke up unable to speak English

#60

Post by klaudioz »

ksenzee wrote: post #49
klaudioz wrote: post #24

I've some weird type of a migraine which sometimes I'm not able to read or speak properly in English or Spanish (Always one of these combinations, fortunately). It's like I forgot how the words are "divided by syllables" and I'm not able to read or speak properly. Fortunately, it's for a few minutes and I got a migraine just one or two times a year. I went to the doctor and he said it's not dangerous and there is not…

That sounds really frustrating. Do you have to warn friends and co-workers in advance? Or is it short-lived enough that you can just go hide until it passes?

Yes, I did it. Actually, I have a sleep mask in my job. It's useful to reduce a headache when everything is normal again. I discovered it a few years ago after 20 years having this migraine but the read/speak thing started about 8 years ago (at least).
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