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Humans began to rapidly accumulate technological knowledge 600k years ago

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Re: Humans began to rapidly accumulate technological knowledge 600k years ago

#241

Post by epgui »

olalonde wrote: post #136
epgui wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I 100% do not think in words or sentences or language. It feels more like node-traversing a graph of concepts, but it's all completely abstract. While I am able to consciously play back my thoughts linguistically or visually with some effort (and at the cost of efficiency), by default there are neither words nor images. French is my first language, I'm fluent in English, and I know a bit about many languages... But I…

What I am saying is that probably everyone thinks the way you do, it's just that not everyone would describe it in that way. For example, I'm sure you came up with this comment in your head at some point before typing it and many people would describe this as an inner monologue, whereas you apparently do not.

Oh, perhaps. And I didn't mean to suggest that I was special in any way, but... When I discuss this with people in real life, it is very rare that I find someone who relates to this way of describing how I think. Most people are just stuck in literal wide-eyed disbelief and either tell me they think in literal words, fragments or sentences, experiencing a real "inner voice", or they tell me that they visualize things somehow.

Sometimes people seem to not be sure how to describe the experience of thinking... Which I suppose explains a lot! /laughs

Re: Humans began to rapidly accumulate technological knowledge 600k years ago

#242

Post by acchow »

Amezarak wrote: post #182
Turskarama wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is supposedly neanderthal DNA in some modern humans, implying that offspring were viable. Breeding resulting in viable offspring is one of the only consistent definitions of what a species even is.

We could make that the definition, but we'd doing a lot of redefinition: coyotes and wolves would become the same species, as would lions and jaguars. Fertility issues tend to increase with genetic distance but aren't guaranteed; for example, mules are usually but not always sterile.

What about the 2nd generation of mule, then 3rd? If the probability of viability keeps dropping generation after generation, eventually it will delete itself?

Re: Humans began to rapidly accumulate technological knowledge 600k years ago

#243

Post by jjk166 »

ysofunny wrote: post #83
fritzo wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's unclear tech transfer is speech driven. People can read machines and reason about purpose without natural language. We've all learned tricks from undocumented code. I've learned mechanical tricks poking around scrap yards.

maybe unclear to you. may I recommend Orality and Literacy by Walter J. Ong. which talks about how text and writing transformed human culture the point (which I learned from the book) is how writting transformed human culture but did not define it, humans have a pre-literal (i.e. written) culture whose origin is literally really lost to history I'm saying that tech transfer can absolutely be speech driven, but I admi…

No one is denying that tech transfer can be speech driven, but that doesn't mean that this particular increase in tech transfer was because of speech.

Re: Humans began to rapidly accumulate technological knowledge 600k years ago

#245

Post by marssaxman »

BlarfMcFlarf wrote: post #55
marssaxman wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's wild - I am clearly the first sort, because I cannot imagine what "a smooth stream of thought" would even be if it were not expressed in words.

It’s a process of serialization. I frequently have thoughts or ideas that take me a while to express in words. Being stuck to words seems so limiting, slow, and linear that I have a hard time believing it; surely there are more fundamental mental processes generating the words and the monologue is just a serialization of thought? Right?

That's an interesting perspective, and I think you are on to something.

I have some experience with a meditative/dissociative state in which that monologue - which I think of as the "narrator process" - can be observed as just one of many mental subsystems, neither containing the whole of my consciousness nor acting as the agent of my will. The narrator merely describes the feelings which arise in other mental components and arranges them, along with the actions I take, into some plausible linear causal sequence.

Minds differ in many ways, and perhaps one way your mind and mine differ is that words flow quickly for me and do not feel slow or limiting; so I suppose I am easily fooled into perceiving that narrative as the medium of thought in itself. It had not occurred to me to describe the activities of the other mental subsystems as thoughts, but why shouldn't they be? And now I have a better guess at what it might be like to experience the world in a different way. Thank you!

Re: Humans began to rapidly accumulate technological knowledge 600k years ago

#246

Post by mistermann »

MeImCounting wrote: post #237
mistermann wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you remember to check/contemplate whether your "measurements" are correct? This seems like a rather recursively self-referential problem.

Im not really sure what you mean here, could you elaborate?

Well, above you seem to be describing "how things are". What if what you're describing is not the things themselves, but rather only a model of the things?

Like, where are the details of how you are "measuring" these things? And what measurement instrument returns values like "is clearly" and "is really just"? I can think of only one.

Re: Humans began to rapidly accumulate technological knowledge 600k years ago

#247

Post by dredmorbius »

orwin wrote: post #117
dredmorbius wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's amusing of course is that the word text shares a root with textiles and hence the notion of weaving thread or cloth. I'd strongly suggest not getting bogged down in the details of what various forms of notional recording are --- ink on paper, etching on stone, holes punched in paper, magnetic field alignments in rust (spinning, sequential, or otherwise), bitfields in memory arrays, holographic images ... Recor…

You managed to explain my own thoughts to me, thank you.

Thanks.

The symmetric equivalence between records and signals is one that I seem to have come up with myself (I'm unaware of it being noted elsewhere, though bits of it have been observed, e.g., speech is conversation in space, writing is conversation in time). How significant it is I really don't know, though something tells me it should be important.

Re: Humans began to rapidly accumulate technological knowledge 600k years ago

#248

Post by MeImCounting »

mistermann wrote: post #246
MeImCounting wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Im not really sure what you mean here, could you elaborate?

Well, above you seem to be describing "how things are". What if what you're describing is not the things themselves, but rather only a model of the things? Like, where are the details of how you are "measuring" these things? And what measurement instrument returns values like "is clearly" and "is really just"? I can think of only one.

Still not entirely sure what exactly youre getting at here.

Yes what I am describing is my opinion which I have formed from looking at evidence. My opinion isnt really a measurement in the sense that one can measure activity in parts of a brain with an MRI. It is really just the state of the system.

I'm not really interested in abstract epistemological definitions of free will because they arent useful in the way that neurology psychology and biology are generally. I am interested in predicting or explaining behavior or observations mostly. You might be interested in that kind of exploration which is great! If you think it does have bearing on such things I am totally interested in hearing how.

Re: Humans began to rapidly accumulate technological knowledge 600k years ago

#249

Post by davidmnoll »

kgeist wrote: post #192
davidmnoll wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This has been hypothesized, but the fact that there aren’t many or any purely sign languages still around and other primates don’t show signs of using signs makes that seem like a reach, IMO

>other primates don’t show signs of using signs other primates don't show signs of using vocal language either, yet humans have it >there aren’t many or any purely sign languages still around we're the only species of modern humans who survived, maybe Neanderthals/Denisovans etc. used sign language, who knows maybe the fact that we started using vocal language made us much more superior evolutionarily speaking, makin…

Yes these are the arguments in support of the idea. I’m not going to dismiss the idea completely but it’s not at the top of the list of likelihood imo

Re: Humans began to rapidly accumulate technological knowledge 600k years ago

#250

Post by tonynator »

mkl wrote: post #139
tonynator wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely same. I wonder how much of it is most people being like this and many of those saying "well yes of course I see the apple" without really thinking about it. If someone actually sees the apple, v.s. imagining what it would be like if they were seeing it, they're hallucinating. Not that it wouldn't be cool to be able to do that on command, I just wonder how many people really can.

I really see it. It's not hallucinating as the imagined image is not in the real world. It's like a different input to the visual processing part of my brain (but both inputs work at once, a bit like looking at a different thing with each eye). I have visual memories (snapshots I can call up) of things I never saw with my eyes (e.g. scenes from novels) that are as strong as any that came from my eyes.

Can you do it with your eyes open?

Have you tried drawing a real object then the imagined one and seeing which ends up better? I've always thought that this would be a great skill for visual artists.

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