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273 points geox | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0s | source
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gcanyon ◴[] No.40712874[source]
You have to think that there were breakthroughs in communication technology — not just language in general but possibly also one individual who happened to be good at explaining things, either before or after language, who both taught more people, but also taught them how to teach — that led to step changes in technology.
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dboreham ◴[] No.40713012[source]
Theory: there are no humans without language. Consider: what language do you think in?
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mkl ◴[] No.40713064[source]
Quite a lot of humans don't think in language, or do only some of the time, see e.g. https://www.iflscience.com/people-with-no-internal-monologue..., https://www.livescience.com/does-everyone-have-inner-monolog..., https://www.bustle.com/wellness/does-everyone-have-an-intern....
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palad1n ◴[] No.40713166[source]
Indeed, there are two types of people in that regard, whose mind is blown (usually) that there is another type. One thinks in words, one has no words but a smooth stream of thought going.
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marssaxman ◴[] No.40713191{3}[source]
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.
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1. mainecoder ◴[] No.40713263{4}[source]
It is like your motor control thoughts, you don't think let me pickup this spoon you just pick it up, when given an equation you do not think go through the steps if x - 9 = 22, you just say x is 31 yet you have skipped in your mind there exists a base mental representation of these things some call it a small world model of a large world model encoded in an abstract knowledge representation sort of like a compilers abstract syntax tree and this representation is sort of universal in that you can take it from someone and give it to another person and they will automatically know provided that they have the requisite properties of the world model in which it exists for instance a thought about the symmetric group s3 could be transferred provided that the requisite structure for groups( just the definition, and concept of rotation exists which already exists by default in mammals).