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Mad_Moodin t1_j9vza1f wrote

Reply to comment by Writteninsanity in [WP] The aliens, it seems, do not consider us a sentient species because we are unable to 'keeneetaa'. We still haven't figured out what that means. by limbodog

So our facial movements no?

Like we have pretty universal communication with pointing, smiling, snarling, crying, etc.

Oww sounds the exact same in every language.

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Writteninsanity t1_j9vzppl wrote

Oh interesting!

I imagine if we argued that to the aliens thought they’d ask us to explain how to build a plane with facial expressions. Wouldn’t go that well.

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Mad_Moodin t1_j9vzz7c wrote

Sure shit can do.

I want you to put screw somewhere. I point at the screwdriver. I point at where i want the hole to be. I make a motion of where to drill and you set out to do it.

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Writteninsanity t1_j9w5sov wrote

I’m gonna throw out that it might be underestimating planes here.

Absolutely granted you can communicate a lot with pointing and gestures, but it kinda falls apart at advanced concepts like “there is not a screw right here but here is how you could make one “

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Mad_Moodin t1_j9xcls5 wrote

It is slower than our learned language. But the aliens also used a learned language. It would take a long fucking time but could work.

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henryuuk t1_j9xu1gu wrote

Many of those gestures are still "learned" at some point in life tho

The aliens seemingly have some sort of inherent understanding of theirs from birth

Like, if you isolated one from its species from birth, it would still somehow understand the others after growing up in isolation.

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mauganra_it t1_j9xfv8x wrote

Surely that is not the expectation. We don't quite know why and how humans* developed languages, but it's safe to say we didn't have these things in mind back then.

* animals, especially birds and cetaceans might or might not have something akin to language as well.

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24111 t1_j9zfr5r wrote

The issue is even languages themselves evolve. New words created, usage changes, etc. Different languages also have different expressions, some does not neatly translate to another. Names throw another wrench in the work too.

So what defines a language as a whole? Then from a mathematical perspective, what to say you can't combine the list of expression a language has to portray a more complex concept? The whole computer is built based on basic computations, for example. A letter is a number/binary sequence, combined with encoded information/computation (the machine code to process the data and the context of the information), also under the guise of binary sequences, is capable of being rendered on the screen as pixels, or even plugged as a whole into a ML model.

Humans also have a built in process to learn how to communicate as babies. We just absorb the stuff as babies too. How would this process play in terms of a universal language?

How would you even define communicate in general too, and why the alien mentioned having three languages. What's the differences and why were they created if universal communication is already a trait?

On top of that, what's unique about a species ability to communicate via one common language? How does this communication even "work"? Vocal/sound? Visual/light? Radio waves? And not being learnt meant the information was encoded genetically as well. Having a predefined genetic information to facilitate a species wide base encoding of information doesn't seem... Natural, to say the least, when you move to non basic natural instincts information. Learning vs instinct is a fascinating concept as well (I took a somewhat philosophical ML course that touched on this, it's awesome!)

It's an interesting idea, hence why there's so many things to explore! But there's also a lot of hard questions you'd need to work out too, to make the concept work with more depth I feel.

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Kethlak t1_j9wriiw wrote

From personal experience, "Ow" does not sound the same in every language. I was working in a lab in college putting an EEG cap on a woman from Italy, another student in the lab, and I was hurting her but the noise she made to express that was not one I understood as being in pain.

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