Re: Universal Translators

Chris Hind (chind@juno.com)
Sat, 09 Nov 1996 20:03:47 -0800


>Or a Johnny Mnemonic type dolphin with cybernetic implants to enable them
>to communicate with us more effectively. Then we could have dolphins on
>the WWW, learning and growing far faster than we did at our early stages
>of evolution.

Whoa! Dolphins wired to the web. Cool. I wonder what special mental
processes they could evolve to add to our pool of knowledge. We *ARE*
Gaia's brain (to go along w/the analogy) and what you're suggesting is that
we should wire all animal brain's to the global internet brain to speed up
evolution of all the animals. A bit odd but cool. The shared global sum of
Earth's knowledge.

>> Do you understand what I am saying? It's very difficult to communicate
these
>> ideas well. Especially since I don't know how much background you have in
>> these areas, and I don't know how much to explain and how much to assume
you
>> already know.
>
>You erroneously assume that every human has as much trouble
>communicating their thoughts as you do. This has more to do with
>education than evolution.

No one can know the entire english vocabulary and there are emotions still
undefined by english so no one can communicate in the least amount of words
and time possible unless you're uploaded and have thousands of years to
restructure your sentences.

>Humans DO have a low level of communication. Most of the activities and
>thoughts occurring in our brains have no representation in our languages.
We
>can look at the sky, but can we communicate the color blue? No; we can only
>refer the person we are talking to, to their experience of the color blue.
>When we're communicating with each other, we're basically referring each
other
>to common, similar memories and experiences. We can only really communicate
>about common experiences and concepts.

Our current language is like how computers across the internet talk to each
other via TCP/IP when we use a completely different language to think. I
think that we will migrate toward a more visual-based language such as
highly detailed stories but created quickly with tools to relay alot of
information to another individual.

>Also, it is extremely difficult for us to communicate with each other about
>experiences we have in common but which haven't been talked about before, so
>no symbols have been developed yet to represent that common experience.
>Various bodily sensations and nuances of emotion are common, mutual
>experiences for which we haven't yet developed symbols, and so we cannot
>really communicate with each other about these experiences, because we don't
>know what sounds or images to make to get the other person to remember the
>experience we are wanting to refer them to.

Perhaps we need to become a closer more open society with people openly
sharing their ideas. This could be encouraged though dynamic optimism being
taught in preschools.