I would imagine you've seen the "Breakfast Question" greentext, so I won't paste that here. But here's a related thing. It's concerning intelligence, not sapience, but it's still a stark reminder that there are vast gaps in cognitive ability between different people. If you're on the far right tail of the bell curve, like I am, you might not even truly understand how stupid the average person is, and things like this are a useful reminder of it
https://www.unz.com/akarlin/stupid-people/ tl;dr: the average scores on worldwide mathematics tests are shockingly low because everyone is stupid. One of the first things in that post, for example, highlights that ~10% of Americans, and ~50% of people worldwide, are incapable of reading a chart.
For a supporting anecdote, one of my first blackpills on the subject of human intelligence was way back when on Reddit, back in the glory days of the early 2010s where everyone was screaming about "income inequality". People were passing a graph around that looked approximately like this:
People were passing this graph around as proof that the rich are getting richer and the middle class is fucked. But if you use basic critical thinking skills, and your eyeballs, look closely at the graph.
What it's actually saying is that a bunch of the people who made 50k in the 1950s make 100k now. What the chart was actually saying is that _the middle class got hollowed out because they're all rich now_, and NOT that the same small set of rich people got richer.
In other words, people were sending this graph around to argue that the middle class is getting fucked, and using it to demand that the middle class get more resources. But what the graph actually shows is that the middle class got so many resources that they graduated to upper middle class, EXACTLY THE THING BEING DEMANDED
(Note: I have no idea if the graph was true and accurate to reality or not. But that's not the point)
The point is, people had a chart right there in front of them that clearly said one thing, but then some dude tweets saying that the chart says the opposite of that thing, and everybody just spread the chart around saying that it proved the opposite thing. Even when the data is right there in front of them, the average _Redditor_ (who, joking aside, are going to be smarter than the average American because stupid people don't have jobs that let them post on Reddit all day) is _**incapable of reading a basic chart**_.
Because the average person is barely smart enough to qualify as a person. If you are an above average person, it's very very very important to remember this, if for no other reason than that if you put unreasonable expectations on people not smart enough to satisfy them, you hurt both yourself and them
I will disagree with you only in your statement that the average redditor is in anyway more intelligent than the average American. I think that's unacceptably charitable. Otherwise, you're mostly correct.
Can we compromise on "the average Redditor _fifteen years ago_ was more intelligent than the average American"? Truth be told, I haven't gone to Reddit in years, I have no idea what it's like now
Acceptable. However retarded you think reddit is, you're wrong. It's worse. I guarantee you it's worse than you can imagine. Half AI chatbots anyway (the smarter half).
I always point people to the Karlin article on Unz. The realization what percentage of even Japs or Finns can't solve mildly complex problems hits hard. That there are societies that might have a couple hundred people max able to answer question five explains much, if one cares to accept the implications.
It's long been observed that a dog with average IQ (60?) is more practical and capable of logical actions (if not thought) than leftists.
humans not being sapient-
Depending on which source and how it's defined, somewhere between 15% and 50% of humans do not have an internal monologue. There were also studies on at what age human children developed sentience. Unfortunately they separated the subjects by race, so uncomfortable results followed so it was shut down. IIRC, it was something like the average Canadian injun still hadn't developed self-awareness by 15.
I like this article. It has some truth to it, and it's fun to read. But it's main claim is false. Sapience cannot be dependent on language, because I (and presumably anyone reading this comment) can ponder something as abstract as Relativity without relying on an internal monologue. Suppressing the inner voice and learning to think without it (i.e. via imagination) is difficult, but nowhere near impossible.
It should also be obvious that knowing multiple languages is not an indicator of sapience, unless you think Puerto Rico is teeming with particularly sapient individuals. Going out of one's way to learn a second language as an adult might be correlated with intelligence, but picking up a foreign tongue from your nana doesn't mean anything.
Correct. The idea "no internal monologue equals no thinking" only became prominent because the monologians could not imagine other modes of thinking (while the light or no monologues easily can) and monologians are far more numerous (which also doesn't point to high IQ). Having to (as in "must) verbalize something is a serious restriction and explains quite well why many people struggle with complex systems that can not be verbally explained in a decent amount of time. When this monologue idea came up I asked around with relatives and friends and found the normie kind way more often had the internal monologue. Anyone can just ask and find out for themselves.
To respond to the first paragraph (I don't have a good response to the 2nd yet), it's entirely possible to suppress the monologue to consider abstract concepts. Yet without sapience and language as a baseline, contemplating things as abstract as relatively is simply impossible. Learning about the concept and developing an abstract model requires language. Once the model is in the mind, it's possible to contemplate it without language, but it isn't possible to develop an abstract model of the world from scratch without language.
It would be great if backed that up with some actual evidence; as of now it is merely an assertion. The evidence shows that Homo Sapiens and Neanderthals were living in complex social environment, making tools and weapons, making beads, ornaments, and clothing, for at least 400,000 years; well before language came on the scene. Chimpanzees have been taught to think abstractly and pass the ‘mirror’ test of abstract recognition of the self. So you have a nice idea, but little evidence to back it up.
Look at the radiolab podcast linked in the article if you haven't already. It's a fascinating discussion on the nature of language. It also backs strongly this interpretation of language as necessary for abstract conceptualization with a few peer reviewed studies.
I have only searched the transcript of your link so maybe its mentioned there, but Dennetts tiger is a good demonstration of how even visual imagination runs on concepts. (Is there a way to ping usernames in comments?)
Looking at the replies to this, I think “language” may be too narrowly defined by some people.
Hand gestures can be a language, and a fairly complex one. “Enemy approaching from that direction. Gun group cover that direction, rifle group go left and set up an L shaped ambush. Sergeant, go with them.” Is a series of complex concepts that can be communicated without a word spoken or written.
So can math. When contemplating physical problems, I imagine that you’re visualizing the problem? That is also using a language, though one that is extremely difficult to convey to other people, which is why we translate it into mathematics.
Language is a way of breaking down the world into separate concepts, that can then be manipulated by a mind. Those concepts may also be communicated to other minds, if a language that can hold those concepts is held in common. Often, it’s the translation from one language, like what you can visualize in your mind, and the one that you can communicate with others in where misunderstanding can occur.
I’m not sure what point you’re making, but hand gestures and sign language are fundamentally different from language, similar to the difference between analog and digital.
American Sign Language... I think that it counts as language for the sake of my arguments above... but it is fundamentally different from the spoken word.
The point I’m trying to make is that language is not just communication, but the ability to manipulate abstract concepts.
Imagine a baseball ⚾️ is hurtling towards your face. In doing that, you are manipulating the concept of “ball”, “velocity” and “self” at the very least. Depending on how deep you go, you may also have the concept of “depth perception” which has parallax nested in it.
But you can manipulate that series of concepts in your own mind. You can have the ball veer off to the side. You can imagine that a microscopic black hole passed just right to flick the ball away from you, with bits of stuffing trailing behind it as its Roche limit was exceeded. And you can do all of that without any spoken or written language at all, but you are still using language. Call it the language of imagination.
But those thoughts, to be more than random noise, must still have the same prerequisites as language. They must have nouns, verbs, adverbs, tenses and context even if they aren’t communicating anywhere outside of the brain. Saying that language is solely for communication is like arguing that, to use a computer analogy, network protocols are language, but Python and C++ are not.
Language helps organize thoughts, it is not thoughts themselves. I hate to use AI as an analogy but Deepseek illustrates the utility of verbalizing thoughts pretty well.
If I’m picturing a jogger my thoughts do not have the verb “to run”, that’s just one way of encoding them.
Just because computer languages can be used internally and externally does not mean the innerworkings of a computer is language (an incoherent statement).
But you are still using a noun (the concept of the person jogging) and a verb (the concept of running), no matter how incoherent they are. A more coherent language like we a learn as babies learning to speak might make those thoughts more defined and more capable of being communicated, but your brain is still using its own language, learned/created from the experience of its own senses
To your second point, I would think it's a matter of degree. Being able to stammer in two languages wouldn't do anything for you obviously. But becoming proficient in a second language with a very different mode of speaking like for example Japanese is another thing. Speaking Japanese proficiently requires a different mode of thinking. It's reasonable to assume that this generally would strengthen ones' ability to think in the abstract.
This sounds plausible in theory but does not survive the reality check. Puerto Ricans do not stammer through Spanish and English, they’re natively fluent even if they’ve dumbed down the language itself. Also, I grew up in a bilingual home where bilinguals have for centuries been reputed to be dumb and uneducated compared to monolinguals. Having learned several languages myself since then, I am not aware that any improved my ability to think abstractly in a way particular to any specific language.
It must be peaceful to live without sapience. A blissful ignorance free of complex issues and internal conflicts. God may have been protecting Adam an Eve from the tree of wisdom, but perhaps he knew they would defy and seek higher forms of thought regardless. It’s a privilege to think on a higher plane, but it’s a curse for the non-sapient to coexist in a horribly complex world. I can try to teach my dog calculus but she’ll just pretend to get it for another treat. Is our society built by the sapient for the benefit of everyone on this spectrum? Probably not.
Solid, and underrated piece. The neuro-linguistic channels remind me conceptually of the economic and monetary channels in a market. Free markets allow for a larger number of experiments and a greater degree of complexity, leading to more advanced economies. Communism is like the social and economic equivalent of the individual NPC.
There’s a joke that the English invented English but the Irish perfected it. The English that Irish people speak often includes phrasing and themes that are unique to Ireland.
And it was only since I’ve been learning Korean that I noticed this since Korean requires a different way of understanding situations. I’m mathematical, musical and scientifically oriented so internal monologue is natural but it is fascinating that sapience can alter perception.
I guess that’s the main point of the movie Arrival.
Oh wow, you're right. I had to read it 4 times to even notice... I never thought about it. I'd consider it an in-joke, in that you who actually read all the words see it, while most people who assume the existence of the correct word don't see it.
My take on the NPC meme was that Big Tech cracked down hard on it because they had early results from ChatGPT and the like that suggested that many NPCs were basically acting at the same level as ChatGPT - and when you consider how primitive ChatGPT is, that is quite a scary realisation.
The NPC meme emerged before AI was developed, and they cracked down hard on it then too. I suspect it's more due to personal resemblance/offense than it is due to competition with AI.
Some years ago I realized that a co-worker was a NPC from his response to a comment I made. I said "When I was living in the Vancouver area and trying to get work, many young attractive East Asian women flirted with and/or hit on me for some reason; but I couldn't afford to date any woman back then." His response was "So you have a thing for East Asian women?" I couldn't understand how he derived that from my actual words, but now I understand. As a NPC he could only give pre-programmed responses to key words and phrases, so what he heard was "Blah blah blah blah East Asian women blah hit on blah blah blah." In actuality my thing is normal women.
I am simply restating the classical Aristotle-Thomas position that all all persons possess a rational soul that consists of reason and free will. I could look up the Summa reference.
I'm aware of the reference, I simply believe it to be woefully incorrect. I think you'd enjoy the article posted above if you're inclined to read it this afternoon.
I did read it but I’m a theist. and believe that a human soul (mind) is qualitatively different from an animal mind. That is, I believe in natural law. A good defense of natural law is found in What We Can’t Not Know by J. Budziswewski.
I do believe that the human is qualitatively different from the animal mind... but there are vast swaths of the human population that certainly lack rationality in behavior and ideation.
Here's a problem that I wonder about. And concepts that are internal are near impossible to prove.
So I've met people who "can't swim" who could swim. Yet their language model for what it means to swim and mine are different. So that the value system in place that makes a statement have any meaning is devoid of it.
Swimming is made physically manifest. So I can argue the point and debate the meaning and develope clarifications for swimming when I see someone who "can't swim" go in deep water and not drown.
However, what if internal things are sometimes similar? What if someone says "i don't have any internal monologue" is the same level of communication as "I can't swim"???
You will never see that person metaphorically not drown. So you can't badger them into acknowledging that they can. Or in other words, if they do have a monologuing they don't consider to be such, you'd never know.
Language is important for transmitting reality. But it is not itself reality. The number of people who "can't swim" in polls is an unreality. It's fake, it's not real or accurate or a meaningful statistic.
Anything slightly more complex is then even more meaningless.
All things are value judgements and anyone who does not share your values is by default an NPC. If you value money and work for money and see someone who does not, they appear NPC. If they do not value money, they see you as a NPC.
Even children and animals, within the frame of values, seem "stupid" but often this is a matter of conforming values. Being potty trained is not just a matter of skill or intelligence, but a matter of value. If you don't value not peeing your pants, then not peeing your pants doesn't actually reflect necessarily your intelligence.
It's similar to the difference between intelligence and madness, being "mad" is again a value statement. And mad people can be intelligent.
Like the Dark Knight movie and the rebel who stole the gems for fun, "some men just want to watch the world burn" or whatever. If he doesn't value the money, but only the fun of the acts, then he can be highly intelligent and not do anything that makes sense to others.
The question then, is are their objective values? Because then the real judgement of the sapient is if they align with objective values. No amount of training or capacity can make someone do something they refuse to do right?
Like if we decided the mark of intelligence was killing someone. And someone is a pacifist and you train them in every form of war and combat, they will still not kill anyone, making them fail the test of intelligence, but it's actually a failure of value conformity. In some cases, being able to stand unmoved is considered a high achievement right? So if someone tells you to do something you deem immoral and you don't, no matter the motivators put in place, no matter the talking around it, the propaganda, training, etc... then often we say that person was above it in a way.
Well, while I do value not peeing my pants, if someone didn't, if someone valued peeing their pants, they would be "incapable" of being potty trained, child, man, dog, cat, whatever. But that might not be a matter of objective capability, but a matter of value alignment.
So is intelligence truly the right concept or is "morality" the defining line of different groups and their consideration for who is admitted into the "us" category?
My thoughts on the matter tend to be kept to the structure of abstraction. According to the cited study, different regions of the brain cannot cooperate to build a model of reality if an individual cannot speak a natural language. The example given is that the spatial-reasoning part of the brain and the color-recognition part of the brain can both be fully functional. Without language, however, it does not appear possible for a model to be developed and acted upon that includes both spatial dimension and color.
"Travel to the left side of the red wall" is a simple sentence that can be acted upon that is abstracted by language. Evidence suggests that without language a person can hold the thoughts "the left side" or "the red wall" but not both at the same time. Check out the cited radiolab podcast cited in the article for more information on how this appears to work.
I would imagine you've seen the "Breakfast Question" greentext, so I won't paste that here. But here's a related thing. It's concerning intelligence, not sapience, but it's still a stark reminder that there are vast gaps in cognitive ability between different people. If you're on the far right tail of the bell curve, like I am, you might not even truly understand how stupid the average person is, and things like this are a useful reminder of it
https://www.unz.com/akarlin/stupid-people/ tl;dr: the average scores on worldwide mathematics tests are shockingly low because everyone is stupid. One of the first things in that post, for example, highlights that ~10% of Americans, and ~50% of people worldwide, are incapable of reading a chart.
For a supporting anecdote, one of my first blackpills on the subject of human intelligence was way back when on Reddit, back in the glory days of the early 2010s where everyone was screaming about "income inequality". People were passing a graph around that looked approximately like this:
https://files.catbox.moe/n2b29f.png
People were passing this graph around as proof that the rich are getting richer and the middle class is fucked. But if you use basic critical thinking skills, and your eyeballs, look closely at the graph.
What it's actually saying is that a bunch of the people who made 50k in the 1950s make 100k now. What the chart was actually saying is that _the middle class got hollowed out because they're all rich now_, and NOT that the same small set of rich people got richer.
In other words, people were sending this graph around to argue that the middle class is getting fucked, and using it to demand that the middle class get more resources. But what the graph actually shows is that the middle class got so many resources that they graduated to upper middle class, EXACTLY THE THING BEING DEMANDED
(Note: I have no idea if the graph was true and accurate to reality or not. But that's not the point)
The point is, people had a chart right there in front of them that clearly said one thing, but then some dude tweets saying that the chart says the opposite of that thing, and everybody just spread the chart around saying that it proved the opposite thing. Even when the data is right there in front of them, the average _Redditor_ (who, joking aside, are going to be smarter than the average American because stupid people don't have jobs that let them post on Reddit all day) is _**incapable of reading a basic chart**_.
Because the average person is barely smart enough to qualify as a person. If you are an above average person, it's very very very important to remember this, if for no other reason than that if you put unreasonable expectations on people not smart enough to satisfy them, you hurt both yourself and them
I will disagree with you only in your statement that the average redditor is in anyway more intelligent than the average American. I think that's unacceptably charitable. Otherwise, you're mostly correct.
Can we compromise on "the average Redditor _fifteen years ago_ was more intelligent than the average American"? Truth be told, I haven't gone to Reddit in years, I have no idea what it's like now
Acceptable. However retarded you think reddit is, you're wrong. It's worse. I guarantee you it's worse than you can imagine. Half AI chatbots anyway (the smarter half).
I always point people to the Karlin article on Unz. The realization what percentage of even Japs or Finns can't solve mildly complex problems hits hard. That there are societies that might have a couple hundred people max able to answer question five explains much, if one cares to accept the implications.
Data points:
animals being sapient-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z6GMhwyKlhc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WYBATyILJD8
It's long been observed that a dog with average IQ (60?) is more practical and capable of logical actions (if not thought) than leftists.
humans not being sapient-
Depending on which source and how it's defined, somewhere between 15% and 50% of humans do not have an internal monologue. There were also studies on at what age human children developed sentience. Unfortunately they separated the subjects by race, so uncomfortable results followed so it was shut down. IIRC, it was something like the average Canadian injun still hadn't developed self-awareness by 15.
That's why I distinguish "sapient" from "conscious" in the article, but you're not entirely wrong.
I like this article. It has some truth to it, and it's fun to read. But it's main claim is false. Sapience cannot be dependent on language, because I (and presumably anyone reading this comment) can ponder something as abstract as Relativity without relying on an internal monologue. Suppressing the inner voice and learning to think without it (i.e. via imagination) is difficult, but nowhere near impossible.
It should also be obvious that knowing multiple languages is not an indicator of sapience, unless you think Puerto Rico is teeming with particularly sapient individuals. Going out of one's way to learn a second language as an adult might be correlated with intelligence, but picking up a foreign tongue from your nana doesn't mean anything.
Correct. The idea "no internal monologue equals no thinking" only became prominent because the monologians could not imagine other modes of thinking (while the light or no monologues easily can) and monologians are far more numerous (which also doesn't point to high IQ). Having to (as in "must) verbalize something is a serious restriction and explains quite well why many people struggle with complex systems that can not be verbally explained in a decent amount of time. When this monologue idea came up I asked around with relatives and friends and found the normie kind way more often had the internal monologue. Anyone can just ask and find out for themselves.
To respond to the first paragraph (I don't have a good response to the 2nd yet), it's entirely possible to suppress the monologue to consider abstract concepts. Yet without sapience and language as a baseline, contemplating things as abstract as relatively is simply impossible. Learning about the concept and developing an abstract model requires language. Once the model is in the mind, it's possible to contemplate it without language, but it isn't possible to develop an abstract model of the world from scratch without language.
It would be great if backed that up with some actual evidence; as of now it is merely an assertion. The evidence shows that Homo Sapiens and Neanderthals were living in complex social environment, making tools and weapons, making beads, ornaments, and clothing, for at least 400,000 years; well before language came on the scene. Chimpanzees have been taught to think abstractly and pass the ‘mirror’ test of abstract recognition of the self. So you have a nice idea, but little evidence to back it up.
Look at the radiolab podcast linked in the article if you haven't already. It's a fascinating discussion on the nature of language. It also backs strongly this interpretation of language as necessary for abstract conceptualization with a few peer reviewed studies.
I have only searched the transcript of your link so maybe its mentioned there, but Dennetts tiger is a good demonstration of how even visual imagination runs on concepts. (Is there a way to ping usernames in comments?)
I don't believe there is a way to ping usernames, but you could do it with a restack +note I believe?
Okay, that's a softer claim than I originally took it for. I'm not sure how one might try to falsify it.
Look at the radiolab podcast linked in the article if you haven't already. It's a fascinating discussion on the nature of language.
Looking at the replies to this, I think “language” may be too narrowly defined by some people.
Hand gestures can be a language, and a fairly complex one. “Enemy approaching from that direction. Gun group cover that direction, rifle group go left and set up an L shaped ambush. Sergeant, go with them.” Is a series of complex concepts that can be communicated without a word spoken or written.
So can math. When contemplating physical problems, I imagine that you’re visualizing the problem? That is also using a language, though one that is extremely difficult to convey to other people, which is why we translate it into mathematics.
Language is a way of breaking down the world into separate concepts, that can then be manipulated by a mind. Those concepts may also be communicated to other minds, if a language that can hold those concepts is held in common. Often, it’s the translation from one language, like what you can visualize in your mind, and the one that you can communicate with others in where misunderstanding can occur.
I’m not sure what point you’re making, but hand gestures and sign language are fundamentally different from language, similar to the difference between analog and digital.
ASL
American Sign Language... I think that it counts as language for the sake of my arguments above... but it is fundamentally different from the spoken word.
The point I’m trying to make is that language is not just communication, but the ability to manipulate abstract concepts.
Imagine a baseball ⚾️ is hurtling towards your face. In doing that, you are manipulating the concept of “ball”, “velocity” and “self” at the very least. Depending on how deep you go, you may also have the concept of “depth perception” which has parallax nested in it.
But you can manipulate that series of concepts in your own mind. You can have the ball veer off to the side. You can imagine that a microscopic black hole passed just right to flick the ball away from you, with bits of stuffing trailing behind it as its Roche limit was exceeded. And you can do all of that without any spoken or written language at all, but you are still using language. Call it the language of imagination.
I disagree. Language is a medium to convey thoughts. If we conflate thoughts with language then the term “language” has no meaning.
But those thoughts, to be more than random noise, must still have the same prerequisites as language. They must have nouns, verbs, adverbs, tenses and context even if they aren’t communicating anywhere outside of the brain. Saying that language is solely for communication is like arguing that, to use a computer analogy, network protocols are language, but Python and C++ are not.
Language helps organize thoughts, it is not thoughts themselves. I hate to use AI as an analogy but Deepseek illustrates the utility of verbalizing thoughts pretty well.
If I’m picturing a jogger my thoughts do not have the verb “to run”, that’s just one way of encoding them.
Just because computer languages can be used internally and externally does not mean the innerworkings of a computer is language (an incoherent statement).
But you are still using a noun (the concept of the person jogging) and a verb (the concept of running), no matter how incoherent they are. A more coherent language like we a learn as babies learning to speak might make those thoughts more defined and more capable of being communicated, but your brain is still using its own language, learned/created from the experience of its own senses
This is serious equivocation. The concept of a person jogging is not a noun. A noun is what represents the concept; it is not the concept itself.
To your second point, I would think it's a matter of degree. Being able to stammer in two languages wouldn't do anything for you obviously. But becoming proficient in a second language with a very different mode of speaking like for example Japanese is another thing. Speaking Japanese proficiently requires a different mode of thinking. It's reasonable to assume that this generally would strengthen ones' ability to think in the abstract.
This sounds plausible in theory but does not survive the reality check. Puerto Ricans do not stammer through Spanish and English, they’re natively fluent even if they’ve dumbed down the language itself. Also, I grew up in a bilingual home where bilinguals have for centuries been reputed to be dumb and uneducated compared to monolinguals. Having learned several languages myself since then, I am not aware that any improved my ability to think abstractly in a way particular to any specific language.
It must be peaceful to live without sapience. A blissful ignorance free of complex issues and internal conflicts. God may have been protecting Adam an Eve from the tree of wisdom, but perhaps he knew they would defy and seek higher forms of thought regardless. It’s a privilege to think on a higher plane, but it’s a curse for the non-sapient to coexist in a horribly complex world. I can try to teach my dog calculus but she’ll just pretend to get it for another treat. Is our society built by the sapient for the benefit of everyone on this spectrum? Probably not.
Solid, and underrated piece. The neuro-linguistic channels remind me conceptually of the economic and monetary channels in a market. Free markets allow for a larger number of experiments and a greater degree of complexity, leading to more advanced economies. Communism is like the social and economic equivalent of the individual NPC.
Well done.
Thanks!
There’s a joke that the English invented English but the Irish perfected it. The English that Irish people speak often includes phrasing and themes that are unique to Ireland.
And it was only since I’ve been learning Korean that I noticed this since Korean requires a different way of understanding situations. I’m mathematical, musical and scientifically oriented so internal monologue is natural but it is fascinating that sapience can alter perception.
I guess that’s the main point of the movie Arrival.
In memes like the one under the "Life Among NPCs" heading, I always wonder what the purpose of the typo is.
Ok... what typo? I went and looked and didn't see one.
In the meme, not the article.
Oh wow, you're right. I had to read it 4 times to even notice... I never thought about it. I'd consider it an in-joke, in that you who actually read all the words see it, while most people who assume the existence of the correct word don't see it.
I think you might get a lot out of Derek Bickerton’s Language and Species. Seems right up your alley.
I'll look into it, thanks.
NPCs have two additional characteristics:
- False binary thinking.
Example: Either Israel is our greatest ally, or the Holocaust never happened. Clearly the Holocaust happened, so Israel must be our greatest ally.
- Label thinking.
Example: Antisemitism = bad. Not supporting Israel can be labeled "Antisemitism". Therefore, not supporting Israel = bad.
Are you familiar with hoe_math's "Levels", adapted from Ken Wilbur's work? You will find that the model applies to the concept that you have outlined.
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1JwzfIf7F8tRFw0qoXx5a0cxUX-MVYr9K
I am not, thanks.
I’m still learning how to speak chicken. I swear they wanted to play chase yesterday when they got in the vegetable garden. 🦋
You know chicken!
BAWK BAWK BAWK BAWK!
My take on the NPC meme was that Big Tech cracked down hard on it because they had early results from ChatGPT and the like that suggested that many NPCs were basically acting at the same level as ChatGPT - and when you consider how primitive ChatGPT is, that is quite a scary realisation.
The NPC meme emerged before AI was developed, and they cracked down hard on it then too. I suspect it's more due to personal resemblance/offense than it is due to competition with AI.
Some years ago I realized that a co-worker was a NPC from his response to a comment I made. I said "When I was living in the Vancouver area and trying to get work, many young attractive East Asian women flirted with and/or hit on me for some reason; but I couldn't afford to date any woman back then." His response was "So you have a thing for East Asian women?" I couldn't understand how he derived that from my actual words, but now I understand. As a NPC he could only give pre-programmed responses to key words and phrases, so what he heard was "Blah blah blah blah East Asian women blah hit on blah blah blah." In actuality my thing is normal women.
An adequqte anthropology does comprehend reason, and the quality of rational intellect is possessed by all human persons.
I'm gonna need a pretty good citation on [rational intellect is possessed by all human persons]. I just wrote an article on how that is not the case, and I'd love to get your take on it. https://alwaysthehorizon.substack.com/p/a-christian-is-just-a-psycho-on-a?r=43z8s4
I am simply restating the classical Aristotle-Thomas position that all all persons possess a rational soul that consists of reason and free will. I could look up the Summa reference.
I'm aware of the reference, I simply believe it to be woefully incorrect. I think you'd enjoy the article posted above if you're inclined to read it this afternoon.
I did read it but I’m a theist. and believe that a human soul (mind) is qualitatively different from an animal mind. That is, I believe in natural law. A good defense of natural law is found in What We Can’t Not Know by J. Budziswewski.
I do believe that the human is qualitatively different from the animal mind... but there are vast swaths of the human population that certainly lack rationality in behavior and ideation.
Here's a problem that I wonder about. And concepts that are internal are near impossible to prove.
So I've met people who "can't swim" who could swim. Yet their language model for what it means to swim and mine are different. So that the value system in place that makes a statement have any meaning is devoid of it.
Swimming is made physically manifest. So I can argue the point and debate the meaning and develope clarifications for swimming when I see someone who "can't swim" go in deep water and not drown.
However, what if internal things are sometimes similar? What if someone says "i don't have any internal monologue" is the same level of communication as "I can't swim"???
You will never see that person metaphorically not drown. So you can't badger them into acknowledging that they can. Or in other words, if they do have a monologuing they don't consider to be such, you'd never know.
Language is important for transmitting reality. But it is not itself reality. The number of people who "can't swim" in polls is an unreality. It's fake, it's not real or accurate or a meaningful statistic.
Anything slightly more complex is then even more meaningless.
All things are value judgements and anyone who does not share your values is by default an NPC. If you value money and work for money and see someone who does not, they appear NPC. If they do not value money, they see you as a NPC.
Even children and animals, within the frame of values, seem "stupid" but often this is a matter of conforming values. Being potty trained is not just a matter of skill or intelligence, but a matter of value. If you don't value not peeing your pants, then not peeing your pants doesn't actually reflect necessarily your intelligence.
It's similar to the difference between intelligence and madness, being "mad" is again a value statement. And mad people can be intelligent.
Like the Dark Knight movie and the rebel who stole the gems for fun, "some men just want to watch the world burn" or whatever. If he doesn't value the money, but only the fun of the acts, then he can be highly intelligent and not do anything that makes sense to others.
The question then, is are their objective values? Because then the real judgement of the sapient is if they align with objective values. No amount of training or capacity can make someone do something they refuse to do right?
Like if we decided the mark of intelligence was killing someone. And someone is a pacifist and you train them in every form of war and combat, they will still not kill anyone, making them fail the test of intelligence, but it's actually a failure of value conformity. In some cases, being able to stand unmoved is considered a high achievement right? So if someone tells you to do something you deem immoral and you don't, no matter the motivators put in place, no matter the talking around it, the propaganda, training, etc... then often we say that person was above it in a way.
Well, while I do value not peeing my pants, if someone didn't, if someone valued peeing their pants, they would be "incapable" of being potty trained, child, man, dog, cat, whatever. But that might not be a matter of objective capability, but a matter of value alignment.
So is intelligence truly the right concept or is "morality" the defining line of different groups and their consideration for who is admitted into the "us" category?
My thoughts on the matter tend to be kept to the structure of abstraction. According to the cited study, different regions of the brain cannot cooperate to build a model of reality if an individual cannot speak a natural language. The example given is that the spatial-reasoning part of the brain and the color-recognition part of the brain can both be fully functional. Without language, however, it does not appear possible for a model to be developed and acted upon that includes both spatial dimension and color.
"Travel to the left side of the red wall" is a simple sentence that can be acted upon that is abstracted by language. Evidence suggests that without language a person can hold the thoughts "the left side" or "the red wall" but not both at the same time. Check out the cited radiolab podcast cited in the article for more information on how this appears to work.