On 4/15/2014 1:41 PM, Telmo Menezes wrote:
On Tue, Apr 15, 2014 at 6:44 PM, meekerdb <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:On 4/15/2014 4:38 AM, Telmo Menezes wrote:An interesting related hypothesis is that language originated from synesthesia caused by psychadelics. Telmo.I had heard that Telmo. Do you have a reference, a link? Unfortunately not. I think I heard in a talk. Might be related to McKenna's "stoned ape" theory, but I can't find anything...That seems very far-fetched considering that animals already exhibit rudimentary language and that its selective advantage for a tool making social animal is huge.I agree that the idea that language was bootstrapped by psychadelics is far-fetched. I see it as a fun hypothesis more than anything else, for the reasons you mention.I don't see how synesthesia could do anything but confound and confuse the development of language.Maybe so for the development of direct symbols, but I can imagine it playing a role in the emergence of more abstract ideas. Even in modern times we can see this at work, to a degree. Many of the cultural ideas that originated in the 60s, and that still reverberate today, were "unearthed" by using LSD, cannabis, etc.
What cultural ideas would those be? Get out of Viet Nam? Civil rights for blacks? The pill?
I find the effects of psychoactive substances particularly interesting for AI research, because they show a profound way in which our brains differ from the current model of computation. Computer programs typically crash if we mess with their computational substrate. We flood the brain with an inhibitor for a certain type of receptor or with the analogue of some transmitter and it doesn't collapse. It does all kinds of interesting things, some good and some bad. Sometimes you get "the dark side of the moon" -- if musical talent is already present, of course :)
I think the analogy is wrong. Brains compute by chemical transmitters. So when we interfere with the chemistry, its analogous to changing program steps in a digital computer - not to messing with the substrate (e.g. silicon). A brain is a neural network. It can (probably) be simulated by a digital computer; but the simulation will be a low level. At that level LSD would be simulated as changing some connection strengths.
Brent
Telmo.
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