On 15 Apr 2014, at 22:41, Telmo Menezes wrote:
On Tue, Apr 15, 2014 at 6:44 PM, meekerdb <[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.
OK. But I doubt it. Synesthete people seems to have an abnormal wiring
of the brain connecting parts which are not connected in other people,
and they are usually handicaped by their ability. It is very stable,
if they see the number 4 yellow, when asked again 20 years later, it
is the same color.
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.
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 do think psychedelic, and other brain pertubation can help to solve
problem. Some technic in optimization and in AI are based on that. You
can enhance the finding of a minimum by shaking a surface with some
ball on it. The brain is highly redundant, with the information
distributed and slightly different, so by blocking some information
path, new path can be found, and sometimes with a difference (and
sometime with some benefices). The brain do drugs all the time, it is
part of our functioning, and indeed animals drugs themselves very
often, and plants exploits this to manipulate insects.
It looks also that the brain might have some hardcoded solution to
support abnormal stress, like in grave illness and near death, and so
some drugs can perhaps trigger those "dormant" programs, and people
can get idea of what happens in such stress, or near death. That is
consistent with evolution, because your species can benefit from
particular abilities to survive in those high stress conditions, and
it can help for surviving trauma in aggressive animals (like human),
so that it can benefits to some population of genes.
Such change of brains in high stress have been evidenced in mammals
like mice and rats. Some animal brains secrete endo-tranquilizer when
a prey is captured by some predator.
Now there are millions of drugs, and they trigger different responses.
Benefits and harms necessitate case by case analysis.
Bruno
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
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