Engineered Organisms

[DakAttack]

Re: Engineered Organisms

Anybody can learn to read or write a language, it's the speaking part that becomes more difficult to learn as you age from childhood.

[NightShayde]

Re: Engineered Organisms

/em joins the growing list of people who read the thread title wrong.

[Feba]

Re: Engineered Organisms

Anybody can learn to read or write a language, it's the speaking part that becomes more difficult to learn as you age from childhood.

Well, it all gets more difficult. Obviously things like producing the script don't take linguistic thought, but constructing grammar (production of content) does. Writing gives you more time to check for errors and organize your thought, but it's not really any simpler than speaking. Speaking has the added hurdle of accent, though; which is oftentimes near impossible to get over.

[DakAttack]

Re: Engineered Organisms

Words, grammar, sentence structure, etc, is all memory and association. Not something that's too difficult for most.

[Feba]

Re: Engineered Organisms

Words, grammar, sentence structure, etc, is all memory and association.

No, it isn't.

[DakAttack]

Re: Engineered Organisms

No, it isn't.

No, it isn't.

[Aeni]

Re: Engineered Organisms

Words, grammar, sentence structure, etc, is all memory and association.

Are you sure of this? I think I read somewhere that wasn't the case but I have to go find the article first before I make that statement so for the time being I'm giving you the benefit of doubt.

[Feba]

Re: Engineered Organisms

Are you sure of this?

Of course he isn't. Even the most basic, cursory glance at the field of linguistics would show the evidence to the contrary.

Don't let facts get in his way though.

[DakAttack]

Re: Engineered Organisms

Of course he isn't. Even the most basic, cursory glance at the field of linguistics would show the evidence to the contrary.

Don't let facts get in his way though.

Yes, let's make things more complicated than they need to be. And to be specific, we're talking about learning a language. Speaking it can definitely be more difficult, as I've already said, and I haven't even mentioned listening to an unfamiliar language. That can easily be qualified as the worst.

If you're learning a foreign language and you're doing more than associating words you do know with the ones you don't, memorizing the ones that don't quite translate so well, and learning grammar and sentence structure then you're either doing it wrong or putting too much effort into it.

Oh, but I'm arguing with Feba! The American master of the Japanese language! Surely, his recent efforts in language knowledge acquisition and cursory glances at fields of linguistics with its evidences and contraries make him an expert! Whatever.

[Feba]

Re: Engineered Organisms

I've pointed out on many occasions that my Japanese abilities are decent at best.

If you think you can learn a foreign language based purely on memorizing words, you clearly haven't studied any language significantly different from your own, or gotten very far in those which are close.

It's shit like that that has me looking at middle school students using vocab that American kids their age wouldn't be using, and yet after they've written the sentence they're incapable of actually reading it. No, you don't learn a language by memorizing words. You can fake a lot of reading a newspaper by knowing words, especially in another European language, but that gets to the difference between practical comprehension and truly understanding the language.

[Kailea]

Re: Engineered Organisms

is that why that Roseta Stone thingy works well, I was thinking of trying it out to learn Japanese. They say it uses a different way to learn the language, and you absorb it faster and better.....or something like that -.-

[Malacite]

Re: Engineered Organisms

^ It works amazingly (though it's expensive, I too want to get it for Japanese) because you're shown images and taught words at the same time, so your mind can associate the two. It helps with retention.

[Kailea]

Re: Engineered Organisms

yeah the cost is what is holding me at bay as well..... maybe that will be my next thing to do after I take my Violin classes I want to take. to me music first, then talkies

[DakAttack]

Re: Engineered Organisms

It's an old study trick, except they make it sound awesome. Associating one piece of information with other pieces of information making recalling it easier if you can recall the information it's linked to. Students have been doing it for a while, such as copying notes into different colors, organizing them into unique tables, tagging them with different shapes, etc.

[DieselBoy09]

Re: Engineered Organisms

but I contend that the human brain is far more superior and efficient at what it does.

Any biological system is really not all that efficient. Evolution keeps what works, not what is most efficient. Biochemical catabolic and anabolic pathways for starters are horribly inefficient. Hormone cycles in human females are also highly inefficient. The brain might be more superior and efficient than a current machine, but trust me, there will be a day when we design some system more efficient than the brain. Hell, local release of neurotransmitters in the brain isn't even efficient given the likely hood for them to cause unwanted side effects in the rest of the brain, or to release too much so that competing chemicals must be released to limit their effects.

Now as for making a synthetic brain that can interface with a real one.... that's a tough one. Since our neuronal circuitry works not only off of action potentials (electrical signals), hormonal signals (think Hypothalamus---> pituitary---> rest of body), but also on the release of vesicles containing neurotransmitters (acetylcholine, seratonin (5HT), etc..) it is going to be hard to achieve. Not only that, but thought is the product of all these things working in tandem, stimulating the architecture to varying degrees and creating new pathways...... understanding it is more a matter of time and improvement in instrumentation, creating a similar system to mimic it in a streamlined form... probably coming sooner, but making something synthetic, equally complex, and able to interface to transfer thought.... I imagine you could, but the second system would have to be equally as complex and have some sort of constantly changeable and variable system with fluxes constantly. I just don't see it being done for a very very long time, and it will certainly be the very last thing. Which is disappointing, I'd much like a synthetic body like Batou, You'd probably be better off creating a fully functioning brain, somehow impressing upon the new brain the same pathways as the old, starting it somehow and then killing the original brain. In fact, I don't see a mechanical brain able to interface with our own as a possibility, it would have to be some biochemical system like our own.