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Comment by xenophanes | Hacker News Reader

> Strange to think that human communication represents only a small portion of what's possible.

But humans can communicate 3d scenes and imagery in words. Perhaps inelegantly. But universal turing machines do lots of things inelegantly and it doesn't really matter. English is universal language (taking into account its ability to define new words), so we're not missing out on anything fundamentally important (and nor are, e.g., the French missing out on anything fundamental by not speaking English: French is universal too).

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I don't think you mean the same thing when you say we can communicate 3d scenes and imagery in words. Humans can describe a 3d scene in words.

Dolphins use such high-pitched and information dense communication that it's highly possible they are communicating raw data that is directly converted into a 3d map or image by the receiving dolphin's brain. Listen to a dolphin's speech, then think of what a 56k modem sounds like... not too far off huh? Now imagine that dolphins could communicate actual 3d maps or sonographic images using sound, rather than just describe them.

Would you agree the "describing" issue you raise is the same as "English can describe what it feels like to be pinched, but cannot make you feel a pinch"? No dolphins are needed, it's the issue of qualia.

A universal language can express anything that can be expressed in language. If qualia are outside the realm of language, that wouldn't make English less universal.

You may say dolphins use a language, and then feel qualia in response. Similarly, we can imagine a human who is genetically engineered for his skin to pinch when he hears certain sounds, so that he would feel the pinching quale. I think in neither case should triggering hardware features by sound be considered language. A nice example is "clap on" devices -- surely that's not language.

I'm not sure I agree. You may describe an underwater setting by saying "there is a clump of seaweed floating 3 meters above , 10 meters in front of, and 2 meters to the left of your current location, and a shark hiding about 20 meters behind the clump of seaweed", but it's much more efficient for you to send me a JPEG image of it, or better yet, a 3d image of it. I think this is how most scientists believe that dolphins communicate.

This is sort of like the difference between playing a text game like Zork or a 3D MMO like World of Warcraft. English only descriptions leave the details up to your imagination. 3d graphic imagery communicates the actual picture.

You could read out each byte of a jpeg to someone (or invent a different format in pure English). That is an example of an English description that leaves no details up to your imagination (that aren't also left up to your imagination by jpeg).

Further, really detailed and well written prose can describe 3d scenes -- and help the reader visualize them -- better than everyday photographs, 3d computers renderings, what dolphins have, etc... There is no limit to how much detail prose can include.

As a practical matter, we do not use English to its full capacity, and it's inefficient for some things, but still it is universal.

Perhaps if we redefine language to include data communications protocols, and the only difference is in how the protocols are interpreted by the receiving device, I can agree with you.

Similar to tines thought speech in "Fire Upon the Deep".

> English is universal language (taking into account its ability to define new words), so we're not missing out on anything fundamentally important (and nor are, e.g., the French missing out on anything fundamental by not speaking English: French is universal too).

They're universal languages for people; for brains that specifically evolved to swing through trees, pick bugs out of our friends' fur, and to chase down antelopes. It's software that's pretty specific to the hardware.

What if we just don't have enough in common with a critter that evolved in a fully 3D environment with no hands?

English is universal, period. It can reach into any new domain like theoretical physics or computer science. Its ability to deal with black holes or linked lists has nothing to do with picking bugs out of fur.

English can also, of course, incorporate 1s and 0s and thus express anything that could be put into a computer (including a dolphin's brain, which is a computer). This would be horribly inelegant and slow, and I don't think it would ever come to that, but English is capable of doing it.

Just like a universal computer is quite a simple and minimal thing, so is a universal language. This is a common theme about universality: as soon as you start to get a reasonable amount of generality in a system, you often find you've reached universality even if you didn't intend to.

Universality will be discussed further in David Deutsch's upcoming book _The Beginning of Infinity_ which I highly recommend. The book also addresses the particular issue of the circumstances of evolution of our brain and whether that fundamentally limits us.

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