It would be fun to train an LLM with a knowledge cutoff of 1900 or something
Found the GitHub: https://github.com/haykgrigo3/TimeCapsuleLLM
However, primitive languages were... primitive. Where they primitive because people didn't know / understand the nuances their languages lacked? Or, were those things that simply didn't get communicated (effectively)?
Of course, spoken language predates writings which is part of the point. We know an individual can have a "conscious" conception of an idea if they communicate it, but that consciousness was limited to the individual. Once we have written language, we can perceive a level of communal consciousness of certain ideas. You could say that the community itself had a level of shared-consciousness.
With GPTs regurgitating digestible writings, we've come full circle in terms of proving consciousness, and some are wondering... "Gee, this communicated the idea expertly, with nuance and clarity.... but is the machine actually conscious? Does it think undependably of the world, or is it merely a kaledascopic reflection of its inputs? Is consciousness real, or an illusion of complexity?"
Is it self awarness? There are animals that can recognize themselves in mirror, I don't think all of them have a form of proto-language.
The basic assumption he attacks is that “there is a world we discover” vs “there is a world we create”.
It is hard paradigm shift, but there is certainly reality in “shared picture of the world” and convincing people of a new point of view has real implications in how the world appears in our minds for us and what we consider “reality”