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Comment by suddenlybananas | Hacker News Reader

You can't really know for sure, but the typical argument (c.f. Chomsky & Berwick) is there was an enormous explosion in "cultural" products then. Before then, we don't see figurative art, and after we see all sorts of crazy things.

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That's a pretty thin reed. Chomsky does a fair bit of argument by assertion and displays of confidence. And he's committed to this idea that language emerged in one massive mutation and thus functional analyses of language are pointless. This is a weird stance for a scientist to take.

I don't understand why you are hostile to me explaining the idea. In any case, you can read their book to see the arguments they use (which are not just assertions, anti-chomskyans just ignore or strawman everything he says). For example, it's not a massive mutation, but specifically a very very small one: the theories called "minimalism" for a reason.

Probably not to you explaining the idea, but to Chomskys ideas that have not been panning out well lately.

Genetically is seems it's very unlikely there is a single gene spot that explains human language but a confluence of different factors feeding back into one another in linage we do not have genetic access to at this time. We've done a bit of gene testing around this now, and single gene flips aren't near enough. I think the best analogy would be like playing a video game where you have to flip a number of switched to the correct position to get the system to work together.

Again, I don't think you understand the substance of the claim. Have you read the book? Mutations don't need to be single gene flips and I don't understand why you think Chomsky thinks that. He compares it to the evolution of the first photorecepetive cell, e.g. a qualitative jump, but that the mechanism is likely quite simple in order for that qualitative jump to be possible.

People really do flagrantly misrepresent his claims.

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