Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id PAA00712 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk); Wed, 17 May 2000 15:09:46 +0100 Date: Tue, 16 May 2000 10:03:16 -0700 From: Bill Spight <bspight@pacbell.net> Subject: Re: Fwd: Did language drive society or vice versa? To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk Message-id: <39217F54.FAA8EED2@pacbell.net> Organization: Saybrook Graduate School X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.61 [en]C-PBI-NC404 (Win95; I) Content-type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit X-Accept-Language: ja,en References: <2D1C159B783DD211808A006008062D31CEB192@inchna.stir.ac.uk> Sender: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
Dear Vincent (and Chuck),
Vincent:
> Oh yes, I'm not saying we don't have a probability capacity in our brain,
> only that it isn't "tuned" to cope with huge expanses of probability.
> That's why the probability of the emergence of language from natural
> selection seems improbable to many people (in the way that theists find it
> difficult to deal with the idea of the universe coming from nothing), and
> requires explanation.
Chuck:
>> However, what is interesting is that we DO have an
> > inborn
> > ability to understand probabilities and act on them. But it all depends on how
> > they are stated. It's the same problem as understanding logical constructs that
> > I just wrote about in another posting. The brain has to get the information in a
> > way that approximates how it got it under ancestral conditions.
You both make good points.
Related to what Vincent is saying is the underestimation of the
occurrence of coincidences. For instance, most people would take
an even money bet against whether 2 out of 30 randomly chosen
people have the same birthday. In fact, the break even point is
around 23 people, IIRC. :-)
As for the probability that some species somewhere sometime would
have something we would call language, given the Big Bang and
billions of years, I wouldn't hazard a guess. ;-)
Best,
Bill
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