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Helen Grover's avatar

Can’t help but feel we’re minimizing the efforts of the chimps with typewriters. While unsuccessful so far they’ve had access to them for far shorter than we’ve had access to written language. Could it be that we are judging the species that will produce the greatest literary minds in its artistic infancy? While we would attribute their output to randomness could it be that the chimps will adopt and modify language overtime? This awakening could be compared to Helen Keller’s coming into language but this comparison is inadequate. There is no guarantee nonhuman primates will engage with and understand language in the same ways humans do. Fundamental things like phonemes will look different and it’s possible some chimp-friendly order of organization would supersede grammar and maybe even the concept of words altogether.

Then again we may be looking in the wrong place. Whales have something like language and dialect but so do crows. Still whales have bigger brains. Perhaps they are our salvation.

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feculent fury's avatar

his methods are crude but his ambition cannot be faulted

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