Motherboard

Motherboard

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Is this the way you are born?

An empty motherboard without any circuits, then as you progress in life you will draw your own circuits?

Or are you born with some preprinted circuits?

That question always come back during the summer radio teaching programs.

It is not new.

Many decades ago, you remember the Kubrick film with H.A.L., it was really thought that computers would acquire the capacity to process information received as language inputs and restitute the processed information in language format. Apparently this will not take place in our lifetime.

To the extent that it has been proposed (any format written as "it has been proposed" means that the author is too lazy to go and find the references, it is equivalent to "it is well known that"), it is well known that Scientists have wondered whether we could be born with some kind of language preprinted circuit, which would be filled with the words and syntaxes we hear around us.

This is the right time to place the story of the King (nobody can give the references of that story, most probably because it is a hoax), so the King, preferably from some Eastern Empire, wondering whether the language of his Empire was the language of the Gods, as could rightly be inferred, demanded that new born baby be reared in total isolation from any human contact, especially language, so see which language they would speak by themselves when reaching a language speaking age.

The Story of course a total nonsense, while the question raised is worth an answer.

As to the story, if a child is reared in total isolation from any humans or living beings, it would die rapidly. If it had human substitute like fur, heat sources, sounds, it may possibly survive for some time.

It two or more babies were reared together, without any other access to human presence, they would develop their own communication language. That experience has been done involuntarily.

If a child is born deaf, and a cochlear implant is installed ( I refer to E.R) the first reaction of the child when hearing sounds would be discomfort, it would not understand language but apparently it would develop the neuronal circuits to process language or possibly activate the circuits which were dormant..

As this web site deals with caretaking of Alzheimer patients, it is interesting (awful is it not?) to follow the deterioration of the language capacity in Alzheimer patients. In early stages of Alzheimer the brain has the concept it wants to express, but suddenly it does not have access to the word that is used to express it. For instance, in the very early days, Mother would say:

<< Oh, we must go and buy ....;, you know what I mean >>

The word "bread" had vanished at that occasion.

Then the availability of words is decreasing, then words that are not available are replaced by other ways to express it, then even that capacity deteriorates, and nonsense words will replace the missing words, the Alzheimer patient (my mother) at that stage in the beginning having a feeling that the sentence is not quite alright, then a few month later having the feeling that we, the caretakers, are not alright, even mean and dangerous, as we refuse to understand the obvious statements she is making. Welcome to stage one of your trip into hell, when the patient develops an antogonism against the caretaker.

At that stage my mother was able, when hearing for instance "Traviata" on the car radio, to accompany, even precede the singer through the whole opera. Then more or less within the time space of one week, music became only an annoying sound.

At later stage it can have very strange consequences, one of the patients, of English Origin, was convinced that he was speaking French to the caretakers and was getting very annoyed and upset that they would not understand him and if they, the caretakers, made an effort to understand what he wanted, they would reply in that nonsense sounding language nobody could understand.When I translated both way, you may think that it would have been appreciated by the caretaking staff, instead it was felt as an intrusion into their domain.

The advantage of the situation was that I could act as a U.N. diplomat concerning His relations with a deaf woman patient with rather bad temper. She would tell him to shut up, and he would ask what she was saying whereby, as a well trained U.N. Officer, I explained that she expressed her praise of his new cap. He would express some surprise in English (that he believed to be French) and She would ask what he was saying, whereby I would truth fully (we U.N. officers are under oath) that he said he loved it when she was singing. A quarter of an hour of such on the spot translation would leave them both with the feeling that it really took a long time for the other one to understand them, they would simply sit and glare at one another. Another feather in the cap of the U.N.

Incidentally did you notice that you were born with a faulty circuit? What is your life going to be like. what will others without faulty circuits say of you, behave with you? Are you Born to be Dead Alive?