For Something To Be Known You Have To Say It, And Someone Else Has to See Someone Else See You Say It
For Something To Be Known You Have To Say It, And Someone Else Has to See Someone Else See You Say It
Fracturing communication channels hence makes it harder for things to be known (which was the point).
This reminds me of an interesting thing I read about intelligence where there's an important level of intelligence that very few animals exceed where basically you can't conceive of the concept of others knowing something that you don't or vice versa.
The example used in the study I read about it went like this: Christine has a cookie and she walks into the kitchen and puts it in the first of two cookie jars, then she leaves the room. Justin goes into the kitchen and moves the cookie from the first jar to the second jar. Christine comes back to look for her cookie, in which cookie jar will Christine look?
If an animal fails this test then they'll guess that she'll look in the second jar because they can't comprehend that she doesn't know what they know -- that Justin moved the cookie. As a result, any animal that has failed this test and can communicate with us -- mostly apes who communicate with sign language -- have never asked us a question for information because they can't conceive of the concept that we know anything that they don't.
Until You mentioned chimps I couldn't comprehend how someone was talking to animals to ask them anything, and I still ponder how effectively we can convey the syntax concept of a subjunctive "Where would Christine Look?" to chimps.
Are we sure for example the chimps aren't just getting "where" and "cookie" signs and answering correctly?
Ive dealt with many humans who fail this test frequently. Like theyll give you instructions with half the necessary details missing because they assume you have the pre-requisite knowledge that happened inside their head.
Yes exactly! They even mentioned in the study I wrote that although this concept sounds like it's quite simple, we often fail it ourselves. Like:
Person 1: Can you move my car?
Person 2: Sure, what does it look like?
Person 1: It's the black one!
Person 2: Sorry, which black one?
Person 1: What are you stupid? THAT ONE! pointsI've seen that kind of thing happen a lot.