DNA is language, my dude. it’s like programming code.
Comment on The circle of life
beefbot@lemmy.blahaj.zone 5 weeks ago*can’t use language as much as we can: AS FAR AS WE CAN CURRENTLY TELL. Which isn’t all that much tbh
Me, I think birds are already there, full nouns & verbs. And I highly suspect insects have language systems too. I don’t mean some loose definition like like ants and chemical markers, or emotional expressions.
I mean what linguists mean: units of expression- sound (hand shapes, in signed langs) which recombine to signify different things, in a productive way, allowing for level upon level of transmission of thoughts. It’s a high bar to qualify as human language. And I think probably some nonhuman animals have it, and we’re just not listening closely enough.
But the closer we look.
(And yes there’s a Ted Chiang story about this)
gandalf_der_12te@lemmy.blahaj.zone 5 weeks ago
beefbot@lemmy.blahaj.zone 5 weeks ago
interesting thought …I’m curious - who would be talking to who, in this framing of the idea ?
gandalf_der_12te@lemmy.blahaj.zone 5 weeks ago
well it’s more like a script, a book or library basically. It’s not so much the transport of information, but the storage of information.
beefbot@lemmy.blahaj.zone 5 weeks ago
Ah, ok. Yeah I think that’s different. Like the periodic table would also be that structure, but not in the concept of language
flora_explora@beehaw.org 5 weeks ago
Is it? It’s probably more like binary code for computers that our machines run on but that we as individuals cannot comprehend. But you cannot call it a language as individual organisms are not able to use it as such.
Tlaloc_Temporal@lemmy.ca 5 weeks ago
How do you figure that DNA/RNA isn’t language? It’s a system of abstract symbols that carry information, it uses highly complex syntaxes, there are even different dialects, large parts of it is higher level than Assembly Languages, and it can carry context between organisms.
Limiting your definition to organisms is shortsighted. Fully sapient organelles, computers, crystals, superorganisms, or whatever else could could create vast galaxy spanning civilizations with dizzyingly deep culture and art, and you’d argue that they don’t use language because they’re not specifically a certain kind of individual?
flora_explora@beehaw.org 5 weeks ago
Hm, interesting point regarding not limiting the definition of language to individuals only. Maybe I should have said entities? And my point is still valid, just because everyone of us carries DNA with us, we still cannot “talk” DNA. I meant this mismatch in various levels of the complex multicellular entities we are.
Does DNA/RNA really pose an example of complex communication? It certainly is some highly specialized form of storing and transferring information. Calling it dialects sounds more like anthropomorphizing it to make it sound more like a language. Not sure if it is my human bias accustomed to human-style languages, but it somehow doesn’t feel like a language to me when the information is just past further down the line and there is no real back-and-forth?
And don’t get me wrong, I’m not set on rejecting DNA as a language. I just try to explore the opposite position to yours ;)
gandalf_der_12te@lemmy.blahaj.zone 5 weeks ago
Yeah well I guess it depends on whether you call bytes on a computer a language.
What if those bytes represent characters that compose language that carries meaning? Because precisely that happens in DNA. An individual fraction of DNA might not carry much meaning, but in its sequence (ATGCCAT…) it encodes blueprints, and therefore meaning.
flora_explora@beehaw.org 5 weeks ago
I think it rather depends on how you define language. For example, Wikipedia says the following:
Depending on philosophical perspectives regarding the definition of language and meaning, when used as a general concept, “language” may refer to the cognitive ability to learn and use systems of complex communication, or to describe the set of rules that makes up these systems, or the set of utterances that can be produced from those rules.
What kind system of complex communication do we have in DNA/RNA? It sure is a mode of storing and transferring information. But does this make it a language? And if yes, who is speaking the language of DNA/RNA? Can cells talk then? Because I would argue that this (hypothetical) language of DNA is then always “spoken” by individual cells and isn’t transferrable to a multicellular entity? (I mean, sure all your cells are “speaking” DNA in this way, but you yourself aren’t.) But back to the question of the “complex systems of communication”. I would argue that while DNA is a mode of transferring information, it isn’t a language in itself. Because you don’t have a back-and-forth. It is a pretty simple progression of reusing information again and again. But it isn’t a mode of communication and especially not complex communication.
rockerface@lemm.ee 5 weeks ago
Large parrots are in fact as smart as a toddler. African Greys, apparently, can memorize human language words (just the sound, no grammar or anything complex like that) and apply them to identify objects, colors and materials - even to objects they see for the first time!
And even smaller birds like budgies usually know the sound of their own name and can even assign “names” in form of sound sequences to other birds and humans they live with. You wouldn’t think they have enough brain size for that, but somehow they do
flicker@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
My cat 100% has a name for every human he meets, and he can even say those names in higher or lower registers (and volumes) depending on how he’s addressing that person.
I tell people this, and they think I’m insane. I even point out the sound that means that specific person’s name, and they don’t bother to learn it!
Temba, his arms wide.