Here's a weird thought. Human language was invented in an environment where max scale was say a few hundred. Written language, for maybe a few 1000. Yet here we are, using language casually at scales of potentially 7 billion with thousands of tricky translations, and it works.
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Very few human technologies of paleolithic vintage can claim this level of scaling success
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You’ve got the causation backwards. We didn’t scale up and just keep using language. We invented language, and that is *why* we scaled up.
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Language(particularly syntax and grammar) is probably the only set of communication protocols built in that era. Perhaps that’s why it scales. Grammar and syntax serve as a strong core around which innovation (slang, amelioration etc) makes language ‘current’ and scalable.
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Is it fair to claim that "language" was the same thing then as now?
As has our thinking itself, language seems like a large suite of tools that had been growing and evolving for millennia.
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Language is not a technology any more than seeing and hearing are technologies. You've got entire regions in your brain that have evolved to handle language.
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The modern wheel with bearings, spokes, tires etc. is nothing like the bronze-age wheel
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