There are some things, like languages, that can never be real until a child grows up knowing them.
I think it should be easy to verify that it’s not really true (or at least you need to qualify this statement). I don’t feel handicapped in perceiving English at all, even though I knew almost nothing before I was about 18. Now, I prefer thinking and writing in English. I have no reason to believe it’s atypical.
I think Eliezer had the Creole-Pidgin phenomenon in mind with the language comment, but even ignoring that: if you didn’t start learning English until you were 18, you almost certainly have an accent, and you always will; if you are a concert pianist, you almost certainly started as a child; if you are a world-class chess grandmaster, you almost certainly started as a child.
In the rare exceptions, is there anything different about the people involved? What similarities, if any, exist between people who were the rare exceptions? Are there methods for becoming the rare exceptions in each case? Are those methods generalizable outside of the specific context?
I’m not sure these fine procedural details are that important, in most crafts that don’t feature such attention to detail and clarity of standards. The latter doesn’t apply to the current state of the art in rationality, not by a long shot.
I don’t feel handicapped in perceiving English at all, even though I knew almost nothing before I was about 18.
How many languages did you already know? I have a suspicion that the ease of learning an n-th language at the age of x increases with n when keeping x constant.
Synthetic languages don’t turn into real languages until a child grows up knowing them; English is real because children have already grown up knowing it. See creole language.
Esperanto is a real language, despite the fact that only a small fraction of its speakers grow up learning it (and it would be just as real even without those individuals).
I don’t think there is enough of quintessential knowledge to make something native of it, we’d better work on healthy synthetic community process for now.
Are there non-language examples of this? Did it do any good for educational practices, trying to pass the material through a generation of children learning it?
I think it should be easy to verify that it’s not really true (or at least you need to qualify this statement). I don’t feel handicapped in perceiving English at all, even though I knew almost nothing before I was about 18. Now, I prefer thinking and writing in English. I have no reason to believe it’s atypical.
I think Eliezer had the Creole-Pidgin phenomenon in mind with the language comment, but even ignoring that: if you didn’t start learning English until you were 18, you almost certainly have an accent, and you always will; if you are a concert pianist, you almost certainly started as a child; if you are a world-class chess grandmaster, you almost certainly started as a child.
Then the questions we should ask ourselves are:
In the rare exceptions, is there anything different about the people involved? What similarities, if any, exist between people who were the rare exceptions? Are there methods for becoming the rare exceptions in each case? Are those methods generalizable outside of the specific context?
I’m not sure these fine procedural details are that important, in most crafts that don’t feature such attention to detail and clarity of standards. The latter doesn’t apply to the current state of the art in rationality, not by a long shot.
How many languages did you already know? I have a suspicion that the ease of learning an n-th language at the age of x increases with n when keeping x constant.
Synthetic languages don’t turn into real languages until a child grows up knowing them; English is real because children have already grown up knowing it. See creole language.
Esperanto is a real language, despite the fact that only a small fraction of its speakers grow up learning it (and it would be just as real even without those individuals).
I see; this clearly required a qualification.
I don’t think there is enough of quintessential knowledge to make something native of it, we’d better work on healthy synthetic community process for now.
Are there non-language examples of this? Did it do any good for educational practices, trying to pass the material through a generation of children learning it?