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Collective Learning

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Collective Learning : How symbolic language drives collective learning and how this is one of the truly differentiating aspects of human beings relative to the rest of the animal kingdom

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There are many things that differentiate human beings from other species,
but the one thing that probably differentiates humans even from our closest relatives in the animal kingdom
in a really big way is the notion that humans are collective learners.
Collective learners.
And to understand that, let's think about how even our closest relative in the animal kingdom,
the chimpanzee, might communicate.
So you might have one chimpanzee and over the course of his or her lifetime,
they're able to learn a bunch of cool experiences, and they're even able to learn to use tools,
manipulate tools, and who knows? Maybe even make tools.
Maybe even get a twig someplace and take off the leaves, and then use that to go get ants out of a hole or whatever else.
So they're able to learn all of this stuff over a lifetime.
Now unfortunate for chimpanzees, well what IS fortunate for chimpanzees, is they do teach some of these
things that they've learned to other members of their group, often their offspring.
But what's unfortunate for chimpanzees is that they don't have a great way to communicate with each other.
So for most chimpanzees, the way that they're able to teach is essentially by, kind of...showing.
Not showing and telling, just showing.
And so because this is such a, this is such a, a unprecise, or, or...not exact
and, and such an inefficient way of communication,
the really...all of the nuances of what this chimpanzee might be able to accumulate over his or her lifetime
aren't able to be conveyed to the next generation, or to the other chimpanzees around,
so you have tremendous energy loss.
And in particular, all that can be conveyed are maybe the specific movements, or what you might be able
to kind of observe in the present.
All of the other things that maybe the chimpanzees are learning about...
the times of year where this is be appropriate, or maybe they can convey some of that by showing
them at the right times of year.
But other nuanced aspects of it, or particular ways to hold something or twist something
can only be shown. It can't be described in a very precise way.
So you have all of this loss of experience, just loss of information.
And then over the course of these animals' life, they may be able to learn the same amount again,
they're able to learn maybe the same amount again, but then when they need to communicate it, they have the exact same problem.
It's hard to communicate it with their, with what they have at their disposal,
which is really just showing the other chimpanzees what they've done,
and so once again, you have a loss of information.
And what you have in this type of circumstance is, generation after generation,
even though there is learning over the course of an individual chimpanzee's life,
and even though they can communicate to, some of that, to each other,
that form of communication is so, it loses so much information, and so much nuance
that you never have an overall accumulation of knowledge, and wisdom in this chimpanzee population.
Now humans, on the other hand, have something called symbolic language.
And I'll talk about this in a second, but it's, it's, for now it's safe to say that human language is
far more precise and far more efficient than just being able to show someone something.
Imagine if you had to learn how to do something without being able to communicate verbally,
you'd just have to look at someone else's actions.
And then you'd have a good idea of how difficult it is for chimpanzees to teach other other.
But in the case of human beings, we have this thing called symbolic language, that's a very precise,
a very efficient way of communicating.
So from one human being to another, you could actually communicate a good deal.
Maybe not every single nuance and every single experience, but a good chunk of it.
So right here I'm drawing about that much of it, to the next, to some other human being, maybe it is the offspring, maybe it
is another member of the tribe, or the group, whatever it is,
and then this human being might come up with some other innovations.
They're able to build off of all of this learning from that previous generation or from that other human
being that's around, and they're able to come up with their own, their own nuances, and their own innovations.
And this one right over here might come up with his or her own nuances and innovations,
and because they have a good communication mechanism, this one could even communicate to that one
what he's learned, or what she's learned, and communicate a good chunk of that.
Maybe not all of it, but maybe a reasonable bit.
They can describe exactly how they do something, the times of years,
when it's good to do it, when it's not good to do it,
how to plan for the future, what's the history of this new learning.
And so what you have going on here is because of this strong communication mechanism.
So strong, precise, precise, efficient communication, efficient communication, communication.
What you'd have is a human group, or eventually a human civilization,
is able to have a collective memory. Is able to have a collective memory,
In the case of the chimpanzees, in every generation, every chimpanzee is having to
relearn the things that the other chimpanzees might have already done in previous generations.
They're not able to really move forward or build on those in significant ways.
In humans, as information is learned and experienced again,
a good bit of that is able to be passed on to other humans.
So this might be passed on. So all of this might be passed on,
or a good chunk of this could be passed on to the next generation.
And I'm not even talking about written language yet. This could even, this could still just be
oral communication, which is still a very strong, precise, efficient means of communication.
Written communication takes it to another level,
but then this person over here, maybe she comes up with other innovations.
And at some point you might say, well look, if everyone keeps having innovations and they
keep learning what everyone learned in previous generations, maybe this will tap out
the total amount of memory that a human being even has.
And there's actually a case, and maybe this is why humans even have larger memories,
because there is all of this collective knowledge to gain from one generation to another,
from one human being to another,
but there are some limits to this, and this is the other element where this collective aspect
of collective memory and this collective learning becomes really powerful.
A human being, because of this strong communication mechanism,
is not just limited to the knowledge and the experience in their memory,
they are able to tap into, so this human being right over here does not have this skill set,
and that skill set maybe gets passed on to another human being.
So let me copy and paste that, so let's say you copy...say you paste that...
This other human being that's maybe living at the same time,
and when that becomes relevant, when that becomes relevant, they could
actually tap into it, and maybe they could learn it from that human being,
or maybe it's in a different part of society, and this human being can build certain tools,
or build certain things using this information, using that knowledge right over there
and then this human being doesn't need to know that information,
they can just leverage the output of that information to then build on top of it.
So what allows human beings to do is not only convey information and build on information
from generation to generation, human to human, it allows all of the human
brains collectively, at any given point of time, to be one collective memory bank,
that can be used to develop or innovate in specific domains,
and adapt to specific parts of the ecosystem, or to teach other other.
So all of a sudden, this is really unique as far as we can tell, in the animal kingdom.
All of a sudden, it's not all about the brain, or the memory, of one individual member of a species,
it now becomes about the brain, or the memory, of the entire civilization, or the entire group of the
species. And just as an example of that, there's, as far as I know, there's no human being
who knows how to do everything that all humans know how to do.
I could imagine that there are, there is a chimpanzee that knows how to do everything
that any other chimpanzee knows how to do.
There are no humans that can be a fighter pilot, a doctor, a gymnast, a...lawyer,
understands philosophy, speaks twenty different languages.
As far as I know, that human being does not exist. And that's okay, because they can tap into the experiences,
the abilities of other human beings to build up their civilization.
None of us, as far as we know, knows how to do everything that we need to actually build our civilization.
But the information is in our collective memory to actually do it.
Now the next thing you might say is, okay, I started with this premise that we have a
strong, precise, efficient means of communcation, and that other animals don't,
but don't other animals actually have some form of language?
So for example, don't...for example, even monkeys,
wouldn't they screech when they're, when there's, when they're in danger?
That's a form of communication, maybe a form of language.
Maybe certain animals: birds, monkeys, maybe they have a song that they sing that can convey certain things.
Maybe it's when they're, maybe it's when they're looking for a mate.
Isn't that a form of communication?
And these are, these are a form of communication, and a form of language,
but these don't really come in play in terms of the teaching-learning.
You don't see one chimpanzee making screeching sounds for learning sounds.
They might do a little bit of it just to warn, maybe as a warning.
But there's no deep nuance, or deep precision that's being able to convey by these, by these
one off sounds, or even one off gestures.
And what's particularly powerful about human language is that it is a symbolic language.
It is a symbolic language.
And when I say it's a symbolic language, I'm even saying it in a broader sense
than even just written symbols.
I'm talking about even the sounds themselves.
So let's go to a time where we did not even have writings.
And when we talk about symbolic languages, let's think about a non-symbolic language,
so in a non-symbolic language, you might have some sound, let's call it sound one,
and it has some meaning. Let's call it meaning one, meaning one.
So this might be a certain type of scream, it means that a predator is approaching.
And then you might have something like a sound two, or gesture two,
and then it has some other meaning, it has meaning two.
It might be a certain type of song, which means that I am in the mood to reproduce, or whatever else.
You might have gesture three, gesture three, that has some direct meaning.
It might mean that I have found food, or something like that. So meaning three.
What humans have, they can do this, where particular sounds have particular meanings.
So for example, in humans, you could have sound one, it refers to meaning one.
I'll just refer it to meaning one.
You could have sound two, that refers to meaning two.
You could have sound three, that is, refers to meaning three.
So these are just direct representaions.
But what is really powerful about symbolic languages is that these, these, oral symbols
can be combined according to set rules, or grammars,
to have an infinite number of meanings!
So what, this is what really makes human language transcend other languages,
and really makes it this robust, precise communication mechanism,
is you could have combinations.
Sound one, sound two, sound three will now have another meaning, meaning four.
Then you could maybe have a combination where you have sound three, sound one, and sound two,
might have meaning five.
And if you have tens of thousands of sounds, and, really, our oral words are those sounds in a given language,
then all of a sudden you can have infinite meanings by putting them in different combinations.
And if you think this is a little bit abstract, imagine that sound one is the sound,
me saying the word "dog".
And I'm not even gonna write it down, 'cause I wanna imagine a world even before written communication.
So sound one is the sound "dog".
Sound two is the sound "eats".
And sound three is the sound "man".
So, literally, sound one, if you heard "dog", you'd think
okay, I'd visualize a dog of some type, and well, you'd have some visualization of a dog.
And we all have one maybe.
Sound two, if you heard "eats", you'd say okay, I imagine eating in some way.
And sound three, "man", you have some visualization on it.
And if it was a non-symbolic language, that's all you could get out of those three sounds,
but now, in a symbolic language, we could combine those.
We could say "dog eats man".
So once again, we just reuse the three sounds, the three symbols,
but now they're referring to a whole new, a much more complex meaning
than just referring to certain objects or certain actions.
Or you could have "man eats dog", which is not pleasant, but I guess in a desperate situation...
But once again, it is another meaning that we can get out of the same sounds.
And what these symbolic languages do, besides giving you an infinite number of meanings,
they're allowed to give you more nuance, and really refer to things that are abstract.
And including,and maybe most importantly, things like the present, the future, the past,
kind of hypothetical things that really are necessary in order to really communicate,
or optimally communicate all of the experiences, or the learnings
from one entity to another.

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Collective Learning

Collective Learning : How symbolic language drives collective learning and how this is one of the truly differentiating aspects of human beings relative to the rest of the animal kingdom