Earlier today I posted some advice from John Stossel saying that when it comes to investing in the market you should forget what the experts say and either invest in an index fund or get a monkey to pick your stocks for you.
This, of course, leads to the question of how you will be able to communicate with your new financial advisor.
Fortunately, there is progress that is being made on that front!
Of course, there are some apes that have been able to
learn at least some sign language or other symbolic communications
systems designed by humans, but that’s apes. I am not aware of the extent to which
humans have been able to teach monkeys ways to communicate.
We are, however, starting to gain new insights into the ways that monkeys themselves communication.
FOR EXAMPLE, THE PUTTY-NOSED MONKEY (PICTURED) APPEARS TO HAVE SYNTAX.
This is the ability to combine linguistic elements–like words–into more complex wholes–like phrases or sentences.
The putty-nosed monkey, for example, has the ability to sequence is /pyow/ call and its /hack/ call in a way that means something other than what /pyow/ or /hack/ would mean on their own:
A sound known onomatopoeically as the “pyow” warns other animals against a lurking leopard, and a cough-like sound that scientists call a “hack” is used when an eagle is hovering near by.
The monkeys live in groups consisting of a single adult male accompanied by several adult females and their young. When the male utters this “sentence”, consisting of up to three pyows followed by up to four hacks, it seems to be a command telling others to move,generally to find safer, less exposed terrain.
[Dr. Arnold said:] “Observationally and experimentally we have demonstrated that this sequence serves to elicit group movement in both predatory contexts and during normal day-to-day activities such as finding food sources and sleeping sites.
“The pyow-hack sequence means something like ‘let’s go’ whereas the pyows by themselves have multiple functions and the hacks are generally used as alarm calls.”
So . . . if you’re consulting with your new financial advisor about the state of the stock market and he says something like /pyow! pyow! pyow! hack! hack! hack! hack!/ then it’s probably time to see about putting your money into bonds.
Jimmy, there are an infinite number of financial advisers at the door who want to talk to you about this script for Hamlet they’ve worked out.
who smurf’d the smurf smurf!
Jimmy,
Don’t make the financial advisors mad – they are legion, much like laywers were a decade ago. THEY’RE EVERYWHERE!
Shhhh…don’t tell anyone I told you.
I nominate this blog entry for the strangest of 2,006! You’re a shoe in Jimmy!!!
On a side note, why are scientists always trying to make animals out to be human and indispensable and humans out to be animals and quite disposable?
Greetings Jimmy,
I thought this blog entry might be a lead in for a reflection on the nature of souls in primates. Since they can communicate and have syntax, could they have something like a human soul? How could this fit in Catholic teaching? This would also relate to the nature of alien souls, if we ever encounter them. I’d love to hear your well reasoned thoughts on this subject sometime.
I think that they have to be pushing the definition of syntax.
Now, we shouldn’t rule out other creatures having language, and yet not be therefore human beings, bearing the Imago Dei. Cheruvim and Seraphim come to mind. Bottlenose dolphins have -names-, and the African Grey Parrot can learn at least 900 words, -and use them correctly-. I once witnessed one telling two yappy-dogs to “shutup” *and they did*.
The question is, what is “syntax”? Sequences of 7 symbols in different orders is a far cry from true grammar, which is, for example, infinitely productive (“a leopard is nearby”, “the leopard that ate the eagle is nearby”, “the leopard that ate the eagle that ate the mouse is nearby”, “the leopard that ate the eagle that ate the mouse that ate the worm is nearby,” etc.).
This monkey is by no means the first animal to be claimed to have syntax. The writers of Language Log like to highlight these stories and critique them, the most recent one being a story about starlings. They haven’t set their sights on the putty-nosed monkey yet, though.
http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/003101.html
Basically, scientists aren’t saying that monkeys have language or a soul. (Though St. Thomas Aquinas reasoned that animals have animal souls, just like rocks have rock souls. They just don’t have enough soul oomph to survive after the matter they’re attached to gets destroyed. It’s a fun speculation.)
What scientists are looking for are the buildingblocks of language — stuff about calls or distinguishing between different things or actions, that were variously useful to the animals, but later on got elaborated and combined in us. Language, in us, is something like an instinct. Language and gesture, between us and some animals, is just enough so that we can understand a little bit of what’s meant. And both of those things are weird and interesting.
The problem is that if our language is a function of how our brains work, understanding aliens from another planet could be a reallll pain. Some linguists seriously doubt that we could ever talk to them about anything, or that we’d even have any concepts in common.
(Linguist and sf writer Suzette Haden Elgin’s Alien Tongue series suggests that very young human children might be sent to spend time with aliens, and hence “pick up” alien languages and concepts the same way they do human ones. However, she also suggested that too alien a species would drive the lil’ munchkins mad, which I thought overly pessimistic. Very little can drive toddlers mad; that’s what they’re supposed to do to adults.)
(Of course, a lot about that series is overly pessimistic. The view of Republicans and Christians as Ultimate Oppression and Evil, for instance. I think the Pope was in there somewhere, too.)
That is a cute financial advisor — and with my finances — well suited to the job too. Jimmy you are clearly fascinated with language, and you make it interesting.
Where did Thomas say rocks have souls?
“why are scientists always trying to make animals out to be human and indispensable and humans out to be animals and quite disposable”
I think it’s people who do this. Read once, from a primatologist who studied chimp “language,” that the more we learn about a chimps ability to communicate the more we learn just how DIFFERENT we are from them. Some scientists might pull the classic “I’ll save the panda but I rather my neighbor did not exist,” but not all.
IMO, looking at this mad mad world, I think people deny how special humnanity is as a form of self-hatred. Maybe they sense that saying we’re more important (or special) than animals begs the questions: Why? That why might in turn lead to God, which might lead to the necessity of admission of sin and, hey – who wants THAT?
But looking at all the cutesy animals they get to say “awww” and have a fuzzy moment. These fuzzy moments, vee might zpeculate (yah, Sigmund?) are a much needed, though misguided, respite from the bitterness they’ve taken into their lives.
Sorry for the long post: this is what I think of animal-rights nuts. I love the whale too, but my love is different. It’s not idolatrous and self-destructive.
Pyow Hack…
Wasn’t he the North Korean Interior Minister?