Why Koko (Probably) Couldn't Talk (Sorry) | The Deep Dive

Comments · 19K

• TH

  @theoneandonlysoupemporium · 4 years ago · pinned

  Hey all! <br> <br>I put up a community post about a piece that offered a critique to this video which seems to have gone missing (thanks, YouTube) <br> <br>Anyway, having had a few days to reflect on it and digest it, I decided to move it here and write out a more fleshed out message - and maybe write a bit about how the sausage is made, so to speak. <br> <br>I put the piece in the description if you wanna read. <br> <br>I still broadly stand by this video, and the conclusions I drew in it. I still find Terraces paper a more compelling case than not; and there are bits of the critique I disagree with. But the piece highlighted a few shortcomings that I feel are valid and worth including here. <br> <br>The first is the lack of any real substantive analysis of behavioural linguistics - and I&apos;ve had a few non-Chompsky linguists reach out to me about it and their chats have been very eye opening. <br> <br>The second, more important one in my opinion, was about the implicit ableism in the ways I talked about language and language acquisition; especially with regards to neurodivergence. <br> <br>The framing question of the video was &quot;why were we trying to teach these animals how to talk?&quot; and the answer I leaned towards was a more philosophical one: the idea that animals generally (apes especially) were viewed as lesser versions of people. <br> <br>People got bored with Clever Hans when it was revealed Hans was using his owner&apos;s body language cues to determine the right answer to a maths puzzle. Hans&apos; ability to count had little to do with his capacity for understanding human speech or mathematics, and everything to do with his ability to read human behaviour. <br> <br>That&apos;s a form of intelligence! It&apos;s theory of mind! It&apos;s interpreting the signals someone else is giving off, and then using your own brain to decode that and find meaning! <br> <br>It&apos;s not language, but it is a very powerful form of communication <br> <br>But its not one we found valuable. Ape communications seemed to have the undercurrent of humans - like Prometheus with Fire - will give them language so they may transcend the constraints of their animal selves, and be more like us. For we: we are the God species. <br> <br>This view - in my opinion - justified all manners of abuse and mistreatment, because we couldn&apos;t see animals -- like Koko, like Nim, like Kanzi -- for who they were. <br> <br>Where this breaks down is in the ways I considered, or rather didn&apos;t consider, neurodivergence. I didn’t think about how the research I cited centres and reinforces neurotypical, non-disabled experiences; I wasn&apos;t careful enough to make it clear that people who don&apos;t have what would be considered typical linguistic levels, or don&apos;t have typical styles of communication, are still full humans who deserve to be treated with love, respect, and dignity; and I implicitly reinforced those problematic ideas and notions. <br> <br>Many neurodiverse people don&apos;t show certain hallmarks or traits Terrace wanted to observe in Nim, and Terrace himself, I learned recently, was deeply dismissive of atypical kinds of communication. He echoed the view of others who viewed autistic patients as lesser people, rather than full people. I don&apos;t think I need to explain why that&apos;s problematic. All people are full people. <br> <br>It was baggage I brought to the table, and it should have been baggage I was more introspective about. It’s an area I should have walked more carefully, and looked at through a more nuanced lens. I should have been conscious of the fact I don&apos;t have the best filters for seeing those kinds of connections. I can’t imagine they were the only person to feel this way, and I wanted to thank them for their feedback, and apologise for reinforcing those kinds of ideas. <br> <br>It matters that we&apos;re critical of those kinds of ideas. Because they&apos;re used as grounds to sterilise and kill disabled people. And they&apos;re not ideas that should be reinforced implicitly. <br> <br>As they say in the critique: “Ideas have power, wield them with care” <br> <br>I’ll try and wield with more care moving forwards.

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• LE

  @leonardomachado9423 · 4 years ago

  My little girl was talking to me about this the other day and said: &quot;Father why do people project their behavior onto animals who in reality behave differently and deserve to be respected and understood rather than understand us? Isn&apos;t mankind capable of understanding animals as separate beings that perform better in other neural tasks humans themselves sometimes aren&apos;t capable of ?&quot;. She&apos;s 3. She&apos;s also a german shepherd. She&apos;s so smart it blows my mind away.

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• FR

  @frooty9508 · 5 years ago (edited)

  My Cat is smart and is capable of human communication. I asked him who was the communist former president of the People&apos;s Republic of China and he replied &quot;Mao&quot;.

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• SH

  @shock_n_Aweful · 4 years ago

  I would agree that giving Koko non-alcoholic beer is abuse. What kind of monster would deprive her of a proper beer.

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• GH

  @GhostOfSnuffles · 2 years ago

  Boss &quot;Can you work Sunday?&quot;<br>Me &quot;Give me you raise, me give me raise, raise give me, give give raise me&quot;

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• JE

  @Jester-rm9ox · 5 years ago

  When the chimp said &quot;GIVE ORANGE ME GIVE EAT ORANGE ME &nbsp;EAT ORANGE GIVE ME EAT ORANGE GIVE ME YOU&quot;..... I felt that.

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• LU

  @lukelucas7652 · 11 months ago

  <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e7wFotDKEF4&amp;t=1703">28:23</a> “the researchers who worked Koko and other apes did not know sign language” is quite a nuclear bomb to drop on the discussion 😂

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• FO

  @Forestfreud · 5 years ago

  Koko’s final message had the same energy as people lying on Twitter about their toddlers saying something profound

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• PI

  @Pitts_not_Pitty · 1 year ago

  Wow, Patterson &quot;interpretting&quot; koko has the same cadence and feel as a &quot;medium&quot; cold reading their target. The same way she rationalizes mistakes, its very uncanny!

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• MO

  @Mousy677 · 1 year ago

  did somebody at least give nim his orange

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• DA

  @dasme8210 · 4 years ago

  this and the dolphin experiment has taught me one thing, researchers are far too concerned with getting animals to communicate as humans rather than to understand how animals communicate as animals and with each other.

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• DO

  @DoktorPaj · 4 years ago

  &quot;Nim would be taken to an empty bare classroom with no toys or climbing frames and was forced to do language drills.&quot;<br>Can relate

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