I was talking with a friend about sci-fi stories trying to come up with scientifically plausible mechanisms for telepathy. Like an alien species that could communicate via thoughts.
They could probably utilize some band of the EM spectrum that humans can’t perceive. They would need a receptor organ to receive transmissions, and some physical transmitter for creating the transmissions.
We realized that if there were a deaf alien species, one that could not perceive soundwaves as stimuli, then our talking would be basically telepathy to them. Like if a species evolved in the vacuum of space, or on a planet lacking atmosphere, it would have no use for auditory sensations.
It might see us flapping our mouth holes, or it might feel the vibrations we make passing air across specialized muscles to create radio wave frequencies, but it would be indecipherable without a Wernicke’s area of the brain to convert EM wave vibrations into thoughts. If it tried to recreate those vibrations, it would lack the Broca’s area of the brain to convert thoughts into EM waves.
We always assume language would be the barrier between intelligent species, but our form of communication might be just as foreign and fantastical to them as telepathy is to us.
The Children of Time series by Adrian Tchaikovsky has a species of spiders which communicate by moving their palps and tapping webs with their legs. When they first encounter humans they don’t figure out the vibrations they make is a form of communication right away. As sound travels poorly onto webs and not in a way they are used to. Also humans make too much noise with all their other vibrations, so the tiny bit of sound that gets through gets lost in the noise.
Big recommend on that series, it’s awesome!
They communicate by flapping their meat at each other!
Language, whether it’s written or spoken, is weird. Words are bits of long dead people’s thoughts, reused over and over again; like semantic corpses ever finding new ways to rot.
given enough permutations, (library of babel) everything that has ever been said, and can ever be said, and will ever be said, has already been said. And is to some degree, not an original thought.
This kind of reminds me of calvin and hobbes
Why would you do this to me?!
I actually don’t get it 🙁
By describing in unappealing and excessive detail the process by which humans speak, the kid on the left has weirded out the kid on the right, who now finds it too weird to talk normally – or perhaps, by being forced to think about something that otherwise comes naturally, he has lost the ability to actually to it, could go either way.
The kid on the right communicates his distress, and indicates that it’s the left kid’s fault, by writing a note to the left kid since he can’t speak the words out loud.
Oh. Thank you kind stranger. For some reason it didn’t click that he was passing a note. I’m for some reason I thought he was writing the whole time and friend left just noticed or something. I missed the obvious eye contact in the first two panels cuz I have no social skills.
No worries, a lot of the signals that go into jokes aren’t universal, so I’m always happy to explain if I can.
