Beyond any Turing test
On the organic evolution of language, in-depth podcasts, and the thing humans will overcome nearly any challenge to do
For all the drawbacks of the decline of truly mass-market news coverage, the digital news age has opened up a market for sophisticated reporting on surprising topics. A good example is the “Drum Tower” podcast from The Economist, which does a world-class job of adding much-needed depth to coverage of China. The latest episode is a 31-minute narrated story about Nushu, a language “created and used exclusively by women” in isolated areas of southern China. Hardly the sort of thing that ever would have fit into the evening news when Walter Cronkite was at the anchor desk.
■ The story of Nushu isn’t a cheerful one -- the language emerged because women were leading difficult lives full of toil and hardship, at a time when both education and autonomy were both well out of their reach. Through the sympathy a listener ought to feel for the women who invented the language, one also ought to feel a sense of basic human solidarity. It’s part of the universal human nature to want to communicate with others -- especially those who can share empathy.
■ One of the recurring themes told by prisoners of war in the Vietnam conflict was that they often found psychological salvation in being able to communicate with other Americans, even if only through rudimentary methods like taps on the prison wall. John McCain and James Stockdale both told tales of surviving solitary confinement in such ways, and they were not isolated examples.
■ The urge -- or, really, the compulsion -- to communicate is a signature aspect of what makes us human. And it may be the kind of characteristic that stands out where Turing tests might fail: Computers may become very good at imitating human communication, but there’s no reason to believe they will ever initiate communication, against the odds, entirely for its own sake. Perhaps that’s because loneliness is something we feel in our bodies, with real physical symptoms we can’t just rationalize away. Nature compels us to communicate for reasons far beyond strict informational necessity or response to commands. There is no “off” switch to our need to communicate.
