Reading thoughts in different languages

[Rigel Stardin]

I agree with the last two posts.

When a psion is in a passive mode they are like an AM radio reciever late at night. Depending on the strength of a sophont's emotion and mental state he or she might recieve stronger signals from people who are upset, depression or angry over something. As long as he or she doesn't focus on the sphont, there will be no indication of his presence. But at the same time, he or she could track this person by the strength of emotion radiations or even possibly even easedrop on the person thoughts. Because the sophont his broadcasting his thoughts and emotions at a high level than the people around him.

 

[emeketos]

Read send thoughts my opinion

my thoughts on it

Concepts, Pictures, feelings are easily read
Actions, tasks processes can be read fairly seamlessly

same language easy
Language I would say similar grammar sentence structure is Moderate

completely Alien language and thought processes with unfamiliar species very difficult. only the briefest of actions, feelings and images.

 

[Carlobrand]

"Thoughts" are not a single discrete entity. Different types of thoughts trigger activation of different areas of the brain. If you're remembering an event or thinking of a person or object, you're retrieving and manipulating visual information. If you're thinking about a discussion with your wife and what you might have said different, you're retrieving and manipulating language, a different part of your brain. If you're thinking about a math problem, you're retrieving and manipulating another kind of information.

The convention that reading the thoughts of aliens is difficult implies that reading thoughts consists of emulating someone else's brain inside your own - detecting and reproducing his current brain activity within your own, such that an MRI would pick up activation of the same areas in the same pattern. That would not be possible if you and the subject had radically different brain structures. By extension, it would also be more difficult if his brain stored information that your brain lacked.

Consider, for example, that if he thought the word "apple" while visualizing the image and flavor of an apple, you'd hear the sound "apple" along with the corresponding visual and flavor sensations that told you what the sound "apple" meant. If he'd been struck by a thrown apple as a boy, it might also come across with a sensation of pain. He's likely to do that unconsciously - words with strong association with visual or other sensory memories tend to bring those associations to mind with them. You don't necessarily have to have seen an apple - your store of experiences and the common nature of your visual centers and the neurological programming that lets you see would let you construct a reasonably accurate image of a round, red object with a stick poking out the top (and you might scratch your head in puzzlement over the twinge of pain that came with it). But, if you were blind from birth, the idea that an apple was red and round might be about as meaningful as saying an apple was blergamorp - your mind lacks the visual data with which to emulate what his mind is doing on that subject.

If he's furiously thinking about the argument with his wife and what he might have said different, and you don't share the language, then you're getting a rapid stream of sounds that have no meaning for you, accompanied by a wash of feelings and quick occasional glimpses of images or sensations strongly tied to the words in his mind, probably alongside strong and likely warped memories of the incident itself - warped of course by his strong feelings. You could infer an argument and possibly the subject of the argument, but following his train of thought would be like trying to understand a heated argument in a movie done in a foreign language when you only know a few dozen words in that language: most of it would be fast-paced gibberish, there and then gone before you could make sense of it, and you're stuck trying to make sense of it all from the visual information you're getting.

 

[FreeTrav]

While I tend to think that there's SOMETHING to the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, my tendencies are toward it being perhaps weaker than even the weak-SWH proponents hold it to be. My take would be that to the extent that the reader and readee have commonality of concept, the reader can read the readee, regardless of linguistic kinship/compatibility/what-have-you. Whether the reader will get the full intent of the readee's thought(s) depends on how close the commonality of concept is for the particular concept, and the lower the commonality of concept, the more open to misinterpretation the reading is. Thus, in a Traveller setting, thoughts about most technology and thoughts about basic needs are likely to come through between any two species with no problem, but thoughts about literature, music, entertainment, etc., are likely to lose quite a bit going from one mind to another, and thoughts/ideas that are absolutely dependent on language - puns, for example - will be totally lost, unless the reader and readee have the language of the thought/idea in common.

 

[bromdenlong]

It defines the gymnastics of it (what one does to make the language fit the thought). I have a friend who works in this field at UC Berkley. He has been working with a device that can ID what object you are thinking about. It works regardless of the language used by the person.

So Alice looks at a red balloon, and the device records Alice looking the red balloon and is informed that Alice is looking at the red balloon. Now if the device reads any human looking at the red balloon, it can identify the object seen as the red balloon? The device doesn't have to be recalibrated for each individual?

If so, then how much can a replacement balloon vary from the original balloon and still result in a correct guess by the device? Well, I suppose performance will improve through developmental trial and error.

If the device must be recalibrated, this suggests to me that mindreading for specific information, i.e. interrogation, is only possible with extended stimulus and observation of the subject. No quick and dirty mindgouging for info.

If the device does NOT need recalibrating from individual to individual, the process could be much quicker. Perhaps just make a series of statements, and see if they respond as if the statements are true or false. If you don't know their language, provide them with a series of images, and see if they respond as if the images are true or false.

If the device does NOT need recalibrating, it suggests that familiarity with the species brain is all that a mindreading machine will need. Whether a psion of one species would ever be able to read another species' mind is unknowable until we know how psionics works.

How well an interrogator could overcome the lack of a common language would depend on how well she could communicate the concepts nonverbally.

I stand with those saying "it depends". The more abstract the information sought, the more difficult it will be to extract and interpret without common language. And with different species, it may not be possible at all without a machine.

I voted no, since at least some thoughts are languageless.

 

[HG_B]

Now if the device reads any human looking at the red balloon, it can identify the object seen as the red balloon?

Yes.

The device doesn't have to be recalibrated for each individual?

No, it doesn't.

I'm sure that after a decade or so of refinement the government will find uses for this thing.

 

[bromdenlong]

Yeah, no doubt. Nothing sinister in that...yikes.