From: mailrus!gatech!mit-eddie!media.mit.edu!minsky@uunet.uu.net (Marvin Minsky)
Subject: Re: Virtuality as a system of actions
Date: Mon, 23 Sep 1991 05:18:36 GMT
Organization: MIT Media Laboratory


In article <1991Sep23.023616.4287@milton.u.washington.edu> smoliar@iss.nus.sg (stephen smoliar) writes:
>
>Pete Brooks decided to take issue with Gary Van Den Heuvel on the issue of
>signing apes.  This was sort of peripheral to the primary argument;  but I
>would like to pursue it long enough to raise a minor methodological issue.

>What is often overlooked is that all these anecdotes come from the scientists
>working with the apes who, because of their intimate attachment to the
>subjects, tend to be the poorest possible observers for what are basically
>subjective judgments.  As far as I am concerned, the last word (for now) on
>this issue has been best expressed by Stephen Jay Gould in "The Quack
>Detector," the last article in his collection AN URCHIN IN THE STORM.

   Smoliar goes on to develop this theme.  And it reminded me of what
happened when Paul Morrell, a pre-teen-ager friend of mine, got
involved, after school, with teaching signing to Koko, the gorilla at
Stanford.  I asked Paul how many words Koko knew.  Paul said that
according to his notes, Koko actually could distinguish some 600
words, but that the scientists were unwilling to claim more than about
300.  I asked him why, and he replied, more or less, "Two things.
First, Koko isn't very manually dextrous.  I suspect she may be a bit
retarded, or have a some cerebral palsy, or something.  She wasn't
flourishing at the zoo where they got her.  So the grown-ups can't
read her signs so well, I think because they themselves aren't so good
at learning these ill-formed signs.  It's not so hard for me, because
I'm still just a kid, and therefore still good at picking up new
languages."  Paul was indeed something of a linguistic prodigy.  At
that time he had learned ASL much more quickly than anyone else in our
lab-wide signing class, and more recently I heard that he now knows a
dozen or so languages (and has higher degrees in that area).