8 Million Species of Aliens

language is weird and swearing is maybe the weirdest thing we do with it oh most words are fine avocado sasketch one amphibian dog entity but use these other words and suddenly it's all uh sir this is a funeral that's not appropriate language also why are you wearing that dinosaur costume also please stop openly taking schedule 1 substances during the reading of the eulogy [Music] jesus we may as well start with perhaps the ultimate naughty mouth noise which we'll just substitute with the german philosopher kant in a futile attempt to avoid youtube demonetization the words can't roots are probably germanic we don't know how the word got started but we do know that the strength of the word has changed over time chaucer used a cousin word quaint openly in the 14th century shakespeare was writing puns with it in the 17th century and today like many swears it functions as the lowest insult and at the same time the highest compliment in many parts of the world one might be called a stupid cat but in australia he's a right good cat is tall praise indeed same goes for he's the [ __ ] just remove the definite article and the meaning is exactly the opposite likewise bollocks can mean false information or the dog's bollocks something brilliant then there's [ __ ] the beloved old faithful of the english tongue it probably comes from germanic or indo-european possibly for to strike and it is flexible it can function as an adjective is that a [ __ ] penguin as an adverb this penguin is [ __ ] unhinged yo intransitive verb this penguin [ __ ] or even as a verbal noun that penguin has an assault rifle i think we're about to receive quite the [ __ ] and judging by the fact that official documents from the middle ages mention gentlemen with names such as the upstanding john lefucker we can guess that like the word can't [ __ ] probably wasn't always as strong as it is today anyway words don't just change in severity but they also mutate to be nice once meant to be foolish to amuse meant to deceive then there's toilet a noun borrowed from the middle french word twal meaning a little piece of cloth next it came to mean the cloth that covers a dressing table then the things on the dressing table then the dressing table itself then the whole process of getting ready for the day and then morphed into its current form the disgustatorium we know and love in any case cursing and insults probably work not because of the sound of the words themselves but because they are metaphors if you screw up and the serbian person tells you you just [ __ ] the hedgehogs back it's clearly not that you literally crippled a poor hedgehog but that you are in general regrettably an idiot likewise in latin calling someone a public poop pile clearly just meant they were worthless or in russian if someone threatens you with me i'm gonna show you where the crayfish hibernates really of course they just mean actually i have no idea with this one but sounds good doesn't it and some languages don't even really have profanity but the one we're speaking in now does it is a technology it is a gift because the real genius of our species is in language and the genius of language is in cursing and it's more complicated than that because to even get that some words are bad in the first place you have to understand register phonology semantics all of which we're doing all day every day automatically right now in fact meaning get a load of you 10 out of 10 no notes you're a linguistic primate whatever happens even if everything's gone to [ __ ] even if you're miserably listening to this in the bath drinking vodka and shampoo because you ran out of mixers you have the superpower of language meaning golly g you are doing one hecking success are you drinking your mother's shampoo again dad shut the [ __ ] up if you're listening to this then congratulations you've already acquired a language but of course none of us remember doing it really new humans usually spend a large amount of their time vocalizing meaningless nonsense some people continue this far past infancy it's called babbling even fresh out of the oven we're already trying to talk then between 9 and 18 months usually come our first words in english generally mama dada or oh god i exist make it stop by year two most of us have at least 150 words licked and by three we will simply not shut up then most of us will go on to nail the four main aspects of wordy noises phonology that's the sound of speech semantics that's vocabulary and meaning grammar and syntax learning how words fit together and pragmatics knowing what's even appropriate to say and when and just as children acquire language presumably civilization had to too too what please permit this stock image of a confused llama to signify we don't know so did language first begin in our hunter-gatherer past as just simple nouns and what was the first language well tamil is the oldest living language thousands of years old even and still spoken by about 80 million people today but again bruh and did an enlargening of the human brain make language possible or did language encourage enlargements of the brain evolution is sociopathic but it isn't usually wasteful so what problem did our distant ancestors have to solve that was so complicated we had to evolve not just simple verbal communication but the capacity to memorize and use thousands and thousands of words why did our ancestors need the ability to say uh homies i don't mean to be egregious but is that a rather sizable apex predator over there rather than just ah [ __ ] lion [ __ ] maybe it was for negotiation maybe for laying down sick diss tracks we have no idea then again we don't even know where we yawn yet so you know baby steps still if we stick with english for now we do know a fair bit just like greek hindi catalan and many other languages english has its roots in proto-indo-european a language we've had to reconstruct probably spoken about 6 000 years ago by a bunch of cats who lived between the black sea and the caspian sea through a combination of the standard human pastimes of wandering around and shagging each other language families probably grew out of proto-indo-european germanic began to evolve then came anglo-frisian old english middle english and finally the patchwork tongue we're using now and just 10 seconds of watching what you're saying in english will reveal what a patchwork tongue it is do you like waffles what is do doing there exactly you like waffles or i know like waffles is not only more efficient it's the structure plenty of other languages use perfectly well or o-u-g-h which can be used simultaneously to spell do cough bow through and if you're learning english at the moment i'm just so sorry we don't get it either in fact english is one of the only languages that can have competitions for spelling many languages can't do this it's too easy because they use phonetic spelling because they're not [ __ ] mental yukt descent choreograph english stop it get some help and it's kinda telling that once indoctrinated into english is madness if someone breaks the rules we know even if we can't explain what the rule is this sentence now become loads weird syntax because all jumble ryan reynolds or the fact that in english descriptions generally have to go opinion size age shape color origin material purpose noun and only in that order or we get upset a lovely big new blue fluffy polyester cap bed is fine a polyester blue catbed lovely big new fluffy strongly suggests those thc gummies have just kicked in hard or register which is basically knowing which words to use in the context of communicating there are a few registers in english but let's just say we're usually talking formally or informally and it's not always obvious which register to use you may have found yourself in one of those [ __ ] interviews with a hey we're all friends at the company vibe where they insist you speak your mind and just be honest but if they ask what you do for fun and as requested you reply honestly well in my free time i like smoking massive rocks of crack cocaine i'd say my biggest weakness is perfectionism it is highly unlikely you will be offered the position but arguably the most interesting feature of almost all languages is displacement or rather we can talk about things somewhere else in time and space none of us will live to see it but we can have a chat about paris in 500 years or patagonia 500 years ago likewise you're not here but i can tell you it's currently 1am in europe i'm sat in front of two monitors with a word document and a beer the cat is sleeping on the desk the light is fairly dim and you probably imagined something like this which doesn't sound like a remarkable skill but it is it's literally telepathy it's [ __ ] mind-reading because language isn't just for pointing it is the ether in which we distribute abstractions it's possible without words even there's no official name for an ellipsis followed by a question mark but the meaning is universally understood as uh what the [ __ ] and the fact that we immediately get this tells us that humans have evolved way past the era of pointing and entered into the age of signification and metaphor things mean deeper things sometimes was captain oates just going for a walk was moby dick just about a whale are those baby on board signs just about the baby on board and if you happen to be the sort of person who likes to blow off a little steam by indiscriminately careening into other motor vehicles at top speed but you suddenly notice this sign would you avoid that car for some reason or is the purpose of the sign really just to tell you that the people driving the car successfully boned at least once we get it you reproduced well done etc etc etc this is messier 13. it's a fairly cramped globular galaxy about 25 000 light years away and in 1974 we detected this signal coming from messier 13. the signal is composed of frequency modulated radio waves shifting by 10 hertz and out of this you get ones and zeros that correspond to 1679 digits which is weird because that's a semi-prime a number divisible by itself one and two other prime numbers 23 and 73. so you arrange the ones and zeros on a grid 23 by 73 squares and you get these shapes it's hard to imagine this is from a natural astronomical event but if it's a message it's even harder to imagine what it means because i'm playing of course this is a message we sent to messier 13 not the other way around but it bears hammering home that if we want to establish contacts with intelligent life beyond earth not to imply there's any on earth universal messages are going to be like really tricky the messier 13 signal we sent is called the arecibo message and it looks in full like this there are seven components first is a primer the numbers one to ten in binary then some representations of human dna then an approximation of us and our population then our solar system and which planet it is sending the message earth then the aracebo radio telescope that sent the message itself the message only has another oh 24 955 years to go before arriving but when it does and if it reaches messier 13 in about 12 more jesus cycles it's gonna be a bit of a doozy to decode because we're assuming in the first place that aliens will understand that this is binary or whatever their analog of binary is next that the messier thirteeners will know this is dna or that they even understand nucleotide biology then that they will ensure this is an organism not a structure or a continent then that this is a solar system not an appendage or a reproductive organ or something and then that this is a machine and that's all assuming they even use symbolic language in the first place to be fair the message was more sent ceremonially than a real hello but still when you think about it how do you send an unambiguous message to beings of unknown psychology well it's bad enough with us there are a fair few writing systems by our own species that we still can't decipher like bible script in lebanon or linear a in crete and that's not to mention nuclear semiotics which is the study of well we produce a lot of nuclear waste and the stuff we don't recycle need somewhere to go because it's hella dangerous and it stays dangerous for thousands of years oh well we'll put it somewhere then okay but in the hardly implausible event that civilization collapses entirely and say in the distant future our great great great great grandchildren discover our sights full of nuclear waste we need some way of telling them this radioactive stuff will make you dead don't put it up your bottom and if today's languages are forgotten by them how do you write that warning without words oh that's easy just yeah really because that could mean death it could also just be a drum kit depending on how morbid your culture is or okay how about this so left to right that's obvious yeah unless they read right to left like literally millions of humans do today in which case it isn't so much the nuclear waste kills you rather that it brings you back from the [ __ ] dead oh but it's obvious there's arrows yeah what does an arrow mean if you've never seen an actual arrow and on top of that even if we crack universal messaging even if aliens receive and read our nonsense would they care we are the way we are because of evolutionary pressure because of our specific climb up the tree of life we could have ended up looking a thousand other ways perhaps we could have ended up thinking a thousand other ways is it universal for other intelligent species in the universe to be curious or linguistic or social or even give a damn about looking across the knights for other mines who knows but we're trying to find them and the aracebo message is hardly the only message we've sent to the heavens between april 2051 and november 2069 the human sent message cosmic call 1 will be arriving in the constellation cygnus and sejita respectively between july 2047 and february 2017 the teenage message will make its way to the constellations ursa major cassiopeia and a few others then cosmic call 2 hello from earth and a bunch more whether received or not in transit currently are our first tries hello our name is our fledgling electromagnetic attempts to introduce ourselves to the great neighborhood but even then even if those messages reach other beings even if those beings understand what they're reading considering just how young we are technologically it is entirely possible that more advanced civilizations may well perceive us as babies still stuck at our early vocalization stage babbling at adults as those adults silently wait for us to begin the quests of learning cosmic grammar as we continue like featherless birds chirping desperately across the dark forests [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Laughter] talking of which perhaps you've been to one of these fancy international meetups that capital cities like arranging sometimes and the native speakers of widely used languages will usually seek each other out and the brits and the americans will inevitably start chuckling amongst themselves at the tiny differences in their vocabulary oh you say trunk we say boot oh you say cause light we say horse piss etc while just a few feet away will be standing someone who uses a completely different system of writing and grammar someone from georgia or tibet or wherever who won't be receiving anywhere near as much attention for some reason someone who genuinely has linguistic differences just look at georgian he's gorgeous it's georgious but when it comes to language we seem to be fascinated with similar differences not different similars which is maybe why for all of our looking out to the stars for talking aliens we seem a little indifferent about the fact that aliens are sort of already here and there's about eight million species of them this apprentice chunker is called freya she's four years old she likes tuna and when she's really chill she presents the jelly beans for inspection freya has never uttered a word before but she does sort of say things to me especially when she's hungry you already have food what's this or rather she's probably saying i want something make you do thing i want you bipedal furless oik if communication is trying to put things from your head into other heads then this is kind of communication and though her and i share a common ancestor and though we both enjoy idleness and biographical dramas her mind is pretty unknowable to me and i'm quite sure her reality is unknowable to me too if this little lion could speak i would not understand her sort of talking aliens are already here i live with a sort of talking alien perhaps you do too oh but she's not a talking intelligent alien you might reply well first of all what'd you say about my cat [ __ ] you and second of all all right then how's about ants well there's probably about a hundred trillion of them on earth made up of twelve thousand species they form alliances raid other colonies and practice division of labor just like us working as nurses foragers warriors matey with a door for a head matey has a door for a head and they build societies of a sort one colony in japan reportedly held 300 million of the suckers made of 45 000 nests across 700 acres about the same size as mark zuckerberg's hawaiian estate a thriving metropolis and how with communication with sound touch and chemical cues pheromones ant pheromones can signal anything from alarm there's an intruder to i done a good trail come see even to propaganda pheromones lying about allegiances to get inside other nests oh but those aren't talking intelligent aliens either you might say that's just mindless group cooperation yeah could one of us build a space program or an airliner or even a pencil all by ourselves we look like ants from not that far up but all right how about bees then if you're having a lovely day out as a honey bee and you come upon some nectar you'll want to tell your mates so it's back to the hive where you perform this figure eight dance in which you'll communicate the richness of the nectar with the intensity of your twerk and the location of the nectar with the direction of your dance relative to the sun it's called the waggle dance is that language uh it depends how you feel about bodria after a few drinks but either way we'll never know because the non-human communication story ends there with insects unfortunately except of course it [ __ ] doesn't what about electric fish who use their electric fields to chat about anything from hi i'm a boyfish or a girlfish to we're getting attacked as simultaneously they're trailed by sharks who have learned to eavesdrop on these electrical conversations or dolphins who some researchers think are naming themselves with entirely unique whistles rather impressive if true considering most of us don't even have an original christian name or cuttlefish who can display two totally different messages on either sides of their bodies simultaneously or elephants who seem to be sending seismic distress signals with their stamps that can travel tens of miles distantly through the ground or chimpanzees who can learn and utilize hundreds of symbols from human sign language it's debatable whether they really understand what they're saying but in any case they can not only count with human numbers but can outperform humans over and over at memorizing number sequences or of course to humpback whales and their songs the songs are usually hierarchical units build into phrases which build into themes which build into songs they compose and exchange these songs together inside populations many songs are only sung during breeding season so something to do with getting laid but many aren't sometimes they're used before feeding sometimes just alone and why do they sing at all we have no idea but if the criteria for an alien we're interested in is can do some technology and communication has mind we don't understand and evolved from beyond earth many animals are nailing two out of three of these and to the third one there our last common ancestor with parrots lived probably 300 million years ago five times as far back as the dinosaurs went extinct our last common link with octopuses is likely about twice that 750 million years back animals might not be from an alien planet but many are certainly from an alien time which is not to say that animals will be rivaling humans any time soon they're busy with their own [ __ ] often literally but until extraterrestrials message us back if it's different similars we're looking for if it's unknowable minds we're after haven't they been here the whole time and is the problem really that they're not smart enough to speak our languages or that we're currently too daft to understand theirs it's got a door fred

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Length: 21min 24sec (1284 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 28 2021