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From the article: "No right-thinking or peace-loving alien species would choose us, humans, for alliance. The heptapods chose us because we, like them, are consummate destroyers, so skilled at war we wage it from a distance, almost invisibly, speaking softly about co-existence."
It seems like the author has a lot of shame about being human.
# You want a human #
Humans quickly get a reputation among the interplanetary alliance and the reputation is this: when going somewhere dangerous, take a human.
Humans are tough. Humans can last days without food. Humans heal so fast they pierce holes in themselves or inject ink for fun. Humans will walk for days on broken bones in order to make it to safety. Humans will literally cut off bits of themselves if trapped by a disaster.
You would be amazed what humans will do to survive. Or to ensure the survival of others they feel responsible for.
That’s the other thing. Humans pack-bond, and they spill their pack-bonding instincts everywhere. Sure it’s weird when they talk sympathetically to broken spaceships or try to pet every lifeform that scans as non-toxic. It’s even a little weird that just existing in the same place as them for long enough seems to make them care about you. But if you’re hurt, if you’re trapped, if you need someone to fetch help?
You _really_ want a human.
source: http://iztarshi.tumblr.com/post/145107805571/inspired-by-var...
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I'll also link this here because I found it simultaneously hilarious, and troublingly insightful: http://www.tor.com/2016/10/17/the-answer-to-why-humans-are-s...
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And also this: http://prokopetz.tumblr.com/post/57702943181/mikhailvladimir...
The movie was fairly specific about why the heptapods chose us:
"We help humanity. In 3000 years we need humanity help."
It's pretty clear that the heptapods expected us to do them a solid in exchange for Heptapod B and the timey-wimey perspective that comes with it. Perhaps it's some sort of resource or technology they will need -- but cannot obtain or make on their own -- to avert a calamity, or perhaps there is some aspect to our thinking that they don't understand but will need to benefit from. Perhaps the lack of our logical, linearized thinking prevented them from developing digital computers like we have, for instance; lack of such technology prevented them from sequencing their DNA, and without us they'd have no way of preventing some sort of genetic blight that wipes them out 3000 years in the future.
I don't know. I just know they saw in us a unique quality unrelated to our morality that they wished to benefit from and came to earth as traders and negotiators, not benevolent uplifters.
I think the best phrase about humans could probably be taken from Mattis about Marines: No better friend, no worse enemy.
>> No right-thinking or peace-loving alien species would choose us, humans, for alliance.
The saddest thing I read today :(
It's well founded.
Shame or realism.
>> Over the decades, the list of features posited as universal to human grammar has been laboriously reduced to an almost catchy formulation: human linguistic expressions are linearized, recursive hierarchical structure, with differences in structure associated with differences in interpretation, and, in principle, no limit on the depth of hierarchical structure.
What the article is describing (in very broad terms, probably to suit a diverse audience) is knonw as "merge". It, along with a discussion on the evolution of language, is discussed in the paper below:
Contemporary linguistics is to Chomsky as psychology is to Freud.
The Chomsky hierarchy is very useful. Knowledge of it distilled as theory of automata is basic Comp Sci literacy. I've heard of instances where ignorance of such had large consequences.
Care to elaborate?
My guess is both elevated and popularized their fields and are the only practitioner most people can name. However, almost none of their theories have held up over time.
Clearly. I'm interested in how the field has evolved relative to Chomsky.
I'm not convinced that a "logical form" can exist. It suggests there is a one true universal language of description which does not rely on context. But I'd argue that any language reduces the objects it describes to symbols, and there is no way to agree on such a reduction without some base agreed contextual understanding.