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Thanks for the thoughtful critique — I think you’re absolutely right that evolution by natural selection, as we know it, relies on mechanisms like reproduction, variation, and interaction happening on relatively fast timescales and small spatial scales. Galaxies and planets don’t seem to fit that model: they don’t reproduce, they rarely interact meaningfully, and they change far too slowly for classic Darwinian evolution to work.
But I realize now that I may have been too loose with my use of “life” or “intelligence” in the original post. What I’m really interested in exploring is this:
Are there forms of structure or information-processing at different scales — even planetary or galactic — that could be analogous to intelligence, adaptation, or life-like behavior, without being literal biological evolution?
We already have some examples that stretch the definition:
- Artificial neural nets don’t evolve biologically — they adapt through learning and feedback.
- Planetary weather systems “compute” outcomes via chaotic interactions and feedback, without reproduction.
- Civilizational or economic systems exhibit adaptive behavior over centuries, though they don’t replicate like organisms.
So maybe galaxies aren’t evolving minds — but could they still participate in slow, emergent feedback structures we’d recognize as life-like, if we weren’t so bound to human-scale definitions of cognition or change?
I appreciate you pushing me to clarify this — I think the real idea I’m after is whether structure + time + interaction could lead to complex, adaptive dynamics at any scale, even if it doesn’t meet the biological criteria for life or intelligence.
Yes, It is more difficult to understand arbitrary tree structure but the goal is make the tree more and more logical and less and less arbitrary, we need a perfectly logical tree that could describe every meaning (if possible) or atleast as close as possible. When its more logical it'll be easier to learn and hard to master.
Yesss! Solresol is definitely a spiritual cousin — and you're right, the pentatonic scale connection is super interesting.
Kamelo using 5 phonemes intentionally echoes both:
- the pentatonic musical scale (so it could be spoken, signed, or played as music),
- and tree-based semantic logic, where each level refines the concept more.
Solresol mapped syllables to meanings too, but Kamelo’s twist is:
- Tree depth encodes specificity.
- Context compression is built-in (like pronouns or omitted branches).
- Designed from the start to be machine-readable, signable, musical, and tactile.
So theoretically:
- A blind person could feel a string of raised tactile glyphs.
- A deaf person could see it signed.
- A device could parse and translate it.
- And a musician could sing meaning.
Hey, Thanks so much for diving into Kamelo, you’ve nailed exactly the kind of questions I’m wrestling with.
Grammar & Ambiguity
You're totally right — grammar is where ambiguity really enters. Right now, Kamelo doesn’t have a fixed grammar yet. But the idea is:
- Word order is generally SVO (subject-verb-object), like English.
- Modifiers (adjectives, adverbs) follow what they modify.
- Punctuation-like tokens may act as "semantic closers" to end a branch of a conceptual tree.
Stopping Mid-Structure
Yes! You can stop mid-encoding. That's a key principle: Kamelo is compressible based on shared context, like how we say "the fruit" instead of "a Rosaceae angiosperm of genus Malus". The idea is to transmit enough meaning for the moment, and go deeper if needed.
That’s why a base likekakasu meti su
("noun, fruiting plant, [Rosaceae]")
could be totally valid in conversation, and even shorten further in high-context.
Phoneme Clarification (IPA)
This is still flexible, but currently considering:
| Syllable | IPA | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| ka | /ka/ | like "car" |
| me | /me/ | like "meh" |
| ti | /ti/ | like "tea" |
| su | /su/ | like "soo" |
| lo | /lo/ | like "low" |
The goal is max distinctiveness across modalities — so these sounds are spread in mouth shape, tongue placement, and timing (good for speech-to-sign or tactile mapping later).
Pronouns
Pronouns aren’t fixed "words" like in English. Instead, they act like references. For example:
ka→ "living entity"- Then you can say
loafter that in the same convo to refer back to that entity.
So something like:ka ti = "the dog"lo me = "it is happy"
(Assuming me = happy or emotive state)
They behave more like pointing mechanisms in programming, and are scope-bound to context.
Final Thoughts
You're spot on: 5 syllables is limiting — Kamelo is intentionally extreme, like a design provocation. It pushes me to see how much abstraction and compression can be done before the system collapses. Future iterations might have 12–20 syllables for balance.