Comment by turing machine go brrr (turing-machine-go-brrr) on Language Ex Machina · 2023-06-26T15:11:19.011Z · LW · GW

Natural languages are exquisitely complex machines.

 

a consideration:

> Language is a symbiotic organism. Language is neither an organ, nor is it an instinct. In the past two and a half million years, we have acquired a genetic predisposition to serve as the host for this symbiont. The marine biologist Pierre Joseph van Beneden first distinguished between parasites, free-living commensals, obligate commensals and mutualists.
("Language as organism: A brief introduction to the Leiden theory of language evolution". George van Driem.)