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There are many things that differentiate human beings from other species,

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but the one thing that probably differentiates humans even from our closest relatives in the animal kingdom

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in a really big way is the notion that humans are collective learners.

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Collective learners.

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And to understand that, let's think about how even our closest relative in the animal kingdom,

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the chimpanzee, might communicate.

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So you might have one chimpanzee and over the course of his or her lifetime,

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they're able to learn a bunch of cool experiences, and they're even able to learn to use tools,

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manipulate tools, and who knows? Maybe even make tools.

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Maybe even get a twig someplace and take off the leaves, and then use that to go get ants out of a hole or whatever else.

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So they're able to learn all of this stuff over a lifetime.

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Now unfortunate for chimpanzees, well what IS fortunate for chimpanzees, is they do teach some of these

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things that they've learned to other members of their group, often their offspring.

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But what's unfortunate for chimpanzees is that they don't have a great way to communicate with each other.

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So for most chimpanzees, the way that they're able to teach is essentially by, kind of...showing.

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Not showing and telling, just showing.

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And so because this is such a, this is such a, a unprecise, or, or...not exact

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and, and such an inefficient way of communication,

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the really...all of the nuances of what this chimpanzee might be able to accumulate over his or her lifetime

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aren't able to be conveyed to the next generation, or to the other chimpanzees around,

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so you have tremendous energy loss.

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And in particular, all that can be conveyed are maybe the specific movements, or what you might be able

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to kind of observe in the present.

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All of the other things that maybe the chimpanzees are learning about...

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the times of year where this is be appropriate, or maybe they can convey some of that by showing

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them at the right times of year.

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But other nuanced aspects of it, or particular ways to hold something or twist something

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can only be shown. It can't be described in a very precise way.

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So you have all of this loss of experience, just loss of information.

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And then over the course of these animals' life, they may be able to learn the same amount again,

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they're able to learn maybe the same amount again, but then when they need to communicate it, they have the exact same problem.

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It's hard to communicate it with their, with what they have at their disposal,

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which is really just showing the other chimpanzees what they've done,

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and so once again, you have a loss of information.

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And what you have in this type of circumstance is, generation after generation,

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even though there is learning over the course of an individual chimpanzee's life,

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and even though they can communicate to, some of that, to each other,

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that form of communication is so, it loses so much information, and so much nuance

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that you never have an overall accumulation of knowledge, and wisdom in this chimpanzee population.

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Now humans, on the other hand, have something called symbolic language.

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And I'll talk about this in a second, but it's, it's, for now it's safe to say that human language is

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far more precise and far more efficient than just being able to show someone something.

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Imagine if you had to learn how to do something without being able to communicate verbally,

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you'd just have to look at someone else's actions.

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And then you'd have a good idea of how difficult it is for chimpanzees to teach other other.

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But in the case of human beings, we have this thing called symbolic language, that's a very precise,

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a very efficient way of communicating.

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So from one human being to another, you could actually communicate a good deal.

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Maybe not every single nuance and every single experience, but a good chunk of it.

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So right here I'm drawing about that much of it, to the next, to some other human being, maybe it is the offspring, maybe it

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is another member of the tribe, or the group, whatever it is,

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and then this human being might come up with some other innovations.

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They're able to build off of all of this learning from that previous generation or from that other human

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being that's around, and they're able to come up with their own, their own nuances, and their own innovations.

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And this one right over here might come up with his or her own nuances and innovations,

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and because they have a good communication mechanism, this one could even communicate to that one

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what he's learned, or what she's learned, and communicate a good chunk of that.

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Maybe not all of it, but maybe a reasonable bit.

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They can describe exactly how they do something, the times of years,

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when it's good to do it, when it's not good to do it,

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how to plan for the future, what's the history of this new learning.

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And so what you have going on here is because of this strong communication mechanism.

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So strong, precise, precise, efficient communication, efficient communication, communication.

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What you'd have is a human group, or eventually a human civilization,

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is able to have a collective memory. Is able to have a collective memory,

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In the case of the chimpanzees, in every generation, every chimpanzee is having to

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relearn the things that the other chimpanzees might have already done in previous generations.

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They're not able to really move forward or build on those in significant ways.

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In humans, as information is learned and experienced again,

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a good bit of that is able to be passed on to other humans.

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So this might be passed on. So all of this might be passed on,

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or a good chunk of this could be passed on to the next generation.

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And I'm not even talking about written language yet. This could even, this could still just be

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oral communication, which is still a very strong, precise, efficient means of communication.

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Written communication takes it to another level,

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but then this person over here, maybe she comes up with other innovations.

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And at some point you might say, well look, if everyone keeps having innovations and they

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keep learning what everyone learned in previous generations, maybe this will tap out

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the total amount of memory that a human being even has.

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And there's actually a case, and maybe this is why humans even have larger memories,

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because there is all of this collective knowledge to gain from one generation to another,

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from one human being to another,

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but there are some limits to this, and this is the other element where this collective aspect

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of collective memory and this collective learning becomes really powerful.

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A human being, because of this strong communication mechanism,

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is not just limited to the knowledge and the experience in their memory,

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they are able to tap into, so this human being right over here does not have this skill set,

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and that skill set maybe gets passed on to another human being.

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So let me copy and paste that, so let's say you copy...say you paste that...

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This other human being that's maybe living at the same time,

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and when that becomes relevant, when that becomes relevant, they could

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actually tap into it, and maybe they could learn it from that human being,

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or maybe it's in a different part of society, and this human being can build certain tools,

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or build certain things using this information, using that knowledge right over there

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and then this human being doesn't need to know that information,

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they can just leverage the output of that information to then build on top of it.

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So what allows human beings to do is not only convey information and build on information

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from generation to generation, human to human, it allows all of the human

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brains collectively, at any given point of time, to be one collective memory bank,

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that can be used to develop or innovate in specific domains,

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and adapt to specific parts of the ecosystem, or to teach other other.

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So all of a sudden, this is really unique as far as we can tell, in the animal kingdom.

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All of a sudden, it's not all about the brain, or the memory, of one individual member of a species,

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it now becomes about the brain, or the memory, of the entire civilization, or the entire group of the

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species. And just as an example of that, there's, as far as I know, there's no human being

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who knows how to do everything that all humans know how to do.

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I could imagine that there are, there is a chimpanzee that knows how to do everything

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that any other chimpanzee knows how to do.

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There are no humans that can be a fighter pilot, a doctor, a gymnast, a...lawyer,

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understands philosophy, speaks twenty different languages.

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As far as I know, that human being does not exist. And that's okay, because they can tap into the experiences,

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the abilities of other human beings to build up their civilization.

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None of us, as far as we know, knows how to do everything that we need to actually build our civilization.

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But the information is in our collective memory to actually do it.

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Now the next thing you might say is, okay, I started with this premise that we have a

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strong, precise, efficient means of communcation, and that other animals don't,

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but don't other animals actually have some form of language?

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So for example, don't...for example, even monkeys,

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wouldn't they screech when they're, when there's, when they're in danger?

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That's a form of communication, maybe a form of language.

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Maybe certain animals: birds, monkeys, maybe they have a song that they sing that can convey certain things.

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Maybe it's when they're, maybe it's when they're looking for a mate.

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Isn't that a form of communication?

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And these are, these are a form of communication, and a form of language,

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but these don't really come in play in terms of the teaching-learning.

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You don't see one chimpanzee making screeching sounds for learning sounds.

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They might do a little bit of it just to warn, maybe as a warning.

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But there's no deep nuance, or deep precision that's being able to convey by these, by these

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one off sounds, or even one off gestures.

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And what's particularly powerful about human language is that it is a symbolic language.

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It is a symbolic language.

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And when I say it's a symbolic language, I'm even saying it in a broader sense

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than even just written symbols.

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I'm talking about even the sounds themselves.

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So let's go to a time where we did not even have writings.

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And when we talk about symbolic languages, let's think about a non-symbolic language,

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so in a non-symbolic language, you might have some sound, let's call it sound one,

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and it has some meaning. Let's call it meaning one, meaning one.

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So this might be a certain type of scream, it means that a predator is approaching.

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And then you might have something like a sound two, or gesture two,

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and then it has some other meaning, it has meaning two.

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It might be a certain type of song, which means that I am in the mood to reproduce, or whatever else.

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You might have gesture three, gesture three, that has some direct meaning.

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It might mean that I have found food, or something like that. So meaning three.

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What humans have, they can do this, where particular sounds have particular meanings.

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So for example, in humans, you could have sound one, it refers to meaning one.

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I'll just refer it to meaning one.

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You could have sound two, that refers to meaning two.

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You could have sound three, that is, refers to meaning three.

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So these are just direct representaions.

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But what is really powerful about symbolic languages is that these, these, oral symbols

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can be combined according to set rules, or grammars,

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to have an infinite number of meanings!

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So what, this is what really makes human language transcend other languages,

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and really makes it this robust, precise communication mechanism,

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is you could have combinations.

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Sound one, sound two, sound three will now have another meaning, meaning four.

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Then you could maybe have a combination where you have sound three, sound one, and sound two,

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might have meaning five.

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And if you have tens of thousands of sounds, and, really, our oral words are those sounds in a given language,

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then all of a sudden you can have infinite meanings by putting them in different combinations.

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And if you think this is a little bit abstract, imagine that sound one is the sound,

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me saying the word "dog".

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And I'm not even gonna write it down, 'cause I wanna imagine a world even before written communication.

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So sound one is the sound "dog".

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Sound two is the sound "eats".

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And sound three is the sound "man".

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So, literally, sound one, if you heard "dog", you'd think

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okay, I'd visualize a dog of some type, and well, you'd have some visualization of a dog.

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And we all have one maybe.

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Sound two, if you heard "eats", you'd say okay, I imagine eating in some way.

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And sound three, "man", you have some visualization on it.

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And if it was a non-symbolic language, that's all you could get out of those three sounds,

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but now, in a symbolic language, we could combine those.

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We could say "dog eats man".

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So once again, we just reuse the three sounds, the three symbols,

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but now they're referring to a whole new, a much more complex meaning

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than just referring to certain objects or certain actions.

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Or you could have "man eats dog", which is not pleasant, but I guess in a desperate situation...

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But once again, it is another meaning that we can get out of the same sounds.

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And what these symbolic languages do, besides giving you an infinite number of meanings,

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they're allowed to give you more nuance, and really refer to things that are abstract.

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And including,and maybe most importantly, things like the present, the future, the past,

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kind of hypothetical things that really are necessary in order to really communicate,

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or optimally communicate all of the experiences, or the learnings

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from one entity to another.