(September 2, 2021 at 12:43 pm)The Grand Nudger Wrote: Human beings do it all the time - especially when we want or need to be quiet while doing something - or don't want the other guys to understand what we're doing.
Combinations of drilled behavior, intimate knowledge of your coparticipants abilities derived through play, and explicit body language and gestures have all been used to say.......assault a fortified position in the dead of night, or nab some fucker out of a crowd before he realizes he's been id'ed. Then, there are those dogs again - which might explain why we use them in those situations. We can communicate with and instruct and train dogs, which learn and participate in our strategies in a very exacting environment..and it's not on account of how they do words. Grantedm they;re not as good at communicating their plans to us as we are communicating ours to them...but I think that might make us the dummies in that exchange, not the dogs.
Other primates do this too, btw - in their conflicts, sans the use of dogs. Chatter goes nuts before a raid then they go silent as they cross the territory border...until it comes time to rip limb from limb in a pure orgy of blood. We're more disciplined, in that regard, we can do it calmly.
The short version - do you remember when you learned the gesture of looking at the person next to you, pointing to your eyes, and then pointing to an object you saw? Do you need to know the words for that (or for whatever you see), or any word for anything, to understand and use that prompt, to learn it..or learn from it? Imagine going into the mountains with me, and all that could be accomplished between us without a single word.and all that you could learn about being out there, and about elk... as I pointed out interesting or leverageable routine behaviors. Imagine being on a jobsite framing a house with a mute carpenter who shook his head and showed you how to do it right every time you messed up.
How do you explain. instruct or stratigize with out words?
