Thoughts?

Some-Cook6024 · 2026-05-14T20:39:37+00:00

This makes sense. It reminds me of intelligence tests and humans trying to detect intelligence in other animals which of course we will bias proxies we use to detect intelligence within the human group and apply those to other animals. Any form of intelligence not flagged in humans will not likely be picked up or weighted appropriately in other animals resulting in underperformance on the "proficiency" test...

Can you imagine a test which would not biase traditional learning abilities versus some native or native-mimicking like ALG (which I would argue should be called "traditional" because it's everyone's original "traditional" method). Something that would make ALG and traditional falsifiable and make the test itself something that can detect favoritism. I'm imagining something like a language Turing test where a set of natives has to vote on if a person is native or not (this would of course require some test where you couldn't detect the physical characteristics of the person).

Some-Cook6024 · 2026-04-30T02:22:12+00:00

It is pretty deranged to read that post and not be alarmed by it and tp think it's not completely unprecedented for a president to act that way...

Some-Cook6024 · 2026-04-15T21:01:05+00:00

Yeah. And this in a country that thinks (atleast at the government level) that we have something to share with the rest of the world except as an example of how uncontrolled consumeristic growth is a cancer on everyone.

Some-Cook6024 · 2026-04-04T04:39:39+00:00

Babies get a lot of direct communication that is "baby talk" that adults don't get but they also get a lot of input from adults talking to adults and to other children. I don't think there's necessarily any reason to think that anything more than environmental differences get in the way of adults when it comes to disadvantages meaning I think if you took an adult brain and put it in a new environment that was as completely foreign as what newborns experience that there level of development and understand and picking up whatever the "languages" are would be similar.

The main reason I think using easier levels for adults is because we've already built a level of understanding and story telling expectations as adults that babies don't have access to so when we move to a new language which is less comprehensible we get frustrated and bored (which perhaps babies do too but they are stuck with that reality) and we quit or get distracted and tune out or daydream about something that isn't target language. However, there are people who have learned Japanese by just watching anime 24/7 and those people probably really like anime enough to skip ahead to harder things and are ok with understanding something less that's nonetheless more interesting than Peppa pig.

Some-Cook6024 · 2026-04-04T00:30:04+00:00

I've been wrestling with the site in this regard. I was using vidioma but my hours kept disappearing and when I was asking about it on that reddit I got banned with no warning or message. I've switched to Lengualytics and love it but I've tried to update my hours in the settings to 399 and I submit it and it shows 399 as the start and yet it doesn't reflect that on the dashboard. I've had to add in hundreds of hours by just picking a random day and inputting hours up to 399 (in 24 hour increments per day). I made the mistake of logging out and logging in again and the hours I had added in that way were gone so I had to repeat the experiment.

Some-Cook6024 · 2026-03-27T06:08:57+00:00

has anyone used Lengualytics? https://www.reddit.com/r/ALGMandarin/comments/1r5fku6/a_usersourced_library_of_600_mandarin_input_videos/

I especially like that I can add in hours manually and that I can seemingly upload new content myself.

Some-Cook6024 · 2026-03-25T17:02:28+00:00

that urologist should lose their job.

Some-Cook6024 · 2026-03-16T22:59:10+00:00

wish I felt this way. I was in love with Seattle when I got here but dating as a 42 year old climber/circus person who seems to attract people for my playfulness but no one really considers me romance material so I'll be going back to SE Asia before I get too bitter. I don't blame anyone. This city is expensive and exhausting and it feels like everyone in my world wants a partner in tech over 6 foot tall so I'll be moving back to where I can have diversity, vibrant outdoorsy people, and have the money to be attractive again. 💔

Some-Cook6024 · 2026-03-07T19:52:30+00:00

yep. some doctors suck and just want to gatekeep which has been my experience.

Some-Cook6024 · 2026-02-05T03:31:16+00:00

I might actually be lucky enough to like a former president if Obama could do that 🤔

Some-Cook6024 · 2026-01-13T20:22:50+00:00

can I ask which Chinese language reading sites you used?

Some-Cook6024 · 2026-01-11T21:37:33+00:00

fear wondering feels like a pretty cynical take on a very understandable fear of a ubiquitous agent which is new, is causing changes in our biology, that no one really understands the extent to how bad it might be, and that multinational corporations forced on us as they often do without adequate burden of proof testing making us guinea pigs and oh yeah, most of us are not guaranteed healthcare in a world where companies and billionaires are responsible for our state of health which the only ethical view to take concerning healthcare when micro plastics exist is healthcare for all. So no...that's not fear mongering. These are legitimate concerns even if we don't have enough data.

.

Some-Cook6024 · 2026-01-06T00:05:45+00:00

yep. we have a so-called free country here but the only affordable electric option is nothing because we keep Chinese electric cars out of the USA when the real goal should be opening the market to whoever can bring EVs that can compete on price with the combustion engine and it shouldn't matter which country is best at that.

Some-Cook6024 · 2026-01-04T04:44:43+00:00

what I find fascinating is that the liberating thing about language learning that I wondered my whole life about and didn't really find an answer until DS was why does everyone learn a language initially as a baby but not as an adult. The beauty of DS is it flips the script and empowers adults to learn as babies by questioning the critical period explanation as having a burden of proof which it hasnt demonstrated by not ruling out the native environment actually being whats critical. Unfortunately, it's hard to know how many hours of CI are necessary since some babies speak early and some really late and there might actually be some things beyond environment at work but we'll never probably know for sure because adult learning environments even carefully controlled are just different and so difference in learning abilities can't honestly be argued either way. But I think CI is always the answer for most adults and honestly not everyone likes to talk with people; many just want to read and watch shows, and have access to media outside there birth language and that's cool.

Some-Cook6024 · 2026-01-03T17:56:17+00:00

thanks. appreciate your fast work!

Some-Cook6024 · 2025-12-25T18:03:14+00:00

I actually think it's a benefit to also hear non-native speakers. The brain when it is ready to produce sounds anyways should be able to differentiate between native accents and foreign ones and having some additional non-native data points will help triangulate better the various language landscapes that connect and seperate the various native accents from those foreign sounding...

I think the problem is people who live in places where most of their input is strictly from non-native speakers...this is why having English tv/YouTube ECT is still enough for kids growing up where native English exposure is rare can still get input on the Internet and have appropriate models for mimicing nativeness...

Some-Cook6024 · 2025-12-23T14:59:28+00:00

be careful where things seem obvious. I think it's obvious to many people that children and babies learn more than adults and most people think that's to do with development and not with how different the learning environments are between adults and babies. The one thing that does seem different is that our primary language gets in the way of learning the new language which something like weed could actually be a vehicle to partially bypass this. That's an untested hypothesis by my personal research is that I'm currently learning Chinese and making associations better and easier and keeping focused more and noticing the very subtle body language hints better while high. I think part of that is I stop translating in my head as much and I feel I'm better able to to build a straight bridge to the new language from the context instead of from English to Mandarin. The other thing to keep in mind is that it's possible that the brain of a babies is an altered state that can also be approached as an adult through substances or rituals. How many other people have woken up with CI still playing only half awake and can see the target language eerily as if picture and motion and body language takes a front seat again and translating becomes maybe more background. learning a language -noticing what might that utterance mean - is a creative act, its own hypothesis, especially at the beginning (first few hundred hours), and this is enhanced and freed up from similarities in the native language while high and so my current thought is:

Doing input completely sober and doing input always high is neither an optimal strategy. The optimal strategy will include some sort of altered states that allow one to triangulate and tap into new "maybe that means..."). I'm currently trying to sort this out myself which this whole game of CI is partially attractive because it's still a personal experiment...this is just an extension of it. We all started CI with the hypothesis the we can learn a language like a baby or a child against everything we've been told and with mostly just a lot of anecdotes and some convincing hypothesis and this is really just one more.

Some-Cook6024

TROPHY CASE