protoparadoxical

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you're the pope now. nothing you can do about it

i never want to hear about the pope again ever

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is making/using fire something thats unique to humans or are there other animals that do that?

using fire is not unique to humans; some species of birds, such as the black kite, are known to carry smoldering foliage around in order to start forest fires and drive prey into more vulnerable positions. as far as i know, there are no extant species aside from humans that intentionally create fires without using a preexisting fire, although to be fair, humans struggle with that as well unless they have advanced tools or were taught be another human, so it might be possible for a particularly clever ape to figure it out and teach it to all their ape friends, and then it would stop being unique

there are other arguments that i didn't write out as well, like wearing clothing or making art. some of them i didn't think i could give a good enough defense to include, and a lot of them i didn't include just because the counterpoints from older participants like the linguist and the physicist would sound too similar to arguments that they had already made, and it would just feel like a rehash of previous parts of the dialogue. i pretty much explored it as much as i could without it getting too repetitive

thanks for being my first ask!

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gastronome: the answer is cooking, by the way. we're the only species that prepares our food

zoologist: we are certainly not the only species that prepares our food. famously, a certain group of macaque monkeys have been observed to clean their food and season it with saltwater. as for more cooking-like preparations, big headed ants marinate their food in the spit of their larvae to make it easier to digest. it's not exactly the same method, but it has a similar result of making the food quicker to eat and easier to digest. cooking in particular as a method of preparing food is unique to humans for now, but i have little doubt that you could teach a macaque how to make fire and they would be inventing new culinary traditions within a generation

gastronome: fine, other animals prepare their food, but cooking still makes us special. preparing food by cleaning is it so much more basic, and monkeys being capable of learning to cook is just speculation. and that whole thing with ants is specifically because ant's waists are too small for large bits of food to pass through; it's resulting from a completely different type of evolutionary pressure

zoologist: we don't really know the evolution of ant digestive tracts that well, and it's best not to assume that they started using larvae spit because they had narrow waists; maybe they were able to evolve narrow waists because they could rely on larvae spit. after all, humans would have a difficult time eating raw meat with how our teeth and jaws currently are, but we're pretty certain that we only became like that after we started cooking

linguist: cooking may be somewhat unique as a form of food preparation, but language is unique as a form of communication, and i still feel that language is the more important thing to our identity as a species and our moral considerations. if an animal started cooking, they would be a curiosity, but if an animal started talking, we would have to accept them as an equal

physicist: cooking is only possible because of fire, which i would argue is just another example of technology borne of humanity's unique ingenuity.

gastronome: cooking was pivotal in human evolution though: it allowed people to extract more energy from their food, and coincided with increased brain size. the language and ingenuity which humans demonstrate is only possible because of cooking

major league baseball pitcher: ya know, i've never seen an animal pitch a fastball

[all look to zoologist]

zoologist: yeah, no, you're right. throwing is pretty unique to humans. no other animal specializes in it

physicist: oh come on! after all this, you can't seriously be saying that throwing is what sets humans apart from animals!

remembering the scene in arrival when our linguist protagonist talks about how language is what separates humans from animals. and then a scientist she's talking to says hmm personally I think it's science that separates humans from animals. and I really wanted that scene to just keep going with experts from more fields weighing in on how their field of study is the most fundamental thing about humanity. just showing all their perspectives

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linguist: language is what separates humans from animals

physicist: i think it's science which separates humans from animals

linguist: but lots of people don't do science. and anyway, how would people publish their research without language? language is a necessary precursor to science

physicist: i don't mean the specific ways that we do formal science and research, i mean more like how humans analyze their environment to learn, rather than relying on instinct

zoologist: well lots of animals are capable of curiosity and learning. some species are even known to make and use tools. and as for language, while no animal aside from humans has been known to be capable of the narrow linguistic definition of 'language', many of them are capable of quite advanced forms of communication, and really, it's pretty unfair to say that the communication methods that other animals use are 'lesser' just because they don't fit the human standard. if you tried to teach a human to use bee communication, they would probably struggle as well. in the end, i don't think that humans should be considered separate from animals

linguist: you make some interesting points, but i still think that human language is superior for communication compared to other forms of animal communication because human languages allow for infinite regresses of embedded metalanguages, which makes it possible to talk about any aspect of consensus reality, at least theoretically

physicist: your comparison with other animals lacks nuance. sure, there are animals aside from humans who are capable of reasoning and tool use, but humans are far cleverer and can create for more advanced tools than any other animal-

linguist (under her breath): because language allowed humans to pass on increasingly complicated information for how to create increasingly complex tools

physicist: -if you could show me an animal that was capable of advanced metallurgy or something of that ilk, then maybe i can believe that they're not so different from humans, but i don't think there is anything like that native to earth

zoologist: you're both biased because you're humans, and you want to have a rational reason to justify your instinctual feeling of kinship with other humans over other, non-human animals. yes, humans do have particularly good reasoning, tool use, and communication abilities, but even if humans are especially good at them, they're still all things that other animals do in a more general sense, so i still don't think that they should be sufficient for considering humans as separate from the rest of the animal kingdom

theologian: you're all talking around each other here. you all have different standards for what is and is not significant, so even if you can agree on the facts, you will never agree on the conclusions. but there is one thing that sets humans apart that none of you have considered: humans are separate because humans --unlike animals-- were given a higher purpose by god

physicist: wait, why did they bring a theologian on our mission to try to communicate with aliens? no offense, but i don't see how your field of knowledge will be relevant at all

remembering the scene in arrival when our linguist protagonist talks about how language is what separates humans from animals. and then a scientist she's talking to says hmm personally I think it's science that separates humans from animals. and I really wanted that scene to just keep going with experts from more fields weighing in on how their field of study is the most fundamental thing about humanity. just showing all their perspectives

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it doesn't seem like a linguolabial consonant at all. her tongue doesn't curve up towards her upper lip, but down and away. the it seems like she is pronouncing the sound using the back of her tongue rather than the tip, so i would analyze it as a dorsal-alveolar lateral approximate, or for the sake of transcription, an advanced palatal lateral approximate

[ˈnː jɹ̩ ˈgənə ˈæftʰə ˈgoʊ ɹə ↗ ˈd͡ʒeɪːʎ̘]

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that is all