[spoonjim]

The language will be “preserved” in that 300 years from now, a tape drive in Harvard’s Widener Library will have a Hokkien model on file for historians writing a tenure book designed to go right back into those dusty shelves.

[Apocryphon]

In the same way all verbal and symbolic language will no longer exist following the invention of the neuraljack, yes.

[nullc]

Most people use their spoken[1] language as a major part of their conscious minds. Do you expect that to change?

[1] (ASL speakers claim to 'think' in sign)

[jxf]

Some researchers think that this is a sort of limitation of our current language structures, and that there exist more general encodings of our ideas ("engrams") that we could express if we had perfect telepathy and perfect comprehension.

In this sense, we would exchange information that was of a higher order than language. For example, a complex idea like "the location where I will meet you for lunch this afternoon" would be independent of the verbal language we use it to express it.

We can see a similar (albeit more limited) exchange of language-independent structural ideas in mathematics. We distinguish between "numbers" (the idea of a quantity) and "numerals" (the symbols we use to describe that quantity). For example, `III`, `three`, `3`, `5 - 2`, and `the number of complete revolutions made by rotating 6*pi radians` are all ways of defining and representing the same common idea — "the number three". Going back to the previous example, imagine if an idea "where I'll meet you for lunch today" could be universally and unambiguously shared in a similar way, and you'll get a rough approximation of what perfect telepathy and perfect comprehension would be like.

[Aerroon]

I don't think it's just researchers that think this.

Every time that I have a word on the tip of my tongue I have an idea in mind that I wish to express, but I simply cannot remember the word to convey the concept. That is to say that I've already thought of the idea and am now merely looking for a way to express it.

However, I think that "thinking out loud" in your head has benefits. It makes the idea you wish to express more concrete and lets you iterate on it more easily. Think of it like writing down an equation when doing math: it gets easier to reason about it when it's expressed externally. I think ideas and thinking verbally in your head work the same way.

[nullc]

I asked in part because I don't have an internal monologue. I was quite surprised to learn that many other people have one and people who do usually seem surprised that monologueless people can think at all.

So, The idea of thinking without directly using language is less foreign to me than many. Nevertheless, I'll still sometimes use 'words' internally to reason things through which are too complex to solve intuitively, or when enacting a procedure I learned from someone else.

It's not clear to me that the engrams you imagine wouldn't just be a symbolic language under another name. I suppose if they were continuous in some vast highly dimensional space ... but even then one could discretize them at the resolution of distinguishable ideas and it's a symbolic language again. :)

[samus]

It's still a language, even if it is not a verbal one. Words and voice are just a way to encode it.

[Apocryphon]

Regarding the exact nature of the gestalt transhuman super-intelligences that will arise post-Singularity, who can say?