logoalt Hacker News

mostlysimilaryesterday at 7:20 PM3 repliesview on HN

No, but come on. If you insert a computer into your brain and wake up tomorrow speaking German, would you be proud you could speak German? Wouldn't you rather work diligently to learn the language and be proud of that effort?


Replies

QuantumNomad_yesterday at 7:47 PM

Depends on why the person is wanting to be able to speak German.

If you only want to speak German for its own sake, then maybe it does seem silly to be proud of what the brain computer did for you.

But there are many other reasons to want to be able to speak German. Thanks to his brain computer, a French cheese maker could travel to Germany to promote his cheeses in a new market to great success without having to rely on the German speaking skills of expensive to hire people, and without wasting years to learn German on his own when all he wanted to do was to make cheeses and grow his customer base for his cheese. German in and of itself was never a goal to him.

Just like computer programming is not a goal in and of itself to a lot of people, and who would otherwise have to spend time to learn programming instead of doing the thing they want to do, or having to hire software engineers that might cost more than they could ever hope to afford.

And even though the computer is doing something for the person, they are leveraging that for something that they feel pride and accomplishment in. Such as for example to use German (done by the computer) to expand your cheese customer base into Germany (your own accomplishment that was only possible thanks to the existence of the German speaking skills of the computer).

tekneyesterday at 7:50 PM

Absolutely -- why on earth would I spend more time and effort than I have to?

Now I can focus on the reason why I wanted to learn German in the first place, like appreciating German culture or talking to German people.

Note this is not saying "why learn the language at all there's a translator" since learning a language lets you experience the culture more intimately and communicate better -- lots of things are "untranslatable". But if somehow the implant gave you that necessary context, why not?

john_strinlaiyesterday at 7:24 PM

would i? no.

would i care if someone else is proud in that scenario? also no.

show 1 reply