Loyal to the Group of Seventeen: Star Trek's Darmok, Shaka, and the Tamarians revisited

Gerry Quinn · 20 Jun 2014, 21:58 · from 2014-June.txt.gz

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From: gerry at bindweed.com (Gerry Quinn)
Date: Fri, 20 Jun 2014 22:58:25 +0100
Subject: (urth) Loyal to the Group of Seventeen: Star Trek's Darmok,
 Shaka, and the Tamarians revisited
In-Reply-To: <CAMwO0gxy-Jtv6jscKiYZExUCb1okWaK5bsSR-Sz67pgX97paAQ at mail.gmail.com>
References: <CAMwO0gxy-Jtv6jscKiYZExUCb1okWaK5bsSR-Sz67pgX97paAQ at mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <53A4AE81.1030705 at bindweed.com>

On 20/06/2014 22:12, Gwern Branwen wrote:
> ...Given an absence of evidence either way, why not choose the more aggressive interpretation: Everything that takes place on the bridge of the Tamarian vessel during the episode is encapsulated into the single move, ?Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra.? So dense and rich is Tamarian speech, that these five words are sufficient to direct a whole crew to carry out an entire stratagem over two days? time, and not by following a script, but by embracing it as a guiding abstraction.

There is the issue that such a phrase contains a limited amount of 
information.  To successfully choose a plan based on such a phrase, 
Tamarians would have to be able to analyse the situation *on the basis 
of information that is shared by the speaker and the listener and known 
to both to be shared by both* so as to reduce the number of valid 
possibilities to an ordered list on which the phrase is long enough to 
determine one exact choice.

The biggest problem would seem to lie in the sharing of information.  
After all, if all Tamarians were perfect strategicians, and all shared 
all the same information, there would be no need for them to speak at 
all!  The act of speech, then, suggests that they do not assume everyone 
is fully informed.  But the bit-length of the phrase seems short for 
informing everyone of the relevant details of every situation they might 
encounter.

In truth, if I had to posit a rational explanation for the Tamarians, I 
think I would propose that they are in fact telepathic, and their 
phrases are a sort of cue-ing process which actually represents a 
decision in a communal mind.  They might not fully understand this, or 
how it contrasts with the thought processes of other speakers, themselves.

- Gerry Quinn

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