No, humans learn their languages through observation and generation - watching older people speak, and then imitating it. They get corrections, too, when they mispronounce or misuse words.

They mean at one point there were no older people to listen to in order to learn language because language did not exist yet. We somehow transitioned from grunts to words.

You've got a huge chicken and egg problem here that you haven't resolved.

I didn’t say everyone learns it from scratch at least one, I said we did.

That's not learning, though, is it? Inventing, maybe, or developing or evolving.

We either have the capacity to make boats and traverse the oceans or we don’t. These days almost nobody makes boats, but we sure used to and still can. What’s your point?

I have no idea what you're talking about and it doesn't really matter to me anyway. Enjoy your day.

Haha I love how you stay so polite while being a pompous a#$. A real double bind! I would apologise for being obtuse but I must say the Gloves Are Off. Good day to you sir!

ok thanks

Whatever semantic game you want to play here isn't relevant; the point is it's something humans can do that AIs cannot.

The brain is obviously pre-disposed to language. But evolution fueled learning is by no means from "thin air".

That’s a red herring. Ex post facto the activity of language use as a construction must supersede some enaction by capable actors.

This is a complete tautology in terms, and any dispute must therefore be over the ontology in which it is expressed. To elaborate how something came to be is not required to express that something is.

What makes capable actors capable in the first place is not derived from thin air. There's a reason a capable actor came to be where there was none generations prior. That reason did not come about without reaction to some outside vector.

Evolution optimized for language learning abilities before the full capabilities came. Evolution is not thin air.

The «air» is here an allegory for «large language corpus». It is self-evidently true that as we move backwards through history we eventually pass the first language utterance for any given definition of language or utterance. From here on out, the «air» is indeed «thin». There are still other things, but no «air» (i.e. «language corpora»).