If you believe in Mark Twain's famous line "travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry and narrow-mindedness", and if these earbuds promote travel by lowering the discomfort of communication, then you can expect that the earbuds would help reduce things like racial conflict.
Local sectarian conflicts are definitely a problem in lots of places, but a bigger problem in the US right now is that lots of folks never meet anyone outside their own culture. I'm not sure making it easier to communicate will help (lots of people don't even have passports...), but maybe it will, and I don't see how it could hurt.
I don't think so. We treated American communists with pretty much the same contempt --not that we were not right in condemning the ideology, which as we know leads to massive deaths due to ideology -gulags, cultural revolutions, etc., to reach "purity" but still, it's evident speaking a common language does not prevent us from treating others ill.
We see it from new-Nazis as well as antifa --they actually hate people with mainstream views and, for the most part, we're the same culture, writ large.
If Joe Sixpack and Mohammed can communicate with each other they won't sit idly by while the fear-mongers use the other to justify terrorism/enforced liberty importation. At least in theory.
This would seem easily disproven by any country that has sectarian conflicts where both sides speak the same language. Or for instance, racial division in America.
I'm not sure what the argument here is. That the US would be better off if Republicans and Democrats spoke mutually unintelligible languages? By what logic does it make sense to say "group A and group B are at odds; group A and group B speak the same language; therefore we disprove that speaking the same language will ever resolve anything"?
>If Joe Sixpack and Mohammed can communicate with each other they won't sit idly by while the fear-mongers use the other to justify terrorism/enforced liberty importation
is easily disproven by the fact that this still happens all the time among people who speak the same language. Speaking a different language doesn't help communication obviously, but speaking the same language doesn't magically remove prejudice and hatred.
Saying that example disproves the grandparent is being pedantic.
What they were saying was that "if Joe Sixpack and Mohammed can communicate with each other, [more often] they won't sit idly by while the fear-mongers [...]"
The counter-example of single-language conflict ignores the larger forest of language being a key leveller of cultural differences (i.e. necessary but not sufficient), as well as gp's obviously statistical rather than absolute example.
It's pretty clear he or she wasn't saying that 'as long as two people speak the same language, there will never be conflict between them.'
That this is some wishful thinking that the “differences” between incompatible parts of cultures are just language barriers.
It’s funny that everyone brings up Muslims while one is likely to have harder times finding English speakers in many parts of Europe than in many parts of the Middle East.
But somehow you don’t dehumanize French or Italian ruralists?
> Name one current conflict in which language and the inability to communicate is a barrier.
It'd be easier to list the wars in which language wasn't a barrier. Excluding the category of civil wars, there aren't many wars where opposing sides largely speak a common language.
Well, that's a pretty big one, wouldn't you say? Some of the biggest, hairiest and most bloody conflicts have been civil.
The Syrian government and the rebels speaks the same language, and so do most of IS. The Hutus and Tutsis in Rwanda speaks the same languages. North and South Korea speaks the same language. Croatia/Serbia/Bosnia speak (almost) the same language. The jews in Nazi Germany spoke german.
If you're trying to get to a theory that conflicts are primarily or even significantly fueled by an inability to communicate, you can't just hand-wave civil wars away.
In-group/out-group conflicts is a powerful force and it cuts a lot deeper than language.
Oh, ferchrissakes, you're really scraping the bottom of the barrel now. The OP did a 'name one' gambit, and I pointed out that there were plenty.
Now, I'm not sure if you know this, but in WWII, the Germans fought more than just their own German-speaking Jewish population. They fought the French (don't speak German), the British (don't speak German), the Americans (don't speak German), the Polish (don't speak German), the Belgians (don't speak German), the Soviets (a collection of people, none of whom speak German), the Danish (don't speak German), the Norwegians (don't speak German), the Canadians (don't speak German), the Australians (don't speak German), the Dutch (DO speak German... but their assisting colonies didn't), the Indians (don't speak German), the Kiwis (don't speak German), the South Africans (don't speak German), the Greeks (don't speak German), the Chinese a little bit (don't speak German), the Rhodesians (don't speak German), some Yugoslavians (don't speak German), the Kenyans (don't speak German), an assortment of smaller, lesser-involved nations such as Costa Rica (also don't speak German) and, towards the end of the war, Italy... which doesn't speak German.
Not to mention that on the eve of the war, there were only about 200,000 jews left in Germany - most emigrated in the half-decade beforehand to distant places like the US. The 6M jews that were killed in the Holocaust were drawn from all over Europe - about half of them from Poland. It wasn't 6M German-speaking jews that died in the camps.
WWII claimed the lives of over 60M people, and 200k people is a rounding error on this number. It's drawing a ridiculously long bow to claim it as a civil war because a few of the victims lived in-country.
> you can't just hand-wave civil wars away.
Again, I wasn't. I was responding to the OP's 'name one'. It wasn't even a 'name one where it's a cause', just 'name one where it's a barrier'.
Agreed. I do think the tech is 'cool', though. I was recently in a location where nobody spoke English, outside of a few words like 'hello', etc. We communicated a lot nonverbally, quite easily. We laughed together, attempted to speak each others language(which led to more laughing), did things together, ate together, etc. Sure we couldn't sit around and discuss politics or philosophy, but I found that situation more endearing oddly.
Communication enables social inclusivity which brings people together. I went to a large university and many exchange students would gravitate towards their own groups during social situations. Picture a group of individuals from $X country huddled together in a corner of a bar for a couple hours not able to talk to anyone else.
As far as I read in no way shape or form were they talking about 'conflict' ie war which is what you seem to be implying?
War is a blip.
This device isn't going to translate mosquito (for now, I'm sure at some stage it will, the possibilities are exciting for apps that analyze sounds around you)
Yeah. In Israel we have an NGO that selects the most inflammatory stuff that gets said on Arab news media about Israel and the Jews, and translates it into Hebrew and English. Honestly, it would be far better for Arab-Israeli relations if that shit was left untranslated.
Imagine if instead of that, Israeli kids all had Arab friends they chatted with online every day while playing video games. That's the sort of thing this technology could be used for.
There are plenty of Arabs living in Israel, and last time I've checked all Israeli kids study Arabic in School as a 3rd language.
This is a very rosy sentiment but it's unrealistic not only because of the existing cultural differences and bias, but also because of the premise of the multiplayer aspect, play DOTA, BF or HALO without muting other users and tell me how it goes.
I'm pretty sure most middle easterners including Israelis don't need Google's magical earbuds to understand the meaning of "ya ibn sharmuta"...
I used to play lots of Gears of War without muting the microphone and made several friends. All of them spoke English. I've learned a few other languages at school, but none of them well enough to make friends while playing a game online.
I guess you're talking about MEMRI- a pure propaganda/ PR operation for Israel, founded by former Mossad agents, that often purposefully mistranslates the quotes to put arabs in the worst possible light:
Name one current conflict in which language and the inability to communicate is a barrier.
While the sentiment is nice and fluffy it’s also without any substance.
This is a toy for tourists and expats not a tool for world peace.