I think what the author meant was that the anthropic principle removes the lower bound on how likely it is for any particular species to evolve language; similar to how the anthropic principle removes the lower bound on how likely it is for life to arise on any particular planet.
So our language capability constitutes zero evidence for “evolving language is easy” (and thus dissolving any need to explain why language arose; it could just be a freak 1 in 10^50 accident); similar to our existence constituting zero evidence for “life is abundant in the universe” (and thus dissolving the Fermi paradox).
I think that makes sense. This seems similar to Vaniver’s interpretation (if I’m interpreting the interpretation correctly). But as I mention in my reply to that comment, that looks to me like a different argument to the OP’s one, and seems disjointed from “Since we shouldn’t expect to see more than one dominant species at a time”.
I think what the author meant was that the anthropic principle removes the lower bound on how likely it is for any particular species to evolve language; similar to how the anthropic principle removes the lower bound on how likely it is for life to arise on any particular planet.
So our language capability constitutes zero evidence for “evolving language is easy” (and thus dissolving any need to explain why language arose; it could just be a freak 1 in 10^50 accident); similar to our existence constituting zero evidence for “life is abundant in the universe” (and thus dissolving the Fermi paradox).
I think that makes sense. This seems similar to Vaniver’s interpretation (if I’m interpreting the interpretation correctly). But as I mention in my reply to that comment, that looks to me like a different argument to the OP’s one, and seems disjointed from “Since we shouldn’t expect to see more than one dominant species at a time”.