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The Autocrat's Language

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Re: The Autocrat's Language

#61

Post by pizza »

thenewwazoo wrote: post #53
mannykannot wrote: post #49

This is like a variant of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, which posits that your language constrains what you can think about, but I am not convinced (not in general, and not in this particular case.) It is not a failing of language that it can be used inconsistently, or to lie; this is inevitable. The problem in current political discourse is a growing preference among the electorate for having their emotions stimulated…

I think you're conflating the two. Take, for example, the word "election". If the word "election" can mean both an election, and a not-election – of the sort experienced in the USSR – then how do you describe the election you want to have? The word is meaningless, and thus it throws the very concept into doubt. This has nothing to do with Sapir-Whorf, which isn't really a strong proposition anyway. You have a concept…

Yeah, this makes sense to me according to my experience of people's perceptions of loaded words. When a word may seem like it has e.g. five or six meanings

- it conveys more bits of information

- plausible deniability -> capacity to retroactively compress the word's meaning

- people 'analyze'/recognize simpler words (only one meaning, i.e. GitHub) differently than they do loaded words (multiple meanings, i.e. dream)

- people take their own personal uncertainty (over which meaning is the correct one that they need to interpret the word as) as a sign that if they share their recognition, it's more likely to make them look like a fool in public

Observers realize that the original speaker's (e.g. Trump or Stalin) plausible deniability is a kind of insurance policy against audience members calling them out

Re: The Autocrat's Language

#62

Post by rhizome »

forapurpose wrote: post #34
ogre_magi wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's part of the charm. The issue of course is that if you don't flit in a distant metaphor, you tread disrespectfully upon _sacred ground_. To toe the line a little for you, the witch-hunters are activists (good, noble ones) looking for sinners (bad, evil ones) and preaching about a world where the sinners have all the power. In such a world, why would there be so many successful witch-hunters?

> a world where the sinners have all the power. > In such a world, why would there be so many successful witch-hunters? Because neither group has all the power (and there are many other groups too). The allegory, as someone pointed out, and the reasoning are both stretched past breaking.

Because neither group has all the power

About 45 years ago there was a chance that they might, but Nixon saw to that by inventing the War on Drugs.

Re: The Autocrat's Language

#63

Post by adrianratnapala »

elgenie wrote: post #48
YSFEJ4SWJUVU6 wrote: post #13

Regarding NPR's choice of words: it is in fact quite common to avoid very direct accusations in politics and news. I really doubt the author came about this for the first time ever, but rather wonder if he detested it as much each and every time earlier.

The author is a woman; Masha is the Russian diminutive for Maria.

Is there any phonological rule that can help tell? For the last name you can check "-ov" vs. "-ova", but what about given names?

In school I knew a boy named "Misha" (so assuming I am remembering his nationality correctly) it would seem that "-sha" can go with either sex.

Re: The Autocrat's Language

#64

Post by rhizome »

[deleted] wrote: post #42
eropple wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's very little "misinformation" about him at all. He's cased, and cased correctly. Your own cite demonstrates it amply. You struck me as better than buying this shit. You don't have to care, but I am disappointed.

[deleted]

Why don't you persuade us?

If you diff Moldbug and a harmless eccentric, which areas are concerning?

If you diff Moldbug and a harmless eccentric, which areas explain his greater audience?

Re: The Autocrat's Language

#65

Post by saulrh »

thenewwazoo wrote: post #53
mannykannot wrote: post #49

This is like a variant of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, which posits that your language constrains what you can think about, but I am not convinced (not in general, and not in this particular case.) It is not a failing of language that it can be used inconsistently, or to lie; this is inevitable. The problem in current political discourse is a growing preference among the electorate for having their emotions stimulated…

I think you're conflating the two. Take, for example, the word "election". If the word "election" can mean both an election, and a not-election – of the sort experienced in the USSR – then how do you describe the election you want to have? The word is meaningless, and thus it throws the very concept into doubt. This has nothing to do with Sapir-Whorf, which isn't really a strong proposition anyway. You have a concept…

I find it more useful to think in terms of information theory and the related results in machine learning, signals, and computational theory. For example, I claim that 'linguistic relativity', AKA the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, is an informal intuitive restatement of some of the consequences of Kolmogorov complexity and other parts of algorithmic information theory and machine learning. Put simply: Different languages are differently efficient for expressing and therefore working with a given piece of information. The hypothesis space you explore is defined by the language you use to express hypotheses and a hypothesis space that is smoother and cleaner in the region of the "true" or "target" function will give more correct results more easily.

In this case, confusing the meaning of the words that describe hypotheses near a particular target concept can force the use of a language that lacks terms that efficiently represent that concept, which dramatically hinders computations involving that concept.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12110997

Re: The Autocrat's Language

#66

Post by wruza »

adrianratnapala wrote: post #63
elgenie wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The author is a woman; Masha is the Russian diminutive for Maria.

Is there any phonological rule that can help tell? For the last name you can check "-ov" vs. "-ova", but what about given names? In school I knew a boy named "Misha" (so assuming I am remembering his nationality correctly) it would seem that "-sha" can go with either sex.

Diminutives are all the same, -a, -ya, -ik because of diminutive suffix replacing the ending. Full names usually end on -[y]a for women and on consonant for men. So there is no general rule, I think. (native speaker)

Edit: added -ik

Re: The Autocrat's Language

#67

Post by QAPereo »

mirimir wrote: post #59
adrianratnapala wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But also to the one that brought down the Berlin Wall.

Yes, and arguably to every revolution. Some were good, some were bad, and some were epically bad.

Don’t forget the ones which led to good, but were epically bad to live through... France for example.

Re: The Autocrat's Language

#68

Post by jhbadger »

microcolonel wrote: post #39
forapurpose wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> there is no coherent rightist opposition ... A common tactic of any populist group is to paint itself as a persecuted outsider. The far right and right have possibly never been stronger in the West, in fact. Throughout Europe, right-wing parties run government and far right parties have never had more power since perhaps WWII (and run government themselves in some countries). In the U.S., there is a large, coherent…

> There are a vast number of other popular right and far-right publications. There are many major funders (Kochs, Adelson, Mercers, etc.); The Kochs fund far-right publications? Which ones? They seem explicitly not far right, or even really right at all.

"Reason" is a far right-wing publication funded by the Kochs. Yes, I know people will claim that it is "libertarian" but in practice there is little difference. The magazine recently published an article entitled "The Climate Alarmists Are Wrong", basically parroting Republican talking points claiming that the science is unclear on the issue (it isn't).

Re: The Autocrat's Language

#69

Post by adrianratnapala »

mirimir wrote: post #59
adrianratnapala wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But also to the one that brought down the Berlin Wall.

Yes, and arguably to every revolution. Some were good, some were bad, and some were epically bad.

But in the case of bad revolutions, would the story have ended up any better if people had somehow maintained the spell of ignorance about the previous regime? I think it more likely that would just lead to an even worse revolution a bit further down the track.

Re: The Autocrat's Language

#70

Post by pvg »

adrianratnapala wrote: post #60
pvg wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would 'news' become dead? Nazism had a substantial impact on German both on its way in and out - it developed/repurposed its own special phraseology and terms and those terms later fell out of use (or at least, in out of use in the contexts of their Nazi use). But this happened through focused effort, up to and including laws. Nothing of the sort has happened or is likely to happen to the word 'news'.

As far as I know, there's never been a post-war effort to ban the word "Führer", nor did the Nazis try to remove the ordinary meaning. Heck, calling Hitler "The Leader" was in no way an abuse of language. And yet the word has become uncommon because of a kind of shared embaressment. Now I think tacon is wrong to think that "news" will go a similar way, but if it can happen to simple and basic words like "leader", the…

Germany was occupied and actively de-nazified so the idea that this stuff disappeared out of a genteel embarrassment seems ahistorical.
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