Love discovering random Wikipedia articles! Just this week I started a newsletter about the random articles I come across:
https://randomwalk.substack.com/
Going to use this one in my next email :)
Bouba/Kiki Effect
61–70 of 98 posts
Re: Bouba/Kiki Effect
#62Earlier quoted context omitted.
Consulting people who are intuitively skilled in some area can often be a good way to get a head start on understanding a problem. Given the seeming universality of imitation in humans, the assumption of complete arbitrariness actually seems like the bolder claim.
The strange thing is that many of these people seem to be unable to make predictions a priori, choosing to use their knowledge only for confirmation. If only humanity could harness their intellect and knowledge for search rather than confirmation.
It would be great, but I guess many people who have a prodigious ability in some area may not appreciate the dead ends less fortunate people get stuck in. One could also point to innovators whose artistic or scientific insights go unrecognized early in their career or even during their lifetimes.
I came across some valuable advice in a book once, though sadly I forget the author ant title: be ahead of your time, but only by about 20 minutes or so.
Re: Bouba/Kiki Effect
#63Earlier quoted context omitted.
does it always have to be a ring? I've always imagined a year vertically/top down. Each month a slice. Also alphabet letters in color. Each letter having a distinct color.
Do you have synesthesia? The alphabet color thing is a common marker of it
I think I do. As far back as I can remember - I've always seen numbers & letters in vivid color. As well as things like calendar/datetime, distance and direction in some type of geometric shape. I though that was how everyone perceived the world. It wasn't until much later when I came across an article on synesthesia that learned that it was actually a thing.
Re: Bouba/Kiki Effect
#64Earlier quoted context omitted.
does it always have to be a ring? I've always imagined a year vertically/top down. Each month a slice. Also alphabet letters in color. Each letter having a distinct color.
Nope, it doesn't need to be a ring. I was deep into synesthesia stuff when I worked at UCSD and had a friend participate in an experiment at VS Ramachandran's lab and one of the neat things is that a lot of the commonalities are culturally or temporally specific. Many of the people with numeric synesthesia use a ring because they resemble CLOCKS! 1-12 is a common pattern and most people with synesthesia that grew up…
So couple of things might have helped shape the way I assign colors or structure to things. At least that's my theory - For numbers and letters, I think that might've come from pre-school alphabet or numbers book. I've always pictured the letter 'A' as always being yellow. B was always red , then C was green, D was orange , E as kind of purple, F as pink and so on. For numbers Zero was always white, 1 being black, 5 being bluish.
For time scale - I grew up in the late 80. So planning and scheduling was always done on a wall mounted calendar in my parent's kitchen or mom's day planner. So I think the concept of a year/month/hours in a day where always superimposed in my head as either a grid pattern for the month like any other calendar , or up/down rectangular scale for hours in a day or clock. Same goes on how I visualize a year. Priors years are just vertical block on the left of the current year block. Future years were on the right of the current year. Same for decades. Direction & distance were always like a measuring ruler going either left or right.
Re: Bouba/Kiki Effect
#65"If you saw two guys named Hambone and Flippy, which one would you think liked dolphins the most? I'd say Flippy, wouldn't you? You'd be wrong, though. It's Hambone."
-Jack Handy
Re: Bouba/Kiki Effect
#66The primary author of the Dictionary of Japanese Grammar book series, Makino Seiichi, presents a related hypothesis about sound symbolism in Japanese. He identifies a pattern that "hard" sounds like K often appear with words associated with distance between the speaker and the subject, whereas sounds like N are associated with less distance. For instance, the clause nominalizing particle KOTO expresses a more objecti…
But koko/kore/kono vs soko/sore/sono doesn’t seem to match that hypothesis. How do you make sure you’ve got enough examples to prove the argument?
Re: Bouba/Kiki Effect
#67Earlier quoted context omitted.
'Symbolism' is a terrible word to describe something like this. Symbols are convention and can change. This is the opposite - an innate cross-sensory connection that will not change.
Does a lion symbolize something fierce? The Book of Isaiah notwithstanding, I doubt that symbol will change.
> The Book of Isaiah notwithstanding
For those unfamiliar with the Bible: hyperpape is referring to Isaiah 11:6–7, 65:25, prophecies of the time when God assumes more direct kingship over the earth, featuring herbivorous, peaceful lions.
Notwithstanding this, Isaiah does feature lions as fierce beasts in more places: 15:9, 21:8, 30:6, 31:4, 35:9, 38:13.
Re: Bouba/Kiki Effect
#68Earlier quoted context omitted.
It’s structurally the same. You can choose a lion, a wolf, a shark, etc, but it is not arbitrary that you choose some such animal to symbolize ferocity, and not a rabbit. There’s some bias to associate sounds with particular images or concepts, but we have different languages because we don’t choose the same words. If anything, the consistency of symbolism is much greater than inter-linguistic consistency of how word…
I don't understand what point you are trying to make. You seem to have made exactly mine. Symbolism is a choice. The Bouba/Kiki thing is not.
they're arguing that symbols are not arbitrary, which is true but I think they inferred that you were making that argument as opposed to the softer "symbols are conventional" one that you did make. Convention does not necessarily imply arbitrariness.
If symbols were arbitrary then maybe a rabbit could symbolise ferocity, but they are instead more like metaphors that need to tie into something concrete.
Re: Bouba/Kiki Effect
#69Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't understand what point you are trying to make. You seem to have made exactly mine. Symbolism is a choice. The Bouba/Kiki thing is not.
they're arguing that symbols are not arbitrary, which is true but I think they inferred that you were making that argument as opposed to the softer "symbols are conventional" one that you did make. Convention does not necessarily imply arbitrariness. If symbols were arbitrary then maybe a rabbit could symbolise ferocity, but they are instead more like metaphors that need to tie into something concrete.
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Re: Bouba/Kiki Effect
#70I first learned about this effect from Hempuli, the developer of the game "Baba Is You". It turns out that "Baba" and "Keke", two named objects that the player can control, were named after this effect! Hempuli talked about this during one of their twitch streams many months back. (I can't say enough wonderful things about this game)
I was just coming here to say that! Hempuli studies psychology in uni, he's got always interesting stuff to say about brain quirks and psychological effects.