offtopic, but I can't fathom why academia and Nature specifically thinks that 2 columns of tiny text is a comfortable format for reading off screen
Language is primarily a tool for communication rather than thought [pdf]
271–280 of 404 posts
Re: Language is primarily a tool for communication rather than thought [pdf]
#272In college I was struck by a housemate's law books. They only contained text with no pictures, drawings, diagrams, tables, graphs, formulae, or any of the other tools for organizing information common to engineering. They looked to be extremely tedious and boring. Later, another former housemate, a math major who was developing software, went to law school for a JD. It was his opinion that many of the tools from comp…
> the tools from computer science were useful for deciphering the more complex laws and regulations. I've sometimes thought that certain aspects of law (e.g. contracts) are very similar to the strict rule-based thinking required in programming, and that the same basic logical thinking is required. It's just that some concepts have been formalised differently between the fields, and also that law has inherent fuzzines…
In the modern day, there's almost no way to decipher the true precise meaning of a law just from its text. What really matters is case law - how the law has been applied in practice by courts over the years.
Re: Language is primarily a tool for communication rather than thought [pdf]
#273Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I've never really had a strong internal monologue when thinking I'm curious, what is it like when you read something? Is it just not meditated by a monologue at all?
I definitely have an inner monologue im some situations, reading is a good example. I can speed read in which case I don't really have a perception of the sounds, but if I'm closely reasing something then I do have a sense of the sounds if words as I'm reading. The idea of thinking independtly like that though seems unbearably slow to me (although lots of very clever people report doing it, so obviously it isn't for…
I think almost exclusively through inner monologue, and I find I can't speed read at all. If I'm not vocalizing I'm not thinking, so when I try to not vocalize in order to speed read I don't retain anything. It's like my brain is incapable of processing the words if they aren't being vocalized.
Re: Language is primarily a tool for communication rather than thought [pdf]
#274Earlier quoted context omitted.
> * น้ำใจ (Nam-jai) (Thai): Literally "water from the heart". Being very nice and helpful without expecting anything back. "Charity"
Charity is closer to ใจบุญ (jai-bun) than น้ำใจ (nam-jai). A mixture of "act of kindness" and "good will" would be a more fitting translation, but the interesting part here is that "sportmanship" is also considered an act of น้ำใจ (น้ำใจนักกีฬา nam-jai nak-kee-la or literally. sportman's nam-jai). We also have a word เสียน้ำใจ (sia-nam-jai) for when our nam-jai ended up as a waste, or for when the other party is bein…
In the King James Bible you have lovingkindness but I guess that might be a mistranslation of the Hebrew checed which literally means "covenant loyalty." But I feel like lovingkindness even if it was originally mistranslated has the same connotation as nam-jai.
Re: Language is primarily a tool for communication rather than thought [pdf]
#275Earlier quoted context omitted.
As someone with Aphantasia, this is fascinating to me. There have been other aphantasics who report gaining the ability to visualize after mental exercises, and what you’re describing sounds somewhat similar. No luck for me yet, but I’m really interested in the idea that I could actually learn these skills…
This is such an interesting topic. I believe I also have aphantasia and I find that communicating about the topic is rather challenging as the right vocabulary doesn't seem to exist (or I'm ignorant of it). I have no "mind's eye" and can't produce an image in my head. But confusingly, I am quite good at the mental 3D manipulation. I can spin the cow in my head and describe its orientation, but I don't actually see th…
I have a form of aphantasia, but with that lack of visuals I also have a rich internal sense of touch. Like you, I can create and manipulate 3d objects in my mind; I really feel them down to texture and temperature (and I must say, that cow has textures I didn't want to feel, thanks for nothing) Most of my dreams are like this too -- I know where everything is, but I don't see it.
But my aphantasia isn't complete. Sometimes when I think of a person I get a dim image of their face for about a tenth of a second. And very rarely, I do see things in dreams.
Re: Language is primarily a tool for communication rather than thought [pdf]
#276An important concept , and one that also has implications for mental health treatment. Eg, many talk therapies operate under the assumption that 'saying the wrong words in your head' is a factor maintaining the problem, and replacing these with better ones will result in improvement. But since words are not thoughts, and further they are not mental actions (such as relaxing), saying different words in your head is on…
Words are thoughts but thoughts are not necessarily words. I do think words form better thoughts. Without words, thoughts are memories and can shift and change meaning and I won't be aware of it. If I think my thoughts in words then I can review my thoughts more carefully and be sure the meanings are not changing.
If I'm solving some complicated problem, this is a big deal since if my solution to a sub-problem changes that's very bad. Of course also I can then write my thoughts down and refer back to them repeatedly so I can be sure they remain consistent.
Re: Language is primarily a tool for communication rather than thought [pdf]
#277Earlier quoted context omitted.
Storage I have no idea. (for that matter, I have little idea how we store non-linguistic thoughts) Communication is primarily via posture, secondarily via sound. No "grammar" is involved, intensification is via intensification of signal, not addition of symbols. (that said, much human-animal communication is by means of arbitrary symbols, just that each symbol is serving as a sign because combinations of symbols and…
>> Storage I have no idea. (for that matter, I have little idea how we store non-linguistic thoughts) Efficiently, probably. There was an article about chickadees' memories, recently: https://www.theguardian.com/science/2024/mar/29/birds-create... Although I haven't read the original article. >> "Hey, you, thumb-monkey, feed us!" Well, they do stick around because we can open tin cans...
I am bitterly disappointed in the error message:
cat: food in tin cans: No such file or directory
cat: can't open food in tin cans
make: *** No rule to make target `love'. Stop.Re: Language is primarily a tool for communication rather than thought [pdf]
#278In college I was struck by a housemate's law books. They only contained text with no pictures, drawings, diagrams, tables, graphs, formulae, or any of the other tools for organizing information common to engineering. They looked to be extremely tedious and boring. Later, another former housemate, a math major who was developing software, went to law school for a JD. It was his opinion that many of the tools from comp…
I was the only one in my class in law school who used mind maps and spaces repetition (back then on a Palm Pilot).
After I graduated, new professors came in who now are popularizing such methods, writing books about it, etc..
I think it’s a zeitgeist thing. If you’re too early, nobody will take you seriously. But at some point the tide is strong enough to break through.
Kinda the same as with AI/automation. I tried selling this to lawyers in 2020 and failed miserably. Three years later, ChatGPT became a thing, and now every lawyer wants a piece of AI.
It’s not the better mousetrap. It’s not people wanting new things that moves the world. It’s people not wanting to be left behind.
(Slightly paraphrasing the late Charlie Munger.)
Re: Language is primarily a tool for communication rather than thought [pdf]
#279There are many concepts in our thought stream without a 'word' or even a simple 'phrase' to label them. A word or a common phrase is coined when a concept is sufficiently common and important enough such that someone comes up with a label to communicate the idea succinctly and the label catches on. We, humanity, have words or common phrases to label the vast majority of significant concepts. However, not every concep…
Brevity is key for words that aid thinking. Consider Chinese 成语 (Chengyu) [1] or Japanese 四字熟語 (Yo Ji Juku Go) [2]: - 指桑骂槐 (Zhi Sang Ma Huai) - Pulling the shoots to make the rice grow = helicoptering - 拔苗助长 (Ba Miao Zhu Zhang) - Point at the mulberry tree to curse the locust tree = deflective criticism These condense a whole story with moral lesson in them, and they facilitate recall of that concept. The trick is om…
These are fascinating. Anyone know a book our other source for a list of such Chinese shorthand figures of speech and the tales/aphorisms behind them about human nature? Kinda like “sour grapes” in English, or Aesop’s fables.
Re: Language is primarily a tool for communication rather than thought [pdf]
#280Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The idea of thinking independtly like that though seems unbearably slow to me So, as a person who definitely has an inner monologue, I absolutely agree. It's not like I'm literally sounding out words in my mind all the time. The vast majority of things I do I do without explicit use of language. I think my understanding (mostly coming from Chomsky and in disagreement when OP) is that language is a mechanism for thi…
> mostly coming from Chomsky and in disagreement when OP Is Chomsky's idea that language is not necessarily the same as spoken language, it is an alternate brain mechanism that provides structure to thought as opposed to being the wild west of fluid/analog non-discrete/non-symbolic type of information processing?
The idea would be that language first evolved as a mechanism for thought and only later became used for communication. Spoken language would still be connected to the underlying mechanism though.