Language is primarily a tool for communication rather than thought [pdf]

Post by cableshaft » Sun, Jun 23, 2024, 4:42 AM UTC

nopinsight wrote: post #307

cableshaft wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't that what CNC machines do? Or even 3D modeling software, which then gets 3D printed? Is that not creating things, potentially as complicated as David, using language? I know CNC machines use G-Code. I think the only limiting factor we have on that is we don't yet have a robot that can chisel marble to create a carbon copy of such sculptures, but we can otherwise do it with other materials.

In the context of the original article in which this whole discussion takes place, I assume we are talking about verbal, natural language. Specifying every little detail would make my comments sound like legalese. To my understanding, this is not a type of natural language the paper discusses: N10 G21 ; Set units to millimeters N20 G17 ; Select XY plane N30 G90 ; Absolute positioning N40 G00 Z5.0 ; Raise Z axis to 5.…

Post by lucubratory » Sun, Jun 23, 2024, 6:32 AM UTC

TeMPOraL wrote: post #77

dejj wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

So you're effectively saying that Chinese is compressed Tamarian ? Like, instead of writing "Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra" you'd put their initials together, so you're saying the Chinese-equivalent of "DJT" and the listener instantly knows the story, and therefore the message, it refers to?

Post by lucubratory » Sun, Jun 23, 2024, 6:40 AM UTC

maizeq wrote: post #210

justacomment100 wrote: post #183

My takes: 1. The existence of “rubber duck debugging”, and a whole bunch of studies on verbally explaining a concept indicate that language is essential for thought. In rubber duck debugging, programmers tell their problem to an object and this is beneficial in finding the solution. There are studies that show when we verbally teach material to someone we remember it better. Also the act of taking a test increases le…

1. This doesn’t indicate language is necessary for thought but rather that language is useful for refining thought. If anything it shows that some form of thought exists before it is articulated into language. I would assume inverse cases also exist, where articulation into language narrows a thought down into the vocabulary of a language. 2. I thought rare individuals who did not develop language abilities (e.g due…

Post by tetrisgm » Sun, Jun 23, 2024, 7:15 AM UTC

082349872349872 wrote: post #312

tetrisgm wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for the very thoughtful and well explained answer. If you have pointers on further reading on the subject in all ears. I'm curious if you feel like human behaviors are derived from these sets of behaviors. You mapped all the examples of their behaviors to phrases, to give a general vibe. Is your view that we have simply compressed and made these more nuanced and composite? Or did we invent something completely…

The quantitative difference in planning and execution (they plan a few seconds in advance; we manage decades and attempt centuries) leads to a qualitative difference in range of behaviours. We have "full" language, which I believe is a qualitative difference: we use symbols digitally; instead of expressing displeasure on an analog scale via summing signals, we can concatenate symbols to be "very" or "mildly" displeas…

Post by courseofaction » Sun, Jun 23, 2024, 7:36 AM UTC

ecjhdnc2025 wrote: post #236

LoganDark wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're deriving the cow. You don't see the cow, but you know things logically about the cow, and you can describe it just as well as would someone who does see it. But you are not, and don't need to be, actually seeing the cow.

The weird thing obviously is that next to nobody with a mind's eye is actually seeing the cow. A tiny tiny fraction of people talk about their mind's eye being part of their visual field, to the point that they can sort of functionally see -- hallucinate -- an imaginary object on a table like AR. Another small number of people talk about imagining complete objects out of nowhere that they then have to analyse to desc…