How Language Seems to Shape One's View of the World
1–10 of 48 posts
Re: How Language Seems to Shape One's View of the World
#2http://www.princeton.edu/~achaney/tmve/wiki100k/docs/Sapir%E...
This was the left's justification for Political Correctness.
It's entirely dubious science with a clear agenda behind it: make thoughtcrime illegal.
Re: How Language Seems to Shape One's View of the World
#3Considering that there is so much evidence against linguistic relativity, I do not understand why these types of stories keep appearing on HN.
Re: How Language Seems to Shape One's View of the World
#4Considering that there is so much evidence against linguistic relativity, I do not understand why these types of stories keep appearing on HN.
Do you know enough to be able to write a great rebuttal article? Or to link to a great rebuttal article written by an expert?
I'd like to read that.
Re: How Language Seems to Shape One's View of the World
#5http://www.princeton.edu/~achaney/tmve/wiki100k/docs/Sapir%E... This was the left's justification for Political Correctness. It's entirely dubious science with a clear agenda behind it: make thoughtcrime illegal.
It may be dubious science, but it's important from an 'Everything I Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten' perspective.
Many of my friends have the "fuck em if they can't take a joke" outlook on political correctness, so I get it. On the other hand, it is more difficult to mix with strangers and new social groups when you aren't used to being polite a lot of the time.
Re: How Language Seems to Shape One's View of the World
#6Considering that there is so much evidence against linguistic relativity, I do not understand why these types of stories keep appearing on HN.
care to share some of that evidence with the rest of us?
Re: How Language Seems to Shape One's View of the World
#7http://www.princeton.edu/~achaney/tmve/wiki100k/docs/Sapir%E... This was the left's justification for Political Correctness. It's entirely dubious science with a clear agenda behind it: make thoughtcrime illegal.
It may be dubious science, but it's important from an 'Everything I Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten' perspective. Many of my friends have the "fuck em if they can't take a joke" outlook on political correctness, so I get it. On the other hand, it is more difficult to mix with strangers and new social groups when you aren't used to being polite a lot of the time.
Most British corporate shops, and startups also, transplanted to the US would have everyone headed to HR for sexual harassment training and hurt feelings lawsuits.
Re: How Language Seems to Shape One's View of the World
#8The apropos book is Steven Pinker's The Stuff of Thought. [0]
(language culture) ~~> world-view ~~> intention ~~> behavior ~~> result.
Re: How Language Seems to Shape One's View of the World
#9Considering that there is so much evidence against linguistic relativity, I do not understand why these types of stories keep appearing on HN.
What? What about the studies that show that reading Arabic literally uses different parts of your brain than when reading other languages, or even the evidence presented in the article?
Even intuitively, it would make sense that different languages/cultures might distinguish or understand different concepts differently...since this is HN, imagine asking a trial of 100 people who have programmed in nothing but COBOL their whole life to explain monads or continuations intuitively, and how they'd use them in practice, compared to a trial of 100 who understood Scheme and Haskell. I think the results would be pretty obvious. Why would structures and concepts in human language be any different?
I really don't understand the political posturing behind denying linguistic relativism (not that you're necessarily doing that, of course).
Re: How Language Seems to Shape One's View of the World
#10Considering that there is so much evidence against linguistic relativity, I do not understand why these types of stories keep appearing on HN.
Mark Baker's _The Atoms of Language_ and Steven Pinker's _The Language Instinct_ talk about the evidence against linguistic relativism. There is also a debate between Mark Baker (I believe) and some psychologist published online, but I couldn't find the link. I don't know of any other popular literature on the topic.