The Pursuit
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The Pursuit
Words shape our ideas, how we see the world, and how we relate to one another. As design teacher and researcher Anne Galloway says:
Language makes it possible for us to navigate places and relationships; to express needs and requirements; t... See more
“Language doesn’t just make things—it assembles, cobbles together, entire worlds and all the relations within.”
Language makes it possible for us to navigate places and relationships; to express needs and requirements; t... See more
Matt Felten • Words as Material
We, as humans, sometimes receive streams of tokens and produce tokens in response, forming words, sentences, lines of code ... but always with the ability to peek outside the stream and check in with ground-floor reality. We pause and consider: does this word really stand for the thing I intend it to stand for? Does this sentence capture the real e... See more
Are AI Language Models in Hell?
‘Language is not merely a device for communicating ideas about the world, but rather a tool for bringing the world into existence … Reality is not simply ‘experienced’ or ‘reflected’ in language, but instead is actually produced by language.’
Terence McKenna • Food of the Gods
“Our language is an imperfect instrument created by ancient and ignorant men. It is an animistic language that invites us to talk about stability and constants, about similarities and normal and kinds, about magical transformations, quick cures, simple problems, and final solutions. Yet the world we try to symbolize with this language is a world of
... See moreMarshall B. Rosenberg • Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life: Life-Changing Tools for Healthy Relationships (Nonviolent Communication Guides)
I like thinking about what comes after all the thinking. When we’re done explaining, categorizing, and solving everything that’s explainable, categorizable, and solvable, what’s left? The best things? The most important ones? This reminds me of Nietzsche’s idea that capturing something in language is the end of our wonder, rather than the beginning... See more
On the one hand, language is a wonderful tool. It allows us to describe these other worlds in metaphors that help us think and imagine them. But there are many places where our language leaves us in the lurch. Like with vision, we don’t have a word for detecting light but not having a conscious experience of it.
ed yong • What Counts as Seeing
In almost every language, “journey” has become a way to talk abstractly about outcomes, for good reason: According to what linguists call the “primary metaphor theory,” humans learn as babies crawling toward their toys that “‘purpose’ and ‘destination’ coincide,” said Elena Semino, a linguist at Lancaster University who specializes in metaphor. As
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