Language and Thought
Looking at the connections between the language we use and the thoughts we have
Language and Thought
Curse of Knowledge : The inability to communicate your ideas because you wrongly assume others have the necessary background to understand what you’re talking about.
Morgan Housel • 100 Little Ideas
Learn to simplify if you want to connect.
We often think of language as a means to an end, but rarely take the time to consider whether language in itself is influencing our thoughts, not just enabling the sharing of them.
Steph Smith • Gaining Perspective Through Untranslatable Words
Does language influence our thoughts? How can we minimize (or maximize) that influence?
Questions are places in your mind where answers fit . If you haven’t asked the question, the answer has nowhere to go. It hits your mind and bounces right off. You have to ask the question — you have to want to know — in order to open up the space for the answer to fit. 1
Long Questions/Short Answers
It’s all about asking the right questions
Intuition is a very powerful thing, more powerful than intellect, in my opinion. That’s had a big impact on my work.
Walter Isaacson • Steve Jobs
Intuition is compressed knowledge
Self-promotion makes me uncomfortable.
Maybe because I (read: most women) am not really great at it?
Or because I never want to sound sales-y.
Or because with software, it's always easier to justify tossing in one more feature than exposing our work to criticism.
Maybe because I (read: most women) am not really great at it?
Or because I never want to sound sales-y.
Or because with software, it's always easier to justify tossing in one more feature than exposing our work to criticism.
A moodboard for people who hate self-promotion
Oh, I feel this, a lot.
Socrates said that manual laborers make bad friends and bad citizens because they have no time to fulfill the responsibilities of friendship and citizenship.
Bob Black • The Abolition of Work
every failure is my fault and it’s up to me to fix those failures
Leo Guinan • The Biggest Obstacle To Scaling Creativity
Useful falsehoods
Perhaps I could lean into my weirdness and curiosity, and earn a living from a small group of similarly curious weirdos. It felt like the permission slip I needed to give it a shot.
All That Remains
Sometimes we still need permission in the permissionless economy
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;... 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;... See more
Nicole Fenton • Words as Material
Language is a mechanism of assembly