Language and Thought

Looking at the connections between the language we use and the thoughts we have

A new idea can be spread quickly if someone can explain it and communicate it to others before they have to discover it themselves. But the chief advantage of language is not communication but autogeneration. Language is a trick that allows the mind to question itself; a magic mirror that reveals to the mind what the mind thinks; a handle that turn... See more

Kevin Kelly • What Technology Wants

how can we use language to spread things faster? use language as tool for mind to question itself

This viewpoint may be overly ambitious, and may even — horrors! -- be somewhat wrong, but I have observed that many good ideas start out by claiming too much territory for themselves, and eventually, when they have received their fair share of attention and respect, the air clears and it emerges that, though still grand, they are not quite so grand... See more

Douglas R. Hofstadter • Analogy as the Core of Cognition

Need to remember this

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

“AI will lift the ceiling, leading to more creative outputs made possible by more powerful tools; it will also lower the floor, making it easier for anyone to design and collaborate.”

Our Centaur Future - A RADAR Report

When the gap between the ceiling and flow increases, the way to prevent unrest is by adding more steps between. It’s important to see clearly how to level up to the ceiling, and not only enable people who have the ability to make the leap between the existing steps. More people being able to do something shouldn’t threaten the existence of anyone currently doing the thing.

It’s possible to paint an dishonest picture of reality without telling a single lie.

if i'm honest with myself

The difficulty of valuing information.

I like the term economism . It describes how economic thinking and practice have become ingrained into all sorts of aspects of our lives, even non-economic ones. In today’s world governed by economism , everything seems to need to be measured by economic logic: am I using my time efficiently?

Rabbit Holes 🕳️ #78

Haven’t heard this term before, but I think it follows from the collapse of things into measurements. We started with measuring money as a collapse of information, and that led to collapses of other aspects of the world as a proxy for money where money isn’t available to measure value.

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.

A moodboard for people who hate self-promotion

Oh, I feel this, a lot.

Mentors and friends have always warned me that employers will never care about you.

But what if that’s a story we decided was true, one that doesn’t have to be?

Alicia Bonner • Why do you work?

Finally, we must do away with far and away the largest occupation, the one with the longest hours, the lowest pay and some of the most tedious tasks around. I refer to housewives doing housework and child-rearing. By abolishing wage-labor and achieving full unemployment we undermine the sexual division of labor. The nuclear family as we know it is ... See more

Bob Black • The Abolition of Work

Damn…