Thoughts on Sapir-Whorf
November 4th, 2010
Well, actually this WSJ article never really references the (in)famous Sapir-Whorf hypothesis linking language properties to patterns of thought, but it should, because that’s what it’s about. Some notable quotes:
- Russian speakers, who have more words for light and dark blues, are better able to visually discriminate shades of blue.
- Some indigenous tribes say north, south, east and west, rather than left and right, and as a consequence have great spatial orientation.
- The Piraha, whose language eschews number words in favor of terms like few and many, are not able to keep track of exact quantities.
- In one study, Spanish and Japanese speakers couldn’t remember the agents of accidental events as adeptly as English speakers could. Why? In Spanish and Japanese, the agent of causality is dropped: “The vase broke itself,” rather than “John broke the vase.”
…in recent studies, MIT students were shown dots on a screen and asked to say how many there were. If they were allowed to count normally, they did great. If they simultaneously did a nonlinguistic task—like banging out rhythms—they still did great. But if they did a verbal task when shown the dots—like repeating the words spoken in a news report—their counting fell apart. In other words, they needed their language skills to count.
Keynes-Hayek Rap Battle, Part II
November 2nd, 2010
Awww, yeah. What could be more appropriate on election day than a sequel to the original Keynes-Hayek rap battle?
economics, music, old dead white guys, video | No Comments »
3G on Everest
October 30th, 2010
You can now get cell phone reception on the top of Mount Everest. I think this is the point at which the world becomes too small.
Gödel in Single Syllables
October 27th, 2010
The logician George Boolos once published an article called Gödel’s Second Incompleteness Theorem Explained in Words of One Syllable. In full, the article reads:
First of all, when I say “proved,” what I will mean is “proved with the aid of the whole of math.” Now then: two plus two is four, as you well know. And, of course, it can be proved that two plus two is four (proved, that is, with the aid of the whole of math, as I said, though in the case of two plus two, of course we do not need the whole of math to prove that it is four). And, as may not be quite so clear, it can be proved that it can be proved that two plus two is four, as well. And it can be proved that it can be proved that it can be proved that two plus two is four. And so on. In fact, if a claim can be proved, then it can be proved that the claim can be proved. And that too can be proved.
Now, two plus two is not five. And it can be proved that two plus two is not five. And it can be proved that it can be proved that two plus two is not five, and so on.Thus: it can be proved that two plus two is not five. Can it be proved as well that two plus two is five? It would be a real blow to math, to say the least, if it could. If it could be proved that two plus two is five, then it could be proved that five is not five, and then there would be no claim that could not be proved, and math would be a lot of bunk.
So, we now want to ask, can it be proved that it can’t be proved that two plus two is five? Here’s the shock: no, it can’t. Or, to hedge a bit: if it can be proved that it can’t be proved that two plus two is five, then it can be proved as well that two plus two is five, and math is a lot of bunk. In fact, if math is not a lot of bunk, then no claim of the form “claim X can’t be proved” can be proved.
So, if math is not a lot of bunk, then, though it can’t be proved that two plus two is five, it can’t be proved that it can’t be proved that two plus two is five.
By the way, in case you’d like to know: yes, it can be proved that if it can be proved that it can’t be proved that two plus two is five, then it can be proved that two plus two is five.
15 Authors
October 27th, 2010
I was just tagged by a meme on Facebook. You may be aware of my boundless enthusiasm for memes but less-than-boundless enthusiasm for Facebook, so here we are.
Don’t take too long to think about it. Fifteen authors (poets included) who’ve influenced you and will always stick with you. List the first fifteen you can recall in no more than fifteen minutes.
Memes like this are sort of doomed to end up as exercises in personal branding, but let’s go anyway:
- Jorge Luis Borges
- Douglas Hofstadter
- Italo Calvino
- Carl Sagan
- Bertrand Russell
- R. Buckminster Fuller
- David Foster Wallace
- Rainer Maria Rilke
- Lao Tzu
- Jules Verne
- H.D. Thoreau
- Aldous Huxley
- Kurt Vonnegut
- Arthur C. Clarke
- Donald Norman
Thanks, Mom
October 26th, 2010
There once was a man named Bertold
Who drank beer when the weather grew cold
As he reached for his cup…
“NEEEEVER GONNA GIVE YOU UP!!!”
Oh, snap! You just got limerickrolled!
My mother just sent me this. WHAT IS WRONG WITH MY GENES
Squirrel Fashion
October 26th, 2010
It seems that in the early 1940s Life magazine filled the niche that I Can Has Cheezburger currently occupies. So while it’s true that the Internet makes you stupid, it’s not exactly without precedent.
The End of the World
October 25th, 2010
Jens Lekman fans might enjoy this new song. Well, fine, it’s not new, and in fact it’s been out since July, but I don’t pay very close attention. I wish his blog had an RSS feed.
The important part, though, is that it’s going to be on an album which should be released by the end of the year.
Atlas of Remote Islands
October 18th, 2010
Judith Schalansky’s Atlas of Remote Islands perfectly merges the experiences of reading Calvino’s Invisible Cities and poring over an atlas at age eight. I really can’t imagine recommending a book more highly.
She also wrote an ode to blackletter typography called Fraktur Mon Amour which leads me to wonder if she’s single.