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outside the mind June 23, 2008

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I read this post at Babel’s Dawn expecting to see the word “emergent” — it never came up, but I think the idea’s there. Another good read on non-guided complex systems; that is, more evo-lingo.

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feel the words June 19, 2008

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How is it that music has such a huge impact on us? Why is it that the insensitivity towards or inability to experience music are categorized as neurological conditions? Music, it would seem on its face, is very central to the experience of being human.

Cognitive Daily discusses some peer reviewed research about how musicality helps us parse sounds into words, so that we can make sense of speech. Music, perhaps, is tied into us in the same way that our capability to communicate via sound is — which is the main point of Steven Mithen’s The Singing Neandertals, a book which I found quite intriguing (reviewed here).

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teh June 6, 2008

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Its use is becoming so common I’m starting to have trouble telling when it’s a typo and when it’s intentional…

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oh, the ironía May 6, 2008

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Pictures, worth, etc.

At Language Log.

And yes, the mistake is indeed underlined.

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fun s alfabetom March 10, 2008

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Via this Language Log post, there’s this other interesting one about subbing a string of Latin letters for a Russian word based on the letters being in the same location on a keyboard.

I wonder how many of my posts count as lytdybr…

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tongue-twisted February 18, 2008

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Language Log has two interesting posts on a seemingly (I haven’t read it and don’t intend to) ludicrous book about the history of Western European languages.

Worth noting is this passage, quoted in the second post:

“Take the exemplar of all modern academic paradigms, the Theory of Evolution. There’s no question that the theory is valuable in so far as it has led more or less directly to the creation of the modern Life Sciences, but, true or false, the theory no less certainly contains the sees of its own infinite survival. Having adopted a properly scientific root-and-branch model of speciation in which ex hypothesi all species must be demonstrably linked to other species, it permits the indefinite opening of new categories whenever a species cannot be demonstrably linked to other species. This has the unavoidable corollary that nothing can ever discovered from now until the end of time that can ever call the model into question.”

LL proposes that perhaps the book was written as a bet. Here’s the author in this fictional account of the book’s inspiration: “You don’t understand — no one knows anything, not anything that’ll stand up to an authoritative poke in an anti-authoritarian voice.”

So, of course I’m overjoyed that a post which manages to tie biological evolution and linguistics, tangentially of course, also manages to point out something very important for skeptics, rationalists, and to keep in mind.

Questioning authority is not as important as insisting on evidence and clear argumentation; that is, skepticism, in order to be healthy instead of lending itself to accepting conspiracy theories, must be founded on such an insistence as well as a willingness to acknowledge a source of authority when it has earned its position — keeping in mind, of course, that there always exists room for error. We all love to see the underdog win, and we all love to see people knocked off their high horses and taken down a notch. But we must not let this tendency to enjoy seeing authority’s nose tweaked to allow us to favor absurd arguments based solely upon such nose-tweaking. Above all, it is the content, not the context, that matters.

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edenics December 31, 2007

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Ah, theists — the fun never stops with these guys. Check out this Language Log post on a (rather lame, I must say) mash-up combining biblical literalism, intelligent design, and a corny name.

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he holp me October 12, 2007

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I’ve written about the parallels between evolution of language and biological evolution before; Pure Pedantry has a post up linking to Nature’s news about some papers regarding it. The research seems interesting — an attempt to quantify linguistic evolution:

” ‘There is this general idea that culture evolves, but it is more of a metaphor than something that has teeth — that obeys precise mathematical rules,’ says Erez Lieberman, a specialist in evolutionary maths at Harvard University. ‘I wondered: can you make this metaphor be real? Can you show a process like natural selection that is affecting ideas or language?’ “

I agree generally with Mr Young’s take:

“It may be an good parlor game to apply evolutionary principles to cultural trends, but until those principles can be rigorously and uniformly applied I remain unconvinced that is anything more.”

But, I also think, as I noted in my post I linked to above, that pointing out the non-guided processes involved in linguistic evolution could very well come in handy when discussing biological evolution with someone skeptical of it; so, the more we know about lingo-evo, the better.

Addendum: also of interest, though not related, is a recent Language Log post: “Bad Darwinism“.

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clarity via muddying September 24, 2007

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A few weeks back, Overcoming Bias had a post up about clarity of thought and language, referring for support to Orwell’s essay “Politics and the English Language”.

Today, Language Log, in a post about the President’s nominee for Attorney General, pointed out an earlier post decrying the same essay.

Agree to disagree? I’d prefer not to, since I’d probably wind up trying to agree to disagree with myself. I’m a fan of clarity — my loyal readers might notice that my posts tend to be short and to the point. On top of that, I’ve written again recently that it’s what is said, not how it’s said, that matters.

My clear, short take? Orwell had good initiative but poor judgment. Muddy writing may be used in an attempt to obscure sloppy or perhaps even morally despicable thought, but anyone taken in by such a simple ploy as messy language is not so much being played for a fool as playing the role themselves.

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