From: Lee Corbin (lcorbin@tsoft.com)
Date: Thu May 15 2003 - 19:08:16 MDT
Devon writes
> > > I think that the majority of Americans...
> > > are consistently tricked, duped, programmed - by
> > > a language that denies or regretfully forgets
> > > the major discoveries made by physicists in the
> > > 1920's and anthropologists ever since.
> >
> > But that was prior to 1933 when we all got
> > straightened out.
>
> Oh, what a man he was (sarcasm). The first mad visionary to
> bring human eugenics to such a massive and structured level.
No, no, no! Not *that* visionary. I am speaking of---of
course---the great Count Alfred.
> > Curious how until 1933 humanity had not been yet
> > favored by evolution to adopt appropriate and sane
> > speech patterns. One might have thought that given
> > several hundred thousand years, nineteen civilizations,
> > innumerable tribes and nations and societies competing
> > with each other, better techniques of thinking and
> > reasoning were not stumbled upon. So the burden of
> > explanation must now lie with those who claim that
> > the ways humans think now and have been thinking
> > since 1610 are unfit.
>
> Sarcasm again? I'm not sure.
Sorry. You'd have got the first irony if you'd known
about Null-A and Korzybski. The above paragraph is
entirely serious!
> Just in case, to clarify, [thanks!] i don't think that
> humanity has not developed "appropriately." Rather i
> think that in the case of relativity and the Copenhagen
> Interpretation as with much of scientific history it
> takes a while for new discoveries to reach popular
> culture.
Yes, like Darwin, for the most egregious example!
> More, i will enjoy the emergence of the type of thinking
> i think will come about from the integration of quantum
> thinking. (This seems inevitable and is already happening
> due to the proliferation of quantum technology such as
> computers).
I'm quite skeptical that QM has any great implications for
thinking any more than Relativity did. Sure, they loosen
up one's preconceptions, and get us more accustomed to the
idea that not everything in the universe that is true must
seem natural to savannah-evolved brains. Why does QM, and
in particular the dreaded Copenhagen Interpretation, assist
in anything?
> Language being what it is, and shaping the way
> people and cultures think, in the way s that it does
> leads me to be hopefully curious as to how the addition of
> quantum language or even more simply language patterns
> like e-prime will affect human behavior. E-prime has
> already been hailed by many a semanticist as a useful tool
> in getting out of the bias of Aristotelian "IS" logic
> and making accessible the experience and understanding
> of neurological relativity.
I still have a hunch that even an entire nation wholeheartedly
endorsing e-prime would still be driven by the usual ways
our brain chemistry works. And those ways are *not* very
faulty. The faults, so far as I can see, don't like with
people's thinking in general, but with characteristic lacks
afflicting people individually.
> In any case, i personally am not going to try and prove that
> "the ways humans think now and have been thinking since
> 1610 are unfit." If you want the references to the research on
> how language affects culture and behavior let me know and i'll
> get it to you when i return from vacation - next tuesday.
Well, I'd love to have a nice argument, err, discussion about
Sapir-Whorf and all. There is no doubt that language *does*
affect thought and culture, not to mention behavior---but for
most of the 20th century, that effect was overestimated IMO.
> > > Maybe general semantics [!] and a course of logic should
> > > be included in journalism schools.
> >
> > Yes, it is indeed sad to see even young reporters
> > lapse immediately upon graduation to the two-valued
> > prevalent Aristotelian orientations, adopt bad s.r,
> > fail to adopt *structural* and multi-ordinal semantic
> > relations, employ elementalistic terminology,
> > intensional definitions, undue generalization,
> > unanalyzed linguistic habits., to such a degree that
> > it's probably too late to re-educate the younger
> > generation with null-A non-habitual s.r, remove
> > semantic blockages,.
>
> what is s.r?
> also, what is null-A- habitual s.r.?
Yes, just as I suspected, when "1933" didn't ring a bell.
You have not read "Science and Sanity" (not that I am
especially recommending it). But surely you know something
of Korzybski and General Semantics, or you wouldn't have
used the term. Null-A, s.r, and all the rest of it (I
could write "Null-A, s.r,." instead), it's all explained
in Science and Sanity.
Lee
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