You likely know by now I’m supposedly a “bad communicator”, because I keep on using words in ways that you, the reader, are not used to. (Or as you might say, “incorrectly”. Whatever.) For example, especially when dealing with atheistic material, I love using Biblical language. This is likely to make you hopping mad. Cool! As cool as it is that The God Delusion makes some people hopping mad. (The words of Sunday Times, Perth: “Some of it is hard to disagree with, some of it will make you hopping mad. Perfect, really.”)
My suggestion is thus: if what I say does not make sense, ask me “wtf did you mean with the abuse of that word?” rather than asserting “you are wrong, because that word means blah-blah”. Quite possibly, I know what you think it means, and I don’t care. Or possibly I don’t know what other people mean by it — feel free to inform me, I would like to know, even if I don’t care. Either way, I’m not going to let my lack of knowledge of your “supposedly correct” definition of a word stop me from using what I feel is the best word to communicate a certain idea. I aim to get you thinking. You might have noticed that this is not the place for people that don’t like thinking. Um… duh?
Let me give you some more background on what’s going through my mind then, some background on where I’m coming from…
At a young age, some guy tested me and slapped on a label: I was diagnosed with something like “kognitiewe denke”. Say wha’? Cognitive thinking? What’s that supposed to be? Maybe the psych dudes can help out: did my mother remember the label correctly? Is this old psych-speak that we no longer use, or is this still meaningful? Whatevah. Let’s get to what they meant by it. (”They”…)
Supposedly I’m cursed or gifted with an ability to recognise patterns, similarities, parallels, that other people supposedly do not see. Or do not necessarily see until the parallels are illustrated more clearly. Here is what I need to learn from this: I should not expect other people to see things the way I do. I am sharing my view of the world with you. I am playing with parallels and similarities that are apparently not “common knowledge”. (Read “wrong” if you like. I don’t particularly care. If it provokes just one or two thoughts, if it “raises consciousness”, to borrow from Professor Dawkins, mission accomplished.)
So now comes language. Language is a communication tool. Language is a tool by which we share concepts. A tool by which we have memetic sex. (Yes, this blog is an orgy.) Words in language might typically be attached, in some modernistic sense, to some particular meaning. You might feel fundamentalistic about this meaning. Take this Ayn Rand fan for example:
Elke woord het ‘n bepaalde betekenis. Vanuit ‘n neurologiese perspektief kan dieselfde neuron/neuronbaan nie verskillende betekenisse aan dieselfde woord hanteer nie of twee verskillende woorde met dieselfde betekenis nie, Die brein is ‘n fisiese struktuur en gehoorsaam die wette van die fisika waarvan die eerste die behoud van energie/materie en aldus van identiteit. ‘n Ding kan nie twee verskillende goed wees op dieselfde tyd nie.
To translate (my translation):
Every word has a specific meaning. From a neurological perspective, a particular neuron or neural pathway cannot handle different meanings attached to the same word, or different words with the same meaning. The brain is a physical structure and obeys the laws of physics, of which the first is the conservation of energy/matter and thus identity. Something cannot be two different things at the same time.
This sounds a little like woo-woo horse baloney to me. It sounds like the woo-woo artists’ abuse of “quantum physics”. But I don’t know much about neuro-psychology. Is this “horse baloney” factually correct? Or is this Ayn Rand stuff? OK, in an attempt at more fairness, it seems he is arguing that knowing multiple languages is a waste of energy? Or a waste of our limited neurons or neural-pathways? To give the man some credit (he asked for it), this was Johann Enslin. Enough of an Ayn Rand fan that he translated some of Ayn Rand’s stuff into Afrikaans.
I wish he could have attended the Chris Chameleon “concert” my family and I attended on Saturday. That guy is a master at playing with language. Mix your Dutch and your Afrikaans, and you can prove that one is zero. Anyway… There are some specific mental-health benefits to being multi-lingual, I cannot remember the exact details. Just, don’t deny me my multi-linguality. You can tell me I’m wasting energy, but aren’t we all, with our very existence? I’m enjoying mine…
But I digress. You might feel fundamentalistic about the meaning you attach to your words. I clearly don’t. (And I can explain my choice with reason/philosophy.) So this is what I apparently do: I remix language, I abuse words, in ways you are possibly not used to. I challenge you to look at the concepts I’m trying to communicate. The context in which I use words is supposed to help you understand what I mean with those words.
If you want to prove me wrong, you will first need to strive to understand the concepts I’m trying to deal. You need to look past the words. To achieve this, it may help to first assume I’m correct, if only you could understand my concepts, rather than first assuming I’m incorrect, which is effectively argument by incredulity. This exercise might even help you in your relationships.
Read this blog! Chicks dig guys that read this blog. Oh, and guys dig chicks that read this blog, unless the guy sucks and is not worth your time.. Ditto for the chicks. 
·
25 responses so far ↓
1 Ben // Jan 7, 2008 at 10:51 am
That’s all well and good, Hugo. But you need to take your own advice:
By this, you CANNOT say (from another comment you made):
You can’t say you disagree with the statement because you understand the terms differently. If you want people to interpret words with the speakers’ meaning it goes both ways.
2 Hugo // Jan 7, 2008 at 11:42 am
Thanks Ben. Yes, that is true. Let’s see if we can find something of value in this discussion.
I can say “Yes, with Negate’s meaning of those words, and Negate’s understanding of God and theism, the path of reason leads to atheism”. Where I differ, is in my understanding of “God”.
The problem with this discussion, is if we take it far enough, it will sound like I’m spouting “Newage”. I would like to talk about different realities. And about “this reality”. “This reality” is the one that you accept. This reality is the one that I accept as well. I have decided to accept what we call empiricism. Axiomatically.
However, many people think beyond that. Because of the differing leaps of faith (e.g. accepting empiricism as ground truth, or not), we reach different conclusions. The non-empiricist thinks “but where did *that* come from?” while the empiricist says “pointless question”. I’m thinking of doing a post about “the problem with empiricism” where I try to lay it out neatly.
Here’s the thing: we will end up going around and around, and get nowhere. Circular reasoning. Circular existence. What we need to talk about, is what we want to get done, in this reality. (The one we observe. The very act of performing science, is an act of observational selection. Think Boltzmann brain and the Anthropic principle.
This is why I say: we can discuss this, and get nowhere in this reality. We can go around and around, and explore the mystery that is… um… that I call, like so many other people, “God”. And we get nowhere.
Or we can have some goal in mind, and we can get something done. I have offered in the past, if you want something translated, please ask. I can try to translate something from one segment of “the circle”, to another segment. That does not mean that I do not choose the empirical segment. That is this reality. I am a scientist by nature, I was just a scientist that refused to accept certain answers, and ended up understanding the poets/philosophers of old.
So now I can translate, and we can keep on going, exploring this utterly bizarre universe of ours. As I “see this ring”, I am unable to accept certain statements, even if I can understand what other people mean by them.
OK, enough for now… any questions?
3 Ben // Jan 7, 2008 at 12:32 pm
Heh. Getting agreement on goals and the best methods of achieving those goals is way more difficult than getting agreement on what is. In my experience, anyway.
It’s much easier to change a person’s metaphysics than their politics. (Ben’s law. I just made it up.)
You ain’t kidding. Like the ‘why is there something rather than nothing’ question. It irritates me to no end that people invest more than ten minutes thought in that question. Any answer that is not equivalent to ‘nothing’ fails to answer the question, and ‘nothing’ doesn’t answer the question either.
I’ll post my own rant here FWIW. Or repost from Hemant’s blog, really:
“I really want to go back to my pre-2004 or 2005 behavior of ignoring religion and religious people. The discussions and experiences are overwhelmingly painful and depressing.
Perhaps my kids’ world will be such that they won’t feel compelled to confront it. It doesn’t seem a reasonable hope that I’ll be able to go back to avoidance mode.”
4 Hugo // Jan 7, 2008 at 1:00 pm
And so you call me religious. *sigh*. It does seem you have no use for me.
You know how long Einstein pondered something that was not empirical, at the time? A thought experiment? Feel free to ignore him as well, that was kinda religious.
Here’s the thing: if you want to get rid of non-empiricist thought, you have to kill all the artists and movie makers and poets… and then you can have an empirical society. But will it be a “human” society?
*another sigh*. Does anyone have any use for me? Hmm, nevermind. I’ll just go demonstrate what I mean, by myself. And thanks Ben, this comment of yours helps shape my “The Problem with Empiricism” comment. I hope you will give that post a chance. My dream is that you might end up being less irritated with the “religious” people and the artists, even if you don’t understand them. My dream is that you might get beyond the depression and pain, and experience what Douglas Adams was on about when he wrote:
Or maybe that you can remark at how weird it is that some people are still interested in taking the red pill. Do they not understand that empiricism, the blue pill, is where happiness is found? (Who are you to deny other people the choice of seeking the red pill?)
So here is the suggestion: let us not talk in circles about whether religion should exist or not (I conjecture that every. single. human. is religious, for example, for certain understandings of “religion”), let us rather talk about the problems we are faced with because of religion. Let us rather look for solutions to the problems presented by diversity, rather than try to stamp out diversity once and for all. (That will *never* work. You should know this, you accept evolution.)
5 Hugo // Jan 7, 2008 at 1:02 pm
(As do I. I suggest I’ve taken the idea of evolution to another level, a level that is currently not empirical, more philosophical. Still useful though, which I hope to demonstrate. And maybe, just maybe, we might some day find a way to test the hypothesis. The hypothesis might be as falsifiable as evolution is…)
6 Ben // Jan 7, 2008 at 1:09 pm
We have a misunderstanding. I DON’T consider you religious.
7 Ben // Jan 7, 2008 at 1:19 pm
Entertainment or art =/= factual claims about reality. I love fiction.
I thought he was on about making a great hypothetical joke. Not a factual claim.
Douglas Adams rules.
Sorry, Hugo, I did not communicate well in my rant post. I was meaning to share that where you go ‘beyond empiricism’ and find something…worthwhile? (that’s not the right word, but it’s close) I find intellectual noodling.
“Perhaps I’m old and tired,’ he continued, ‘but I always think that the chances of finding out what really is going on are so absurdly remote that the only thing to do is to say hang the sense of it and just keep yourself occupied.â€
- Slartibartfast
I see our ability to investigate things as very limited and therefore our resultant knowledge to be doomed to accept significant levels of ignorance. And I don’t have a problem accepting that state of affairs.
8 Hugo // Jan 7, 2008 at 1:20 pm
Hehe, thanks Ben. My apologies. Maybe I should just accept that then, rather than starting another argument with “but I am religious”…
These damn mystics, so hard for the empiricists to understand.
So here’s the thing: I understand the mystics. And I understand why they don’t like empirical talk. In Dan Dennett’s terminology, I might classify as having a dual nature: a Bright and a Murky at the same time. The source of Murkiness: we will never know everything, so there’s no point in fearing a loss of murkiness. The people he traditionally labels as “murky”, are those that fear science is going to remove the murkiness.
I’d only like to show them that murkiness will always remain. For what is in my opinion the “right” definition of God, God will always be with us… Or then, “My God will always be with me. If you fear your God will be lost if you pursue science, then my God is bigger than yours, is he not? Don’t you want to learn more about my God, if we don’t worship the same God? Let me teach you science! For God uses science.”
Messy, eh.
9 Ben // Jan 7, 2008 at 1:21 pm
Bah. I can try and re-format that last comment if you can’t figure it out.
10 Hugo // Jan 7, 2008 at 1:31 pm
I could give more of my interpretation of Douglas Adams, but never mind.
I talk about “multiple realities”. Let’s stick to empirical language then. I.e. let’s stick to what you call reality. In a solipsist sense, for example, some guy living in his head, or in a “virtual reality world”, is experiencing another reality. Solipsism illustrates that we can only know our own experiences.
Many people get caught in intellectual noodling, as have I for much too long. The epiphany that hit me at the beginning of December is what gave me use for this. These intellectual noodlings eventually lead to the Golden Rule (in my experience, and I’m skipping many steps here, for brevity’s sake). And these intellectual noodlings eventually lead to a realisation of the worthlessness of intellectual noodlings, “in this reality”.
Consider the catatonic state: some guy thought way too much, and his mind retreated into “another reality”. In this reality, he self-destructed. His mind hit the singularity, the metaphorical psychological black hole. He’s jumped to some alternate reality because he wasn’t satisfied with this one.
So here the results of my intellectual noodlings: the tools by which I can invite people to step into this reality, and enjoy it for what it is. No need to retreat into the realm of what we, in this reality, call “fiction”. No need to live in your own mind, no need to live in a virtual reality world, this world is good enough.
My experience with “mystical traditions” other than Christianity is rather limited. In terms of the mystical language defined by the Bible, I have all the tools and vocabulary necessary to lead the fundamentalist into “this reality”, using the fundamentlist’s language. Or rather, I also have a good idea which authors to recommend to which “seekers”. (Brian McLaren is really good at this stuff, one of the authors from whom I draw a lot of inspiration.)
The important process through which I feel I achieved this: I refused to make the “quantum leap”, the “paradigm shift”, from fundamentalism to empiricism (another kind of fundamentalism, from where I’m now standing). I figured it out logically and experientially. Now I know why that route is so incredibly difficult, but I believe it has given me a vantage point from which I might extend some invitations to the “other realities”, inviting them to join the “real one”. The reality in which we empiricists live…
OK, I’m not going to re-read that, it will freak me out too much. I hope you can meet me halfway on this one.
11 Stefan // Jan 9, 2008 at 2:34 pm
To sling a fairly mundane opinion into the fray: I have no problem with creative use of language, or using words out of their normal context (as long as their original meaning still has some analogue). I *do* have a problem with using well defined and commonly understood words in a completely different meaning. As you say, language facilitates communication, but when we bend our words so far that we lose that ability, I don’t see much sense in carrying on the conversation.
12 Hugo // Jan 9, 2008 at 2:41 pm
True. Have I, in your experience, done that recently? This is the problem with an orgy… oh wait, redefined another word, sorry…
: typically when two people want to communicate, they need a common language. A common corpus. Or else an interpreter. Or something… That means eavesdropping can be dangerous. Kinda like quantum language… oops, another redefinition? Hehe, apologies.
Trust me, I do like reality. We just need some imagination and creativity in order to stay rooted in reality. Reality exists as a counter-balance to our creativity and imagination.
13 Stefan // Jan 9, 2008 at 5:24 pm
You’re welcome to use the term “quantum language” when talking to me, since we both know you are referring to Schrödinger’s cat. And if you eavesdrop, then you may just have killed the cat. So don’t!
14 gerhard // Jan 13, 2008 at 9:34 pm
hugo, going to this tomorrow and thursday.
http://academic.sun.ac.za/iccling/, Steven Pinker is gonna be talking.
Info on Steven Pinker:
http://academic.sun.ac.za/iccling/programme.htm
Homework (to be watched before attending)
I think he covers a lot of what he will be talking about in this video from Authors@Google:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hBpetDxIEMU
Pinker at TEDTalks:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ramBFRt1Uzk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LjQM8PzCEY0
15 Hugo // Jan 14, 2008 at 1:12 am
Eish… is attendance free? I’m not sure I have time for this right now.
It does seem right up my alley though?
16 Steve // Jan 14, 2008 at 10:15 am
One of my friends’ moms is organizing this conference, and he said it wasn’t free. Otherwise I’d probably have checked it out as well.
17 Steve // Jan 14, 2008 at 10:18 am
First a correction: s/organizing/helping with organizing .
Second, from one of the pages Gerhard linked to:
Non-participants of the conference who wish to attend one or both of Steven Pinker’s lectures can contact Ondene van Dulm at ovd@sun.ac.za. So perhaps an alternative plan can be made.
18 Steve // Jan 14, 2008 at 10:44 am
I e-mailed them: R120 per person per lecture. Count me out.
19 Hugo // Jan 14, 2008 at 11:20 am
Gerhard, if you go, you will have to let us know what you learned. I will possibly check out the youtube clips some other day.
20 Pieter // Jan 15, 2008 at 12:25 pm
Steven Pinker! I’m a fan.
21 Steve // Jan 16, 2008 at 9:22 am
Seems like I’ll be going to one of the talks after all: “The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window Into Human Nature”. I’ll post a comment here afterwards about it (or maybe I’ll blog on it).
22 gerhard // Jan 18, 2008 at 11:10 am
was great , missed the second one tho because of work ;0(
this kinda thing is difficult to explain because its all quite well… technical (for the lack of a better word)
he did however teach everyone how to bribe and why we use indirect speech. basically , indirect speech is based on the human nature of ‘i dont need to agree on all the little details, just the big ones’ ie. j. goebels’s idea of propaganda. hehe
i regret not making the second talk … ;p
23 Steve // Jan 18, 2008 at 11:44 am
It seems the first speech was slimmed down and used as part 3 of his second speech.
The first part of the speech I attended discussed how language universally assumes a kind of theory of physics, which differs from true physics. A simple example is that a wire or beam is treated in typical language as a one-dimensional object, and a CD as a 2-dimensional object (mainly because the third dimension is negligibly small in relation). This view of physics explains strange usages in English which often don’t make sense literally. For example, the edge of a ribbon, in theory, is 1-dimensional, but because our use of language allows “1-dimensional objects” to have more dimensions in reality, it is possible to “cut the edge off a ribbon”. Similar points were made regarding how people view time, and also that we use spatial speech to explain non-spatial phenomena.
The second part of the speech discussed swearing. He pointed out (using the Stroop test) that swearwords automatically trigger parts of our brain associated with negative emotion. He posited that there are 5 primary sources of swear words, and attempted to explain why they are such common sources, since they can often be associated with negative emotion (for example, swear words relating to minority groups can be linked to hatred, those relating to bodily effluvia can be linked to disgust).
Then he discussed why people use swear words. My memory’s a bit sketchy on this, so no details, I’m afraid.
The last bit of his talk was on innuendo. He began with the example of bribery, starting in a legal context, and moving on to a social context (where the negative effects of being caught for bribery are replaced by the negative effects of awkwardness and embarassment). He brought in some interesting ideas such as the distinction between individual and mutual knowledge, and the principle of plausible deniability. Another related topic was that of 3 principle types of relationship: communality (such as friends, lovers, family), dominance (boss and employee), and reciprocity (buy-sell relationships). In general it’s fairly clear which relationship is in with one person, but if it is unclear, or a change in the nature of the relationship is being suggested tentatively by one (such as asking someone out, or bribing a maitre’d), innuendo is used because it reduces the level of awkwardness and embarrassment.
That’s a short summary of a very interesting talk. Apparently, the slides may show up on the linguistics society of southern africa’s website at lssa.co.za . But when I went there, there was no site. I assume it is under construction. Their old geocities site has nothing.
24 gerhard // Jan 18, 2008 at 12:09 pm
what steve said
steve : if you are interested in this , read goebels …
he speaks about more or less the same things…
25 Hugo // Jan 18, 2008 at 12:10 pm
Oh man… sounds like someone’s gonna have to stop this guy, before he completely blows my cover.
Leave a Comment