‘thinking’ requires a kind of constructive disobedience

thisself thinks most people think some of the time

‘think’ is being redefined to mean ‘what computers do’

*

think ‘beautiful freak’

cool.

do computers think?

do we, or do we do such a good job of sifting through probable responses that we fool even ourselves into thinking we are thinking?

your posts are interesting but you seem a lot less personable. You used to seem really approachable. You were approachable. Now I feel like if I ask you a question you will just answer it with a question and make me feel like a dumb-ass.

I am just a reader on your blog but this is some constructive feedback I think. It would be nice to connect with what you are going through as you make this shift or whatever.

Yes, I think so, in some sense at least. If there’s someone to read it, perhaps. That’s like the tree falling in the forest: does it make a noise if there’s no-one to hear it?

A sundial is an object rather like Stonehenge or the Rosetta stone: even though we’ve lost almost everything of the people who created them they can still tell us stuff.

My watch will /keep/ time, but how do I set it?

Except I think in “our” world, the way it works is that they monitor for the development of new sub-languages, wait for them to grow, and then lift out the choice users of that sub-language to translate between that and the master language. Generally these people are rewarded with money and prestige within the larger language system.

Oh my God. Are you saying we’re all being trained to be traitors?

I work with former Federal prisoners. This is the style of speach you use with people you have enormous, intractable power over. Do it or it gets worse for you because the rules are set in stone and I’m the one with the stone. The first indication that a staff member shouldn’t be here is in the language they use towards our residents. Pres. Bush isn’t tounge tied, he’s a snake oil salesman who knows the deal will fall apart if he speaks plainly about the product.

Is your point that human intelligence is an organising entity rather than a creative one?

Is it? I’m not sure I in particular had any point as I didn’t actually write any of this…

Symbol-secrecy of this form leads to the development of fragmented sub-languages, each being a signal that its users are accumulating some form of power.

Which I think may be what we’re doing here: accumulating power with new words and sub-languagisticages.

our Imperial Security Force must be ever alert to the formation of sub-languages.

Except I think in “our” world, the way it works is that they monitor for the development of new sub-languages, wait for them to grow, and then lift out the choice users of that sub-language to translate between that and the master language. Generally these people are rewarded with money and prestige within the larger language system.

Then, perhaps, the Rooms think.

Does a sundial tell time?

In all major socializing forces you will find an underlying movement to gain and maintain power through the use of words. From witch doctor to priest to bureaucrat it is all the same. A governed populace must be conditioned to accept power-words as actual things, to confuse the symbolized system with the tangible universe. In the maintenance of such a power structure, certain symbols are kept out of the reach of common understanding — symbols such as those dealing with economic manipulation or those which define the local interpretation of sanity. Symbol-secrecy of this form leads to the development of fragmented sub-languages, each being a signal that its users are accumulating some form of power. With this insight into a power process, our Imperial Security Force must be ever alert to the formation of sub-languages.
Lecture to the Arrakeen War College by The Princess Irulan

Man, I’ve been wanting to check out Gene Wolfe for ages!

That we don’t create but channel?

Or is it that all of our perceptions are not only tainted by language but are linguistically formed?

“I feel funny”
“No you don’t. Thems just words”

Also check out this presidential speeches tag cloud. Very interesting…

http://chir.ag/phernalia/preztags/

(A quick recap: legend tells of a Room in China where pilgrims bring written questions at sunset and receive wise written answers in the morning. Inside the Room is an Englishman who knows no Chinese but who is provided with an enormous set of index cards with instructions for dealing with Chinese symbols…)

A personal view:

Suppose the original Chinese room became so popular that another Englishman turned up, made an approximate copy of the card set with errors, and set up shop on another hillside. Then there were two Chinese Rooms in competition… iterate for a large number of generations, in order to evolve an optimum Chinese Room whose card set has been designed by nothing more than Darwinian selection.

If the Englishmen working the rooms have been doing their jobs, then the only selection pressure on the Rooms will have been the Chinese. Thus the Rooms will represent the collected Chinese worldview, and will be no better than a great library. In this case the Rooms cannot be said to think.

It is, however, conceivable that the Rooms may have been exposed to selection pressures other than the minds of the Chinese - i.e., some sort of interaction with the wider world. In this case, the Rooms might perhaps be able to tell the Chinese something they don’t know. Then, perhaps, the Rooms think.

I’ve lately been inclined to view language not as an ultimate set of encoded neurolimitations but as a very organic/human expression which can counter in form and function any of the mechanistic power systems which might try to bend it to their will. Would-be conquerors can toss whatever they wish into the flow (cf. ‘fluent’; the flow -> fluent etymological relationship/moving water metaphor presents itself in Chinese as well), but they are invariably lost in the necessarily populist developments of ‘linguistic history’; does a word injected into a language with nefarious intent retain its power after being semantically jostled around by a generation or two of people using and misusing it for their own myriad of purposes? Could Sapir-Whorf perhaps be read as indicating a reciprocity between language and thought rather than a one-sided relationship?

Newspeak and hijacked words float like jetsam upon syntax and grammar, which I sometimes feel have far more ’significance’ than fleeting and interchangeable vocabulary. Grammar seems to assert its ‘humanity’ by presenting the illusion of being an ordered and structured system while being slippery enough to resist any attempts by rationalist linguists to adequately and exhaustively describe what that order and structure is: it is a neurotrickster, and we know what happens when a trickster squares off against the goosesteppers.
Put another way: it seems amazing to me that the finite restrictions of Chomskyian ‘universal grammar’ even at its most “textbook” still allow for infinite permutations (and not just recursive ones) - and that this entails an infinite number of ways in which the self-aware can play with their language to test their own infinite (or paradoxically infinite/limited, as they can be constructed with language) hypotheses.

I like to think of language as ritual; either as proto-ritual leading (through extension and implication) to other more involved forms or as the most refined form of ritual at our disposal. By following a series of very precise steps mandated by authorities more-or-less esoteric (the mechanisms of syntax still evading logical description), we exact immediate changes on ourselves/others/the surrounding world. Those of us who are very adept at the ritual can wield profound influence over others.

e.g., I have heard anecdotes of Salish/Wakashan potlatches wherein it is understood that ceremonial dancers will be fined hundreds of dollars by “the community” if they improperly execute their steps; how does this compare to the attitudes some people take off- and online towards “poor” grammar or misspelling?

e.g., Currently I am living in China where to learn a new word entails the memorization of a new sigil.

e.g., Conspiracy lore suggests that rituals are regularly coopted by unscrupulous power seekers - does this speak to the omnivorousness of the power-hungry or the nature of the ritual itself? What is involved in attempting to hijack a rituatl which billions of people perform flawlessly every day? Can language become so newspeak-polluted as to stagnate, lose its inherent flu(idity/ency)?