@drewdevault Yes, I've come to understand there is a murky background here... and it's problematic that the analysis itself comes from an Anglo-American point of view. I myself love delving into the intricacies of language and how I notice myself finding it easier to express things in one language over another, but I'll make sure to better acknowledge the dangers of stereotyping and inferring intelligence or ability in these types of discussions.
Tagged: Akkoma
@David I also have deep interest in language but was definitely not as familiar with Sapir-Whorf as you are – but then you are a teacher. 😅
I'm born in Liberia, lived in Saudi Arabia and Tanzania... studied Arabic and French in school by way of English (nothing that stuck very well unfortunately), but supposedly my mother tongue is Swedish 😁.
I started speaking English and Swedish essentially at the same time according to my mother, and waited until I was almost 3 years old to do so…
My kids tend to speak better English than Swedish without necessarily being bilingual in the traditional sense... their influence from online friends is just that big...
To be clear, when I mentioned gender before it was not gendered nouns I was thinking about but rather pronouns.
@ecumenik I feel your pain. 😊
@SimonRoyHughes
Good point.
@David Thank you for taking the time for this! 🙏
@David Yes, I should have been more clear in my own stance on this. I of course make no presumption that concept can not be understood in one language over to another, but I find interest in the idea that some concepts become more important than others, and that context that is given weight in everyday conversation in one language is not as important in another.
This article that was shared with me is unfortunately in Swedish, but it brings to light some subtle differences in Finnish and Norwegian ways of describing spatial inference, and shows how research uncovered that this carries over to filmmaking for example.
https://svenska.yle.fi/a/7-1134220
I suppose gender is another one of those concepts that becomes interesting to me. Everyone understands gender, but in some languages it's not an important aspect of describing an event. It's easy then to assume that gender occupies the mind of some people more than others, if one is forced to consider it each time one is describing an event to another person. Not saying that is the case every time, but for me it's part of understanding that there are many factors playing into how different perspectives are formed.
@violanders
Fantastisk!! Tack för att du delade. 🙏
@ewen Thank you, that’s a really nice way of putting it 😊
@elhult
Excellent. I see how alienating could be an issue. For me it creates a deep interest in understanding more and underscores the importance of *not* being quick to judge others, especially where "translation" is involved.
When I scroll back through two decades of blogging I can discover having written and created some really interesting stuff that I'd forgotten about.
I'm realising I'm often in too much of a hurry onwards to the next topic or subject of interest, never stopping to appreciate and celebrate my own work. My curiosity makes me jump ahead.
Always impressed by people who can stick with the same topic or even framework for years and years.I'm even bad at marketing my book because my brain has left those ideas behind - writing them down for me meant finishing that train of thought - and moved on.
Not sure what I want to say with this. I think we're all just different and that's okay.
"Do the languages we speak shape the way we think? Do they merely express thoughts, or do the structures in languages (without our knowledge or consent) shape the very thoughts we wish to express?
Take "Humpty Dumpty sat on a...
Even this snippet of a nursery rhyme reveals how much languages can differ from one another. In English, we have to mark the verb for tense; in this case, we say "sat" rather than "sit." In Indonesian you need not (in fact, you can't) change the verb to mark tense.
In Russian, you would have to mark tense and also gender, changing the verb if Mrs. Dumpty did the sitting. You would also have to decide if the sitting event was completed or not. If our ovoid hero sat on the wall for the entire time he was meant to, it would be a different form of the verb than if, say, he had a great fall.
In Turkish, you would have to include in the verb how you acquired this information. For example, if you saw the chubby fellow on the wall with your own eyes, you'd use one form of the verb, but if you had simply read or heard about it, you'd use a different form.
Do English, Indonesian, Russian and Turkish speakers end up attending to, understanding, and remembering their experiences differently simply because they speak different languages?"
The answer is yes.
In a world of sharing ideas across languages, understanding how and why languages make us think, behave and reason differently from each other is increasingly important.
"All this new research shows us that the languages we speak not only reflect or express our thoughts, but also shape the very thoughts we wish to express.
The structures that exist in our languages profoundly shape how we construct reality, and help make us as smart and sophisticated as we are."
« Watch Lera Boroditsky's talk. Lera Boroditsky is an associate professor of cognitive science at University of California San Diego and editor in chief of Frontiers in Cultural Psychology. She previously served on the faculty at MIT and at Stanford. Her research is on the relationships between mind, world and language (or how humans get so smart).
She once used the Indonesian exclusive "we" correctly before breakfast and was proud of herself about it all day. »
https://www.ted.com/talks/lera_boroditsky_how_language_shapes_the_way_we_think
The quotes above are from her 2010 Wall Street Journal article Lost in Translation:
http://lera.ucsd.edu/papers/wsj.pdf
Also read:
The myth of language universals: language diversity and its importance for cognitive science
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19857320/
@Loukas Ah, yes. This is of course true.
@Loukas Yes, they say ”it gets worse before it gets better”. But they never say if that phrase actually has a turning point or just keeps being true. 😅
People around me talking about ”co-existing” with AI. Meanwhile, human activities have caused the world's wildlife populations to plummet by 68% in 50 years, as reported by the World Wildlife Fund several years ago.
I did not sign up for this timeline.
I think the Fediverse gained traction at exactly the right time for me. Being able to host my own social media platform is comforting. But more than that, so happy that I never stopped seeking refuge in writing and blogging. I really want to do more of that…
https://www.npr.org/2020/09/10/911500907/the-world-lost-two-thirds-of-its-wildlife-in-50-years-we-are-to-blame
@sidereal I’d say here in Sweden most of those protections are in place.
Been talking to a fair few of my ethics class students (a vocational program to become a UX Designer), and essentially all of them express doubt that it will be possible to work in an ethically-aligned way once they find employment.
To be clear: they want to, but they just don’t think it will be possible.
How the hell did we end up here, that the expected default is that companies will necessarily harm the wellbeing of their stakeholders, and that these same companies (read: individuals in upper management positions) won’t care to do better when a more compassionate path is made available to them…
@liebach You are more than welcome to do just that 😁
Thinking of changing my LinkedIn job title to "Luddite who loves technological progress."
The key word of course being 'progress'.
Every now and then I start thinking about all the data centers consuming huge amounts of energy with the purpose of storing a vast and growing collection of photos, documents and other media that no one will ever have any interest in accessing again.
So much energy being used in vain…
A testament to human obliviousness.
Water required by data centers is increasing considerably with the advent of generative AI. Large language models trained on vast amounts of data need substantial cooling.
While some may argue that water can be reused, it is often pulled from water supplies in times of significant heatwaves, when residents are in need of it as well, and supplies diminsh faster.
In July of 2022, Microsoft pumped in about 11.5 million gallons of water to its cluster of Iowa data centers, according to the West Des Moines Water Works. That’s around 6% of all the water used in the district, which also supplies drinking water to residents.
Meanwhile, the energy required is of course not recycled – and it’s to be expected that energy use is growing as well. The companies behind the tools are just not disclosing how much their AI investments are costing us when it comes to their carbon footprint.
”In its latest environmental report, Microsoft disclosed that its global water consumption spiked 34% from 2021 to 2022 (to nearly 1.7 billion gallons, or more than 2,500 Olympic-sized swimming pools), a sharp increase compared to previous years that outside researchers tie to its AI research.”
https://fortune.com/2023/09/09/ai-chatgpt-usage-fuels-spike-in-microsoft-water-consumption/