Just started. It's a use of contemporary "continental" psychology (Lacanian and Zizekian psychoanalysis) to consider the irrational choices that go into program

Just started. It's a use of contemporary "continental" psychology (Lacanian and Zizekian psychoanalysis) to consider the irrational choices that go into programming language. It's kind of out-there but anything that gives a wider view of the choices programmers make might be useful. Edit: Watching a bit. I would view the quandary the presenter is discussing thus. Human being are both power-seeking, ego-gratifying being and "rational", logic-using beings. Now, human communicate with language. And a given "speech act", is not going to a pure exercise in logic or a pure exercise in power-seeking but some combination. Then, consider that humans interact with discreet "speech acts". A given speech act is going have an overt logical structure (simplify whatever math-y logic you wish) and it's going to involve some degree of power assertion. The power-assertion part by a fairly simple mechanism - identify yourself with a symbol and argue that symbol is "good" (and further associate symbols with each other, other symbols with "bad" and so-forth, all in dynamic process of power assertion). The most common example is a national flag but lots of judgements and colorations come in with this. Moreover, speech is a sequence of "speech acts" and first speech acts in a given context tend to "set the tone" - power is dynamic so the first speech act in a context to set the context the most. So, with all that, I think it one can find a useful explanation why curly-bracket-semi-colon language and block-structured language have an apparently eternal "holy war". Also, I think evolutionary game theory is a more coherent context for this. Evolutionary game theory allows the contrast between overt logic and self-seeking to be more clear and not have to call any process "irrational".