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It's a pretty bold leap to find a shift in language and then presume that this represents an underlying change in how people reason. It would be equally believ
by floodle 5y ago
It's a pretty bold leap to find a shift in language and then presume that this represents an underlying change in how people reason.
It would be equally believable that people are simply using different, more fashionable, words, but reasoning the same as they have always done.
- civilized 5y agoI've been reading and criticizing media-hyped studies for a long time, and I've noticed there is an "interestingness bias" in these studies' conclusions. Media-hound scientists will always walk straight past the less interesting explanations of their data and seize on the most attention-grabbing conclusion as the one "the data clearly suggests." Then the comment section will go "what about the less interesting explanations"? Which of course were downplayed in the paper, and omitted entirely from the media promotion of the paper.
- krageon 5y agoI think it is not unreasonable to believe language (and word use) and thinking patterns are connected. The fact that these relate (and yes, that different words lead to different thinking patterns) is well understood in practicing areas of psychology.
- tgv 5y agoIt's utter bollocks. And it even looks as if they've assigned "intuition" vs "rational" words afterwards. How come "truth" is intuition while "determine" isn't? But adding "facebook" is really the nail in the coffin: that only became available in 2004 or so, and so could almost only show an upward trend.