Not going to lie I was just making a pun on geometry phrase "how the crow flies". The short answer is that to build abstractions, you need words that represent

Not going to lie I was just making a pun on geometry phrase "how the crow flies". The short answer is that to build abstractions, you need words that represent sets of possibilities, not just specific things. words like "anywhere", "anyone", "somewhere" etc. You also need some set-builder logic words like negation and union and disjunction. Basically you need to be able to substitute a regex matching pattern in place of a literal specific shape instruction. The genius of language is that it can transmit partial information just as well as the whole.