4 ms·

Over-reliance on English hinders cognitive science

21 points by amar-laksh 4y ago

taeric 4y ago
I always have some trepidation on claims that things could be better in a field if we only did it differently. I am open to "what got you here may not get you further," but I get the strong feeling that the metrics we think are valuable, are ignoring many other metrics and ideas that are doing some heavy lifting.
tgv 4y ago
What an unsubstantiated article. First, it oozes Sapir-Whorf: "Critically, the language one speaks or signs can have downstream effects on ostensibly nonlinguistic cognitive domains, ranging from memory, to social cognition, perception, decision-making, and more." Where is the bloody proof of that? Second, nobody will deny that testing (young) students at predominantly English speaking schools will lead to biased results, results that don't generalize across all languages and cultures, but that's got nothing to do with the peculiarities of the language. Every language has its own idiosyncracies. But, there's enough research in other languages, and the basics seem to match. Third: language is a small part of cognition. There's memory, attention, visual recognition, planning, learning, etc., and no reason to think that that's heavily influenced by language. Fourth: progress in cognitive science is not hindered by lack of language, nor the subjects, it's the theory. We have no idea how cognition works, and adding yet another Stroop task but this time in some even smaller language isn't going to advance it an iota (Stroop task experiments have already been run in the Indo-European languages, Basque, Chinese, Japanese, bilingual Arabic-Hebrew, etc.). Fifth: I would definitely discourage people from running experiments in languages they don't understand deeply. I've seen researchers run experiments in my native tongue with glaring agreement errors, and that just throws your subjects off.
- freemrkt8 4y ago
  Human languages are ~5,000 years old while human intuition for quantity (enough heat, food, water), spatial geometry has evolved along with us from the start. GabeN has discussed how relatively easy it is to make tech that can engage with the cortex, but seemingly impossible to read when a person “is cold” because more than the cortex is involved; spatial awareness and consciousness rely on full body sensory data not just the brain. There’s no substance to the idea English is responsible for humans engaging in human things; we built tribal life and tools before they existed. Anglo history has largely relied on the ambiguity of the language to manipulate the masses, externalize the work to prop up a minority “educated in language.” I’d go a step further than this article and call human language a historical barnacle that spreads mind viruses and empowers inept ideas, leading to fascist police state behavior; language comes along, humanity develops religion and violent nation states, vain figurative identity to defend through violence. Our “natural language” is math as it’s a necessary intuition to survive the real world. https://nautil.us/are-all-brains-good-at-math-238539/ https://nautil.us/are-all-brains-good-at-math-238539/
  - DiggyJohnson 4y ago
    This seems bananas too me. Are you arguing that language is bad for us? Do you realize language is much older than the age of modern languages? Linguists debate how long we’ve used complex language, but the most conservative estimates are 50,000 years, and evidence increasingly pushes this date much further back.
    - freemrkt8 4y ago
      Humanoids have been around for millions of years. In universal timescales language has existed as long a TV. I’m arguing figurative identity built through linguistic structures is bad for us. That it binds inner monologue to circling fantasy. That’s it’s entirely built on emotional policing; reinforced preservation of spoken story and tradition, which binds agency to pledges of allegiance, other words of power. Whether it’s good or bad, I don’t know. That’s too simple a set of choices. I don’t think it has much to do with engineering tolerances to build a bridge or machine. I see how it’s correct use is babysat by the educated, as is spoken tradition. But I have yet to see how those educated are more than one of billions. I don’t buy into figurative identity. It’s all a bit repetitive. If I can just dismiss the truth in language I have a hard time seeing how it matters in concrete terms? To be real this is a perspective I’ve adopted over time. I’m in my 40s. I used to love creative writing and fiction. Now it all seems prosaic and repetitive relative to experimental discovery. I don’t use English to guide my next experiment but the measurements of the previous one. If, as a normal human, one of billions, can function like this successfully it’s hard to see language as a fundamental requirement of doing and more of a historical barnacle like religious texts. Edit: I really don’t care about comment scores and online reps either. Chemical addiction to doing what’s acceptable in the aggregate is exactly the argument against language I’m making. Infinite potential sentences of meaning, constrained by politically correct memory. I would hope it’s obvious words are not stored as real things in us. Speaking and writing are trained mechanical behavior. If you merely train the smallest amount of language possible, behavior is tailored to defend that language. This isn’t really a novel idea.
  - taeric 4y ago
    Claiming math as our natural language feels like a heck of a stretch. Unless you mean math as something other than the human construct we use to communicate it. I am open to the idea that things can get better. Indeed, I hope they do. I am deeply skeptical of pushes that what got us here is flawed, inherently, though. Not adequate to get us further? Sure. But actively holding back where we could have been if we didn't have it? Seems ludicrous.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
ccbccccbbcccbb 4y ago
So yeah, instead of learning one de-facto lingua franca of the world and more or less successfully communicating regardless of geographic origin, let's totally focus on learning, let me cite the article out of context, > the current 7000 or so languages , all meaningful international interop be damned! The gist of the article is basically the hackneyed "diversity is good", but no solutions are given as to how would people understand each other should this pesky English domination be gone. Should all the world become over-reliant on google translate instead? That would mean business for google, for sure. A Russian-speaking guy who doesn't feel over-reliant on English a tiny bit here (and also notices the morbid tendency to separate the humankind and encamp it back into the isolated national states of the yesteryear).
- readthenotes1 4y ago
  I thought it was kinda funny the article is in English. They don't have the power of their convictions!

21 points by amar-laksh 4y ago

I always have some trepidation on claims that things could be better in a field if we only did it differently. I am open to "what got you here may not get you further," but I get the strong feeling that the metrics we think are valuable, are ignoring many other metrics and ideas that are doing some heavy lifting.

tgv 4y ago

What an unsubstantiated article. First, it oozes Sapir-Whorf: "Critically, the language one speaks or signs can have downstream effects on ostensibly nonlinguistic cognitive domains, ranging from memory, to social cognition, perception, decision-making, and more." Where is the bloody proof of that? Second, nobody will deny that testing (young) students at predominantly English speaking schools will lead to biased results, results that don't generalize across all languages and cultures, but that's got nothing to do with the peculiarities of the language. Every language has its own idiosyncracies. But, there's enough research in other languages, and the basics seem to match. Third: language is a small part of cognition. There's memory, attention, visual recognition, planning, learning, etc., and no reason to think that that's heavily influenced by language. Fourth: progress in cognitive science is not hindered by lack of language, nor the subjects, it's the theory. We have no idea how cognition works, and adding yet another Stroop task but this time in some even smaller language isn't going to advance it an iota (Stroop task experiments have already been run in the Indo-European languages, Basque, Chinese, Japanese, bilingual Arabic-Hebrew, etc.). Fifth: I would definitely discourage people from running experiments in languages they don't understand deeply. I've seen researchers run experiments in my native tongue with glaring agreement errors, and that just throws your subjects off.

freemrkt8 4y ago
Human languages are ~5,000 years old while human intuition for quantity (enough heat, food, water), spatial geometry has evolved along with us from the start. GabeN has discussed how relatively easy it is to make tech that can engage with the cortex, but seemingly impossible to read when a person “is cold” because more than the cortex is involved; spatial awareness and consciousness rely on full body sensory data not just the brain. There’s no substance to the idea English is responsible for humans engaging in human things; we built tribal life and tools before they existed. Anglo history has largely relied on the ambiguity of the language to manipulate the masses, externalize the work to prop up a minority “educated in language.” I’d go a step further than this article and call human language a historical barnacle that spreads mind viruses and empowers inept ideas, leading to fascist police state behavior; language comes along, humanity develops religion and violent nation states, vain figurative identity to defend through violence. Our “natural language” is math as it’s a necessary intuition to survive the real world. https://nautil.us/are-all-brains-good-at-math-238539/ https://nautil.us/are-all-brains-good-at-math-238539/
- DiggyJohnson 4y ago
  This seems bananas too me. Are you arguing that language is bad for us? Do you realize language is much older than the age of modern languages? Linguists debate how long we’ve used complex language, but the most conservative estimates are 50,000 years, and evidence increasingly pushes this date much further back.
  - freemrkt8 4y ago
    Humanoids have been around for millions of years. In universal timescales language has existed as long a TV. I’m arguing figurative identity built through linguistic structures is bad for us. That it binds inner monologue to circling fantasy. That’s it’s entirely built on emotional policing; reinforced preservation of spoken story and tradition, which binds agency to pledges of allegiance, other words of power. Whether it’s good or bad, I don’t know. That’s too simple a set of choices. I don’t think it has much to do with engineering tolerances to build a bridge or machine. I see how it’s correct use is babysat by the educated, as is spoken tradition. But I have yet to see how those educated are more than one of billions. I don’t buy into figurative identity. It’s all a bit repetitive. If I can just dismiss the truth in language I have a hard time seeing how it matters in concrete terms? To be real this is a perspective I’ve adopted over time. I’m in my 40s. I used to love creative writing and fiction. Now it all seems prosaic and repetitive relative to experimental discovery. I don’t use English to guide my next experiment but the measurements of the previous one. If, as a normal human, one of billions, can function like this successfully it’s hard to see language as a fundamental requirement of doing and more of a historical barnacle like religious texts. Edit: I really don’t care about comment scores and online reps either. Chemical addiction to doing what’s acceptable in the aggregate is exactly the argument against language I’m making. Infinite potential sentences of meaning, constrained by politically correct memory. I would hope it’s obvious words are not stored as real things in us. Speaking and writing are trained mechanical behavior. If you merely train the smallest amount of language possible, behavior is tailored to defend that language. This isn’t really a novel idea.
- taeric 4y ago
  Claiming math as our natural language feels like a heck of a stretch. Unless you mean math as something other than the human construct we use to communicate it. I am open to the idea that things can get better. Indeed, I hope they do. I am deeply skeptical of pushes that what got us here is flawed, inherently, though. Not adequate to get us further? Sure. But actively holding back where we could have been if we didn't have it? Seems ludicrous.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

ccbccccbbcccbb 4y ago

So yeah, instead of learning one de-facto lingua franca of the world and more or less successfully communicating regardless of geographic origin, let's totally focus on learning, let me cite the article out of context, > the current 7000 or so languages , all meaningful international interop be damned! The gist of the article is basically the hackneyed "diversity is good", but no solutions are given as to how would people understand each other should this pesky English domination be gone. Should all the world become over-reliant on google translate instead? That would mean business for google, for sure. A Russian-speaking guy who doesn't feel over-reliant on English a tiny bit here (and also notices the morbid tendency to separate the humankind and encamp it back into the isolated national states of the yesteryear).

readthenotes1 4y ago
I thought it was kinda funny the article is in English. They don't have the power of their convictions!