3 ms·

Fascinating concept I wonder how humans decode these symbols, because it doesn’t seem to be 10x more “costly” for a person to natively learn one of those langu

by nico 3y ago

Fascinating concept I wonder how humans decode these symbols, because it doesn’t seem to be 10x more “costly” for a person to natively learn one of those languages vs another Also, supposedly, independent of the language, humans communicate at an aprox constant rate (39 bits/second according to this: https://www.science.org/content/article/human-speech-may-have-universal-transmission-rate-39-bits-second https://www.science.org/content/article/human-speech-may-hav...) — Here’s the Twitter thread about it from the same author: https://twitter.com/yenniejun/status/1653791622197579776?s=46 https://twitter.com/yenniejun/status/1653791622197579776?s=4...

K0balt 3y ago
Some languages require significantly more effort to think in. I believe this has a non-negligible effect on human productivity and advancement. I suspect that the tokenizer is biased towards English, but I also suspect that a self optimizing or universally optimized tokenizer would see similar results. I am multi-lingual and find that some concepts are easier to explore in different languages. I am native English, so I lack certain insights into the relative usefulness of English, but I know many non- native speakers of English that tell me that they prefer to think in English for many cognitive tasks because it is less tiresome or more efficient or more accurate, to use their subjective experiences. I also wonder how the way that a language is learned (instruction vs immersion) might impact this? I suspect that the end result of these two learning styles is much more divergent than external appearance might suggest, as I find that I don’t or only very rarely solve problems in languages I have learned through instruction, while I have a completely separate personaje available in language/cultures I have learned through immersion. Interpersonal relationships in one language are non-translatable to other languages, for example. Certainly language choice impacts the density of textual knowledge, and English seems to have a density advantage here. Books translated from English tend to be simply bigger in order to convey the same information. I wonder if there are languages more dense textually than English and how they tokenize? It is interesting to consider the possibility that language choice could offer a cognitive advantage, and what that might imply for the potential for intentional human language optimization.
- mcswell 3y ago
  "Some languages require significantly more effort to think in": No. A native speaker of one of those languages can think as effortlessly in them as you can in English. "Interpersonal relationships in one language are non-translatable to other languages": I very much doubt that; the Bible (or at least the New Testament) has been translated into thousands of languages. Some concepts require more words in some languages than in others, but in the end it's possible. The real issue for things like Bible translation are plants and especially animals that don't exist in the other cultures, not interpersonal concepts.

by nico 3y ago

K0balt 3y ago

Some languages require significantly more effort to think in. I believe this has a non-negligible effect on human productivity and advancement. I suspect that the tokenizer is biased towards English, but I also suspect that a self optimizing or universally optimized tokenizer would see similar results. I am multi-lingual and find that some concepts are easier to explore in different languages. I am native English, so I lack certain insights into the relative usefulness of English, but I know many non- native speakers of English that tell me that they prefer to think in English for many cognitive tasks because it is less tiresome or more efficient or more accurate, to use their subjective experiences. I also wonder how the way that a language is learned (instruction vs immersion) might impact this? I suspect that the end result of these two learning styles is much more divergent than external appearance might suggest, as I find that I don’t or only very rarely solve problems in languages I have learned through instruction, while I have a completely separate personaje available in language/cultures I have learned through immersion. Interpersonal relationships in one language are non-translatable to other languages, for example. Certainly language choice impacts the density of textual knowledge, and English seems to have a density advantage here. Books translated from English tend to be simply bigger in order to convey the same information. I wonder if there are languages more dense textually than English and how they tokenize? It is interesting to consider the possibility that language choice could offer a cognitive advantage, and what that might imply for the potential for intentional human language optimization.

mcswell 3y ago
"Some languages require significantly more effort to think in": No. A native speaker of one of those languages can think as effortlessly in them as you can in English. "Interpersonal relationships in one language are non-translatable to other languages": I very much doubt that; the Bible (or at least the New Testament) has been translated into thousands of languages. Some concepts require more words in some languages than in others, but in the end it's possible. The real issue for things like Bible translation are plants and especially animals that don't exist in the other cultures, not interpersonal concepts.