9 ms·

Almost all research on the mind is in English

• BenFranklin100 3y ago
  This is just a re-statement of the disproven Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. The hacks at Wired need to find something better to write about than pseudoscience.
• sdfghswe 3y ago
  Almost all science is in English.
  • psd1 3y ago
    That's not really the salient point. The article is about subjects of psychological studies being English speakers.
    • sdfghswe 3y ago
      It's like those heatmaps that geographically display prevalence of human-contagious diseases, and they exactly maatch heatmaps of population density.
      • WoahNoun 3y ago
        As always, XKCD is on the case: https://xkcd.com/1138/ https://xkcd.com/1138/
        • tiffanyg 3y ago
          Yes, I too have been waiting for the day when we have not just "Martha Stewart Living", but "Martha Stewart Yiffing". I always thought she'd make a good 'Tanuki'. ;)
      • tiffanyg 3y ago
        I.e. "base-rate neglect" or "fallacy", etc. The concept, and examples, of "base rate" are pretty intuitive, IMO. And yet, somehow, considering how INCREDIBLY CRUCIAL even the most basic understanding of "base rate" is to "critical thinking", they seem completely neglected in the vast majority of education. I'd argue, now, that we'd be far better off skipping crap like "integral rules for the cotangent function" (or whatever the current equivalent is) than skipping serious discussion and repeated allusions to the ubiquitous theme of "base rates" (and even "probability" and "statistics" in general - just having SOME feel for these) in interpreting, well, just about any ... putative "information". Further, I suspect that if we introduced kids to this kind of stuff when they were even 5, or 6, they'd pick it up far more easily than most adults, who have to wedge this often "unwelcome news" into their already rather rigid / solidified worldviews ... possibly confronting how 'wrong' of a perspective they've brought to many chains of reasoning etc... leading, often enough, to rejection of the unwelcome news / much more difficulty understanding it at all (often enough probably driven just by the 'subconscious' interfering with quite "getting it" ... but not in a way almost anyone can realize ... [i.e., why the hell they can't "get it" ... why some concept that seems simple enough is actually so slippery and like 'quicksand' in their minds ... something that might look clear enough 'on paper']).
      • tiffanyg 3y ago
        This was still a bit on my mind, so came back to amend / improve on prior comment (though, seems not much interest in it, still wanted to better fill it out): There are two "classic" issues in these sorts of cases, in terms of statistics. One is the "base rate" I mentioned before, the other is "conditional probabilities". I.e., Bayes' rule (or theorem) etc. These are intimately intertwined, generally. The issue is: if you're trying to make a (statistical) inference, it, much like sentences in writing (among other things), needs to be appropriately "contextualized". So, for example, you might be able to "find something" ... "interesting" ... (or infer / "say" something) in the XKCD example mentioned by another commenter, if you were looking at ratios - for example, (number of "Martha Stewart Living" subscribers) / (number of people). Then, at least, you have something other than just a sample straight from the "base heatmap" (population). Now, if you want to look at those subscribers, and consumers of "furry porn" (or whatever - just following the XKCD set up, here), then, you want to look at things like P(a | b) where a = "subscriber to Martha Stewart Living" and b = "consumer of furry porn" (and, P(a | b) means "the usual" - probability of "subscriber to Martha Stewart Living" GIVEN "consumer of furry porn"). Bayes' rule, and other "transformations" available (i.e., that are valid - that are "Theorems"), help you to find ways to compute such statistics (importantly, under CERTAIN assumptions [specified in the statements of the theorems, underlying propositions, etc. - and generally explained in stats textbooks]). Finally, and this probably prompted returning to write this comment more even than what I just wrote - you don't HAVE to be "formally trained" at all to 'get' this kind of stuff, of course (though most people end up with some kind of 'muddle' / fuzzy thinking without). One of my favorite examples of someone more clever than me (IMO - who seems to have gotten it without "formal" training / consideration / exploration / ...) is Bill Burr: https://youtu.be/ylHisHlMWQQ https://youtu.be/ylHisHlMWQQ
    • tekla 3y ago
      Good thing English is the most used language in the world
      • TremendousJudge 3y ago
        English is behind Mandarin and Spanish in native speakers.
        • tekla 3y ago
          I didn't say native speakers. I said most used.
  • wolfram74 3y ago
    and for say, chemistry or astronomy, that's less of problem. It's like if all computer science research had been done exclusively with, say, ruby, which doesn't allow functions to be passed as arguments. For lots of things that doesn't matter, but some of the limitations of the grammar constrain or deter certain questions.
• 2snakes 3y ago
  I skimmed and it seemed like a bit of a sapir-whorf hypothesis which I think has been supplanted by innate grammar? Eastern wisdom traditions have been studying the mind and consciousness for millenia.
• nottorp 3y ago
  It's not only the language. The various parts of the world are culturally different enough that what seems normal in one place may not be normal in another. And when all you know is your culture, you get a biased definition of normality.
• tester756 3y ago
  There's also other issue: English as native language offers huge advantage Think of it: If you're from non-english speaking country, then you'll be spending like 14 years at school learning english. Additionally you'll have to put a lot of effort outside the classes and you'll still be at probably good / very good, but not native level. So, in order to compete with engineers, scientists, etc from english-first countries you not only have to be as good as they are, but all of that while paying this "english-learning tax" It is like a few thousands of hours of effort required to get decent results and now think about it how many other things you could spend that time on. It is actually crazy when you think about this. Almost every person in majority of countries needs to pay that huge penalty that's required to enter science, business, international world.
  • semi-extrinsic 3y ago
    That is not how it works. Coming from a Scandinavian country, we started learning English around the age of 8, and at the age of 15 my English was good enough that I was reading the Harry Potter books in English as they were published, rather than wait six months for the translation. Then I was also learning a third language from age 13 to 19. And it's well documented that learning new languages, similar to playing sports or doing crafts or other stuff, is very beneficial for brain development in children and young adults. If your hypothesis made sense, the United Kingdom should have a huge advantage over other European countries within science and other fields where English is predominantly used. But it does not. You can e.g. look at metrics like "number of scientific publications per capita", where the UK is only number 20 in the world, and the US is number 33.
    • rvba 3y ago
      Funny that you are making the mistake that everyone is offered the same opportunities as in Scandinavia. Public education in many countries is trash. In third world you probably have bad public education and you have to work. In say Poland if you speak good English it means you learned it on private lessons or on your own.
      • 3y ago
• asow92 3y ago
  If it's such a problem then use another language. Nobody is stopping you.
• kaycebasques 3y ago
  See also: How the brain processes German and Arabic https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36347222 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36347222
• b59831 3y ago
  This is pseudoscience but it's antiwest, so I guess it gets a pass. :shrug:
• tolsof 3y ago
  > In English, it is typical to give an “agentive” description, such as “Sofia broke the glass,” even if it was an accident. But in Spanish, the particle se is typically used, and this changes the focus of the sentence; the description of the same event in Spanish would often be formed as: “The glass broke itself.” Meh. It depends. I don't think I would say "Se rompio el vaso" ("The glass broke itself") if I saw that Sofia broke it (I would say instead "Sofia rompio el vaso", just like in English). But if I don't know who broke the glass, then yeah I probably would say "Se rompio el vaso" (or just "The glass is broken", "El vaso está roto"). Edit: But, if I don't really want to point at Sofia while still saying that the glass is now broken, then I may use the "se" to lighten the matter. But I guess in English one can do the same thing ("Things get broken, people. Nothing to see here")
  • dkjaudyeqooe 3y ago
    In reality, in the case of an accident in polite company, most people would just say "the glass broke" since who broke it is irrelevant. In a supermarket where I dropped a jar of pasta sauce, I said "the jar broke". Me breaking it was not important, since I wasn't going to pay for it.
  • stubybubs 3y ago
    I took some Spanish and was taught the "se" form. Is it maybe a "traditional" Spanish vs common usage which has picked up on English sentence structure? A question for parents or grandparents I guess.
  • igsomething 3y ago
    You could also say "Se le rompio el vaso", which means she broke the glass but it was not her fault.
• jasmer 3y ago
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• whispersnow 3y ago
  Agree languages form different brains. If you speak Mandarin, your brain is different: https://theconversation.com/if-you-speak-mandarin-your-brain-is-different-37993 https://theconversation.com/if-you-speak-mandarin-your-brain...
• devsatish 3y ago
  on some what related: Immigrant parents (first gen) mostly 'think'/their internal monologue in their own mother tongue/language. The kids mostly born in the US like the rest of the "English" native speakers have their internal thinking/monologue (brain speak if you will) is in English. This adds to an interesting conversation, sharing nuances, inside jokes etc.
• zen928 3y ago
  it's funny that this statement is brought forward as a problem in trying to assert awareness to closed thinking but the reason that this statement is a "problem" is carefully constructed to avoid any social, political or cultural dialog around discussing the "problem" in a closed mind fashion research and documentation should strive to be the most convenient forms to be accessed and read by others; shifting to outdated romantic languages that tie gender to objects or to region-specialized character heavy ineffecient languages that already rely on english loan words to convey modern ideas doesn't seem like the answer either right? maybe some critique on how outdated other common languages are compared to emerging cultural concepts would provide a better point to how language should evolve instead of becoming frankensteined as a point of cultural prestige? im down for switching to hangul if it were noted that e.g. conveying ideas and topics we commonly see in scientific research were able to be easier processed and understood, but that's not what the subtle "english bad" tone is trying to convey here
  • messe 3y ago
    Talk about bad takes. Do you speak any languages other than English? > shifting to outdated romantic languages that tie gender to objects Gender in linguistics is better referred to as noun classes and should not be conflated with societal notions of gender. And calling a language outdated is deeply ignorant, and borders on xenophobic. And Hangul is not a language, it’s a writing system.
    • zen928 3y ago
      wow, real discussion about language! > Do you speak any languages other than English? yes > Gender in linguistics is better referred to as noun classes and should not be conflated with societal notions of gender. grammatical gender has been referred to as synonymous to noun classes for decades, obviously varies language to language but this isn't a correction but rather your opinion :) > And calling a language outdated is deeply ignorant, and borders on xenophobic. what do you mean? im divorcing any notion of region, politics or cultural context to something as broad as a language like the article is doing! i dont REALLY mean anything negative when trying to discuss weaknesses of these classes of languages by making broad statements, im just noting that the field of research would make these choices inappropriate as a comparison to english using the same sterile tone as the article. > And Hangul is not a language, it’s a writing system. i meant writing in korean (too implicitly, my mistake), does it change that statement? :)
• taeric 3y ago
  I really dislike the idea that people don't perceive differences in things that they give the same name to. Specifically, "Having a certain linguistic category can make the difference between seeing something or missing it" seems distinctly wrong to me. It seems fair to say that caring about things leads to separate linguistic characteristics, but it doesn't make sense to me to say that using the same word implies that you don't distinguish things. Easy example for me would be looking at an aquarium. I'm likely to just say it contains a variety of fish. Someone that cares and has studied fish could tell you the accepted names of each. We would both be perceiving different types of fish, though. Such that if you showed me a gold fish and a tiger fish, I'd like describe it as two fish. But if you asked me if each were the same, I'd say no. Same as if you showed me any of the ridiculously large number of blue crayons in a modern crayola pack. They are all just blue to me. Are they the same blue? Obviously not.
  • lazyasciiart 3y ago
    Sapir-Whorf theory, if you would like to look it up to find out that people have already thought of these objections. And “it doesn’t make sense to me” is a terrible reason to disagree with a claim about nature, nature certainly doesn’t always make sense.
    • taeric 3y ago
      My understanding is that Sapir-Whorf is not nearly as strongly favored as it was at one point, though? And I see nothing wrong with saying something doesn't make sense. If anything, I find the idea that we shouldn't allow folks to express doubts on things as a terrible path to go down. I am emphatically not claiming that, because it doesn't make sense to me, it must be false. In my post, do you have a counter to why I would not be able to distinguish two colors that I use the same name for? It is not at all uncommon to where mismatching clothes that are both blue, as it were. If asked to say what color someone's clothes are that are cyan and blue, I fully expect I'd just say "blue." As would the vast majority of people. If that example bothers you, what color would you say the sky is? Noting that it typically has strong gradients that are clearly visible to people.
• deleted 3y ago
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• FredPret 3y ago
  I'm not a native English speaker. Growing up, I soon noticed that almost all of everything technical is in English. And that's a good thing. All you have to do is learn English (easier said than done, but completely realistic and feasible for most), and you can talk to almost every nerd in the world about anything.
  • nemetroid 3y ago
    How does this relate to the article?
    • FredPret 3y ago
      The article says "almost all of this technical thing is in English and that's bad". I'm saying "no it's good"
      • jamil7 3y ago
        The headline says that, the article is different. It's saying most research studies done on the mind are done on English-speaking participants.
        • FredPret 3y ago
          Serves me right for skimming the headlines!
        • dkjaudyeqooe 3y ago
          That's the argument, but I'm not sure it makes sense. Unless you're studying the difference in people's minds given language differences, it makes more sense to study a common language, otherwise language differences will color the results, making comparisons difficult or impossible.
          • nemetroid 3y ago
            Yes, it's easier to study just one language. But it limits your ability to make universal, language-independent, conclusions about the mind.
• PaulHoule 3y ago
  Funny I have seen a lot of really interesting psychology research out of China recently including ancient Chinese wisdom on how emotions are related to each other (cultivate sadness to quench anger) and on the relationship between schizotypy and bullying victimization in schools. Of course I have seen this because it got translated to English.
• deleted 3y ago
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• arihantparsoya 3y ago
  I am a meditator from India. When I read the theory of meditation in Hindi, it is much more deeply understood (hindi as more words for explaining concepts of mind and consciousness) than english. However, I also think if someone is into experiential learning practices about the mind (such as meditation), it doesn't matter once you are sufficiently developed in those practices.
  • isoprophlex 3y ago
    Interesting, could you give some examples of the more nuanced words that Hindi has, which English lacks? (If it's feasible to do so at all; I'd struggle to translate some idioms from my native language to English...)
• guerrilla 3y ago
  Except the multiple forests worth of books written in Indian and Chinese languages that the OP ignores. Anyway, this is exactly the same mistake psychology made and how we got the acronym WEIRD. Stupid that we don't learn from history even within science.
• pieter_mj 3y ago
  So glad as a native Dutch speaker I'll be escaping the mind reading AI. Cherio mf'ers!
• celtoid 3y ago
  The study of the mind is the study of intangibles. English is a good language for the material, tangible realm but a poor one for describing the intangible realm inhabited by the mind. For instance, the Pali concept of "dukkha" is difficult to translate into English effectively [0]. [0] https://www.accesstoinsight.org/ptf/dhamma/sacca/sacca1/dukkha.html https://www.accesstoinsight.org/ptf/dhamma/sacca/sacca1/dukk...
• pkaye 3y ago
  > “If I ask you now, ‘How many senses are there?’ I suspect your answer is gonna be five,” Ameka says. But in the West African language Ewe, spoken by over 20 million people, including Ameka, at least nine senses are culturally recognized There is already known to be more senses that five: * sense of heat and cold * sense of pain * sense of balance * sense of body awareness (touch your nose while your eyes are closed)
• asow92 3y ago
  We'd be having the same discussion if some other language emerged as the lingua franca. It's just easier to share knowledge if we're all speaking the same language regardless of that language or inherent grammatical bias. A globalized world will always coalesce around some primary language. It's not like english is necessarily special: it was just in the right place at the right time and generally works. And there's nothing stopping you from using other languages. Go right ahead.
• psychoslave 3y ago
  >Generalizations we make about the mind might, in fact, be wrong. We know how it goes: all generalizations are abusive, but they are so appealing, which is all the more true for this current one.