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Your simply mentioning the sensation was enough to distinctly bring it to mind. Having grown up by a beach, I've experienced it a lot, from childhood through t

Your simply mentioning the sensation was enough to distinctly bring it to mind. Having grown up by a beach, I've experienced it a lot, from childhood through to as an adult at different beaches around the world. While a specific word for it may be useful, I don't see how it is necessary as an aid to recall of the sensation.

ethanbond 3y ago
I don’t think they said it’s necessary. They said it helps to isolate it in consciousness from the countless other phenomena you’re experiencing every second of every day.
- psychphysic 3y ago
  Reminds me of mindfulness practices, having a word for it, and linking that word to a trip to the Maldives is likely what makes it so intensely memorable.
  - Lamad123 3y ago
    Very "intensely memorable" feelings/things don't have names!! The smell of old grass or barnes or rain on dry soil or kinds of breeze at certain temperature and level of humidity.. Many of these random things without names are still there and don't require words.
    - yesco 3y ago
      No one said they were required, just that words may help induce mindfulness of these sensations
    - atdrummond 3y ago
      Smell of rain on soil does have a name, though - petrichor.
      - ethanbond 3y ago
        And is a good example of "if you know the name, it makes the sensation stand out even more."
jerjerjer 3y ago
Same thing as a meme - it compresses the information and allows an easier (and so more vivid) recall.
serial_dev 3y ago
Well, now that we all know there is a word for it, we can evaluate whether our senses were calibrated and amplified for that specific thing. We won't know it while this thread is active, but if you go to the beach in a week, and exclaim "wow, this feyli thing is pretty nice", then you'll know that your senses for feeling the "sand between your toes as waves recede on a beach" is heightened.
godelski 3y ago
> I don't see how it is necessary as an aid to recall of the sensation. Because the nature of language itself is that of compression. In fact, this is why there are often miscommunications, and significantly more on the internet than with people you know well. Language works kinda like this: Alice has a thought in their head, they compress that thought into words, Bob hears the words and decompresses the words into thoughts. The intent is so that we can communicate thoughts between one another. But our compression and decompression algorithms are different. Quite incredible when you think about it, since these are fuzzy algorithms so the decompression algorithm works for even different compression algorithms. You can work with someone speaking a broken form of your language or even a completely different language (mutually intelligible). In fact, you can train yourself to be better at decoding and you may notice someone that hangs out with "foreigners" a lot is easily able to understand someone speaking in a broken form of your language with a heavy accent while this is completely unintelligible to another person. This can even be done with novel source languages and accents. (try turning off the subtitles and you'll get better). But the major miscommunication issue is the priors that our compression and decompression algorithms work with. The previous concept works because we broaden the possible priors, but if you assert strict ones you will miscommunication more and misunderstand more. This is why when people try to deceive you they will assert very narrow ways of understanding certain words. But in reality, words only mean what we mean them to mean, as the purpose of language is only to communicate thoughts in heads. But that's why good faith is so important. You shouldn't just try very hard to make sure your words are easy to interpret, but also try very hard to interpret the intent behind the words of another. Reading between the lines isn't only for hidden messages, but every conversation.
- cachvico 3y ago
  This is an extremely insightful and profound comment. Thank you
jvanderbot 3y ago
I think words are a sort of Huffman encoding of information. I can definitely use a sentence to describe something, but you do that enough and it's just nicer to have a word for it.

ethanbond 3y ago

I don’t think they said it’s necessary. They said it helps to isolate it in consciousness from the countless other phenomena you’re experiencing every second of every day.

psychphysic 3y ago
Reminds me of mindfulness practices, having a word for it, and linking that word to a trip to the Maldives is likely what makes it so intensely memorable.
- Lamad123 3y ago
  Very "intensely memorable" feelings/things don't have names!! The smell of old grass or barnes or rain on dry soil or kinds of breeze at certain temperature and level of humidity.. Many of these random things without names are still there and don't require words.
  - yesco 3y ago
    No one said they were required, just that words may help induce mindfulness of these sensations
  - atdrummond 3y ago
    Smell of rain on soil does have a name, though - petrichor.
    - ethanbond 3y ago
      And is a good example of "if you know the name, it makes the sensation stand out even more."

jerjerjer 3y ago

Same thing as a meme - it compresses the information and allows an easier (and so more vivid) recall.

serial_dev 3y ago

Well, now that we all know there is a word for it, we can evaluate whether our senses were calibrated and amplified for that specific thing. We won't know it while this thread is active, but if you go to the beach in a week, and exclaim "wow, this feyli thing is pretty nice", then you'll know that your senses for feeling the "sand between your toes as waves recede on a beach" is heightened.

godelski 3y ago

> I don't see how it is necessary as an aid to recall of the sensation. Because the nature of language itself is that of compression. In fact, this is why there are often miscommunications, and significantly more on the internet than with people you know well. Language works kinda like this: Alice has a thought in their head, they compress that thought into words, Bob hears the words and decompresses the words into thoughts. The intent is so that we can communicate thoughts between one another. But our compression and decompression algorithms are different. Quite incredible when you think about it, since these are fuzzy algorithms so the decompression algorithm works for even different compression algorithms. You can work with someone speaking a broken form of your language or even a completely different language (mutually intelligible). In fact, you can train yourself to be better at decoding and you may notice someone that hangs out with "foreigners" a lot is easily able to understand someone speaking in a broken form of your language with a heavy accent while this is completely unintelligible to another person. This can even be done with novel source languages and accents. (try turning off the subtitles and you'll get better). But the major miscommunication issue is the priors that our compression and decompression algorithms work with. The previous concept works because we broaden the possible priors, but if you assert strict ones you will miscommunication more and misunderstand more. This is why when people try to deceive you they will assert very narrow ways of understanding certain words. But in reality, words only mean what we mean them to mean, as the purpose of language is only to communicate thoughts in heads. But that's why good faith is so important. You shouldn't just try very hard to make sure your words are easy to interpret, but also try very hard to interpret the intent behind the words of another. Reading between the lines isn't only for hidden messages, but every conversation.

cachvico 3y ago
This is an extremely insightful and profound comment. Thank you

jvanderbot 3y ago

I think words are a sort of Huffman encoding of information. I can definitely use a sentence to describe something, but you do that enough and it's just nicer to have a word for it.