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> I'm a neurobiologist with a start up that's about replacing the symbolic What's your startup? What are your publications? That Google doc link is more word-s

by the_af 1y ago

> I'm a neurobiologist with a start up that's about replacing the symbolic What's your startup? What are your publications? That Google doc link is more word-salad and random quotes and citations. What on earth is a "start up that's about replacing the symbolic"? > If you understand the nature of language fully, then its ultimate function is to refute itself. In other words, all our use of arbitrary signals leads eventually to specific signals. To make that simpler, each statement in any existing language is about replacing language. This is word salad, for example. You're not trying to "make it simpler", you're trying to obfuscate (or it's just random). > That's a warning CS hasn't done its homework. What's a "CS"?

mallowdram 1y ago
I don't disclose affiliations here, that's the beauty of HN. I get to keep my anonymity to explore. A start-up that replaces the symbolic engages with specifics in signals in the record (animals, entoptics, onomatopoeia, calendrical signs, action-syntax externals, cinematic action-glyphs) and figures out what representations veer referential and offers concatenation. The idea that language refutes itself is as old as the pre-socratics. I won't go into the detailed history here, but there are 1000s of reference for this statement. I'll use Cassirer's, which is pretty succinct. ..at some point a direct contact must occur between knowledge and reality. If we succeed in freeing ourselves from all these interpretations – if we above all succeed in removing the veil of words, which conceals the true essence of things, then at one stroke we shall find ourselves face to face with the original perceptions.. Ernst Cassirer The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms Freeing ourselves from the veil of words is theoretically equivalent to language's ultimate function is to refute itself. CS is computer science. btw it's clear the drive to encapsulate in plain English was and is the achilles heel to CS, coders are forced to finger point using characterizations of "word salad" at scientifically complex theories and analytic ideas.
nyeah 1y ago
Commenter says language carries no meaning. Why discuss? (How would you discuss?)
- mallowdram 1y ago
  Ask Gemini The idea that "language has no meaning" highlights the arbitrariness of language, meaning there's no natural, necessary connection between a word's form and its concept. The relationship between a word and what it signifies is a result of social convention and agreement within a linguistic community. For example, the sound of the word "dog" does not intrinsically resemble the animal itself; rather, we've all agreed to associate those sounds with the canine creature.
- FreakLegion 1y ago
  It's a much more banal claim: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Course_in_General_Linguistics#Arbitrariness https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Course_in_General_Linguistics#...
  - mallowdram 1y ago
    It's not a "banal claim" it's the foundational property of language that excludes it from any biological specificity (direct relationship to survival). “There is nothing red about the word red, and the word big is itself rather small.” (Cuskley, Simner, & Kirby) https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0003347209002589 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00033...
  - nyeah 1y ago
    I meant the claim at the end of this comment: "language doesn't really mean anything." https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45372551 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45372551 I'm fine with each sign being arbitrarily chosen at some point. People can even make that sound kind of cool with the Helen Keller "water" thing. But if the whole conversation is meaningless, that's a snoozer. I'd be happier staring at the clouds.
    - FreakLegion 1y ago
      He doesn't mean to say the conversation is meaningless, just that the signs themselves have no intrinsic meaning, since they're arbitrary. Which, duh. It's a banal claim articulated poorly. There's a little bit of ore here to mine (there are philosophical accounts of natural meaning, for example; see Paul Grice), but he mostly seems to just believe in a transcendental signified, and missed the boat on how incredibly rich the consequences of e.g. J. L. Austin and late Wittgenstein are for how we think about language.

by the_af 1y ago

mallowdram 1y ago

I don't disclose affiliations here, that's the beauty of HN. I get to keep my anonymity to explore. A start-up that replaces the symbolic engages with specifics in signals in the record (animals, entoptics, onomatopoeia, calendrical signs, action-syntax externals, cinematic action-glyphs) and figures out what representations veer referential and offers concatenation. The idea that language refutes itself is as old as the pre-socratics. I won't go into the detailed history here, but there are 1000s of reference for this statement. I'll use Cassirer's, which is pretty succinct. ..at some point a direct contact must occur between knowledge and reality. If we succeed in freeing ourselves from all these interpretations – if we above all succeed in removing the veil of words, which conceals the true essence of things, then at one stroke we shall find ourselves face to face with the original perceptions.. Ernst Cassirer The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms Freeing ourselves from the veil of words is theoretically equivalent to language's ultimate function is to refute itself. CS is computer science. btw it's clear the drive to encapsulate in plain English was and is the achilles heel to CS, coders are forced to finger point using characterizations of "word salad" at scientifically complex theories and analytic ideas.

nyeah 1y ago

Commenter says language carries no meaning. Why discuss? (How would you discuss?)

mallowdram 1y ago
Ask Gemini The idea that "language has no meaning" highlights the arbitrariness of language, meaning there's no natural, necessary connection between a word's form and its concept. The relationship between a word and what it signifies is a result of social convention and agreement within a linguistic community. For example, the sound of the word "dog" does not intrinsically resemble the animal itself; rather, we've all agreed to associate those sounds with the canine creature.
FreakLegion 1y ago
It's a much more banal claim: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Course_in_General_Linguistics#Arbitrariness https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Course_in_General_Linguistics#...
- mallowdram 1y ago
  It's not a "banal claim" it's the foundational property of language that excludes it from any biological specificity (direct relationship to survival). “There is nothing red about the word red, and the word big is itself rather small.” (Cuskley, Simner, & Kirby) https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0003347209002589 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00033...
- nyeah 1y ago
  I meant the claim at the end of this comment: "language doesn't really mean anything." https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45372551 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45372551 I'm fine with each sign being arbitrarily chosen at some point. People can even make that sound kind of cool with the Helen Keller "water" thing. But if the whole conversation is meaningless, that's a snoozer. I'd be happier staring at the clouds.
  - FreakLegion 1y ago
    He doesn't mean to say the conversation is meaningless, just that the signs themselves have no intrinsic meaning, since they're arbitrary. Which, duh. It's a banal claim articulated poorly. There's a little bit of ore here to mine (there are philosophical accounts of natural meaning, for example; see Paul Grice), but he mostly seems to just believe in a transcendental signified, and missed the boat on how incredibly rich the consequences of e.g. J. L. Austin and late Wittgenstein are for how we think about language.