3 ms·

But then, is that necessarily a bad thing? In most cases where language is being used as a vehicle for exchanging ideas, isn't some degree of uniformity actual

But then, is that necessarily a bad thing? In most cases where language is being used as a vehicle for exchanging ideas, isn't some degree of uniformity actually desirable for clarity? I personally wouldn't want instruction manuals to be full of colorful or highly individualized language, for instance. That's not to say linguistic diversity is meaningless, but I would argue that this particular concern is fairly specialized and matters much more in literature and other creative forms of writing.

tehlike 1mo ago
Eh, not hard to notice some people indeed started to write like LLMs too. Not completely but hints are there.
mr_toad 1mo ago
Linguistic diversity has been used as a casus belli, at least indirectly. It’s something that populations will take up arms for, so it’s probably worth tiptoeing around.
- bsian 1mo ago
  Language is a proxy of something much bigger, if we’re talking about taking up arms for.
eloisius 1mo ago
This makes is sound like everything except a narrow slice of “creative forms” should be subject to a giant efficiency optimization. I’ve never noticed instruction manuals to be hard to understand because of colorful language, so I don’t believe we need to optimize further in that regard. Why stop with language? Shouldn’t every personality outside of “creative forms” be more standardized? Sure I want to laugh at comedians, but wouldn’t it be more efficient for us to work together if everyone had a totally fungible personality? Engineers often reduce human interaction and creativity down to computer analogs like “exchanging data,” treat work and business as life’s raison d’etre and then we wonder why every car on the road is monochrome and we’re on the umpteenth Gardian of the Avangers film.
- vector_spaces 1mo ago
  I completely agree with your critique here but I will say that I have had difficulty understanding pure math texts because of 'colorful' language -- e.g. "chattier" treatments of mathematical analysis. But I will also say that I'm glad such treatments of the material exist, partly because I know that what appeals to me doesn't appeal to others and these might be a valued resource for them, and because often pushing through and understanding texts that were difficult at first helps us to see the material from a different perspective. I think this optimization perspective squashes this possibility a bit when taken too far, as it usually is
- mlsu 1mo ago
  Think of how much money we could make if we weren't wasting so much time being creative.
- dyauspitr 1mo ago
  There’s no universal answer. Like most things it’s highly subjective and some people will want the standardization line to be in a particular place than someone else. I for instance, love the standardization of programming and science research for the most part into one language but at the same time, I also feel terrible about languages that are hundreds or thousands of years old disappearing forever.
Brian_K_White 1mo ago
"is that necessarily a bad thing?" Yes. The value of the diversity is not just aesthetic. Human laguage is rich and expressive, matching human thought. The diversity is part of the expressiveness. Saying something in some poetic, or merely different way, is not just an inefficient or ambiguous/confusing way of saying the same thing, it's saying something else, and that something else cannot be expressed any other way. A crayons-only, thumbs-only, Apple one-button-only, 1000 word vocabulary world is not efficient, it's poor.
- unsignedint 1mo ago
  Like I said, I'm not denying the value of expressiveness at all, nor am I suggesting that anyone who values it should ever be denied the ability to express themselves as they please. I just feel that when people talk about linguistic diversity or having a distinctive "voice," they sometimes overlook the fact that many people simply don't have a strong attachment to those things. A lot of people are primarily concerned with getting their ideas across clearly, and many already struggle with that before they even have the capacity to worry about how expressive or distinctive their language is. I don't think that makes their use of language somehow poorer or less human. It just means they have different priorities for what they need language to accomplish.
xpct 1mo ago
PG's 'learning a word' ~= 'learning an idea' comes to mind
- a2ff6eeb0 1mo ago
  Sure, but we're building tools that will be able to figure out these ideas for us. They're not here yet, but what's the value of learning an idea if the promise of AI is actually fulfilled?
  - xpct 1mo ago
    I don't understand the point you're making, it only comes off as misanthropic to me. We live in a world where humans are valued, and so is human culture. We educate ourselves to live richer lives and to have more fulfilling experiences. What has eventual superhuman AI to do with this?
    - a2ff6eeb0 1mo ago
      Yeah, sorry -- there's definitely entertainment value in education, I don't mean to discount that. But a working AI means that there's no economic value.
Brian_K_White 1mo ago
I think it was the Uplift series by David Brin that has an idea where the old galactic races all speak a perfect language that has no ambiguity, and because of that they have no poetry or jokes. What a great world to strive for. No I'll take the mess please FFS. People joke about engineer types treating humans the same as machines, but really I see no excuse for even engineer types to get this wrong. It's a failure to recognize what the function or goal actually is, and then optimizing for the wrong thing.
- andsoitis 1mo ago
  > a perfect language that has no ambiguity, and because of that they have no poetry or jokes. Lojban, the constructed language, features: a) logical grammar, inspired by predicate logic which means every sentence in Lojban has an unambiguous structure that a computer can parse b) no ambiguity in the grammar (structural ambiguity) while you can be as vague or detailed as you like (or as funny!!) c) emotional expressions via an "attitudinal" system of words that function like emoji https://mw.lojban.org/index.php https://mw.lojban.org/index.php and here are some Lojban literary forms writeup: https://mw.lojban.org/papri/lojban_literary_forms https://mw.lojban.org/papri/lojban_literary_forms
- BarryMilo 1mo ago
  Talking to developers about humanities often highlights how smart we're not.
  - ChickeNES 1mo ago
    Talking to people in the humanities about technology often highlights how smart they're not.
- ChickeNES 1mo ago
  > I think it was the Uplift series by David Brin that has an idea where the old galactic races all speak a perfect language that has no ambiguity, and because of that they have no poetry or jokes. Where can I sign up?
jplusequalt 1mo ago
>But then, is that necessarily a bad thing? Side-stepping this question to talk about the underlying cause for this linguistic compression: Yes, it's a terrible thing! This is only happening because people are increasingly outsourcing their thinking and expression to LLMs.

tehlike 1mo ago

Eh, not hard to notice some people indeed started to write like LLMs too. Not completely but hints are there.

mr_toad 1mo ago

Linguistic diversity has been used as a casus belli, at least indirectly. It’s something that populations will take up arms for, so it’s probably worth tiptoeing around.

bsian 1mo ago
Language is a proxy of something much bigger, if we’re talking about taking up arms for.

eloisius 1mo ago

This makes is sound like everything except a narrow slice of “creative forms” should be subject to a giant efficiency optimization. I’ve never noticed instruction manuals to be hard to understand because of colorful language, so I don’t believe we need to optimize further in that regard. Why stop with language? Shouldn’t every personality outside of “creative forms” be more standardized? Sure I want to laugh at comedians, but wouldn’t it be more efficient for us to work together if everyone had a totally fungible personality? Engineers often reduce human interaction and creativity down to computer analogs like “exchanging data,” treat work and business as life’s raison d’etre and then we wonder why every car on the road is monochrome and we’re on the umpteenth Gardian of the Avangers film.

vector_spaces 1mo ago
I completely agree with your critique here but I will say that I have had difficulty understanding pure math texts because of 'colorful' language -- e.g. "chattier" treatments of mathematical analysis. But I will also say that I'm glad such treatments of the material exist, partly because I know that what appeals to me doesn't appeal to others and these might be a valued resource for them, and because often pushing through and understanding texts that were difficult at first helps us to see the material from a different perspective. I think this optimization perspective squashes this possibility a bit when taken too far, as it usually is
mlsu 1mo ago
Think of how much money we could make if we weren't wasting so much time being creative.
dyauspitr 1mo ago
There’s no universal answer. Like most things it’s highly subjective and some people will want the standardization line to be in a particular place than someone else. I for instance, love the standardization of programming and science research for the most part into one language but at the same time, I also feel terrible about languages that are hundreds or thousands of years old disappearing forever.

Brian_K_White 1mo ago

"is that necessarily a bad thing?" Yes. The value of the diversity is not just aesthetic. Human laguage is rich and expressive, matching human thought. The diversity is part of the expressiveness. Saying something in some poetic, or merely different way, is not just an inefficient or ambiguous/confusing way of saying the same thing, it's saying something else, and that something else cannot be expressed any other way. A crayons-only, thumbs-only, Apple one-button-only, 1000 word vocabulary world is not efficient, it's poor.

unsignedint 1mo ago
Like I said, I'm not denying the value of expressiveness at all, nor am I suggesting that anyone who values it should ever be denied the ability to express themselves as they please. I just feel that when people talk about linguistic diversity or having a distinctive "voice," they sometimes overlook the fact that many people simply don't have a strong attachment to those things. A lot of people are primarily concerned with getting their ideas across clearly, and many already struggle with that before they even have the capacity to worry about how expressive or distinctive their language is. I don't think that makes their use of language somehow poorer or less human. It just means they have different priorities for what they need language to accomplish.

xpct 1mo ago

PG's 'learning a word' ~= 'learning an idea' comes to mind

a2ff6eeb0 1mo ago
Sure, but we're building tools that will be able to figure out these ideas for us. They're not here yet, but what's the value of learning an idea if the promise of AI is actually fulfilled?
- xpct 1mo ago
  I don't understand the point you're making, it only comes off as misanthropic to me. We live in a world where humans are valued, and so is human culture. We educate ourselves to live richer lives and to have more fulfilling experiences. What has eventual superhuman AI to do with this?
  - a2ff6eeb0 1mo ago
    Yeah, sorry -- there's definitely entertainment value in education, I don't mean to discount that. But a working AI means that there's no economic value.

Brian_K_White 1mo ago

I think it was the Uplift series by David Brin that has an idea where the old galactic races all speak a perfect language that has no ambiguity, and because of that they have no poetry or jokes. What a great world to strive for. No I'll take the mess please FFS. People joke about engineer types treating humans the same as machines, but really I see no excuse for even engineer types to get this wrong. It's a failure to recognize what the function or goal actually is, and then optimizing for the wrong thing.

andsoitis 1mo ago
> a perfect language that has no ambiguity, and because of that they have no poetry or jokes. Lojban, the constructed language, features: a) logical grammar, inspired by predicate logic which means every sentence in Lojban has an unambiguous structure that a computer can parse b) no ambiguity in the grammar (structural ambiguity) while you can be as vague or detailed as you like (or as funny!!) c) emotional expressions via an "attitudinal" system of words that function like emoji https://mw.lojban.org/index.php https://mw.lojban.org/index.php and here are some Lojban literary forms writeup: https://mw.lojban.org/papri/lojban_literary_forms https://mw.lojban.org/papri/lojban_literary_forms
BarryMilo 1mo ago
Talking to developers about humanities often highlights how smart we're not.
- ChickeNES 1mo ago
  Talking to people in the humanities about technology often highlights how smart they're not.
ChickeNES 1mo ago
> I think it was the Uplift series by David Brin that has an idea where the old galactic races all speak a perfect language that has no ambiguity, and because of that they have no poetry or jokes. Where can I sign up?

jplusequalt 1mo ago

>But then, is that necessarily a bad thing? Side-stepping this question to talk about the underlying cause for this linguistic compression: Yes, it's a terrible thing! This is only happening because people are increasingly outsourcing their thinking and expression to LLMs.