3 ms·

>He decries one aspect of the evolution of language, the aspect which just hides meaning. But that begs the question of whether meanings are in fact hidden, or

>He decries one aspect of the evolution of language, the aspect which just hides meaning. But that begs the question of whether meanings are in fact hidden, or simply changed -- at least as far as language as a whole is concerned[1]. There are of course individual cases where people are, as you point out, incentivized to do all sorts of weird things with language to accomplish some goal. Thus was rhetoric born. 1. Many insults, for example, shed their original sense and persist only as generic attacks. Does that mean that the original meanings are hidden? Or are they simply no longer relevant? Like 'Scumbag': http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/28253/origin-of-scumbag http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/28253/origin-of-s.... (Note the several possible etymologies, none of which really bears on its use today anyway.) >And it seems to me, that objectively there is a incentive for many stakeholders to disguise the inherent meaning of their message, either to appear more disruptive in whichever space they move, or to straight out lie by misunderstanding. Well said. "To appear more disruptive" is particularly apropos on HN, where 'disruptive' is so perfunctory an adjective as to have lost all meaning (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glittering_generality http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glittering_generality). Edit: To Doctorow's point, I doubt that's quite true. In the West at least, solo pieces (particularly piano), quartets and quintets of various kinds (particularly brass and string), and so on have been popular for ages.

loup-vaillant 13y ago
I sometimes try to talk with my mother about truth, reality, correct beliefs and so on. Her problem is, she is relativist. To her, the idea that there's only one reality, and that contradictory beliefs are incompatible is not only false, but repugnant. One of the major causes happens to be vocabulary. In French, the closest synonymous for belief, "croyance", carries a heavy religious connotation. We have other words, such as "knowledge", "opinion"… but they have other problems. We just don't have a short colloquial word to convey the idea of a probability distribution, and no more. "No problem, I'll just define the word for her." But I'm not allowed to. I'm supposed to be accessible, which means no long sentences, and no jargon. My trying to be precise comes of as pedantic, pretentious, and needlessly complicated. And so we're stuck. She doesn't understand what I mean, and I can't explain it to her. Even worse, she actually believes she does understand. Because my words have meanings to her. Just not the meanings I wanted to convey. --- Regarding solo pieces, quartets, and quintets, you should note that guitar has frets. Playing in tune is much easier compared to say, the cello. While becoming a good guitarist requires just as much effort than becoming a good cellist, merely playing something that sounds cool requires much, much less effort.

loup-vaillant 13y ago

I sometimes try to talk with my mother about truth, reality, correct beliefs and so on. Her problem is, she is relativist. To her, the idea that there's only one reality, and that contradictory beliefs are incompatible is not only false, but repugnant. One of the major causes happens to be vocabulary. In French, the closest synonymous for belief, "croyance", carries a heavy religious connotation. We have other words, such as "knowledge", "opinion"… but they have other problems. We just don't have a short colloquial word to convey the idea of a probability distribution, and no more. "No problem, I'll just define the word for her." But I'm not allowed to. I'm supposed to be accessible, which means no long sentences, and no jargon. My trying to be precise comes of as pedantic, pretentious, and needlessly complicated. And so we're stuck. She doesn't understand what I mean, and I can't explain it to her. Even worse, she actually believes she does understand. Because my words have meanings to her. Just not the meanings I wanted to convey. --- Regarding solo pieces, quartets, and quintets, you should note that guitar has frets. Playing in tune is much easier compared to say, the cello. While becoming a good guitarist requires just as much effort than becoming a good cellist, merely playing something that sounds cool requires much, much less effort.