NancyLebovitz comments on Is cryonics necessary?: Writing yourself into the future - Less Wrong

6 Post author: gworley 23 June 2010 02:33PM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (137)

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: NancyLebovitz 25 June 2010 02:06:21AM 0 points [-]

I believe that language is for communicating the shared part of experience, or sometimes for creating the illusion of shared experience. Whatever is unique about a person's experience is going to get lost if you try to communicate it through language.

Ok, that's maybe a little too harsh-sounding. I think some people are relatively similar to each other, so that language can resonate rfairly well between them.

Still, I believe in tacit knowledge. And even if a skillful person can find words for some of it-- turn the bike wheel towards the direction you're falling is sound advice, but how would you convey exactly what it's like to be you riding a bike on a particular day, or what it's like to know how to ride a bike before you have words for it?