wedrifid comments on Rationality quotes: October 2010 - Less Wrong

4 Post author: Morendil 05 October 2010 11:38AM

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Comment author: wedrifid 07 October 2010 05:11:11AM *  5 points [-]

Your evidence was your own sense (not a paper, not even a survey) that people think differently when writing in a different programming language.

I refer not to my own sense so much as what is more or less universally acknowledged by influential thinkers in that field. That doesn't preclude the culture being wrong, but I do put Paul Graham on approximately the same level as Pinker, for example.

While Pinker is an extremely good populariser and writes some engaging accounts that are based off real science, I've actually been bitten by taking his word on faith too much before. He has a tendency to present things as established fact when they are far from universally agreed upon in the field and may not even be the majority position. The example that I'm thinking of primarily is what he writes about fear instincts, regarding to what extent fear of snakes (for example) is learned vs instinctive. His presentation of what has been determined by primate studies is, shall we say, one sided at best.

Comment author: erratio 07 October 2010 05:48:58AM 4 points [-]

While Pinker is an extremely good populariser and writes some engaging accounts that are based off real science, I've actually been bitten by taking his word on faith too much before. He has a tendency to present things as established fact when they are far from universally agreed upon in the field

Seconded. Reading him is a good method of learning how to resist the Dark Arts, since he's pretty good at writing persuasively.

Comment author: NancyLebovitz 07 October 2010 03:07:55PM 3 points [-]

I've heard more than once from people who are fluent in more than one language that they feel as though they're a different person in each language.