timtyler comments on Compression progress, social niches, and culture - Less Wrong

4 [deleted] 19 January 2012 04:11PM

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Comment author: gwern 19 January 2012 05:09:52PM 1 point [-]

Perhaps it also explains language diversity?

Comment author: timtyler 19 January 2012 09:34:16PM 0 points [-]

That is surely more down to drift - and xenophobia.

Comment author: David_Gerard 19 January 2012 10:52:08PM *  2 points [-]

Dick Hebdige's book (a standard sociology text) Subculture: The Meaning Of Style puts it down to something like that: the essence of a subculture is an awareness of style and differences in style. This obviously expands to fine linguistic distinctions between dialects and so on. (e.g. the language spoken across much of the former Yugoslavia which now has four or five names.)

Comment author: lessdazed 23 January 2012 11:47:47AM 0 points [-]

xenophobia

What do you mean? When in history are you referring to?

Comment author: timtyler 23 January 2012 01:44:17PM *  0 points [-]

The period during which language evolution happened.

Xenophobia acted to help prevent cultures from combining, probably resulting in increased cultural diversity.