army1987 comments on Post ridiculous munchkin ideas! - Less Wrong

55 Post author: D_Malik 15 May 2013 10:27PM

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Comment author: hylleddin 28 May 2013 04:56:41AM *  9 points [-]

Try to take advantage of possible Sapir Whorf effects by constructing your own language to use for thinking in. I got this idea after finding a link here to this New York Times article which has several examples of such effects.

Random brainstorming on potential things to consider including:

It would probably be best to do this after learning at least one other language that is quite different from your native language. Also, keeping ways words can be wrong in mind is likely a good idea.

This would likely also have the same effects as thinking in any foreign language

I may or may not actually try this after I've learned Korean sufficiently well.

Comment author: [deleted] 28 May 2013 12:23:01PM *  4 points [-]

Don't go overboard with that -- IIRC, extremely few people succeed in becoming fluent in Lojban. IOW, think twice before flouting a linguistic universal.

(it can mean "I want it to work", an 'ought' statement)

Not everyone would agree that “I want it to work” is a correct restatement of deontic modality. (The one I use when wanting to avoid the ambiguity of “should” is “it had better work”.)

This would likely also have the same effects as thinking in any foreign language.

That effect is due to the fact that you're forced to use your System 2. It probably disappears after you become too fluent in the language (for example, FWIW, I don't ‘feel’ that happening with English).

Also, +1 or ygert's suggestion to read The Language Construction Kit, and you may want to check out the resources I mentioned in my reply.

Comment author: hylleddin 28 May 2013 05:45:35PM *  0 points [-]

Not everyone would agree that “I want it to work” is a correct restatement of deontic modality. (The one I use when wanting to avoid the ambiguity of “should” is “it had better work”.)

Yes, that is a better way of phrasing it. Changed.

That effect is due to the fact that you're forced to use your System 2. It probably disappears after you become too fluent in the language (for example, FWIW, I don't ‘feel’ that happening with English).

Unfortunately, this seems likely.