shminux comments on Link: Study finds that using a foreign language changes moral decisions - Less Wrong
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Comments (17)
Seems like a special case of using a non-transparent communication medium to activate System 2 by delaying and/or muting a System 1 response. Similarly discussing an awkward subject feels less embarrassing in a foreign language... until you master it. Have you noticed how people tend to use clinical/scientific terms to avoid connotations when trying to stay "rational"?
Probably a good general rationality technique. Maybe the UN should stop real-time interpreting services and make everyone learn Latin, Esperanto or Lojban?
What other non-transparent communication media are out there? By "non-transparent" I mean one that requires a conscious effort to imbue or tease out a meaning.
Communicating via blurry text or using a hard-to-read font is a well known one.
I don't think that either Esperanto or Lojban is the perfect language. Expressing an idea in either of those languages usually takes 1.5 the amount of time as it does in English.
I think there room for a new constructed language that does things better.
In this case it would be a feature, not a bug.
If a unproductive language is what you want you could go for Toki Pona. It's even easier to teach than esperanto.
The point would be the opposite: to make it hard but usable.
Latin it is! I'll bet some people won't enjoy the return of a world-spanning political authority communicating in a language no normal person knows though.
That's their problem.
Although it sounds profound.