Language vs. Reality
by N. J. Enfield · first published 2022
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Delving through another corpus I ran across this, by chance, which immediately reminded me of Colin's submission: Language Vs. Reality: Why Language Is Good for Lawyers and Bad for Scientists N. J. Enfield, Mar 23, 2022, MIT PRESS 2022 Nick Enfield’s book, Language vs. Reality: Why Language is Good for Lawyers and Bad for Scientists…
on “The Innumeracy of the Rulers” ↗…Do expect elaborate rationalizations intended to waste the energy of an indecisive parent, who is basically getting bullied by a kid throwing a tantrum. This kind of behavior reminds me of the book: "Language vs. Reality: Why Language Is Good for Lawyers and Bad for Scientists" - Nick Enfield, Linguistic Anthropologist [1] [1] https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262548465/language-vs-reality/
on “Dear Paul Graham, there is no cookie banner law” ↗…kind of phrase that is sometimes used for this that drives people crazy; "Language is beautiful, but unusable." It's kind of true, you know. Even if people don't like it. [2] [2022] Nick Enfield: "Language vs. Reality: Why Language Is Good for Lawyers and Bad for Scientists" [3] > Language cannot create or change physical reality, but it can do the next best thing: reframe and invert our view of the world. In Language…
on “Language is primarily a tool for communication rather than thought [pdf]” ↗Interesting. N.J. Enfield (Linguist, Anthropologist) makes a similar point about the purpose for which language evolved for in "Language vs Reality". I'm paraphrasing loosely, but the core argument is that the primary role of language is to create an abstraction of reality in order to convince other people, than to accurately capture reality. He…
on “What is intelligence? (2024)” ↗