[~ot] why is programming so fun?

[Sean Kelly]

== Quote from Yigal Chripun (yigal100 at gmail.com)'s article
> Chris Wright wrote:
> > Yigal Chripun wrote:
> >> PS - you should read about the Sapir conjecture in wikipedia to see how
> >> culture and language influence the way we think.
> >
> > Sapir-Whorf is not well thought of these days. People invent terms for
> > things as necessary, and grammar is generally too primitive to convey
> > significant biases. (Which is fine; grammar is supposed to be primitive.)
> >
> > It's possible that our brains have advanced beyond the capacity of our
> > current languages and that they are restricting us somehow, but if so,
> > it's almost certainly an issue common to all humans and all languages.
> > But given that languages have emerged spontaneously just about every
> > time a group of humans got together without an existing language, I'm
> > strongly inclined to say that any limitations we experience are due to
> > our brains rather than our languages.
> as I replied to BCS, experimental evidence shows otherwise.
> when Columbus wanted to go to India by sailing west it was common
> knowledge that he's stupid and that he'll fall of the earth. he was
> considered crazy at the time.

Minor correction.  Everyone knew that the world was round at the time
Columbus proposed to sail around the world.  In fact, Copernicus had
developed his model of the solar system by around this time.  My
history is a bit rusty, but I think the issue was that Columbus
wrongheadedly thought the world was far smaller than it actually is.
Everyone knew he was wrong, and saw no point in funding a mission
domed to failure.  But failure by normal means, not falling off the world
into space.

> What matters is facts and experimental evidence and that shows that
> those ideas are not without merit, and nowadays the emphasis in research
> is about /how/ this affects cultures and languages rather than trying to
> show that the idea is false altogether.
> two things:
> a) indeed "languages have emerged spontaneously just about every
> time a group of humans got together" but those languages /are/
> different. compare Chinese with Hebrew.

>From what I've seen, languages have a natural tendency to diverge
rather than converge.  There are instances where neighboring tribes
in isolated regions of the world speak languages that are entirely
dissimilar from one another, which isn't what you'd expect of two
tribes that must have interacted over time or even come from a
common original source.  In fact, I believe that some Native
American tribes used a form of sign language for trading purposes
as a way to get around the language barrier.


Sean