Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by numpad0 982 days ago
It’s something you just know if you’re bilingual or more. It would sound threatening to monolingual speakers but this is just how it works. Languages are our thought construction algorithms.

It’s not a “Turing Completeness isn’t real” hypothesis, more like just “Rust != C”. I think this is where software nerd types predict wrong, as it sounds as if it is trying to disprove TC, which shall be futile attempt. It’s not(the former one at least).
2 comments
avgcorrection 982 days ago
> It’s something you just know if you’re bilingual or more.

Not in my experience.

link
TeMPOraL 982 days ago
It is obvious. Most words in different languages aren't 100% equivalent - they have large or small differences in sets of connotations. Same is true for phrases and sentences. When you translate a thought expressed in one language to another, you may get the primary, leading-order meanings across 100% right, but you'll still lose some lower-order connotations.

For a more direct analogy, I'd compare this to how LLMs process tokens, but I feel most of the community is not ready for it yet, as we're still stuck debating the validity of this comparison in the other direction...

link
avgcorrection 982 days ago
> It is obvious. Most words in different languages aren't 100% equivalent - they have large or small differences in sets of connotations.

This is true. Which is why idioms and phrases can be hard to translate. But we're talking about Sapir-Worth hypothesis which is a much stronger claim.

I have never experienced that I need to think in a specific language in order to do something better (well, I only have two choices).

link
TeMPOraL 981 days ago
> I have never experienced that I need to think in a specific language in order to do something better (well, I only have two choices).

I found that for me, certain thoughts "flow better" in one language, and others in another. And this makes sense, because thinking is, in large part, exploring the web of associations and connotations, going down the gradient of what "feels right"[0] - and since those annotations and connotations have different structures in different languages, so will the thoughts drift in different directions, take different paths, even if they end up in the same place.

--

[0] - The obvious parallels between one's inner voice and the workings of an LLM are left as an exercise to the reader.

link
avgcorrection 976 days ago
> I found that for me, certain thoughts "flow better" in one language, and others in another.

For you. So not an absolute truth as in “it is obvious”.

> The obvious parallels between one's inner voice and the workings of an LLM are left as an exercise to the reader.

Another obvious? Hmm.

Perhaps obvious to the techno-animists.

link
dragonwriter 982 days ago
> I think this is where software nerd types predict wrong

Pinker isn't a software nerd, he's an evolutionary psychologist and psycholinguist.

link
himinlomax 982 days ago
He's indeed precisely one of the most qualified person around to opine on this subject.
link
otabdeveloper4 982 days ago
"Evolutionary psychology" is not a real discipline. It's like calling yourself a "karmic surgeon" or whatever.
link