[wolverine876]

> Words are not perception. This is such a pernicious bit of nonsense

> pseudo-intellectual mysticism

The influence of words on perception is backed by a lot of research and expertise, and seems apparent on a concrete level: The words I choose affect others perceptions; people who make their living in persuasion (political leaders, opinion leaders, 'influencers', etc) put great effort into chosing words that will influence perception, and they do it to great success.

Why do you think otherwise?

What makes you say otherwise? When you say 'pernicious', that implies negative intent - whose intent? (If that's not meant literally, I take back this particular question.)

[kelvie]

I think the original poster is referring to the intent of those that believe in (the strong version of) the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, which isn't the scientific consensus (at least it wasn't when I studied linguistics/psychology).

[mistermann]

As a believe in Hard Whorfism, I think this is rather excellent evidence in support of it...

> I think the original poster is referring to the intent of those that believe in (the strong version of) the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, which isn't the scientific consensus (at least it wasn't when I studied linguistics/psychology).

When "is not scientific consensus" is considered abstractly, it DOES NOT equal "is false" (if everyone has adequate background knowledge, and is thinking clearly)...but if you observe people (including actual scientists/linguists) discussing concrete instances that involve these abstract notions, then it "almost always" DOES "equal" "is false"...and, if one is to point out the error, it tends to be not well received (rejected due to "pedantry", or one of 5 or so other memes).

Higher in the chain:

> Word meanings are fuzzy clouds of references and nuances, and every language has slightly different clouds. There is nothing magical about this, despite the recurrent lizard-brain notion that words or names are somehow mystical and intrinsic, and that these differences must somehow be meaningful.

Human communication and perception has substantial dependencies on language, and language has a dependency on consciousness, which science does not understand[1] - therefore, pick whatever label you want to attach to this state of affairs, but it is magical/mystical.

> I trained as a linguist and you hit the nail on the head.

At runtime, this tends to render as: ~I know it to be objectively true that you are objectively correct, because I have the necessary specialized training.

> I assure you I see these colours the same as you do

At runtime, this tends to render as: ~It is a fact that I see these colours the same as you do.

> Words are not perception.

This is kinda true - they are (to the degree that they are....which is not known, so the mind conveniently swaps in a simulation, but does not notify us) a fundamental component of perception, but they are not equal to perception - perception has a dependency on words - in general, and on which specific words are used or not) during communication of an idea.

> This is such a pernicious bit of nonsense....

~That which seems like nonsense to me, is(!) nonsense [to everyone].

> ...and journalists and writers are especially susceptible to it because it flatters them, in their role as word-smiths.

~Other people suffer from naive realism and overactive ego, but not me!

> Languages are way more interesting than this pseudo-intellectual mysticism.

~My map of what "mysticism" is is identical to what it actually is (roughly: silly and incorrect "woo woo" would be my guess).

> The Japanese are just as capable of distinguishing blue and green as anyone else, and they use blue traffic lights for the same reason they drive on the left - because it doesn’t actually matter what convention they pick, so long as everyone agrees on it and sticks to it.

This seemingly innocuous claim highlights one of the biggest problems in English, and Western culture: we use the same word (ie; to be) to communicate two ideas with subtle but very importance in meaning: "it is a fact that it is" vs "it is my opinion that it is".

And yes, I appreciate that all this "is" "just" "pedantry", but it also plausibly affects the frequency and severity of war and various other suboptimalities in the world, that in other threads people "assure me"[2] "are" ~"a big deal". Well, if these things actually were a big deal, you'd think people would treat them as such. Sadly, I am very confident that there are people in powerful positions (political "public relations") who understand all of what I say here and much more, likely much better than I understand it.

[1] Notice how I used "understand" with no qualifying terms? This is deliberate, because I have pre-knowledge that this is a scenario where humans get very confused (and often emotionally motivated, depending on the topic, and consciousness is one of those topics) when performing categorization (much of which is sub-perceptual). A soft whorfist might say: This "is" trolling (because that is how it appears to them, and how things appear is how they "are").

[2] it "is" a fact that