Changing Your Mind, Language Hippies, Emerson's Wisdom
Three Point Thursday
Overcome this destructive human default.
We have many default settings that are destructive. Refusing to change our minds even when presented with evidence that contradicts our position is among the worst. We would be wise to heed Marcus Aurelius’s words, which still echo through the centuries: “If anyone can prove and show to me that I think and act in error, I will gladly change it—for I seek the truth, by which no one has ever been harmed. The one who is harmed is the one who abides in deceit and ignorance.”
Lost in Translation?
The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is the idea that language influences the habitual thought of its speakers. The strong version of this idea is that a language determines what you can think or perceive. But as the linguist John McWhorter explains at length in much of his work, it just doesn’t make sense. Language is a set of symbols and sounds that correspond to things and ideas. It doesn’t matter what language you use to call a tree a tree. It’s still a tree. There are words and phrases that, if directly translated into another language, don’t make sense or sound awkward. But just because something is hard to translate doesn’t mean it is inconceivable to speakers of other languages. There is nothing, in principle, that a human could not express or understand because of whatever language they happen to speak. As David Deutsch would say, people are universal explainers. Humans can always create new explanations and new linguistic tools. Yes, speaking another language feels different because you are moving your tongue and lips in different patterns and listening for different combinations of sounds. But it’s not as if you suddenly lose or gain the ability to grasp certain concepts based on what language you’re using.
Self-Reliance is a must-read.
Emerson had a forceful way of writing that made ideas stick with you. His essay Self-Reliance is one of the most famous writings ever composed in the United States for a reason. I highly recommend reading it.
