THE POWER OF WORDS

firstly the caps-lock key is annoying.. i keep having to re write stuff because i left it on

next a very short thought.. without words our race would be.. erm.. words are almost like thoughts they are a part of how we found logic and even ourselves.. without words iv no idea what we would be.. maybe animals emotional and instinctive.. words are probably the defining feature of the human race.

oh dear not very short thought after all

some say names dont change things.. they just describe them.. calling a frog a duck changes only that the description is poor
but words can be used to create complex logic and communicate it.. with words i can make a nuclear reactor.. without words i would maybe at best be able to make a hole in the ground for sleep

i heard once a horse can learn 200 words.. but tell them to say the word for freedom and makes them cry.. poor enslaved animal race
if they had more grasp on words they could run for a government position.. mare horse could get rights and free his enslaved people.. erm.. horse people

but words and truth vs lies is complex and is a mess .. billions of ideas.. so much convolution and confusion
the first word written on a cave wall.. was so powerful its like magic.. words that stay.. words are why we dominated the known universe

heh heh i do get bored.. guess its good to see you again =P

words even have the power to hurt me.. amazing.. =D

quote: I don't quite buy the psychological idea of that words shape thoughts.

I'm pretty sure Gender Studies have plenty of "research" put into disseminating the patriarchal norms of languages.

Manored
the big question in research is actually if language is a necessary factor for the brains ability to construct thoughts and concepts above a certain complexity. Anyway, I don`t buy "words shape thought" as is either, but "certain words or structural concepts in certain languages shape certain thought-patterns in a cerain, variably way" seems a lot easier to get into.



@Godde

"I'm pretty sure Gender Studies have plenty of "research" put into disseminating the patriarchal norms of languages."

1. No. They have not. This research is done by psychologists, sociologists and first and formost linguists.

2. Gender Studies use the reseach done by others. All four are purely working describtive. They describe the information they get out of research. Neither of those will tell you what language you SHOULD use. (Me as a musicologist, i describe and analyze music. We are not there to tell you what "good" or "bad" music would be, and certainly not what music you should listen to.)

-> what you percieve as "Gender Studies" is what politically motivated people and the internet make out of it.

-> Both following or rejecting those theories without doubt is unscientific.

that was what i have said. :D

I have to admit i assumed the following subtext:
research in " " implies you want to say it is not actual, valid research

"(non-valid) research in disseminating the patriarchal norms of languages" implies to me that you think that this research is done to underpin the political agenda of left-winged-groups.

But maybe i just read the wrong subtext... In this case i would like you to correct me.

Nice. Thank you.
So are you actually into Gender Studies?

quote: This research is done by psychologists, sociologists and first and formost linguists.

For some of those categories falsifying data is even easier than for others, hence you end up with things like: https://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/28/magazine/diederik-stapels-audacious-academic-fraud.html .

On the other hand, besides politics, probably they are not immediately applied so maybe the damage is less than in bio-medical things, which things evolve so fast, than even retracted papers get highly cited, see: https://retractionwatch.com/the-retraction-watch-leaderboard/top-10-most-highly-cited-retracted-papers/

well, i am not a "fan" of those disciplines, i just have to work with them from time to time and i understand your critique. On the other hand i would say it would be quite irritating if we give up to study humans exept for their cognition, aka seeing them as machines and how they work on a technical level, aka neuroscience. A world where we are only interested in that would scare me personally.

I had to take off-tours into various other disciplines while i studied, including 1 course each in linguistics, philosophy and yes, Gender Studies.

I actually found philosophy the most useful thing actually as it dealt with general questions about knowledge, but heavily drawing on logic. Philosophy felt more like a craft.

Linguistics, well, i forgot most what we did.

Gender Studies was the weirdest one, because we did something none of us expected. We actually applied methodical critique to said studies done by other disciplines that were dealing with gender themselves and found that many of them were pretty useless, simply because they were quite full of fallacies, their sample size was too limited (10 people is laughable) etc etc. So we actually had to scap most stuff that was done by other disciplines about gender...

Later i was working in the field of neurocognitive musicology were we ran into the problem of experiments not being reproducible. Not just one or two. More like 80% of them. They simply didn`t produce the same results.


So, what do i do now? Do i stop to think about humans or simply accept that noone is interested ENOUGH to fund those fields? Robots are cool. Star Trek is cool. So people have a very high tolerance for very high amounts of funding for technical stuff. Meanwhile, there is equal to zero funding for psychologic experiments, research in humanities etc.
Thats why there is not enough data in those fields.

quote: Then again, I feel the same about most "social sciences". They develop these ultra-complex theories about how people or society supposedly work that never seem to be clearly demonstrable or have any applicability to every day life.

Manored: Think it from another perspective: many things that have applicability today started from unclear things that "maddman" were saying they work - for example the idea of washing hands before a operation, see https://theconversation.com/ignaz-semmelweis-the-doctor-who-discovered-the-disease-fighting-power-of-hand-washing-in-1847-135528.

The problem with research is that is very very hard before you succeed and can be seen as obvious after. I was/am involved in research and it is hard/annoying/frustrating work most of the times, that involves a lot of wasted effort.

quote: More like 80% of them. They simply didn`t produce the same results.

Not nice, but not that bad either. If 20% were reproducible it's still a start. Hope your field is more friendly to "reproducible studies" than others, so your reproducing work is not wasted...

malric, well as i said below the quoted thing: we simply don`t get enough funding to do a satisfiying amount of research. the following is polemic because i simply don`t have numbers but i am pretty sure that the energy required to run a experimental fusion-reactor for half a minute costs as much as the whole musicological institute in a year. Frustrating. I do not mind to find out that studies cannot be reproduced. It`s fun and refreshing.