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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   2939 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for January 8, 2023

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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So, what are you reading?

I'm still on Korzybski's Science and Sanity. I haven't managed to wrap my head around all the implications of his system, but Korzybski had an interesting project. In his view, the reason why people have not caught up to science is related to our conception of language. I've started adopting the term "semantic reaction" to describe people's understanding or lack of understanding of what underlying structure they are referring to when they speak. God knows I could do better in that regard.

I'm not sure I understand what you mean by semantic reaction. Is he describing the reflex to bullshit, or is it about the language used to qualify one's statements?

As I understand it, it refers to the response, which is conditional on personal (non-verbal?) meanings applied to an event. An example might be if someone sees a criminal and says "he believes in law and order." A verbalistic/"elementalistic" analysis wouldn't be able to understand how such a semantic reaction is formed.

Though to be honest, Korzybski is quite confusing, so I possibly misunderstood. I just think it's a neat term for the relationship between map and territory (Korzybski coined the phrase) when specifically talking about how people respond to things.

For clarity, it isn't just mismatched reactions, it's any reaction. One of his goals was to teach "extensional" semantic reactions (ie. non-elemental, multi-level) such as more use of words like "I don't know," I have run into some of this in my experiments with E-Prime. I ended up using a lot more of the phrase "I don't know at present" rather than things that let one off the hook like "I'm not sure" (which often implies that I have an idea and knowledge is just around the corner, and does so without explicitly trying to justify that claim).

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