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the 1984 Newspeak hypothesis is that if you control the language you control the minds take away the right words and the corresponding thought crime simply can't be had in the first place it's on to an important idea, but is TOTALLY wrong about the mechanism

Newspeak/hermeneutical injustice acts less on your ability to form thoughts, and more on your common knowledge of how these thoughts relate to everyone else https://t.co/amtYjH8B9x

if the State Run Newspaper never runs any dissenting opinions, it doesn't prevent you from being able to not forming negative opinions of our dear leader but it DOES keep you in the dark about if anyone else has dissenting opinions. maybe you're the only one...

a thing being under-discussed makes it hard to think to the degree that you find it difficult to think without the firm backing of social reality this can be useful and harmful https://t.co/Iss0cweCjN

strong version of this claim: getting new language to describe your experience mostly makes it easier to think and feel this experience because the existence of language means others are affirming the experience. I don't think "now i've got a catchy word" actually helps much

think of the difference between how you talk about a behavior that you think is a weird personal tic of yours, vs a more archetypal behavior. for the latter there's more common knowledge about how others think about it, so it's safer

very similar to this idea. basically, other people *are* our minds, unless weird shit happens. newspeak affects you by isolating your mind from others self-delusion is about fooling others, via fooling yourself, so that you can be fooled https://t.co/JOJtKGdTCR


"X is good actually" is speech act that wagers your social captial to create intersubjective space for X. some of the effect is an "updating on other's minds" and I think most of the effect is "someone has said it, someone cool might say it, i can imagine being supported in X"

some amount of gaslighting probably works by trying to change you understanding of the CK of what will be punished, rather than changing your mind on the object level https://t.co/2WrQ9UZrsV

@natural_hazard One thing I didn't talk about in the thread on rich networks vs one dimensional hierarchies is that probably the most important function of a ODH is that it creates stable abuse patterns. Since there is a known pecking order, suffering can be reliably externalized down it.