Community Archive

🧵 View Thread

🧵 Thread (7 tweets)

Aleksi Liimatainen@aleksil79• over 3 years ago

For practical purposes, language is an evolutionarily novel symbiote prone to opportunistic parasitism. To put it bluntly, we're communicating via piranha-descended babelfish that chomp on your brain if you let your guard down.

135 17

7/27/2022

Vivid Void@vividvoid• over 3 years ago

Replying to @aleksil79

@aleksil79 Literally what fresh hell is this?

24 0

7/27/2022

Aleksi Liimatainen@aleksil79• over 3 years ago

Replying to @VividVoid_

@VividVoid_ Well, it started with the observation that being stuck in one's head is a pretty common problem, and the way our language-derived systems of logic have Godelian gaps and it's so easy to derive Prisoner's Dilemma-style gotchas out of them.

19 2

7/27/2022

Aleksi Liimatainen@aleksil79• over 3 years ago

Replying to @aleksil79

@VividVoid_ The exchanges with nobu branching from here both clarified the question in my mind and later helped partially resolve it. https://t.co/KsuVnpemqf

7 0

7/27/2022

Aleksi Liimatainen@aleksil79• over 3 years ago

Replying to @aleksil79

@VividVoid_ The one-tweet takeaway is that language is both very useful and a heap of trouble. I'd like to do something about the trouble part, though that might not be possible beyond awareness, care and the usual mitigation of side-effects.

12 0

7/27/2022

Tyler Alterman is in monkmode (but still tweeting)@TylerAlterman• over 3 years ago

Replying to @aleksil79

@aleksil79 What are the piranhas?

3 0

7/27/2022

Aleksi Liimatainen@aleksil79• over 3 years ago

Replying to @TylerAlterman

@TylerAlterman First pass, the piranhas are flavor. Now that you bring it up it _is_ interesting to ponder what if anything that part of the metaphor might correspond to.

2 0

7/28/2022