The Sapir–Whorf hypothesis, and a new proposal
I
The Sapir–Whorf hypothesis (the link is to the Wikipedia page) suggests that the language we speak effects the way that we think. In the simplist of terms, just in case you didn't know.
AFAIK, the hypothesis is not without disagreement, but I was convinced when I read about the oft quoted example of the Australian aboriginal speakers of Guugu Yimithirr who don't use left, right, front, back equivalents, but use north, south, east, west:
The latte on the north is the one without sugar.
(And then you don't need to go through the whole my-left-or-your-left bit, because north doesn't change, at least not in the time it takes to drink a couple of lattes.)
An experiment went something like putting Guugu Yimithirr speakers in a darkened room, spinning them around a few times and then asking them which way was south, with the necessary scientific sophistication and rigour.
II
Anyway, I would like to propose an addition hypothesis, temporarily the Juckes Hypothesis, and this is that
the text editor that is used to write a post effects the content of the post, in some as yet unmeasurable way.
Like all good hypothesis, I think this idea is both self-evident, and also very difficult to prove. There is terrific millage.
As an initial test of my ideas, I would hazzard that
@dantheman uses emacs
@ned uses Textmate
and
@smooth uses GoogleDocs
III
The only drawback I can identify so far is the name: the Juckes Hypothesis just does not sound pithy enough. Accordingly I am seeking, from the community, a collaborator. Your qualifations sould include both a grasp of the fundamentals here involved, and a pithy name. The name should, I feel, be a real name, so I'm sorry @coinmonkey, no matter how ahead of the game you are, the moniker just won't cut it.
The movie Arrival is about foreign language that is Nonlinear Orthography.
In that movie they mention this Sapir–Whorf hypothesis.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2543164/
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