RE: Almost 3000 followers and how steemit (and the IFC) has helped change my life.
I fear you fight a losing battle! Words only have currency as a concept that has a mutually agreed meaning.
Thing is.. Most average people don't even know the regular definitions let alone the etymology of almost any words. They essentially just mimic words in context or ask someone what a word means and create some kind of distorted perception of it, so that's almost always happening anyways.. People are almost always talking their own language cause they don't even know what words really mean, lol.
Other than that, I essentially agree with you. Which is why I think slang is almost more important than technical definitions because people tend to come up with their own language anyways. BUT.. I still think fixed definitions have a really important place and in the end, the idea of them is so that we DO have a mutually agreed meaning, though that rarely happens cause most people don't even know what words really mean.
But.. Agreeing on definitions is really important, throughout years and years of debating people I can't tell you how many times I've had to correct the way people use words and show them the definitions and what words really mean. So, I do think it's important especially in debate to get the language straight and be speaking on the same page as much as is possible.
Oh, the substitution of complex words for simple thoughts is my post peeve. Otherwise known as management speak.
In my field of music, there can be a tendency to use large words to basically intellectually intimidate or to bias a statement. This has led to an irritating use of words like 'natural' and 'artificial' to basically label ideas. It some absolutely crazy ones like 'temporal distortion' and quantum in music making! Having my background, it just drives me nuts!
You really notice it when people are put in a spotlight, the manner of speaking and the vocabulary can change quite dramatically!
We'll be all fixed when we can just convey ideas telepathically!
Don't know if you know about mathematical set theory? Even conveying the sense of what it means to have the property of 'two-ness' and the ideas that lead from there is quite interesting. If there is a question in mathematics then words have no chance!
Sounds interesting.. Lol. And yeah I saw some thing the other day about some supposed mind reading technology that predicts what you're going to do by facial recogition or something.. Pretty crazy.. Dunno if it works or how well it works, but maybe in the future we will be typing and interacting with computers with our minds. Heh.
And no I'm not aware of the mathematical set theory? Could you elaborate a lil bit?
Mind reading it might seem, but the idea is becoming clear (I think I also saw someone else mention this in an @ifc comment!) that the synapses in the brain fire before the "conscious" desire to act upon something. So, synapses before thought before action. If this were definitely shown to be the case, then the idea of "mind reading" wouldn't be far from the truth! Although it would be more like the faster reading of physical cues before the person is aware of future action/thoughts?
Ummm, not sure if I can do justice to set theory in a short comment! Maybe I'll try to give it a shot in the philosophy round. In short, it is the attempt to lay the foundations of mathematics, what is the property of a group that makes it belong to the group of things that 3 things in it. From there, it lays out the way sets/groups interact with each other to give rise to the basic mathematical operations. From there onwards to more complex functions as combinations of the basic operations. So, it attempts to be the basic building blocks of mathematics. I'm afraid it is beyond what used to be my field of study, so I can't make a better explanation!
That's some interesting stuff! But how would one read the synapses before the thoughts?
And are you hinting at sort of like body language at the end there? Like.. Do you think the body somehow puts off clues that tell us what the person is thinking?
I'm very familiar with body language science, and I do think there is a lot of truth to that idea, but I still think it's not a perfect science and there are ways to trick it or be an exception to the rule and ultimately.. I'm not sure we can know complex inner thoughts, just by outward observations. I think we know a lot, but.. Not sure we can truly "read someones thoughts" in that sense..?
Who knows how you would do it! I'm still a theorist at heart, my interest falls off after knowing it is possible! After that it is for engineers to figure out how it is actually done in practice!