tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3734925856292601239.post3475849412567719832..comments2024-03-22T15:55:34.030-04:00Comments on Evo and Proud: Have we been selected for long-term thinking?Peter Frosthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04303172060029254340noreply@blogger.comBlogger11125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3734925856292601239.post-2363544842600247982019-10-05T17:31:03.878-04:002019-10-05T17:31:03.878-04:00The limit seems to be 30+ years for even advanced ...The limit seems to be 30+ years for even advanced organizations and governments and around 10 years for typical consumers.<br /><br />I derive the 30+ year limit for organizations from what has happened with the newest generations of nuclear reactors, like EPR and ATMEA. Their producers shot themselves in the foot by extending the lifespan to 60 years at the cost of higher upfront cost. And it completly failed financially - noone knows how to properly finance for such long times. For example Hinkley-C financing is basically paying double the price of electricity for 35 years - if they could spread the cost of building it over 60 years then per-MWh price would be close to normal market price. <br /><br />In case of consumers - most popular household products are designed for 7 - 10 years of use. There are brainds that advertise 20 years of use (eg. Miele), but it doesn't look like the bulk of consumers care. <br /><br /><br />tomRhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05250648754955371165noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3734925856292601239.post-40898695888033741872019-09-23T16:38:47.067-04:002019-09-23T16:38:47.067-04:00just to add some small corrections: german has not...just to add some small corrections: german has not 3 cases, but 4 :)) ... and, of course, also french, spanish and english have all 4 cases - but as 'false/faux cases' (nevermind, english still performs the genitive even more boldly than german...<br />on the other hand, average, ordinary language in most german dialects is rather simple and often vey similar to basic english analytic language (little wonder, as anglo-saxon old/middle english was a west-germanic language very similar to dutch/platt dialects.<br />as with regards to IQ-level: chinese people with the most analytic language outdo (like korean or japanese) all european/westerners by 5-10 points, right? so, it cannot be directly dertived/connected IQ and 'simplicity' of language.<br />quite the contrary: australian aborigines show some of the most complex languages in grammar, syntax and lexik, but perform very poorly in IQ.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3734925856292601239.post-18832572029549408362019-09-23T12:54:26.125-04:002019-09-23T12:54:26.125-04:00"Therefore my thesis is that languages like E..."Therefore my thesis is that languages like English, Spanish, French, and Chinese have a natural affinity to low-IQ populations. I know it's a controversial thing to say, but I stand behind it. I have objective proof."<br /><br />Your thesis should be easy to test. Do synthetic languages correlate with the mean population IQ? Offhand, I would say the correlation is weakly negative. <br /><br />In any case, the issue here is future orientation, not IQ per se. Over time, languages seem to evolve from a synthetic structure to an analytic onePeter Frosthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04303172060029254340noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3734925856292601239.post-63833879849372061502019-09-21T19:26:57.532-04:002019-09-21T19:26:57.532-04:00"Analytic" and "synthetic" are..."Analytic" and "synthetic" are relative terms. Spanish and French are more synthetic/less analytic compared to English, and less synthetic/more analytic relative to, say, Russian. <br /><br />English's huge vocabulary is not necessarily because it's an analytic language, but there's likely an association there. Analytic languages are characterized by having very low morpheme to word ratios. Synthetic ones by contrast have high morpheme to word ratios. A morpheme is the smallest unit of meaning, but not necessarily a word. For example, the prefix "re" in "reheat". "Re" has meaning but is not an independent word. Synthetic languages tend to preserve roots and affix morphemes to come up with new words and meanings, and are less eager to adopt promiscuously independent words wholesale. Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3734925856292601239.post-45229722851617804002019-09-21T17:25:41.942-04:002019-09-21T17:25:41.942-04:00"analytic languages are regarded as more comp..."analytic languages are regarded as more complex... English famously has a huge vocabulary."<br /><br />English has a huge vocabulary because it incorporated Roman words into its Germanic base, not because it's an analytic language. Combinations such as <i>begin/commence</i>, <i>end/finish</i>, <i>friendly/amicable</i>, <i>build/construct</i>, <i>abandon/relinquish</i>, <i>fast/rapid</i> and so on are due to the merger of Latin and Teutonic words which is a phenomenon unique to the English language and the <b>history of the English people.</b> But Spanish and French, for example, which are also analytic, don't have this unusually expanded vocabulary.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3734925856292601239.post-32382176116748667682019-09-21T15:22:26.278-04:002019-09-21T15:22:26.278-04:00^^ But think about the IQ implications of the spea...<i>^^ But think about the IQ implications of the speakers of synthetic languages vs. analytic/compositional languages.</i><br /><br />Because of the traditional influence of Latin pedagogy in the English speaking world, Latin and its inflectional nature have been taken as the model for grammar for English scholars, despite English itself being very analytic. Hence the traditional rule against splitting the infinitive in English. The only reason this "rule" existed was because in Latin the infinitive is one word. In English, infinitives are two words, so keeping them together and not splitting them makes them more like the Latin infinitive and thus more correct. Grammar itself was identified with inflection. Thus the traditional view of Chinese having no grammar because it was almost purely analytic. <br /><br />Regarding prepositions, their development and usage in a language correspond with a movement away from synthetic to analytic (relatively speaking). <br /><br />Analytic languages don't just rely on helping words but on syntax such as word order. Traditionally French has been regarded as being a highly "logical" language because of its emphasis on word order, in contrast to synthetic languages with their freer word order. <br /><br />Native speakers of synthetic languages don't "keep track" of inflections in a top-down fashion the way an English speaking schoolboy would memorize tables and lists of Latin and Greek declensions and conjugations. The work of grammarians and pedagogy in school are quite removed from how people actually learn and use languages. Typically they just assimilate words and their particular inflections in context and usage. <br /><br />Analytic languages are regarded as more complex in terms of syntactic rules. They also tend to have more different and new words, so are regarded as more complex in that regard, while synthetic languages tend to inflect preexisting words to develop new and different words. English famously has a huge vocabulary.<br /><br />Synthetic languages are not only associated with high IQ populations. Amerindian languages tend to be highly synthetic. Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3734925856292601239.post-50403318221336738472019-09-21T12:20:27.823-04:002019-09-21T12:20:27.823-04:00^^ But think about the IQ implications of the spea...^^ But think about the IQ implications of the speakers of synthetic languages vs. analytic/compositional languages.<br /><br />Russian, German, Finnish, Polish, Hungarian, and other synthetic languages still have their prepositions like "to," "from," "with," etc., but in addition to that, the speaker has to be conversant in 100's of suffixes that need to be in strict agreement with function, gender (3 in all those languages), and even mood. The helping words haven't gone away, they're still there, it's just that the complexity has been ADDED on top, and is immense.<br /><br />In contrast to that analytic languages just rely on the helping words and nothing else. So you don't need a very high IQ to speak those languages. You don't need to keep track of hundreds of suffixes or prefixes corresponding to 3 (genders) x 7 (cases) x (2 or 3) moods or other categories ~ 45 or 50 word forms. It's just that the word order is a little bit firmer, but word order is also relatively firm in the synthetic languages in terms of everyday speech. (Relaxed word order only occurs in poetry.) So they're not equivalent, you really have to be quite smart to speak synthetic (or as I call them "conservative") languages.<br /><br />And unlike English, where people are free to mangle grammar in major ways such as "He don't care" or "Who did you see" or "Who done it" without any resulting foreignness, in the synthetic languages, if you even so much as miss one small ending corresponding to the large number of permutations, people will scream at you, scold you, and instantly treat you as a foreigner.<br /><br />Therefore my thesis is that languages like English, Spanish, French, and Chinese have a natural affinity to low-IQ populations. I know it's a controversial thing to say, but I stand behind it. I have objective proof.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3734925856292601239.post-3527362528114263862019-09-21T02:21:24.652-04:002019-09-21T02:21:24.652-04:00In linguistics, highly inflected languages such as...In linguistics, highly inflected languages such as those with many cases are called "synthetic", and those that are less so are called "analytic". <br /><br />Proto-Indo-European was very synthetic with lots of inflection and 8 or 9 cases. Older IE languages like Latin and Greek are regarded as synthetic, along with certain modern IE languages like Russian and German that retain many cases and lots of inflection. English is regarded as being very analytic and among the most analytic of the IE languages, since it has lost most of its inflection. All the modern IE languages are less synthetic/more analytic than their older variants and Proto-IE. <br /><br />Chinese is regarded as being among the most analytic languages in general, since it lacks inflection almost entirely.<br /><br />More analytic languages such as Chinese or English depend on word order and helping verbs such as "will", "shall" as mentioned above to convey meaning.<br /><br />I'm not sure if there's anything to the idea that decline in inflection is associated with greater future orientation. It seems to me that they just use different means to convey the same meanings. <br />Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3734925856292601239.post-67236480446494525702019-09-20T21:14:20.996-04:002019-09-20T21:14:20.996-04:00Anon,
I'm suspicious about the data on polite...Anon,<br /><br />I'm suspicious about the data on politeness distinctions. But the authors make a good case for the relationship between return on agricultural investment and the periphrastic future tense. They looked at a large number of other linguistic characteristics and found no correlation. Of course, you could argue that they built their theory after finding a chance correlation with the periphrastic future.<br /><br />Anon,<br /><br />The authors argue that the shift away from cases is due, at least in part, to a shift toward greater future orientation. It became more necessary to state intentions about the future.Peter Frosthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04303172060029254340noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3734925856292601239.post-48254858671540887712019-09-18T21:38:24.823-04:002019-09-18T21:38:24.823-04:00It's an interesting subject for sure. I myself...It's an interesting subject for sure. I myself have wondered why languages have evolved they have. One of my questions is why, going from West to East, European languages start having cases (e.g. Russian and Polish have 7, French and English have none, and German is in the middle with 3 - precisely according to the geographical distribution of these countries). It's as if Western languages are more liberal and Eastern ones more conservative, with German in the middle. I think there's something about Eastern Europe that favors complex grammars, and something about Western Europe that wants to simplify.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3734925856292601239.post-91508969112075257512019-09-18T18:02:42.150-04:002019-09-18T18:02:42.150-04:00The correlations listed seem kind of random. Did t...The correlations listed seem kind of random. Did the authors find any others? Are we sure they weren't p-hacking -- i.e., looking at a large number of possible correlations between linguistic and social characteristics and then reporting the few that came up positive?Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com