You're a hypocrite, but so am I

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seedling

Why is the language you speak the way it is? Why is capitalism the norm? Why is saying “Amiges” or “Amigxs” so controversial in Spanish?

Why were ankles eroticized, but aren’t anymore, while breasts still are?

To begin with, why is it that when you hear or read the word rock, you think of the same concept that I do? The reason for why it’s like this, could be better understood by Richard Dawkin’s ideas of Memes (of all things (Seriously, read his book The Selfish Gene)).

In short, language is a microcosm of culture itself. So how does language work?

Structure

  1. Language
    1. Words as a mapping from labels to concept
    2. Grammar as convention for facilitating communication.
  2. Social mores
  3. Concepts in general
  4. What is culture
    1. A colection of concepts that facilitate cooperation
    2. Measure of culture is how similar those concepts are between people or groups of people.
  5. Why culture changes
    1. Problems in culture

What is language?

At it’s root, language is simply a method of transmitting concepts from one person to another. Words then, function as labels for concepts, which can then be composed into more complex concepts.

Words as labels for concepts

So what does it mean to understand words as a label for a concept? When you read or hear the word rock, what do you think of? Of course, you think of a rock. However, what kind of rock you imagine might be different to what I imagine; some might imagine a pebble, others a mountain, and still others a gem.

One of the problems of communication, is that it’s pretty much impossible to transmit the concept directly from one persons mind to another’s, so as humans we solved this issue through the use of words. Instead of trying to transmit the concept itself, we simply tell the other person a label, and hope that they have a concept similar to us.

It looks a little like this:

An illustration showing how a word can map to different concepts

Platonic Ideals (Explain relevance)

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