> [!summary] Progressive Summary # Structured Notes ## Definitions Brute reality - physical reality that is imperfectly captured by language Social reality - cannot exist without language - Or [[Reality according to Philip K Dick]] Schelling point - A Schelling point, also known as a focal point, is a solution that people tend to choose by default when there is no communication. The concept was introduced by American economist Thomas Schelling in his book The Strategy of Conflict. ## Chapter Summaries ### Chapter 1 - Coordinating around Reality > When individuals build coalitions through coordination, they become merged as agents. They work as one. To achieve this, they need landmarks to coordinate around. In Schelling's map, two parachutists must find each other by choosing the same landing point. They can do this by picking out a prominent feature. ![[Pasted image 20250112094217.webp|442]] > We appear to be the only species that can achieve entirely ad hoc coordination of this kind *without communication*. > We take into account what the other person knows, what we believe that person knows about what we know, and how that mutual knowledge should factor into our current shared task of trying to coordinate our behavior. > As a coordination device, language is a tool of human *agency*, both individual and shared. Agency can be defined as a capacity to do things and make things happen, where this capacity entails some degree of control and some degree of accountability. Words are our most powerful tools. > Students of the Stanislavsky acting method are taught to regard every spoken line – along with their every movement on stage – as pursuing a task, solving a problem, carrying out an action. At every point, an actor must ask: What am I trying to make the other person *do*? With words, we act both *on* other people and with *other* people, for agency is situated in the individual *and* is distributed across individuals. > We find it natural to think of ourselves as individuals when it comes to our personal agency. By coordinating socially, separate individuals may mutually influence one another, but in reality, our agency is distributed. At every step, we enhance our individual agency using person-extending technologies from levers and wedges to bicycles and smart phones. These technologies are *interfaces* that translate or transform our actions beyond what our bodies alone could do. > Language allows us to coordinate with each other in movement and action, as well as value and identity. Language is a two-way interface. It allows us to influence other people, but it also allows others to influence us. ### Chapter 2 - Schelling's Game Words are landmarks for social coordination. For people to be able to coordinate around something, two criteria must be met: - the thing must be prominent - this prominence should be assumed to be shared among the people (ie it's not enough just to know something, you also have to know that the other person knows it) ### Chapter 3 - Language and Nature Languages are constrained in how they carve reality up (this is called **constrained diversity**). Most languages will converge on features of reality that are prominent to the community of speakers. This is because language's main function isn't to describe or mirror reality, but to coordinate people's actions. Our vocabulary to describe things is far less than the nuances our perception can pick up. Humans can detect up to a trillion different smells, but we only have a handful of words to describe them. Jahai, an Indigenous language of Malaysia, which has a dozen basic terms for smells, is on the higher end of the vocabulary scale. English and other European languages are on the lower end. Urban populations typically have a handful of names for plant forms. Hunter-gatherers will have an average of 200 words. Cultivators will have around 500 words. ### Chapter 4 - Priming and Overshadowing The words we use alter our memories. By indexing the world through language, we gain certain aspects of control. At the same time, we strip away details and impoverish our memories. Labeling things makes it more difficult to remember details later, because it cues our minds to move its attention towards something else. Lots of interesting experiments cited in this chapter to show how language influences behaviour and judgments. Framing things in either an active or passive voice has a big effect on our attributions of agency. This has huge implications for legal cases, where the agency of the person committing an offense is a significant factor. [^1] ### Chapter 5 - Linguistic Relativity Different languages structure our thinking in different ways. When given a list of random numbers to memorise, speakers who speak languages that use Subject-Verb-Object order (such as English) were better able to remember items near the beginning of the list, and speakers who spoke Subject-Object-Verb languages (such as Korean and Japanese) could remember items at the end of the list better. ### Chapter 6 - Communicative Need ### Chapter 7 - Framing and Inversion ### Chapter 8 - Russell's Conjugation and Wittgenstein's Ruler Russell's conjugation is a play on the type of conjugation drills that learners of Latin go through. He proposed > I am firm, you are obstinate, he is a pig-headed fool. as a way of demonstrating how we cast ourselves in a more positive light than others. Wittgenstein's Ruler says that we can use a measurement to measure the ruler. Consider the statement: "An isoceles triangle has two equal sides." When uttered by a teacher to a student, this is meant to impart knowledge, because the teacher is an authority. When uttered by a student to a teacher, this is meant to measure the understanding of the student. Many times, utterances tell us more about the speaker than the actual content of the words. GPS technology is based on the idea that we can track a satellite's movements by calculating changes in the Doppler effect of signals coming from it. This is in a situation where we know the position of the detector on the ground, but not the satellite. However, if we know the position of the satellite, then we can invert this and calculate the position of the detector on the ground. We are using the satellite as a Wittgensteinian ruler. ### Chapter 9: Stories and What They Do to Us Listening to stories can release hormones in us such as dopamine, oxytocin and endorphins. Dopamine is released when we see a protagonist overcome their obstacles and achieve a resolution. Oxytocin (a peptide hormone produced in the hypothalamus) is released when we identify with a protagonist as "one of us". Endorphins (released in the pituitary gland) are a natural morphine-like painkiller, and are released when we undergo strong emotions, such as watching comedy or tragedy. ### Chapter 10: Social Glue According to Robin Dunbar, gossip is everything. It makes human society possible. It establishes common ground. ### Chapter 11: Sense Making # Quotes > Political language is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable. > – George Orwell (1946) > Language is the main instrument of man’s refusal to accept the world as it is. > – George Steiner (1975) # References [Dunbar 1996 - Grooming, gossip, and the evolution of language](zotero://select/items/1_YURJAKW8) [Pinker 10/2009 - The reality of a universal language faculty](zotero://select/items/1_75JZLYDM) [^1]: [Chivers 2019-12-12 - What’s next for psychology’s embattled field of social priming](zotero://select/items/1_AXAZS39X)