The Pirahã are off by one (2020) | Hacker News Reader

The Pirahã are off by one (2020)

byrnehobart.medium.com

23 pointsmooreds23 comments

> This is seen as proof of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, that words determine the concepts you can use: Pirahã can’t instantly compare collections of objects to see which is bigger (e.g. a pile of four batteries next to a pile of five) while people in cultures with other number systems can.

My goodness. Sapir and Whorf had this theory, but neither gathered much data to prove it, and attempts to do so since Whorf's death in 1941 have not gathered much evidence for that theory. In fact the mass of evidence has been against it.

A Christian missionary named Daniel Everett studied linguistics to preach to the Pirahã in the late 1970s. When he learned their language, he became convinced that they helped make the case for Sapir-Whorf and published many papers, but other linguists who went down to work with them found countervailing evidence.

It's a pleasant theory to consider, but the evidence for it over the past eighty years has been thin, and most linguistics data seems to go against the theory.

Whorfianism is certainly oversold, but it's hard to come down completely against it in the face of evidence from color identification.

If it weren't that people make these claims about Pirahã all the time, "it's slightly slower to compare counts of things if you don't have basic numerals for them" is exactly the sort of thing at about the right level of automaticity to sound plausible.

The obvious thing is that the concept precede the word and the word reinforce the concept

The book "Don't sleep there are snakes" by Everett is still a very entertaining read! I highly recommend it.

Sounds like the Zero-One-Infinity rule: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero_one_infinity_rule

I've been thinking about something related recently.

I was wondering if the only number that truly exists is One. Zero is nothing and therefore doesn't exist, and all that does exist is eventual composed of One.

Feels a bit like Bertrand Russel and Alfred North Whitehead's Principia Mathematica.

They spend some 350 pages proving 1 + 1 = 2 from very primitive principles, including the existence of numbers themselves. Turns out, numbers, even One, are non-primitive constructs.

It feels like our Being is one and unique and therefore provides an irreducible concept of One that we are all presumably experiencing.

We only share our object reality not our sense of Being and so while for me this seems like a singular concept I can not witness what it is for you or anyone else.

Interestingly, many number systems (like Piano numbers and Surreal numbers) start with zero & build up from there.

"Zero is nothing" is my first objection here. Zero is not always Nothing; I feel like there are many mathematical zeros (including Nothing).

The duality of existence and non-existence means that We all share fundamentals, totally agree with you there.

Zero is not even absence it would be absolutely nothing, irreducibly nothing.

Though a strange thought has occurred that existence of One implies Zero by it's lack of absence. But this feel incoherent because these two poles can never exist together.

Counterexample: qubits

I'm trying to parse this.

Do you mean zero implies one by its lack of absence?

I feel the difficulty is that they can't exist together. But it was more a musing on my part, please forgive me that indulgence.

I'm wondering that if we were to consider a platonic view of forms through planes of physicality, idea and thought is it the case that all that exists across them is One?

I had a similar thought about numbers that exist or don't.

In my book, something like two or ten exists - because my kid can hold up 2 fingers and say 2 or all of them and say 10. I am saying that you can actually count to those numbers in physical space.

But at some point, the number is like larger than the number of atoms in the universe (or whatever you think is the biggest domain we can count) and once you go past that number, your counts represent abstract numbers that don't have a physical representation.

So .. if the world has 10 marbles we may only count to 10 ..?

This despite there being ( 10 x 9 ) groupings of pairs of those 10 marbles?

For any of those 90 pairs we can show a physical example of ( this marble, that marble ).

Someone once said that whatever follows "So..." Is going to be a misrepresentation of what one said :)

In my comment I said "or whatever is the largest domain you think you can count". So in your example we still run out of physical stuff that can be counted (at 90) right?

> whatever follows "So..." Is going to be a misrepresentation of what one said :)

> So in your example .. right?

Not at all, and it's pretty clear why :)

Sounds like ultrafinism or actualism:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultrafinitism

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Actualism

You sounds like you'd enjoy learning about the Surreal Numbers.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mPn2AdMH7UQ (15m video starring Don Knuth) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1eAmxgINXrE (1h15m video starring John Conway)

It may be the case that you've already heard of the Surreal Numbers, but I remain confident you enjoyed learning about them. :)

If you are interested in the Piraha, the book "Don't sleep, there are snakes" is fantastic. Incredible to read about their language and what life is like deep in the Amazon.

i forgot about those vicous animals

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