How to use repetition (2017) | Hacker News Reader

How to use repetition (2017)

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65 pointshighway-trees22 comments

In the puzzle game "Baba is you", three word sentences define the rules of the game. For example the phrase in the title means that the character/object "baba" is controlled by the player.

You can use phrases of the form "<noun> is <other noun>" to transmute objects. But of there is the phrase "<noun> is <same noun>" on the board, then it becomes immutable, matching the use or repetition described in the article. For example https://i.postimg.cc/Z0kqQxXY/image.png

It's a fun game BTW. https://store.steampowered.com/app/736260/ or https://hempuli.itch.io/baba

A bit unrelated since the article is more about stylistic repetition, but I had a hard time using repetition in my writings after decades of school drilling into my that it was a bad thing.

Yet in teaching, repetition is not just acceptable, it's necessary.

You need to say the same thing over and over again for it to stick.

And still, you'll note people will have missed half of it.

So it turns out repetition is like everything: whether it's good or bad is highly contextual.

The hard part is making repetition not boring.

> after decades of school drilling into my that it was a bad thing.

I'd argue that's just school teaching bad style. They're doing it because they are optimising for something else: exposing students to wider vocabulary.

To write well, call a spade a spade. To show off how many words you know, call it a spade the first time, shovel the next, digging device the third time, then earth moving tool, substrate projector, historic agricultural staple, etc. School optimises for the latter.

If you feel like your vocabulary is sufficient, forget everything school taught you. Write simply. A spade is a spade.

I would never call a shovel a spade due to the potential for confusion (unless that's what I'm going for).

"It is what it is" isn't a tautology. It's a condensed way of saying that "it is what is seems to be, and nothing more or less; in particular, it is not something else we might wish it to be."

Right. A tautology would be "it is ∨ ¬it is"

If we remove the nuanced semantics, a logical tautology can be discerned in the syntax "it is what it is", namely:

  (it = what?) ∧ (it = what?)

The left expression says that "it is what?": it binds the meta-variable what? to the it object. The right expression has the binding of what? in scope already, and just redundantly asserts it; the two what?s unify. The right side is saying "it is what; and as for what that is, see the left side".

It's basically a more elaborate form of the P ∧ P tautology.

BTW: I just intuited that I can get ∧ using Japanese IME by typing "ando" (あんど); it appears as one of the replacements.

Japanese IME is useful not just for Japanese. Need ohms? Just "omega" (おめが) and there it is.

Well none of the other example repetition usages are simple tautologies either. The entire post is about how repetitions that appear to be simple tautologies are actually communicating some meaning.

A haiku by Kobayashi Issa, supposedly written after the death of one of his children:

    The world of dew
    Is a world of dew
    And yet ... and yet ...

I wonder if this kind of thing is found in other languages. for example i can't think of any in French (i am French) even "it is what it is" which I would translate by " C'est comme ça" (it is like this)

I can think of the following sentence used in Maghrebi Arabic dialect (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maghrebi_Arabic):

إِلِّي صَارْ صَارْ

Which translates to: "Whatever happened, happened."

C'est la vie.

In Russian, you do hear people say «что будет, то будет» — literally ”what will be will be”.

The formal rules of the language discourage tautology though. It's considered ineloquent, so it's not very common.

The last in TFA with the "drink drink" is definitely done all the time in french too.

Something like the following repetition is ultra common:

"C'etait bien ?" (What is good?)

"Oui c'etait bien. Enfin, pas 'bien bien' mais... Bien". (Yes, it was good. Well, not "good good" but... Good).

The "x is x" is ultra common too, say to a kid, when it really needs to go to bed:

"J'avais dit dodo et dodo c'est dodo!" (even if it's not proper french, it's a typical way to talk to kids: "I said bedtime and bedtime is bedtime").

Even with french "verlan": *"Il etait relou. Pas relou-relou mais quand meme un peu relou!".

Also I'm sure I hear this one all the time: "Quand faut y aller, faut y aller!".

It's everywhere in french.

I like how you use the pronoun "it" for the child. Somewhat in line with French parenting philosophy, or is that reading too much into it?

Definitely reading too much into her

Shikata ga nai in Japanese (famously fictionally adopted by the First 100 in Red Mars when they encountered difficulties when colonising Mars), as well as mei ban fa (没办法) in Chinese.

I think French uses repetitions in a different way. I mean, it's attained the status of just a word particle in its own right in French, but Est ce que c'est - Est ce que ce est - "is it that it is" seems like a repetition embedded deep in a part of the language. Are the circumstances such that the circumstances are...

And then qu'est-ce que c'est takes it to another level - what is this, that this is?

I am somewhat disappointed that the thread below this one is not also called "How to use repetition (2017)."

Long cat is long.

The tautologies are there straighten out the confusion that was in someones mind. Like invoking modus ponens.

If he dies, he dies.

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