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Comment by Mathnerd314 | Hacker News Reader

To summarize the Wikipedia article on linguistic relativity, the "strong" hypothesis that language determines thought has been debunked. But there are many things that a language influences. To use a computer analogy, all mainstream programming languages are Turing complete, so you can express any computation in them. In this sense the language does not determine what programs you can write. But in practice, as any computer person will tell you, different languages are good at different things. And that is kind of this paper, they cite a lot of examples where English has poor vocabulary or odd quirks, and show by comparison to other languages that this measurably affects conclusions about certain cognitive abilities. The issue they're complaining about is like if you benchmarked Python programs and tried to draw conclusions about the speed limits of computing, but never tried C++ or assembly.

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Its ridiculous to compare human language to a programming language, even by analogy. They are entirely different domains.

Tell it to the papers: https://www.cs.drexel.edu/~csg63/publications/onward24/onwar... https://arxiv.org/pdf/1808.03916 As vague analogies go, much more ridiculous and vague things have been published and peer reviewed and even gotten significant citations. Like ecological niches and invasive species, DNA as genetic blueprints, selfish genes, ... About all that can be said about these is that they are closer to the truth than what came before, and that if you actually learn the field then you can appreciate how they kind of get it right.

Yet what about aphasia? There seems to be direct evidence that thought, action, language are in conflict rather than seamless, so language plays a weird role in that some of us are programmed and others are blissfuly unconnected to their effects.

If aphasia is evidence that some of us don't use language to think, then language is nothing more than a programming language.

Whatever programming language using language is irrelevant to people with aphasia.

Typically people develop aphasia after a stroke. This provides a natural before/after comparison. When for example Mark Brodie had a stroke, he wasn't able to speak - and he also wasn't able to read or write computer programs. This indicates that natural and programming languages use overlapping regions of the brain.

Regarding language being in conflict with other modes of thinking, there is indeed a "savant" effect of aphasia, where after an aphasia-inducing stroke people suddenly develop amazing abilities in visual art, music, or mathematical thinking. But it is not consistent - most people don't develop these. And it comes with impairment of emotions, memory, etc. So really what the evidence suggests is that some people suppress parts of their brain, and these injuries unlock that potential because the suppression mechanisms break. It's most likely a cultural thing - people act how they are "expected" to act. There is some evidence that females actually have more biological capability for math (in cultures with very high gender equality) but typically you see less performance, so the conclusion is that the culture essentially "programs" in the lower performance. It is probably the same with the supposed "conflict" between thought, action, and language - the culture treats these as distinct modes and inhibits cross-modal thinking like synesthesia.

Sure, but thought does not end or get impeded in aphasia, merely the ability to use language. People can reason, gesture, react, which tells us they're either divergent or entirely separate abilities. Any language is an external program that runs a cultural control system, not a communication system that directly connects mental states.

You can't generalize like that. Aphasia is a symptom - of course by definition it is merely the inability to use language. But people with stroke will typically show a lot of impairment, not only aphasia - they will have difficulties reasoning, gesturing, reacting, etc. Different people will have different abilities and different levels of impairment, but this tells you very little - it is not like each ability has its own little neuron in the brain, fMRI has confirmed that most activities involve several different parts of the brain. There are complex thoughts that require linguistic involvement to process, sign language and dancing combine gesturing with language, etc. The main thing the OP paper shows is that language is pervasive and intricately involved in how activities map to mental states.

I'm not sure it's generalizing, it's simply been demonstrated in testing.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-07522-w

Yeah, so what that paper shows is that 6-7 cognitive tasks show low involvement with the language areas. What it doesn't show is that all cognitive tasks are independent of the language areas. As the paper itself admits, some forms of reasoning seem to involve language.

It demonstrates what divides the brain, actually, if you read her other papers and public layperson statements as well where she claims we don't use "language to think" as mental events are specific and language is arbitrary.

There's enough similarity there for an analogy, like the above posted.

Both are abstractions that use symbolic representation

Both are designed for human understanding

Both have quirks that make them better or worse at certain kinds of abstraction

comparison != analogy.

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