Hacker News Reader

Comment by MarcusBrutus | Hacker News Reader

I 'm not convinced. Such a "media" for thinking the unthinkable already exists. It's called "written language" plus maybe a drawing here or there. Has been used for millennia and once internalized by a mind willing to spend the effort to parse it has never failed to convey the unthinkable, the sublime or the transcendent.

View on HN

Did you even watch the entire talk? He mentioned the written language very early on ... but then moves forward significantly.

I see your point. However, these tools for thinking, they give you time to think more things and also allow you to think on new levels, which may let you attain the previously unthinkable. And you might be able to combine different ideas to understand new systems and conceive of new tools to discover more.

Further, on an individual level, each person might be able to think what maybe they personally couldn't think otherwise. And in that, communication might happen which gives rise to new thoughts.

I tend to agree, though I suppose it's not entirely proven that it's never failed. But the "unthinakble thoughts" argument seems to be to go in two different directions - the analogy to sound is misleading; we have reason to believe in the existence of ultrasonic vibrations, and they don't require us to hear or not hear them. But thoughts don't exist separate from our minds. Truly unthinkable thoughts wouldn't be thoughts at all. What the concept seems to represent here is "novel ways of thinking" and those are in fact generally not impossible to share with other thinkers (luckily).

So, it would suck to introduce you to this guy named Ludwig Wittgenstein.

Inability to hold educated conversation on Wittgenstein should not be taken to reflect badly on anyone's intellect.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com