Ideas I like that are also kind of wrong
Some ideas are so cool but also kinda wrong, but you still low key like them. Here is one.
Language can affect how you think.
This ideas is known as the “Sapir-Whorf hypothesis”. I’ve picked up that idea watching Arrival. Great movie, watch it.
[spoilers ahead]
So, there are these aliens, Heptapods, and they are all circular. No direction what·so·ev·er. Circular language, circular writing, circular economy, probably. Circular themselves with 7 legs, so that you never know if you stare them in the eye or at their butt.
And because of that, they do not have time. Not like they are busy all the time. They do not have the idea of time. As John Wheeler said, “Time is what prevents everything from happening at once”, for them, it everything actually happens at one. They know everything, they have seen everything. They know the future.
Knowing everything, bored out of their minds, they arrive to Earth. Gave crash course of heptapodian to protagonist of the movie. And “Voilà!”, she can see the future, and saves the world big time.
Cool right? Yes, but it does not work this way, no? I did not know that kohlrabi existed, but when I saw it for the first time, I was not running around screaming that it is impossible and that I saw a ghost. I thought, “wat is that green comet-like thing, can I eat that?”. Later I learned the word for that thing and became like the rest of you.
People learn new ideas, concepts, and words all the time. People invent new concepts and make up words for them. This is our unique power — make shit up.
So, the idea is that if you do not have some concept in your language, you can not think about it is kinda wrong. Some tribes do not have the word for “tomorrow”. Many languages have a single word for blue-green. You need to limp around with weird constructions like “the time after I wake up after long night sleep but before I go to bed again” and “blue-green like a kohlrabi”, but then you invent a word for that to get on the same page quicker. We get along.
But I still love the idea.
