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habitue ◴[] No.41889815[source]
Language may not be essential for thought, (most of us have the experience of an idea occurring to us that we struggle to put into words), but language acts as a regularization mechanism on thoughts.

Serializing much higher dimensional freeform thoughts into language is a very lossy process, and this kinda ensures that mostly only the core bits get translated. Think of times when someone gets an idea you're trying to convey, but you realize they're missing some critical context you forgot to share. It takes some activation energy to add that bit of context, so if it seems like they mostly get what you're saying, you skip it. Over time, transferring ideas from one person to the next, they tend towards a very compressed form because language is expensive.

This process also works on your own thoughts. Thinking out loud performs a similar role, it compresses the hell out of the thought or else it remains inexpressible. Now imagine repeated stages of compressing through language, allowing ideas to form from that compressed form, and then compressing those ideas in turn. It's a bit of a recursive process and language is in the middle of it.

replies(3): >>41890360 #>>41890458 #>>41890579 #
1. ujikoluk ◴[] No.41890360[source]
Yes, dimension reduction.