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Language is not essential for the cognitive processes that underlie thought

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549 points orcul | 9 comments | 17 Oct 24 12:10 UTC | HN request time: 1.141s | source | bottom
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fjfaase ◴[19 Oct 24 21:56 UTC] No.41891068[source]▶
As some who has a dis-harmonic intelligence profile, this has been obvious for a very long time. In the family of my mother there are several individuals struggling with language while excelling in the field of exact sciences. I very strongly suspect that my non-verbal (performal) IQ is much higher (around 130) than my verbal IQ (around 100). I have struggled my whole life to express my ideas with language. I consider myself an abstract visual thinker. I do not think in pictures, but in abstract structures. During my life, I have met several people, especially among software engineers, who seem to be similar to me. I also feel that people who are strong verbal thinkers have the greatest resistance against idea that language is not essential for higher cognitive processes.
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1. kerblang ◴[20 Oct 24 00:29 UTC] No.41891928[source]▶
> During my life, I have met several people, especially among software engineers, who seem to be similar to me

This begs a question though: Since programming is mostly done with language - admittedly primitive/pidgin ones - why isn't that a struggle? Not sure if you're a programmer yourself, but if so do you prefer certain programming languages for some sense of "less-verbalness" or does it even matter?

Just wondering, not attacking your claim per se.

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2. alserio ◴[20 Oct 24 01:00 UTC] No.41892060[source]▶
The idea that programming languages and natural languages are processed with the same wetware should be testable with something like the tests described in this submission. I don't expect it to be true, but only expecting something is not science
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3. superb_dev ◴[20 Oct 24 01:01 UTC] No.41892066[source]▶
A programming language has a ton more rules and way less ambiguity than a speaking language.
4. makeitdouble ◴[20 Oct 24 01:03 UTC] No.41892075[source]▶
I see your general point on needing language proficiency to program, but I think it's just a very low requirement.

Parent isn't saying they can't handle language (and we wouldn't have this discussion in the first place), just that they better handle complexity and structure in non verbal ways.

To get back to programming, I think this do apply to most of us. Most of us probably don't think in ruby or JS, we have a higher vision of what we want to build and "flatten" it into words that can be parsed and executed. It's of course more obvious for people writing in say basic or assembly, some conversion has to happen at some point.

5. dleeftink ◴[20 Oct 24 02:40 UTC] No.41892495[source]▶
Some progress has been made in this area, see [0], [1], [2] and [3], observing both similarities and dissimilarities in terms of language processing:

Siegmund, J., Kästner, C., Apel, S., Parnin, C., Bethmann, A., Leich, T. & Brechmann, A. (2014). Understanding understanding source code with functional magnetic resonance imaging. In Proceedings of the 36th International Conference on Software Engineering (pp. 378-389).

Peitek, N., Siegmund, J., Apel, S., Kästner, C., Parnin, C., Bethmann, A. & Brechmann, A. (2018). A look into programmers’ heads. IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, 46(4), 442-462.

Krueger, R., Huang, Y., Liu, X., Santander, T., Weimer, W., & Leach, K. (2020). Neurological divide: An fMRI study of prose and code writing. In Proceedings of the ACM/IEEE 42nd International Conference on Software Engineering (pp. 678-690).

Peitek, N., Apel, S., Parnin, C., Brechmann, A. & Siegmund, J. (2021). Program comprehension and code complexity metrics: An fmri study. In 2021 IEEE/ACM 43rd International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE) (pp. 524-536). IEEE.

[0]: https://www.frontiersin.org/10.3389/conf.fninf.2014.18.00040...

[1]: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/8425769

[2]: https://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1145/3377811.3380348

[3]: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/9402005

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6. alserio ◴[20 Oct 24 12:04 UTC] No.41894791{3}[source]▶
thank you! fascinating reads
7. branko_d ◴[20 Oct 24 18:58 UTC] No.41897653[source]▶
Other than the word “language”, programming languages and natural languages really have very little in common.

Anecdotally, when I write code, I don’t “talk in my head”. The structures that I have in my brain are in fact difficult to put into words, and I can only vaguely describe them as interconnected 3D shapes evolving over time, or even just “feelings” and “instincts” in some cases.

The code that comes out of that process does not, in fact, describe the process fully, even though it describes exactly what the computer should do. That’s why reading someone else’s code can be so difficult - you are accessing just the end product of their thinking process, without seeing the process itself.

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8. alserio ◴[20 Oct 24 20:06 UTC] No.41898118{3}[source]▶
I do subjectively agree with this. I, too, don't "code by words". However, it's the first time someone has described their personal experience to me as interconnected 3d shapes. Really fascinating and really distant from my own experience. For the second part of your message, code comments are a possible place where you can store the process, via the medium of words, this time.
9. eacnamn ◴[21 Oct 24 20:36 UTC] No.41908284[source]▶
Programming is moreso based on recursive problem solving. (Most) language does have some recursive structures, but these become quite difficult to think about after just a few levels, and really aren't what you'd normally consider to be "good language", e.g.

> The dog's owner's house's roof's angle's similarity to an equilateral triangle is remarkable.