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Language is not essential for the cognitive processes that underlie thought

(www.scientificamerican.com)
549 points orcul | 1 comments | 17 Oct 24 12:10 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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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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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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1. 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.