Natural languages are the languages used by humans, these languages are developed "naturally" by many factors like biology, history, etc not designed or constructed. Everyone uses natural languages all the time, however, the languages themselves are problematic and cause conflicts and misunderstanding. It's important to understand this specially here and how languages and words creates unnecessary problems all the time.
Natural languages are like a game (actually that would make a video game concept and if one is familiar with certain genres, it would be easier to understand).
The game of natural languages is played with swords and shields.
And with each sentence and each word, it's possible to attack with your swords or defend with your shields. Also there are secret weapons and techniques.
Ok, that was the fun description that sums it up but when we look at the reality, it's bad and caused a lot of disasters, suffering, misunderstandings, and even here in the forum, we see daily problems caused directly by natural languages. This is really frustrating because humans pretend to appear advanced, modern or knowledge yet continuously and consistently fall for such straightforward, simple and abstract problems and never try to solve or improve.
Before starting, there is the question of why this post is written with a natural language?
Well, if it's written in another type of languages, nobody would read or try to understand it. The statements when written or shown in a different way are unambiguous. But by trying to write it like this, it's easier to understand although it's a form of gambling.
Now it's the time to see what those problems are.
Humans try to encompass everything with words:
One word can't describe everything, the word is finite and that means by trying to describe everything, a contradiction is inevitable.
For example, we could say "blue" or "red" but there are varieties and sometimes it falls under the name of another color. In this case, the words are approximations and not exact. There are situations where one would say "blue" and it works and there are situations where one would say "blue" and it doesn't work.
Humans put everything they want in the form of words and there is very large information loss in the process. While some forms like stories try to tell more details and depth, there is still a lot of information loss.
Like how they try to use words for everything and lose a lot of information in the process, they try to minimize the words needed in a lossy way.
For example, we see a lot of generalizations and labels in almost every topic. Things like "men", "women", "countries", "disorders", "age", etc. One would immediately put themselves in a group or take a side instead of trying to clearly understanding the situation and the statement. This happens all the time and everywhere.
For example,
A: People in that city are terrible.
B: But I know some nice people there.
This is a common situation where B focuses on the label instead of understanding the problem of why A said that.
Adding one word would solve and save a lot of unnecessary problems.
A: Some people in that city are terrible.
That was a simple example to demonstrate how labels are messy in communication. One can see the same exactly in many topics.
A: X group is attacked by Y group.
B (from Y group): No, not everyone and this is a small sample.
As you can see, the self insertion and label usage harm the communication and both sides are turning it into a group war rather than finding and understanding the problem.
That was for labels and there are many shortcuts and problems, it's common also for someone to forget saying details because they used a lot of shortcuts. Writing a longer response takes way longer time which makes it harder and using shortcuts is a form of gambling which doesn't work most of the time and that's why there are a lot of conflicts.
The words can't convey the full information, additionally, when it reaches the other side, it's interpreted in a completely different way than intended. If we take any random word, it has a different nuances and connotations for each person. To make things clearer, the pronouns preference is a prominent example, apply the same concept to each word and one would see unexpected results about how people prefer or react to words. People like or dislike some words, meanings and preferences, as a result, it makes a completely interpretation and understanding for each person.
It takes a lot of time and resources to learn a language and on top of that, each language has its own way of expression and meanings which a lot of it is lost when translating. Imagine how much information is lost because of the points we said until now, and wait, there are more. The important point here is, to really learn and use a language, one must think directly using the language instead of translating it in their head.
Politics, chauvinism, religion, etc are all detrimental to the progress of the languages. Now, in the age of information, and we have about 7000 languages in the world which is something incredibly inefficient and doesn't even match the "natural" progression of language itself. Let alone the incredible inefficiency in some languages' aspects (Chinese characters as an example). If we assume the political nonsense doesn't exist, we would have a new natural language made by the internet. What makes things worse is how humans and their governments don't want to scientifically improve the languages and use a better and improved language for communication.
It's possible also to see how many people claim their language is superior while every language shares the same fundamental problems. Unfortunately the way humans think is detrimental to the progress of languages.
Every word has multiple meanings and even if we assume words has one to one meanings, sentences could be interpreted in multiple ways, add more to that and make paragraphs and the story has endless meanings and interpretations with endless potential of conflict. One of the patterns that's pretty much repetitive in communication is leaving the whole paragraph and focusing on one word to make a conflict.
It's really absurd how a story, book, or anything with a big amount of words has an arbitrarily large amount of interpretations. Some of the usual responses is how its interesting to see diversity but actually that's not really true, one could see the enormous amount of conflicts, misunderstandings about various works specially in groups and fandoms.
When one word or one sentence has multiple meanings, it means the whole thing is inconsistent and self-contradictory. This means for almost everything written or used by people, there is always some hole and some way to attack the statement regardless of actual truths. More about this is coming in the next points.
The big problem or actually disaster is how natural languages are incapable of being consistent which makes them a contradiction and logically false, and trying to get information out of the mess is gambling.
The acknowledgement of the previous point has a devastating results on a lot of topics people use.
For example,
"
Religion says its the absolute truth.
Religion uses natural languages.
Natural languages are inconsistent/self-contradictory.
Religion is a contradiction/wrong.
"
This is a straightforward conclusion about anything that uses natural languages exclusively, specially those concepts that doesn't exist outside of the natural languages. One could question how those concepts are there. The answer actually is the points mentioned above, combine those points with the accumulation of communication errors amd distortion for tens, hundreds, thousands or more years. This creates a completely different story than the reality because of the arbitrarily large amount of interpretations and the arbitrarily large amount of communication errors and information distortion and loss.
In the previous points we mentioned how its possible to find any hole and its the core of the swords and shields game.
Regardless of actual topics and truths, one could take any side and try to "win". This goes hand in hand with trolling and a skilled troll with effective language skill could make any statement look wrong. The concept isn't new, for example Sophistry which has roots in ancient Greece.
When everyone is trying to find a hole and trying to continue the game, it takes forever and that's why it's common for some "discussions" to take a long time with a lot of repetitive replies about similar things and it doesn't end well. The game is an infinite loop and some scenarios could be an endless cycles of same responses.
There are many tricks used, although the rule of thumb is to make things short and solid, there are replies that tries overwhelm by unnecessary length. Also as mentioned before, many would just ignore the whole thing and focus on one word or two.
It's easy see how this game plays and in forums specifically, the patterns are predictable.
It's sad how a messy thing like this is restricting and causing unnecessary conflicts. It's shocking for many that when they write and think they conveyed the intended meaning well enough to see misunderstanding responses.
People should be aware more about the hazards of the languages, and transcending the barrier of the languages should be a priority. It's mindblowing how many conflicts and problems happens because of such inherent faults in undeveloped languages. There are also way many problems other than the mentioned ones.
People should be more understanding to each other instead of playing a messy word game that causes unnecessary hatred and conflicts.
/
Ok, I admit it took me an incredibly long time to write this. I tried to make it more interesting with the game thing imagination and Zelda picture lol. I hope I didn't forget anything and I hope it was good.
Natural languages are like a game (actually that would make a video game concept and if one is familiar with certain genres, it would be easier to understand).
The game of natural languages is played with swords and shields.
And with each sentence and each word, it's possible to attack with your swords or defend with your shields. Also there are secret weapons and techniques.
Ok, that was the fun description that sums it up but when we look at the reality, it's bad and caused a lot of disasters, suffering, misunderstandings, and even here in the forum, we see daily problems caused directly by natural languages. This is really frustrating because humans pretend to appear advanced, modern or knowledge yet continuously and consistently fall for such straightforward, simple and abstract problems and never try to solve or improve.
Before starting, there is the question of why this post is written with a natural language?
Well, if it's written in another type of languages, nobody would read or try to understand it. The statements when written or shown in a different way are unambiguous. But by trying to write it like this, it's easier to understand although it's a form of gambling.
Now it's the time to see what those problems are.
Humans try to encompass everything with words:
One word can't describe everything, the word is finite and that means by trying to describe everything, a contradiction is inevitable.
For example, we could say "blue" or "red" but there are varieties and sometimes it falls under the name of another color. In this case, the words are approximations and not exact. There are situations where one would say "blue" and it works and there are situations where one would say "blue" and it doesn't work.
The languages can't fully express and convey intended emotions and meaning:
Humans put everything they want in the form of words and there is very large information loss in the process. While some forms like stories try to tell more details and depth, there is still a lot of information loss.
The usage of labels and shortcuts makes easier usage but a messier result:
Like how they try to use words for everything and lose a lot of information in the process, they try to minimize the words needed in a lossy way.
For example, we see a lot of generalizations and labels in almost every topic. Things like "men", "women", "countries", "disorders", "age", etc. One would immediately put themselves in a group or take a side instead of trying to clearly understanding the situation and the statement. This happens all the time and everywhere.
For example,
A: People in that city are terrible.
B: But I know some nice people there.
This is a common situation where B focuses on the label instead of understanding the problem of why A said that.
Adding one word would solve and save a lot of unnecessary problems.
A: Some people in that city are terrible.
That was a simple example to demonstrate how labels are messy in communication. One can see the same exactly in many topics.
A: X group is attacked by Y group.
B (from Y group): No, not everyone and this is a small sample.
As you can see, the self insertion and label usage harm the communication and both sides are turning it into a group war rather than finding and understanding the problem.
That was for labels and there are many shortcuts and problems, it's common also for someone to forget saying details because they used a lot of shortcuts. Writing a longer response takes way longer time which makes it harder and using shortcuts is a form of gambling which doesn't work most of the time and that's why there are a lot of conflicts.
Words have different meanings and preferences for the different sides:
The words can't convey the full information, additionally, when it reaches the other side, it's interpreted in a completely different way than intended. If we take any random word, it has a different nuances and connotations for each person. To make things clearer, the pronouns preference is a prominent example, apply the same concept to each word and one would see unexpected results about how people prefer or react to words. People like or dislike some words, meanings and preferences, as a result, it makes a completely interpretation and understanding for each person.
Languages are inefficient and the translations are inherently lossy:
It takes a lot of time and resources to learn a language and on top of that, each language has its own way of expression and meanings which a lot of it is lost when translating. Imagine how much information is lost because of the points we said until now, and wait, there are more. The important point here is, to really learn and use a language, one must think directly using the language instead of translating it in their head.
Languages themselves are a label and a factor of dividing people into groups:
Politics, chauvinism, religion, etc are all detrimental to the progress of the languages. Now, in the age of information, and we have about 7000 languages in the world which is something incredibly inefficient and doesn't even match the "natural" progression of language itself. Let alone the incredible inefficiency in some languages' aspects (Chinese characters as an example). If we assume the political nonsense doesn't exist, we would have a new natural language made by the internet. What makes things worse is how humans and their governments don't want to scientifically improve the languages and use a better and improved language for communication.
It's possible also to see how many people claim their language is superior while every language shares the same fundamental problems. Unfortunately the way humans think is detrimental to the progress of languages.
Natural languages are inherently ambiguous:
Every word has multiple meanings and even if we assume words has one to one meanings, sentences could be interpreted in multiple ways, add more to that and make paragraphs and the story has endless meanings and interpretations with endless potential of conflict. One of the patterns that's pretty much repetitive in communication is leaving the whole paragraph and focusing on one word to make a conflict.
It's really absurd how a story, book, or anything with a big amount of words has an arbitrarily large amount of interpretations. Some of the usual responses is how its interesting to see diversity but actually that's not really true, one could see the enormous amount of conflicts, misunderstandings about various works specially in groups and fandoms.
Natural languages are inherently inconsistent and self-contradictory:
When one word or one sentence has multiple meanings, it means the whole thing is inconsistent and self-contradictory. This means for almost everything written or used by people, there is always some hole and some way to attack the statement regardless of actual truths. More about this is coming in the next points.
The big problem or actually disaster is how natural languages are incapable of being consistent which makes them a contradiction and logically false, and trying to get information out of the mess is gambling.
A lot of topics including religion use natural languages exclusively:
The acknowledgement of the previous point has a devastating results on a lot of topics people use.
For example,
"
Religion says its the absolute truth.
Religion uses natural languages.
Natural languages are inconsistent/self-contradictory.
Religion is a contradiction/wrong.
"
This is a straightforward conclusion about anything that uses natural languages exclusively, specially those concepts that doesn't exist outside of the natural languages. One could question how those concepts are there. The answer actually is the points mentioned above, combine those points with the accumulation of communication errors amd distortion for tens, hundreds, thousands or more years. This creates a completely different story than the reality because of the arbitrarily large amount of interpretations and the arbitrarily large amount of communication errors and information distortion and loss.
The game of natural languages, the game of trolls and conflicts:
In the previous points we mentioned how its possible to find any hole and its the core of the swords and shields game.
Regardless of actual topics and truths, one could take any side and try to "win". This goes hand in hand with trolling and a skilled troll with effective language skill could make any statement look wrong. The concept isn't new, for example Sophistry which has roots in ancient Greece.
When everyone is trying to find a hole and trying to continue the game, it takes forever and that's why it's common for some "discussions" to take a long time with a lot of repetitive replies about similar things and it doesn't end well. The game is an infinite loop and some scenarios could be an endless cycles of same responses.
There are many tricks used, although the rule of thumb is to make things short and solid, there are replies that tries overwhelm by unnecessary length. Also as mentioned before, many would just ignore the whole thing and focus on one word or two.
It's easy see how this game plays and in forums specifically, the patterns are predictable.
It's sad how a messy thing like this is restricting and causing unnecessary conflicts. It's shocking for many that when they write and think they conveyed the intended meaning well enough to see misunderstanding responses.
People should be aware more about the hazards of the languages, and transcending the barrier of the languages should be a priority. It's mindblowing how many conflicts and problems happens because of such inherent faults in undeveloped languages. There are also way many problems other than the mentioned ones.
People should be more understanding to each other instead of playing a messy word game that causes unnecessary hatred and conflicts.
/
Ok, I admit it took me an incredibly long time to write this. I tried to make it more interesting with the game thing imagination and Zelda picture lol. I hope I didn't forget anything and I hope it was good.
