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A comment on Mr. Difficult: William Gaddis and the Problem of Hard-to-Read Books (2002). Parent comment

Re:Mr. Difficult: William Gaddis and the Problem of Hard-to-... by ethanbond on Sunday February 04, 2024 @04:57PM (#39254931)
> truly don't believe there is any idea, thinkable by any human mind, that can't be communicated in simple writing

I don’t see why this would be true at all. Language is an extremely recent innovation, with most biological and conscious experiences happening nowhere in the vicinity of it. Also we know there are ideas that can be expressed in one language and not in another, largely due to the need for cultural conditioning (i.e. repeated firsthand sensory experience)

Here’s a trivial example: describe the color blue to someone who has never seen it themselves.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Mr. Difficult: William Gaddis and the Problem of Hard-to-... by genman on Sunday February 04, 2024 @09:50PM (#39256739)
I never understood this statement about the color blue like it has been claimed that ancient cultures may not have known it because they were not able to reproduce it and therefore were not able to knowingly see it. It reads nonsense to me as the sky is blue. It is a good example but I think describing sensory experience is not that difficult or impossible, for example I have never tried cocaine, regardless I have pretty good idea what it might feel like. But imagine if your language lacks some grammatical concepts like future.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Mr. Difficult: William Gaddis and the Problem of Hard-to-... by ethanbond on Monday February 05, 2024 @07:54AM (#39260739)
Well part of the issue is the statement you just made about blue is a totally different one than the statement I made.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Mr. Difficult: William Gaddis and the Problem of Hard-to-... by genman on Monday February 05, 2024 @01:27PM (#39264782)
I added this nuance because it is very difficult to imagine somebody who (on Earth) has not seen the blue color. But it is still a good examples, as I have also admitted.
[ Parent | on HN ]