It’s great to have some new Better Letters from ya Bob. I’ve missed ya. And I’m glad you’ve started the year reminding us what Yogi Berra once said - It’s tough to make predictions, especially about the future. Happy New Year.
I once read a story about an anthropologist who had gone to study an uncontacted tribe in the Amazon. Not sure how he got to it, but he did this thing where he would place an object somewhere in a room and ask a tribe member to look for it. He then noticed that if he placed the object somewhere high, they never found it. The problem? There was no word for 'up' in their language, so they had no concept of looking up. Predictions fail because of priors: you can't imagine what you have no conception of.
well, the native tribes i.e. the piraha have a weird language that is missing a lot of words https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fddKrsKx-zI I don't recall if it was this particular tribe but it was similar. If I find the book I got that story from I'll share it. The tribe lacked a concept of looking above their eye line (up) so you could hide stuff somewhere high and they would have trouble finding it.
The video was primarily about the existence of recursion in Piraha sentence structure.
Though there was no reference to using the word "up", one of the tribeswomen talked about hunting monkeys. One would think looking up into trees would be a concept important to hunting monkeys.
The video was meant to illustrate my point about tribes with weird languages. The particular story about not being able to look above their eye line (up) is in a book I read, but I can't remember what book it was. I will look it up and share it if I find it.
"Seawright!"-- in the voice of William Shatner's Captain Kirk as he 'reminisces' about his old friend, Khan. Thanks for going full Kobayashi Maru on us.
It’s great to have some new Better Letters from ya Bob. I’ve missed ya. And I’m glad you’ve started the year reminding us what Yogi Berra once said - It’s tough to make predictions, especially about the future. Happy New Year.
Thank you.
P.S. It isn't clear that Yogi said it.
I once read a story about an anthropologist who had gone to study an uncontacted tribe in the Amazon. Not sure how he got to it, but he did this thing where he would place an object somewhere in a room and ask a tribe member to look for it. He then noticed that if he placed the object somewhere high, they never found it. The problem? There was no word for 'up' in their language, so they had no concept of looking up. Predictions fail because of priors: you can't imagine what you have no conception of.
PS: I love your writing.
I hope it’s true! And thanks.
People who live deep in a rainforest have no concept of looking up?
well, the native tribes i.e. the piraha have a weird language that is missing a lot of words https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fddKrsKx-zI I don't recall if it was this particular tribe but it was similar. If I find the book I got that story from I'll share it. The tribe lacked a concept of looking above their eye line (up) so you could hide stuff somewhere high and they would have trouble finding it.
The video was primarily about the existence of recursion in Piraha sentence structure.
Though there was no reference to using the word "up", one of the tribeswomen talked about hunting monkeys. One would think looking up into trees would be a concept important to hunting monkeys.
The video was meant to illustrate my point about tribes with weird languages. The particular story about not being able to look above their eye line (up) is in a book I read, but I can't remember what book it was. I will look it up and share it if I find it.
"Seawright!"-- in the voice of William Shatner's Captain Kirk as he 'reminisces' about his old friend, Khan. Thanks for going full Kobayashi Maru on us.
Thanks for compiling “Fooled by randomness” cases of 2024🙏