Mindscape 89 | Lera Boroditsky on Language, Thought, Space, and Time

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Mindscape 89 | Lera Boroditsky on Language, Thought, Space, and Time

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Blog post with audio player, show notes, and transcript: www.prepostero...
Mindscape Podcast playlist: • Mindscape Podcast
Patreon: / seanmcarroll
What direction does time point in? None, really, although some people might subconsciously put the past on the left and the future on the right, or the past behind themselves and the future in front, or many other possible orientations. What feels natural to you depends in large degree on the native language you speak, and how it talks about time. This is a clue to a more general phenomenon, how language shapes the way we think. Lera Boroditsky is one of the world’s experts on this phenomenon. She uses how different languages construe time and space (as well as other things) to help tease out the way our brains make sense of the world.
Lera Boroditsky received her Ph.D. in cognitive psychology from Stanford University. She is currently associate professor of cognitive science at UC San Diego. She serves as Editor in Chief of the journal Frontiers in Cultural Psychology. She has been named one of 25 Visionaries changing the world by the Utne Reader, and is also a Searle Scholar, a McDonnell scholar, recipient of an NSF Career award, and an APA Distinguished Scientist lecturer.

Пікірлер: 49

@johnnyringo7928 4 жыл бұрын

Thank you Sean for keeping the content coming especially in a time like this.

@atf300t 4 жыл бұрын

16:14 "but computer scientists time flows downwards. I really don't know why." Early CRT monitors (which were modified TV screens) drew the image on the screen in lines from left to right and starting with the top line moving to the bottom. All pixels were stored in video memory in the way they are drawn on the screen. So if you wanted to draw something on the screen (by modifying video memory), you had to use the co-ordinate with the Y-axis going downwards. Though we do not use CRT monitors anymore, this convention is still widely used in CS.

@common151 3 жыл бұрын

Хххххх

@bryandraughn9830 Жыл бұрын

Also, a program starts at the top and runs downward as lines are executed. If I remember correctly. Until a command is read to go somewhere anyways. I only learned BASIC lol! I really should have stuck with it.

@Sound_man73_Electronics 4 жыл бұрын

I could listen to these two discuss virtually any topic! Great orators.

@gaussdog 4 жыл бұрын

Thank you good sir, I am so happy this popped up into the algorithm on KZfaq for my home feed… You just got another subscriber, bell on and everything

@lubricatedgoat 4 жыл бұрын

I listened a couple of times simply because it was so pleasurable to hear such great minds express thoughts so fluidly. To say it was refreshing is an understatement.

@brunoteixeira6078 4 жыл бұрын

The relationship between language and thought is beautifully shown in the novel "1984". I highly recommend it.

@MathPhilosophyLab 4 жыл бұрын

Great recording quality! Keep it up Sean! To Infinity & Beyond!

@Rattus-Norvegicus 4 жыл бұрын

It's a little too good in her case, I keep hearing her lips smack.

@HarryNicNicholas 3 жыл бұрын

i play the guitar (right handed) so my nails are too long to text on my right hand, lots of people have assumed i'm left handed because when i text i move the phone with my right hand but hit the keys with my left, and although it's not a lot of things, i do a few things "left-handed" as it's easier. "handed-ness" is more interesting now lera has brought historical influences. cardinal directions is another one, in the UK road layout is historical, whenever people and horses went, that's where the road would go, in the states though most roads are east-west or north-south, so i notice in movies and games people refer to "heading north" or "they're on the east side" whereas i would have to stop and think about which direction was which. brilliant discussion, the approach from lingustics to the "hard problem of consciousness" is much more palatable, and definsatley not as "woo" as some. lera is brilliant, i've watched her TED talk (years ago) and some of her other presentations, this is a really interesting area, and also a great way to catalogue and record language as so many are dying - by the moment!

@charlesalexanderable 3 жыл бұрын

Time flows downwards in computer science probably because code (with no jumps) executes downwards line by line. Upwards in cosmology maybe because of events emerging out of the big bang (a gravity well, with convention on earth being gravity source is down?).

@drzecelectric4302 4 жыл бұрын

Yesss! Something to take me awaaayyy

@isengard13 4 жыл бұрын

Great discussion!!!

@donaldjmccann 4 жыл бұрын

Many years ago, after reading the book "Men of Mathematics," it occurred to me that being born into the French language may offer some advantage towards being a mathematician. Obviously speaking English or German is not much of a handicap, but there does seem to be a lot of remarkable French mathematicians. I would like to hear from an expert about this hypothesis.

@russellgrubb 4 жыл бұрын

If I ‘bring ‘ something forward , it’s towards me . If I ‘put ‘ something forward it’s in the future . Isn’t it about the accuracy of what we say ? Our minds work so fast sometimes , that we miss the important things

@ivannogolica364 4 жыл бұрын

Hi Sean. Please have David Deutsch on your podcast.

@myothersoul1953 4 жыл бұрын

16:20 I think the implements are why computer scientists think of time moving from top to bottom. Old printers would print one row, move the paper up, print another row below the first and thus the early was always on top of the latter.

@kesavveluchamy1136 3 жыл бұрын

Lera B is so natural and smooth like mist. Very open minded. She mentioned Time comes with very first cell... zygote...But space ...the moment you start to perceive. Sean's space-time gets little disappointment there.. Down the road we will learn both are just the manufacture of mind. QFT already proved it.

@life42theuniverse 4 жыл бұрын

51:05 "you've said some word, understood some words and feel pretty good, and like, achievement unlocked..." Not only have understood Spanish in this moment but also a new generation of English. 16:00 It would be interesting to know the historic percentage of the programming market that originates out of China.

@mr51406 4 жыл бұрын

27:23 Upriver/downriver: that’s how Montrealers organize space. Down = towards the St.Lawrence (even if locally it’s uphill) = “south” (even if in reality it’s SE or even ESE); and Up = away from the St. Lawrence (even if you’re going downhill towards the Prairie river) = “north” (even if it’s really NW or WNW). And then East-West is actually parallel to the St. Lawrence, which sometimes flows NNE. Visitors are amused or bemused seeing the sun rise in the south. ⚜️🇨🇦

@timsmith3921 4 жыл бұрын

If time didn't have an arrow, every point in spacetime would be a massive collision zone. Try crossing the intersection without an arrow of time. Time is absolutely intrinsically intertwined with reality.

@JJoeisCooking 4 жыл бұрын

Great discussion!

@krikeles 4 жыл бұрын

I had heard of the Russian distinction between blue and light blue, but no one seems to talk about the American distinction between red and light red (AKA pink).

@thomas-beaver 3 жыл бұрын

I have a hard crush on Lera. She is amazing.

@kennelson5096 4 жыл бұрын

Just watched the first class. 👍👍

@DerekFullerWhoIsGovt 4 жыл бұрын

Smells are a powerful context for recalling memories 👃🏽😖😋😝

@mitchkahle314 4 жыл бұрын

The theme song got no groove.

@russellgrubb 4 жыл бұрын

If I bring something forward , it’s towards me . If I put something forward it’s away from me . It’s easy not to get words right at speed . Am I right ?

@bryandraughn9830 Жыл бұрын

The real question is are you left? ;)

@johnphil2006 4 жыл бұрын

Please bring Donald Hoffman in your circle.

@JesusChristSaves2024 4 жыл бұрын

When we think, we think with language and words, But what or how do the deaf people think ?.

@Uninen 4 жыл бұрын

Someone should count how many times ’time’ is said in this episode.

@yuvallitvin 4 жыл бұрын

Love it. I would love to make translation to Hebrew if you teach me how

@puppetperception7861 4 жыл бұрын

tldr; Sean: so my positive associations of reality are only consistent in reference to myself? Lera: that’s right bucko and it’s why you felt the need to tell me.

@puppetperception7861 4 жыл бұрын

Countdown to Wittgenstein being mentioned but not Whitehead

@puppetperception7861 4 жыл бұрын

59:12 there it is. But where is Whitehead? I thought this podcast was about time.

@MrPDTaylor 4 жыл бұрын

I haven't listened to the podcast yet but I predict the words "Noam Chomsky" will be spoken at least twice.

@MrPDTaylor 4 жыл бұрын

@Laura i suppose this could be the first time I was wrong

@MrPDTaylor 4 жыл бұрын

@The Cave Explorer I failed

@trevorcrowley5748 Жыл бұрын

I was surprised regarding the Zero Chomsky reference as well. Think the awkward moment after the Sapir-Whorf mention resulted in the pass over in silence.

@grayaj23 4 жыл бұрын

If time travel is possible, time has to be n-dimensional. At present, it is true that the so-and-sos won the national Thingball championship. If I go back in time to change it, then it's not true that the So-and-Sos won. But in the past, it was true that they won. That is, in the past, the past was different than it is now. If I know that in the future, the Thingball champions will be the Thingamajigs, but I travel back in time to prevent their head coach from being born, then it is no longer true that the Thingamgajigs will win. But in the past, it was true that in the future, the Thingamajigs will win. I think this holds true even if time travel to the past is limited to going back to the spacetime location of one end of a wormhole. Like we built it on Thursday, so we can't ever go back prior to that date. But as long as we can go back to the date the wormhole was opened, time has to be at least two-dimensional.

@paulrite6202 4 жыл бұрын

Qualia

@Zoxesyr 4 жыл бұрын

in re Sapir-Whorf hypothesis - it's pretty much been abandoned by the 1990's en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity

@EricaCalman 4 жыл бұрын

Offer stands Sean, first Jesus, then all the secrets of time and QFT.

@MrPDTaylor 4 жыл бұрын

Are you offering answers to these mysteries?

@leobat7007 4 жыл бұрын

To me it's pretty obvious why languages have categories of gender and not of height, weight, color or wathever. For starter, sex is pretty much a binary, with very few exceptions, while most other traits tend to vary along a smooth continuum. Furthermore, sex correlates with all sorts of important traits, such as reproductive compatibility, physical size and strenght, personality and social role, while most other traits usually vary independently. Then again, if it was arbitrary, cultural evolution wouldn't have converged on it.