From: M. Taylor Saotome-Westlake Date: Thu, 12 Nov 2020 07:28:16 +0000 (-0800) Subject: drafting "Comment on 'The Sapir–Whorf Hypothesis'" X-Git-Url: http://534655.efjtl6rk.asia/source?a=commitdiff_plain;h=454679ee759bcffa42c6355febabf714dba94bff;p=Ultimately_Untrue_Thought.git drafting "Comment on 'The Sapir–Whorf Hypothesis'" --- diff --git a/content/drafts/comment-on-the-sapir-whorf-hypothesis-and-probabilistic-inference.md b/content/drafts/comment-on-the-sapir-whorf-hypothesis-and-probabilistic-inference.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..fb3388b --- /dev/null +++ b/content/drafts/comment-on-the-sapir-whorf-hypothesis-and-probabilistic-inference.md @@ -0,0 +1,17 @@ +Title: Comment on Cibelli, Xu, et al.'s "The Sapir–Whorf Hypothesis and Probabilistic Inference: Evidence From the Domain of Color" +Date: 2021-01-01 +Category: commentary +Tags: categorization, convention, review (paper) +Status: draft + +[This is a cool paper about how language affects how people remember colors!](https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0158725) You would expect that the design of the eye is human-universal (_modulo_ [colorblindness](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_blindness) and [maybe some women with](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetrachromacy#Humans) [both](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OPN1MW) [kinds](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OPN1MW2) of green opsin gene), but not all languages have the same set of color words. There are some regularities: [all languages have words for light and dark; if they have a third color word, then it's _red_; if there's a fourth, it'll cover green or yellow](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_Color_Terms)—but the details differ, as different languages [stumbled onto different conventions](/2020/Jan/book-review-the-origins-of-unfairness/). Do the color category conventions in one's native tongue affect how people think about color, in accordance with the famous [Sapir–Whorf hypothesis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity)? Maybe—but if so, how?? + +Our authors discuss an experiment where people are briefly shown a color, and then try to match it on a color wheel after a short delay. + + +Bayesian reasoning! + +[The answer is always Bayesian reasoning.](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/QrhAeKBkm2WsdRYao/searching-for-bayes-structure) + + +You know where I'm going with this. \ No newline at end of file