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RE: A peer-to-peer network for sharing and rating information

in #hivemind3 years ago

If you take a hard look at it, it’s quite amazing how much of the information we rely on in our daily lives is the information we’ve been told is true by others, with little if any independent verification by us as individuals.

The past tense of Turkish verbs have different forms depending on how the speaker knows the act happened.
So 'Steve walked along the path' would have a different form of 'walked' if I saw him do it myself, than if somebody else told me about it, and I'm just passing along what I've been told.

At least that's what I heard on the radio once.

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Yes, in a way it's interesting that every language doesn't more forcibly require these two different cases to be disambiguated.

The varying power of language to express different concepts is a fascinating topic in general. Two of my favorite sci-fi books on this topic are "Babel-17" and "The Languages of Pao". They both explore theoretical advantages and disadvantages that might impact human thought based on the languages used by the speaker. They're also just fun reads, of course :-)