by mallowdram | 2025-09-25 20:50:55+00:00
<<You'll see, for example, the first reply bears almost no relation to TFA nor to the comment they were replying to. Then, when pressed, they responded with obfuscation.>>

The reply deals directly with both the article in question and the post heading this thread. Neither get at the cause of the confused translation. My post provides a direct channel past idiomatic expression into the source pf all language mistranslation, that words are arbitrary, and particularly what sabotages exchanges between Western agentic language and Eastern nonagentic languages (Chinese, Korean, Japanese - each with their own peculiar forms of non-agency.

If you don't understand a statement, then ask questions. If you think it's obscure, then detailed questions. If you understand it, then probably very bad protocol to accuse anyone of being a bot. In any case, this is a protocol network, each exchange is negotiable. If you want to participate, do it in good faith and keep the outlook rosy, avoid characterization: you are not a mindreader. One thing is clear here, there's a very big divide in here between the intellectually curious, and the intuited pretenders who seem to have only a background in pseudoscience and folk science/psychology who are posing as scientific thinkers. Some of you may have extensive math backgrounds, but this is not enough to parse theory and demonstration in the linguistic and neuroscientific fields. Keep your minds open.

If you need some background that goes into the statement, I'd do some research, here's a section of the citations from Nisbett's Geography of Thought that delineate how distinct Eastern and Western perception and language are:

Gentner, D. (1982) Why are nouns learned before verbs: Linguistic relativity versus natural partitioning. In S. A. Kuczaj (Ed.), Language Development: Vol. 2 Language thought and culture. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum Gentner, D. (1981). "Some interesting differences between nouns and verbs." Cognition and Brain Theory 4, 161-178. Imai, M., and Gentner, D. (1994). "A cross-linguistic study of early word meaning: Universal ontology and linguistic influence." Cognition 62, 169-200. Ji, L., Peng, K., and Nisbett, R. E. (2000). "Culture, control, and perception of relationships in the environment." Journal of Personality and Social Psychobgy 78, 9 Masuda, T., and Nisbett, R. E. (2001). "Attending holistically vs. analytically: Comparing the context sensitivity of Japanese and Americans.” Nisbett, R. E., Peng, K., Choi, I., and Norenzayan, A. (2001). "Culture and systems of thought: Holistic vs. analytic cognition.” Norenzayan, A., Smith, E. E., Kim, B. J., and Nisbett, R. E. (in press). "Cultural preferences for formal versus intuitive reasoning.” Norenzayan, A., and Kim, B. J. (2002). A cross-cultural comparison of regulatory focus and its effect on the logical consistency of beliefs. Unpublished manuscript, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, B.C. Norenzayan, A., Choi, I., and Nisbett, R. E. (2002). "Cultural similarities and differences in social inference: Evidence from behavioral predictions and lay theories of behavior." Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 28, 109-120. Peng, K., and Nisbett, R. E. (1999). "Culture, dialectics, and reasoning about contradiction.”