thinktoomuch.net

During my 16 December visit to Shofar, I learned another interesting thing about their language and definitions that tends to confuse the scientists. What I learned was, the supernatural really does exist! Now the typical scientists say “stupid people, it does not exist”, but they are not using the same definitions.

What I learned was that things like “pornography addiction” and depression are supernatural. If depression is supernatural, we really do have miracles occurring on this planet. I am aware of an army of miracle workers, typically called psychologists or psychiatrists, that fight these supernatural demons to rescue the humans that have been possessed. In fact, you can go buy some miracle drugs at a pharmacy, a miracle-in-a-pill. One of these is Fluoxetine, popularly known as “Prozac”. A miracle-in-a-pill…

I don’t see anything wrong with this use of language, but that should not surprise my regular readers. I love diversity in language. My love for diversity in language makes me hate intolerant bigotry that claims “a word can mean only one thing”. Go tell that to the Chinese, who use the “same word” with two “tones” to mean two different things (I’m thinking of buying and selling here…) Or go tell that to speakers of languages containing homonyms (for example, English). Or speakers of multiple languages, where some words sound the same. (Homework for the reader: provide some examples of the weird things we say, if we do not translate properly.)

Even Arthur C Clarke was aware of this, as formulated in Arthur C. Clarke’s third law:

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

There are a large number of corollaries or derivatives of Clarke’s third law. Some can be found on Wikiquote. There is also some examples on Wikipedia. Which is your favourite?