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Informed consent was holding us back
Aug. 27th, 2012 10:05 amI'm hitting the limits of the English language pretty regularly. Currently I compensate by spending five minutes talking around a concept in the hopes that I can transmit it to the other person's brain, but that's costly, and only works when I have a good idea of the concept already. There are probably millions of times English has limited my thought process that I'm not aware of.
Obvious solution is to learn another language. Difficulty: I'm not naturally good at languages. They were probably my worst subject in school. I don't know how much of this is a self-fulfilling prophecy/a remnant of the fact that I wasn't allowed to be bad in other subjects (I had a terrible relationship with gym in school, and look at me now), and how much of it is genuine difficulty, but I don't think it matters. Doing something that won't pay off until you're good at it is a fool's errand no matter what your talent level. Plus, ease of learning is probably negatively correlated with letting me think things I can't think right now. I have a vague hope that now that I'm going in with the attitude of "show me how you're different" and not "fuck you for not being English", I will get more out of each thing I learn and also learn more things faster, but I really can't count on that.
I'm also very convinced I need to take an actual class, and not just self study. Languages are for communicating with other people and I should learn them in that context. Also, attempts to study German on my own have fallen completely flat, and I went farther in German than I went in anything. German is not on the list for this project because it is pretty much the least useful language for not thinking like English you could ask for.
One intriguing possibility is sign language. The spatial grammar means it will use different paths than English immediately, and I already find Deaf culture fascinating. The lack of writing means I won't be able to game the system the way I usually do, and forces the in-person interaction I think is critical to this.
But before I commit to that, I wanted to open the floor to other suggestions. There's a community college nearby, with classes starting in a month, so most of the standard options should be available to me.
Obvious solution is to learn another language. Difficulty: I'm not naturally good at languages. They were probably my worst subject in school. I don't know how much of this is a self-fulfilling prophecy/a remnant of the fact that I wasn't allowed to be bad in other subjects (I had a terrible relationship with gym in school, and look at me now), and how much of it is genuine difficulty, but I don't think it matters. Doing something that won't pay off until you're good at it is a fool's errand no matter what your talent level. Plus, ease of learning is probably negatively correlated with letting me think things I can't think right now. I have a vague hope that now that I'm going in with the attitude of "show me how you're different" and not "fuck you for not being English", I will get more out of each thing I learn and also learn more things faster, but I really can't count on that.
I'm also very convinced I need to take an actual class, and not just self study. Languages are for communicating with other people and I should learn them in that context. Also, attempts to study German on my own have fallen completely flat, and I went farther in German than I went in anything. German is not on the list for this project because it is pretty much the least useful language for not thinking like English you could ask for.
One intriguing possibility is sign language. The spatial grammar means it will use different paths than English immediately, and I already find Deaf culture fascinating. The lack of writing means I won't be able to game the system the way I usually do, and forces the in-person interaction I think is critical to this.
But before I commit to that, I wanted to open the floor to other suggestions. There's a community college nearby, with classes starting in a month, so most of the standard options should be available to me.
