{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/1235",
    "note": "Exported from an unofficial mirror of a public mailing list. Copyright in each message remains with the person who wrote it.  Email addresses are obscured as `user at host`, the form the original archive published. This file was rebuilt from parsed fields rather than retained headers, so it is faithful in content but not byte-exact.",
    "addresses": "obscured as 'user at host'"
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  "archive": "urth",
  "thread": {
    "id": 1235,
    "subject": "Jaynes, etc.",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "1998-10-30T17:16:42+00:00",
    "last": "1998-10-30T17:16:42+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0021-0025@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "John Bishop",
        "address": "jbishop at blkbrd.zko.dec.com"
      },
      "date": "1998-10-30T17:16:42+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) Re: Jaynes, etc.",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "re Chesterton\n\nNo, I never heard of that, and would welcome a summary.\n\n(I notice, Rostrum, that you are at unc.edu--I got my Master's\nthere in 1980, and liked the area--do you?)\n\n_The Varieties of Religious Experience_ (William James) is\nrelevent here; he claims that the experience is the same \nbut expressed differently based on available cultural and\nlinguistic forms.  In other words, we should NOT take St.\nWhoever's words about hearts and fire and lightening literally,\nbut as a best-effort attempt to describe the indescribable.\n\n(On the other hand, I know a woman who says she hears her\nmother's voice making accusations and complaints.  I've asked,\nand it's not a \"literal literal\" voice, but it's more than the\nknowledge that ones' mother would disapprove.  Some people\nmay have more vivid imaginations, or more auditory ones--e.g.\nwhen I imagine a stellated cube lit from above by a red light,\nor a green bear with wings, am I hallucinating if I say \"I see it\"?)\n\nre \"Hiro Protagonist\"\n\nYes, I laughed out loud at that one.  Quite ballsy on the\nauthor's part.\n\nre _Languages_of_Pao_\n\nI read that before I did my Linguistics; I don't remember it.\n\nI do remember that _Babel-17_ and _Hellspark_ tripped the bogometer.\n\nThere was a story in Analog a long time ago, the punchline of\nwhich was that being able to speak wasn't as important as having\nsometing to say.  In the story, the hero and the commie-spy-girl\nare both on \"Six\", a planet with a dense atmosphere and an iron-age\nintelligent race which does a lot of gliding in primitive planes.\nThat one wasn't bogus.\n\nPersonally, I suspect that some very verbally-oriented people\nreally can't think well outside of language; they falsely generalize\nto all of us.  Those who are visually- or kinesthetically-\noriented can immediately see that the assumption is wrong.\n\nAs Steven Pinker points out, we can all throw a ball and jump,\nbut most of us can't explain what we are doing.  And it clearly\ntakes lots of thinking to do either.\n\n\t-John Bishop"
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}