In an age of universal madness, in my more despondent moments, I find this channel, your thoughts, your presentations a balm for my soul. Thank you for making the ordinary - 'strange', for bringing new ideas so eloquently. Your community may be modest, but your impact is significant.
British science historian James Burke hosted an excellent series of programs broadcast on BBC1 in 1985 called "The Day The Universe Changed". Episode 4 was titled "A Matter of Fact: Printing Transforms Knowledge": It discussed the invention of printing, and its impact on how knowledge was perceived, and language was standardised. I used to love watching James Burke's various series (The Day The Universe Changed and Connections being two of my favourites). I get the same vibe from your videos.
Connections is one of my formative media programs, & THUNK definitely takes a lot of inspiration from his style. I legit hear the scripts I write in either Burke's voice or Mike Rugnetta's.
I’ve been watching for a few years on and off and I’m always impressed by the broad spectrum of content and the quality of it. I’m a mechanical engineering and philosophy double major currently working at NASA in Houston so it’s pretty awesome since this channel really feeds both sides of that! Thank you
Not enough NASA engineers, I guess. 😂 I'm also in Houston, would happily take any recommendations you have for must-see stuff! (I went to the space center & ogled the Saturn V - that lifting eyebolt is something else.)
Many vides later and you are still able to find the pun! Another great video that gives food to the mind. I hope you're enjoying Houston and I encourage you to visit Dallas, I think we have the edge over Houston and Austin.
I think the more people use a technology, the more people assume you use a technology and that bootstraps itself. Like in recent years every restaurant tells you to scan a QR code with your smartphone to order. It was helped along by the Coof of course, but still the ability to assume (correctly!) that you have a smartphone is proportional to the number of people with a smartphone. Similarly, the rapid rise in literacy allowed society to become so writing-dependent, to the point that literacy has become the default. If there's one thing I disagree with, it's that I don't see how the printing press simply spreading new ideas and observations isn't sufficient to make philosophical thinking explode in productivity, as opposed to having to express ideas clearly in text. In my mind it isn't a matter of how these ideas suddenly became more appealing, but instead the fact that these ideas can reach so many more people in the first place. (And we can see well-reasoned argument still doesn't hold a candle to viral bullshit even today.) If Peter Philosopher had an idea and wrote it down prior to the printing press, they could at most share the idea with one person at a time, with a (relatively) huge risk of the manuscript simply getting lost during the delivery. If they wanted to share the idea with another person, they'd have to take however many days to copy it out (by hand!) and then send that off to someone else. Once the printing press was invented, they could churn out dozens, if not hundreds, of copies at a time and share the idea with as many people simultaneously. The printing press helped ideas find a larger audience, and that was what caused the explosion in philosophy and science.
Excellent summary and discussion! I wonder about the perspective of contemporary people that live in non-literate societies and how they relate to the rest of the world where most conventions are written down. It might be interesting to compare and test some of the stated assumptions about how language is used in literate societies as compared to non-literate ones. I don't know of actual research on such topics, so there might already be literature on this.
Ong cites a ton of anthropological observations just like this! My favorite is that oral culture inhabitants tend to reject the framing necessary for logic puzzles etc - if you ask one to define what a tree is, they'll look at you and say something like: "Everybody knows what a tree is! Why would I possibly try to explain it?"
It's true - there were aide-mémoires aplenty in the prehistoric world, but they all came with a prerequisite of the mémoire. Nobody who doesn't already know what the stones mean will be helped by spotting said stones!
17:08 I appreciate you wanting to shout out your new patreon supporter, but FYI the movie got the pronunciation wrong. It's actually pronounced "Aang", not "Ong".
I think you mean /æŋ/ is the correct pronunciation. And Im not sure that you can really say that unless you are arguing that the way they pronounced it in the movie meant that people watching the movie didn't know to whom they were referring when they said his name.
@@THUNKShow No no "Ong" is probably correct for the researcher, I was making a joke about how your new patreon supporter is "Avatar", whose name in the original cartoon is "Aang" but in the terrible movie adaptation they pronounce it "Ong".
The subjective experience of someone grabbing my shoulder and saying "DOG!" is indeed much different than gazing at this bunch of letters in a book or a phone screen because in this context they physically manipulated me into my locker and it was dark in there to view my book and they took my phone away.
Can you recognise the irony in talking about books being so integral to our society, through he medium that is actually going to eradicate its monopoly of information transformation. Bring in the information Age, and the mp4. 16:15. Look, you are literally telling me me face to eyes-ears. My eyes see you move. My ears hear you communicate. What else is there? Touch, taste, smell? Those do not convey information transfer by the same resolution. It just hits differently in front of the camera I can imagine, but from this side it seems pretty familiar.
I don't think text shapes thinking directly. I think a medium just inhibits certain thinking, and thereby indirectly shapes thinking. Just like how a tunnel shapes air. Air doesn't change shape, but you mean pressure density and flow rate. Either all the air gets compressed into the shape of a tunnel or doesn't get transferred. There is an illusion of a medium shaping thinking, but the intermediate step is really significant if you elect to analyse the situation. So if you want to communicate about a beautiful sunset, you may decide to explain it in your utmost detailed description, but to me it would always fail to capture the essence. I would try to use a camera, or not even bother trying communicate it. This may appear like shaping thinking, but it only shapes communication, not thinking; and as far as communication funnels back into thinking [You are communicating something, what for?]. If there is a snowball effect to thinking, and there is read neural networks, it nonetheless only affects thinking indirectly. This indirect effect may be stronger than its direct component. It facilitates selection bias directly, and sampling bias indirectly. The literacy age has reduced the barriers to entry to information transfer, but that it reduces doesn't mean it is perfectly competitive. Every form of communication has a cost, simple physics, and an additional inefficiency cost. Reducing the cost of communication leads to more communication transfer, and likewise it appears to create communication, but rather it reduces the inhibition of communication. Likewise the mp4 reduces the cost of information transfer even further. This will further decrease barriers to entry to information transfer. You see it with TikTok. Love it or hate it, teenagers are capable of more outreach than college professors on certain topics. That is democracy at its finest, the mean intelligence of the population at display. People will fear this change, but in the end creative competition is healthy. It makes sure that knowledge is not only reserved for the highest elites, but is for everyone.
College was an English Lit major. Read and read and read! Music and art felt sort of refreshing but also just a little primitive? I just asked my husband how to spell " primitive" and realized he SEES the word!! I do NOT see the words! Wow! Freak out!
Maybe culture exists partly as a squishy way of encoding the kinds of things we can now fit on a thumbtack. For most of our species existence we couldn't offload it in the insanely efficient way we can now... Lately I've felt a a kind of cultural rot. At least in the United States. Bowling alone and all that. Yadda yadda. Return to monke, as it were. Illiteracy almost seems like a more fun and meaningful way of going about things, in a weird backward, Luddite kind of way.
Interesting, but how much of this is because text was the only way to communicate. I mean you are communicating with me now, and you are speaking, which doesn't sound like a feat of engineering unless you think this is only possible and viable for the past 20 years of the entirety of human history. I would not be able to speak with someone around the world I don't know the physical location even of even 20 years ago. Actually, why I am such a proponent of TH-cam and not any other social media platform is this. While it is definitely the Wild West of information transfer, it is the humble beginnings of a new medium of communication. 8.000 years we have been able to write intergenerationally. 20 years we have been able to speak intergenerationally. The accessibility of an mp3 or mp4 file has become just as easy as written text. That is crazy. Visual information, tone, key, nuance, all are possible through this medium. Like you write dog, but you putting your dog in frame makes it easier to know which dog. That dog. While I don't think the mp4 is as great of an invention as the printing press, I think it comes close.
In an age of universal madness, in my more despondent moments, I find this channel, your thoughts, your presentations a balm for my soul. Thank you for making the ordinary - 'strange', for bringing new ideas so eloquently. Your community may be modest, but your impact is significant.
Wow. Thank you so much, these sorts of comments keep me going - you're my ray for the day. ❤️
British science historian James Burke hosted an excellent series of programs broadcast on BBC1 in 1985 called "The Day The Universe Changed". Episode 4 was titled "A Matter of Fact: Printing Transforms Knowledge": It discussed the invention of printing, and its impact on how knowledge was perceived, and language was standardised. I used to love watching James Burke's various series (The Day The Universe Changed and Connections being two of my favourites). I get the same vibe from your videos.
Connections is one of my formative media programs, & THUNK definitely takes a lot of inspiration from his style. I legit hear the scripts I write in either Burke's voice or Mike Rugnetta's.
Your dog example is kind of insanely adorable!!!
He knows it, too. ;)
This is one of my favourite episodes! So good! Thanks for consistently making incredibly insightful content.
Thanks Max! Glad you enjoyed it - as you can tell, it took a while. 😅
The care and research and elegant verbiage make for a marvelous product!
I’ve been watching for a few years on and off and I’m always impressed by the broad spectrum of content and the quality of it. I’m a mechanical engineering and philosophy double major currently working at NASA in Houston so it’s pretty awesome since this channel really feeds both sides of that! Thank you
Same, why do you think this channel hasn’t taken off?
Not enough NASA engineers, I guess. 😂
I'm also in Houston, would happily take any recommendations you have for must-see stuff! (I went to the space center & ogled the Saturn V - that lifting eyebolt is something else.)
Most underrated Channel. Love Your Videos
Many vides later and you are still able to find the pun! Another great video that gives food to the mind. I hope you're enjoying Houston and I encourage you to visit Dallas, I think we have the edge over Houston and Austin.
I'll definitely try it while I'm here - any must-do's when I come visit?
this video mad cool
no u
Both of you!
Ooooooh. This is pretty interesting stuff to keep in mind next time I'm writing for an illiterate character, thank you!
Right?! I'm already excited the next time I roll up a barbarian in D&D!
They weren't yelling 'dog' at me though, Josh. They were yelling 'cur.'
Cor, blimey, are you sure? 😬
I think the more people use a technology, the more people assume you use a technology and that bootstraps itself. Like in recent years every restaurant tells you to scan a QR code with your smartphone to order. It was helped along by the Coof of course, but still the ability to assume (correctly!) that you have a smartphone is proportional to the number of people with a smartphone. Similarly, the rapid rise in literacy allowed society to become so writing-dependent, to the point that literacy has become the default.
If there's one thing I disagree with, it's that I don't see how the printing press simply spreading new ideas and observations isn't sufficient to make philosophical thinking explode in productivity, as opposed to having to express ideas clearly in text. In my mind it isn't a matter of how these ideas suddenly became more appealing, but instead the fact that these ideas can reach so many more people in the first place. (And we can see well-reasoned argument still doesn't hold a candle to viral bullshit even today.) If Peter Philosopher had an idea and wrote it down prior to the printing press, they could at most share the idea with one person at a time, with a (relatively) huge risk of the manuscript simply getting lost during the delivery. If they wanted to share the idea with another person, they'd have to take however many days to copy it out (by hand!) and then send that off to someone else. Once the printing press was invented, they could churn out dozens, if not hundreds, of copies at a time and share the idea with as many people simultaneously. The printing press helped ideas find a larger audience, and that was what caused the explosion in philosophy and science.
Excellent summary and discussion! I wonder about the perspective of contemporary people that live in non-literate societies and how they relate to the rest of the world where most conventions are written down. It might be interesting to compare and test some of the stated assumptions about how language is used in literate societies as compared to non-literate ones. I don't know of actual research on such topics, so there might already be literature on this.
Ong cites a ton of anthropological observations just like this! My favorite is that oral culture inhabitants tend to reject the framing necessary for logic puzzles etc - if you ask one to define what a tree is, they'll look at you and say something like: "Everybody knows what a tree is! Why would I possibly try to explain it?"
Writing isn't the only way to embed memory into the environment outside one's brain. You can draw pictures, put stones in piles to mark places, etc.
It's true - there were aide-mémoires aplenty in the prehistoric world, but they all came with a prerequisite of the mémoire. Nobody who doesn't already know what the stones mean will be helped by spotting said stones!
17:08 I appreciate you wanting to shout out your new patreon supporter, but FYI the movie got the pronunciation wrong. It's actually pronounced "Aang", not "Ong".
😅I...uh...I've only ever seen it in text...
I think you mean /æŋ/ is the correct pronunciation. And Im not sure that you can really say that unless you are arguing that the way they pronounced it in the movie meant that people watching the movie didn't know to whom they were referring when they said his name.
@@THUNKShow No no "Ong" is probably correct for the researcher, I was making a joke about how your new patreon supporter is "Avatar", whose name in the original cartoon is "Aang" but in the terrible movie adaptation they pronounce it "Ong".
like
The subjective experience of someone grabbing my shoulder and saying "DOG!" is indeed much different than gazing at this bunch of letters in a book or a phone screen because in this context they physically manipulated me into my locker and it was dark in there to view my book and they took my phone away.
Can you recognise the irony in talking about books being so integral to our society, through he medium that is actually going to eradicate its monopoly of information transformation. Bring in the information Age, and the mp4. 16:15. Look, you are literally telling me me face to eyes-ears. My eyes see you move. My ears hear you communicate. What else is there? Touch, taste, smell? Those do not convey information transfer by the same resolution. It just hits differently in front of the camera I can imagine, but from this side it seems pretty familiar.
What Patreon tier unlocks the full Ong audiobook read?
😅 I'll start recording it when I get home, I guess...
Sometimes I wish the intro pun had subtitles...
DOG IS A WORD INDEED!!!!!
God backwards! Any connection? 😇
I don't think text shapes thinking directly. I think a medium just inhibits certain thinking, and thereby indirectly shapes thinking. Just like how a tunnel shapes air. Air doesn't change shape, but you mean pressure density and flow rate. Either all the air gets compressed into the shape of a tunnel or doesn't get transferred. There is an illusion of a medium shaping thinking, but the intermediate step is really significant if you elect to analyse the situation. So if you want to communicate about a beautiful sunset, you may decide to explain it in your utmost detailed description, but to me it would always fail to capture the essence. I would try to use a camera, or not even bother trying communicate it. This may appear like shaping thinking, but it only shapes communication, not thinking; and as far as communication funnels back into thinking [You are communicating something, what for?]. If there is a snowball effect to thinking, and there is read neural networks, it nonetheless only affects thinking indirectly. This indirect effect may be stronger than its direct component. It facilitates selection bias directly, and sampling bias indirectly. The literacy age has reduced the barriers to entry to information transfer, but that it reduces doesn't mean it is perfectly competitive. Every form of communication has a cost, simple physics, and an additional inefficiency cost. Reducing the cost of communication leads to more communication transfer, and likewise it appears to create communication, but rather it reduces the inhibition of communication. Likewise the mp4 reduces the cost of information transfer even further. This will further decrease barriers to entry to information transfer.
You see it with TikTok. Love it or hate it, teenagers are capable of more outreach than college professors on certain topics. That is democracy at its finest, the mean intelligence of the population at display. People will fear this change, but in the end creative competition is healthy. It makes sure that knowledge is not only reserved for the highest elites, but is for everyone.
College was an English Lit major. Read and read and read! Music and art felt sort of refreshing but also just a little primitive? I just asked my husband how to spell " primitive" and realized he SEES the word!! I do NOT see the words! Wow! Freak out!
Maybe culture exists partly as a squishy way of encoding the kinds of things we can now fit on a thumbtack. For most of our species existence we couldn't offload it in the insanely efficient way we can now... Lately I've felt a a kind of cultural rot. At least in the United States. Bowling alone and all that. Yadda yadda. Return to monke, as it were. Illiteracy almost seems like a more fun and meaningful way of going about things, in a weird backward, Luddite kind of way.
Interesting, but how much of this is because text was the only way to communicate. I mean you are communicating with me now, and you are speaking, which doesn't sound like a feat of engineering unless you think this is only possible and viable for the past 20 years of the entirety of human history. I would not be able to speak with someone around the world I don't know the physical location even of even 20 years ago.
Actually, why I am such a proponent of TH-cam and not any other social media platform is this. While it is definitely the Wild West of information transfer, it is the humble beginnings of a new medium of communication. 8.000 years we have been able to write intergenerationally. 20 years we have been able to speak intergenerationally. The accessibility of an mp3 or mp4 file has become just as easy as written text. That is crazy. Visual information, tone, key, nuance, all are possible through this medium. Like you write dog, but you putting your dog in frame makes it easier to know which dog. That dog. While I don't think the mp4 is as great of an invention as the printing press, I think it comes close.