Last March, (I am addicted to the comics version and rarely read the text version of sci-fi) because I was bored after reading the stories of your life and the holographic rose fragments, I discovered that Ted Chiang was actually from the Department of Computer Science at Brown University. I have to say that it is a lot more shocking than the original book (Why humans always use religious vocal buzzing as the soundtrack when shooting cosmic movies, I know we are all thinking about 2001 Space Odyssey). From the scene of seeing the giant shell to the end of the film, I even watched it tremblingly. I haven’t seen any other movies that can implement linguistics and physics so stubbornly. The small-scale tearing with the natural sciences, I got excited) and fatalism (Louis mentioned the unstoppable unstoppable of fate twice in his memory in the future).
The panorama sweeps slowly across the open plain, and the mist is enveloping the gray-black giant crust. A strong religious suggestion—(I know sounds far-fetched and over-interpreted, but this is my first reaction. For example, I think of Arthur Clark’s 2001 Space Odyssey/Meeting with Rama, the alien spacecraft pulls The name of Ma is a metaphor for Rama in Hinduism, Rāmā in Sanskrit, the incarnation of the main god Vishnu; it will be reminded of Prometheus discussing the origin of mankind, religious and mythological metaphors)-digression, why is the Mount Hermon in northern Israel It is the fog machine on Mount Zion, 180 kilometers away in the south of Israel. Zion. For there the LORD bestows his blessing, even life forevermore.")—— The sea breeze blowing in from the west is blocked by Mount Hermon, and the sea breeze rises towards the mountain, until the top of Mount Hermon has become a cold air mass that surrounds the top of the mountain and stagnates on it. Dew; when the temperature is high during the day, the air-conditioning mass moves southward along the hills of the Jordan River, all the way to the bottom of the Jordan River, and even to Mount Zion in the Ephraim Mountains. When the cold air mass moves downwards from a high place, the hot air close to the ground instantly cools down, and the water vapor in the hot air quickly condenses into mist, forming a mist close to the ground surface, and this mist can travel hundreds of kilometers away, called a stream. Fog, the cloud snake in Sils Maria also has this origin. The nectar in the Bible means God's grace and blessing-the origin of the Jordan River that Israel depends on for survival. The devout believer (the Temple of the Holy Spirit) is where the nectar of the Black Gate descends. The giant shell from the universe stands quietly in the stream fog of the vast plains. It is not so much that it feels threatened by alien creatures, it is better to say that human beings are about to be blessed. When the bgm sounded in this scene, I remembered M's question again.
A friend in a movie theater with no one in the middle of the night said that Louis has the ability to foresee, is it a joke? I am excited to say that this is called science fiction-although human beings as time creatures cannot transcend time or master the non-linear language thinking of heptapods, but The meaning of science fiction is a fantasy that breaks through the limitations of cognition and reality. The heptapod barrel in the movie has two language systems A and B. The strange roar of the heptagram and the sound wave recorded by the device that Louis was asked to decipher from a simple recording belonged to the heptagram language A (phonetic system). This language system is actually a linear language like human language. System, because no matter what kind of race/biological language pronunciation can not violate the laws of physics, that is, the pronunciation-transmission-being of the voice, the restriction and imprisonment of one word at a time make the heptapod barrel and all creatures unable to spit out different voices at the same time. Talking; and the pictogram circle is the heptagonal language B (writing system), which is actually not as complicated and unacceptable as the movie shows. In fact, any bending, thickness, angle, and fluctuation changes on the circle are almost equivalent to any The morpheme changes of inflections/adhesives are discernible by human eyes and can be read as long as they spend time memorizing the grammatical rules like Louis. The only complication is that its simultaneous thinking mode is different from the coherent linear consciousness mode of human beings. Humans perceive the world according to a natural chain of thought and the order of time, while they perceive all events at different times at the same time. The expression of its writing system also presents all thoughts in one sentence (a circle) completely synchronously, without word order, syntax, and punctuation, and countless levels of cascading modified clauses. Long before they wrote the first pen, they knew how the entire sentence would be laid out. After learning the heptapod language B, Louis' thinking mode jumps in the time dimension, that is, language and thinking have phonemic-related characteristics.
This directly confirms a philosophical view of language mentioned in the film at the beginning of the last century—Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis/Linguistic Relativity—all linguistics learners know, even Even a foreign language major will mention that the strong hypothesis is that language determines thinking, and the weak hypothesis is that language influences thinking. Very cliché but very classic. Even many computer scientists (Ted Chiang himself is one?) believe that programmers will be affected by the language logic of a certain programming language they use. For example, Yukihiro Matsumoto’s development of the RUBY language was influenced by Samoel Delany’s novel "Babel-17". Its core concept is the Sapir Wolf hypothesis-this man-made language called Babel-17 is an accurate The analytical language can significantly improve the user’s thinking level and proficient in various technologies. Sapir believes that language is a tool, a structure, and a framework for thinking. Without language, thinking becomes impossible. Wolfe absorbed the thoughts of his teacher Sapir and developed his own theory: "The form of language determines how language users view the universe; how language describes the world, how we observe the world." So the movie puts this The potential impact of opinions expands to extremes, which is the meaning of science fiction, which is extremely fascinating.
But there is no doubt that human beings have great differences in the meaning of words when they understand heptagram languages. The semantic contradiction is a contradiction from the beginning to the end of the language itself. "The difference between languages is not only the sentence structure, but also how they divide nature. In order to obtain the composition of the sentence.” (On Language, Thinking and Reality) The segmentation here naturally means that each nation understands, recognizes and describes the world according to its own mother tongue system, and language also reflects what people perceive The world and the world outlook of each nation have constructed their own cultural environment. “Language itself is condensed into a world, and all spiritual effects belong to it, just as it belongs to the external world.” (Marx Dessault, "Aesthetics and Art Theory"), which is exactly the same as Wittgenstein's "The boundary of my language means the boundary of my world" (Die Grenzen meiner Sprache bedeuten die Grenzen meiner Welt). The world here refers to the sum of facts, not the sum of things.
The translation of the language of the heptagram into English becomes "use weapen". The possible three levels of errors in the middle are not only insufficient learning of the source language, loss of information in the translation process (cultural environment, different understandings of the meaning of words by different races) , The inadequate grasp of semantic conceptual meaning (purely abstract concept of objective things) and subsidiary meaning (word meaning, emotional expression, and contextual differences), which led to almost fatal errors.
This raises one of the most fascinating questions (of course, this has nothing to do with the film. Ah, but it seems to be a topic): Is there a precise existence? What can be precise? Language? math? Does "pure concept" do not exist? How does the term "pure concept" define the criteria for classification?
I once stubbornly believed that the creation of all vocabulary becomes an absolutely accurate abstract summary of the objective world, a general summary that can cover all related parts of speech. The production of language is based on the needs of humans to describe and explain the world; just like mathematics Although mathematics does not derive meaning from the universe, but gives meaning to the universe; physical entities exist purely and mathematics is completely independent, but mathematics gives physical semantics and provides a set of highly accurate explanations and descriptions.
(In my opinion) The so-called generally accepted view that "natural language is vague and ambiguous" is nothing more than the prejudice/cognitive bias that people produce from the perspective of their own experience (cultural environment, individual practice). Cognitive methods are based on empirical basis rather than logical basis, and people even generally think that their own empirical understanding is logical inference. The creation of all vocabulary is absolute. People use and express only to get close to this absolute, but it will never be possible to achieve true absolute. It is like Einstein said: " As long as mathematical theorems describe reality, they are not definite; as long as they are definite, they do not describe reality. " For example, the generation of the word "absolute" itself represents an extreme concept. It can only explain things by analogy, and cannot exist objectively. This idea of "absolute accuracy of language" may have been thought by the ideal language school of logical positivism. The facts are far from that simple, or it may be as simple as that. If the truth-seeking of mathematical logic is applied to language analysis, Simplifying language into a natural science program, then accurate machine translation will become possible, and it can be concluded that language and thinking are not even related, forming a paradox. However, I still hold a stubborn view, trying to prove that although language is a man-made cultural phenomenon, it has become a set of standards and references like mathematics, and strives to explain the world, so it should be an accurate and pure abstract expression. But every time I try to express, I still get confused: what does the word itself represent? What exactly do these words used in its paraphrases represent? All the connections between the signifier and the signified are lost. Saussure’s principle of sign arbitrariness is extremely exaggerated. I gradually find that I can put forward a corresponding refutation for every sentence, not only for logic, but also for every word meaning in a subtle way. This has almost left me in a state of near collapse, and I will never be at peace in my mind.
Ted Chiang described a female mathematician in "Division by Zero". She discovered that all numbers can be proved to be all equal, all arguments lose precision, and all numbers lose meaning. After discovering that the most nearly accurate mathematics in the world was meaningless, and what she believed most was overthrown by her, her world collapsed. I finished reading almost like finding a lifelong confidant. Just like Hilbert said: " If even mathematical thinking is flawed, where can we find truth and correctness? "
If even the language vocabulary itself is not precise, how can we correctly express our thoughts and communicate normally?
Later Wittgenstein said, "We have a great danger that we want to make fine distinctions."
Okay, I am seriously off topic.
I still remember the conclusion of Derek Jarman's Wittgenstein. He turned from mathematics to philosophy of language. He pursued precision and perfection, and wanted to summarize the whole world in a theory, a pure logic. He was very smart and finally implemented it. He took a step back and admired it. It was beautiful, it was a plain without imperfections and imperfections, and continued to the horizon, covered with shimmering thin ice. He wanted to explore the world, but he slipped to the ground as soon as he took a step. He forgot that ice is pure and flawless, without any stains, and without friction, so he cannot walk on it.
As he grows older, he gradually understands that roughness is not a disadvantage. It was roughness that made the world go round, and he wanted to run and dance desperately. The things and language scattered on the ground are dirty and indeterminate. The wise and old man realized that this is what it should be.
But somewhere in his heart he was still obsessed with the ice field. Everything there is brilliant and pure. The rough ground is good, but he can't live it. So he was between the ground and the ice sheet, unstable on either side.
This is the source of his sorrow.
Completely off topic, this is not a film review.
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