It's the big one, y'all

Math and language, in the electric impulse stage in the brain, are driven by the same logic.  The evidence for this is from the way math and English behave.  However, most of the brain studies are trying to determine what people are thinking by identifying areas of the brain that contain electrical impulses when formulating thoughts of math or language.  That is helpful as a first foray into the study of the brain, but it tells nothing about what is being thought, what is similar in thought, or even what triggers a thought.

     

Gary Lynch’s work is a refreshing break from this direction of study because he has been trying to find out how thought is registered and remembered.  His work has been ongoing for the last 30 years and will serve as a first step in working with electric impulses.  Once we know how a thought is registered as a memory, the next step is to analyze the stages between stimulus and recall.  After that,the similarities of thought behavior can be observed.

Observations into what you ask? Into the pathways of operations of logic.  Finding what causes the various behaviors determining one’s thought.  Here’s an example of thought behavior.  The use of the adverb in English is mostly not a word order governed item.  The subject/verb/object order is definitely an ordered item for understanding the correct semantics.  The same logic applies in math.  Addition is not an ordered item but subtraction is; multiplication isn’t, but division is.  The same logic underlying the reason for not ordering the placement of adverbs and addends and ordering the operations of subject/verb/object and multiplication seem to hint at what the future of language holds.

                                       

In the big scheme of things, math is considered efficient, eloquent.  Language is considered imprecise, ambiguous.  (I know that some say that language is precise, but the fact that the words ambiguity, nebulous, and fuzzy can apply to an expression hint that language is otherwise.  Also the redundancies built into constructions such as subject/verb agreement and two aspects such as perfective and progressive conveying the same idea tell me that language is not precise).  When communication passes the threshold of 70% for being visual in nature, needing only words to identify a category type (like the names of buttons or names of an axis on a graph), then efficiency and eloquence will be heightened necessities.  The logic used for math is already the same as the one used for English, so logic will help in organizing language use to make it more precise, less ambiguous.

The catalyst for this change is imminent, within my lifetime.  I may be 80 when 3D, holographic, visual communication will be the rule rather than the exception as the principal way for communication, but at that point, the logic for math and language will be closer than they ever have been.  When it happens, I will celebrate that the slow, antiquated, inefficient, inadequate, and fuzzy nature of reading and writing has morphed into a smoother, more efficient, more precise method of expression.  Spoken language as well will tend to pare itself into a more efficient way of expression.  I suspect it will trend toward consolidation into one language, whichever one is deemed most efficient (fewest sounds, fewest redundancies, most component oriented, etc.)

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The brain seeks the most efficient way to accomplish its tasks.  It will do the same with the two lines of logic – numbers and words.  I know regular people are ready for efficiency in language.  Business is also driven by efficiency, so I know they will be accepting.  Others, who are slower in accepting what is happening in the real world rather than an artificial world will have their boat swamped. 

I remember so well Mayor Nagan giving a press conference two days before Hurricane Katrina made landfall in New Orleans.  He told the people listening to the sound of his voice that New Orleans had always known that there might be a time when “the big one” would hit the city and cause a great catastrophe.  Then he added a comment about Katrina, “This is the big one.”  Many ignored his words, thinking he was overly dramatic, so they didn’t evacuate.  Many lives were lost as a result.

      

Those who are not realists about the disappearance of reading and writing, as we know its use, need to be given the same warning.  This is the big change that will transform the way business is conducted.  If you don’t evacuate, well, your future will be directly affected.