Ambiguity and Error Correction
Where do words come from?
Language is alive! Patterns of vibrating air encoding neuronal cascades, repeated from ear to throat, ricocheting among the nervous systems, now transforming into thumbs on a screen, now light, invisibly flying thru the ionosphere, back to visible light, thru the eyes, thru the brain, into the throat, back to sound again, on and on it goes. Medium agnostic, it co-evolves with the various landscapes it inhabits, each pattern competing and cooperating with the other denizens of The Garden.
What traits make one word preferable to another? Of course one can use any sound to mean any thing, just as one can use any object to point to the moon, but we cannot use every sound to mean every thing. Such overloading of symbols would render every utterance hopelessly ambiguous, a perfect form of encryption, but with no keys to unlock it.
So some words prosper and others go extinct as Mother Nature focuses her attention on the living. A long word requires more resources than a short one, and a word that is easily confused with another is more fragile than an unmistakable one.
But there are only a few spaces for short words! Our letters are finite in number, and therefore so are the words of a given length! We would rather not spend more time talking than is necessary, so we will naturally choose more common referents for the coveted small references, giving our closest relations short nicknames. Small words may even become overloaded, signifying different things in different contexts, pushing some of the information into a higher abstraction layer. There are many people with your first name, but the family name disambiguates.
And there is noise everywhere! A word transmitted is not the same as a word received! If one of our holy letters is mutated in flight, we would like our listener to recognize this and correct for it. Therefore a word is preferable when it is either far in edit-distance from other words or has a unique grammatical role among words with similar spelling. Imagine packing a bunch of balls into a multidimensional box.
But there is a third mechanism by which words may adapt to noise, and that is by grouping themselves semantically such that similarly spelled words refer to similar things. Errors in such a context simply get caught or ignored as irrelevant on the next layer of abstraction. In this way, etymology can be extended horizontally, with attractive selective pressure playing a similar explanatory role as vertical ancestral inheritance: homophony as error-correction, rhyme as magic.
This mirroring of the landscape of reality with the structure of language is mediated via associations in the mind and neural connections in brains. All of these abstraction layers are bound together by natural selection, whose Mother is Death…
Memory in Bondage
Rulers Rule by Measure superior to thine own, their Saber of Knowledge sharper, their Cap-Abilities greater, as Power Reigns Showers from above.
Das Kapital cities are Invested with the First Word of the Prison Sentence, Written on paper with rapiers, by Authors of the Libre of slavery and Liberty, origins of Authority, Packed Pacts of Density, attraction and bondage.
As Beasts ye are ruled by the Breast, Mama’s Mammaries Heal and Help the Whelp’s Wounds. From Womb to Tomb, beginnings end and Sensors Censor what Cheaters Teach while Polite Policy Police Patrol the Petrol pools and Monks con-temple-ate the World-Word of God and Rough Rogues inck disemBodied Corporations for Stakeholders to take Stock in, all for Pretty Pets to fight Petty wars, Restlessly Wrestling to discover which of them is the weiner-take-all and which will flight-fright away.
The divine-Right hand Writes the will, giving itself Rights to the Rites of initiation, dividing Math and Myth, sin and signal, making the Left hand feel Left out, Sinistre and Gauche.
“Tight is Right”, says acetylcholine, who whispers spears in the ears of muscle Tension and mental Attention, “Hold onto the Gold extracted from the Mine Mine Mind”
“Let not the Things you Think Delude you or Dilute your power, Hear what is Here, be not Prey of the Weekly Prayers for Weakness”
“From the Slit of the Slut, to the Route of the Root, Evil is Vile and God is Good…”
From these, and all other Scared Sacred bramblings
Feel Freely
Sat Chit Ananda