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<p>The oft-maligned <a
href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_Character_Simplification_Scheme">Chinese
Language Simplification</a> of the Cultural Revolution seemed on
it's face to be an attempt to prune back out-of-control language
bushiness? When seen as an attempt at social control it seems
unconscionable but to curb verbosity and <i>circumloquacity</i>,
well motivated?<br>
</p>
<p>Trump's verbal tic of fixating on a word (e.g. "Gro-cer-ies" or
"Ta-r-iff") seems to be his nod to the under-literate who feel the
same way when THEY learn a new word?</p>
<p>I'm guiltier than most for (tyring to) add context to the context
to the context of words I don't fully trust to be exactly what I
meant:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>"<i>I know you believe you understand what you think I said,
but I think what you heard was not what I meant" ?</i><br>
</p>
</blockquote>
<p> glen wrote:</p>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:640fc61f-2c9b-4501-81fd-9da4aecbabc1@gmail.com">[⛧] It
also results in a bit of a verbosity explosion, where every
polysemic word or phrase needs more phrases to disambiguate it,
each of those phrases then needing more phrases, etc.
<br>
</blockquote>
<br>
<p>I do believe it is possible to recognize when someone is trying
to communicate vs when someone is trying to obfuscate? I think
our discussions here of late about LLMs touches on this. Can I
tell if an LLM is "trying" to help me
research/understand/think-about something" or is it just trying to
"tell me what I want to hear"? There are probably terms-of-art
(a term of art in itself?) for this distinction/spectrum? </p>
<p>While my abstraction of LLMs as a manifold of sub-manifolds with
linear narratives tracing various sub-manifolds might be
misbegotten, it is where my head goes often. The question (for
me) is whether there are families of sub-manifold (said family a
manifold in it's own right?) which can be labeled as "righteous"
or "good faith" vs "duplicitous" or "bad faith".... but to Glen's
point, nothing is context free? A narrative arc on a story-world
manifold within a story-multiverse (e.g. DC vs Marvel, vs ???)
represents nested context?<br>
</p>
<p>When I worked with lawyers I felt I could tell the difference in
the legalese I occasionally read if they were trying to be clear
or obfuscating... but not sure I could write an algorithm to
detect which?</p>
<p>FWIW in the spirit of linguistic hair splitting, one of my
favorite lines from a fantasy short-story was "the glint of the
spark of the light of the fire in the eye of the dragon". Though
I'm not sure quite why... maybe just a verbosity fetish?</p>
<p><br>
</p>
<p>mumble,</p>
<p> - Steve<br>
</p>
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