I tried this out for about a week before posting, and found the results to be interesting enough that I plan to try to keep it up for a while longer.
(I don’t endorse strong upvoting everything with this property, but am feeling capriciously like rewarding this today. I think there’s tendency to post about clever ideas as soon as you think about them, and actually trying them and seeing how it plays out is a good habit)
That said: I disagree with the claim that “distance” metaphors are inaccurate – as I’ve played a bunch of semantle and semantle.pimanrul and noticed how I think about concepts elsewhere in life, I think spectrums that make sense to measure in distance are just… everywhere. “Bird-iness” is pretty scalar. There are birds that can’t fly, or are bad at flying. There are things with lots of birdlike properties on the dimension of flying and on other dimensions.
That said, your description of the general benefit of forcing yourself to avoid your usual conventions and explore new thought patterns makes sense.
Strong upvoted for this line:
(I don’t endorse strong upvoting everything with this property, but am feeling capriciously like rewarding this today. I think there’s tendency to post about clever ideas as soon as you think about them, and actually trying them and seeing how it plays out is a good habit)
That said: I disagree with the claim that “distance” metaphors are inaccurate – as I’ve played a bunch of semantle and semantle.pimanrul and noticed how I think about concepts elsewhere in life, I think spectrums that make sense to measure in distance are just… everywhere. “Bird-iness” is pretty scalar. There are birds that can’t fly, or are bad at flying. There are things with lots of birdlike properties on the dimension of flying and on other dimensions.
That said, your description of the general benefit of forcing yourself to avoid your usual conventions and explore new thought patterns makes sense.