One thing I’ve also been thinking about is how concepts spread in large-scale social networks. If you’ve got a social network A—B - C—D, i.e. where person A knows person B and person B knows person C, but person A does not know person C, and so on, then it’s possible that basically none of the concrete things that person A’s ideas are about will be things that person D knows of. However, many abstract/general things might still apply; so memes that are about general information can spread much further.
I suspect we’re underrating the extent to which this affects our concept-language.
I also find the question very interesting, but have different intuition about what travel father. I think that in general, concrete things are actually quite similar wherever there are humans, at least in the distances that where relevant for most of our history. If I am a Judean I know what a cow looks like, and every other Hebrew speaker know too, and almost every speaker of any language similar to Hebrew knows too—though maybe they have a little different variant of cow. From the other hand, if I’m a Hindu starting a new religion that is about how to get enlightenment—chances are that in the next greenstone there would be 4 competing schools with mutually exclusive understanding of the word “enlightenment”.
The reason is that we generally synchronize our language around shared experience of the concrete, and have much less degrees of freedom when conceptualising it.
General means something that applies in lots of different places/situations. I’m not sure memes about religious enlightenment applies in lots of places/situations; they seem to be dependent on weird states of mind and for weird purposes.
The aspect of abstract that is most relevant is probably avoiding excessive detail. Detail is expensive to transmit, so ideas with very brief accurate descriptions are better at spreading than ideas that require a lot of context. But this is not the only aspect of abstractness, as abstractness also tends to be about something only being a thought and not having concrete physical existence.
One thing I’ve also been thinking about is how concepts spread in large-scale social networks. If you’ve got a social network A—B - C—D, i.e. where person A knows person B and person B knows person C, but person A does not know person C, and so on, then it’s possible that basically none of the concrete things that person A’s ideas are about will be things that person D knows of. However, many abstract/general things might still apply; so memes that are about general information can spread much further.
I suspect we’re underrating the extent to which this affects our concept-language.
I also find the question very interesting, but have different intuition about what travel father. I think that in general, concrete things are actually quite similar wherever there are humans, at least in the distances that where relevant for most of our history. If I am a Judean I know what a cow looks like, and every other Hebrew speaker know too, and almost every speaker of any language similar to Hebrew knows too—though maybe they have a little different variant of cow. From the other hand, if I’m a Hindu starting a new religion that is about how to get enlightenment—chances are that in the next greenstone there would be 4 competing schools with mutually exclusive understanding of the word “enlightenment”. The reason is that we generally synchronize our language around shared experience of the concrete, and have much less degrees of freedom when conceptualising it.
“A cow” is abstract and general, Betty the cow who you have years of experience with is concrete.
Abstract and general are spectra. I agree that the maximally-specific is not good at spreading—but neither is the maximally-general
General might be more relevant than abstract.
General means something that applies in lots of different places/situations. I’m not sure memes about religious enlightenment applies in lots of places/situations; they seem to be dependent on weird states of mind and for weird purposes.
The aspect of abstract that is most relevant is probably avoiding excessive detail. Detail is expensive to transmit, so ideas with very brief accurate descriptions are better at spreading than ideas that require a lot of context. But this is not the only aspect of abstractness, as abstractness also tends to be about something only being a thought and not having concrete physical existence.