Priors allow the possibility that languages are not created equal and lead to different cognitive speeds
Common discourse is biased towards assuming neutrality in all tribal identity adjacent matters AND the two visible opinions are “English & Chinese are equally fast” and “Chinese is faster”—“English is faster” is a missing opinion
Chinese websites tend to look “full of text” to me, which is explained neatly if information absorption rate is higher
(weak) The seeming competence of China
Evidence against:
Priors allow the possibility that languages are created equal bc they do not present bottlenecks in cognition
Strongly considering learning to read in Chinese based on vague anecdotal reports pointing to higher reading / scanning speeds
(also as a status symbol / intelligence signal, tbc)
For this I could write an app that performs a gradual translation to chinese on the .epub file of a fiction I’m currently addicted to
Overly optimistic ballpark estimate is “800k words of text are enough to learn recognize 4k chinese characters”
Evidence in favour:
Priors allow the possibility that languages are not created equal and lead to different cognitive speeds
Common discourse is biased towards assuming neutrality in all tribal identity adjacent matters AND the two visible opinions are “English & Chinese are equally fast” and “Chinese is faster”—“English is faster” is a missing opinion
Chinese websites tend to look “full of text” to me, which is explained neatly if information absorption rate is higher
(weak) The seeming competence of China
Evidence against:
Priors allow the possibility that languages are created equal bc they do not present bottlenecks in cognition