Thursday, March 24, 2016
Whorf and revolution
The Whorf Hypothesis was believed by linguists for a long time, until more refined experiments showed that some instances were false. Even though the natives didn't have separate words for blue and green, or yellow and white, they could clearly tell the difference.
Atypically among beliefs held by scientists, Whorf is still called a Hypothesis. Generally a belief held by scientists becomes an unbreakable Law Of Nature whether it's true or not.
Whorf isn't universal but it is useful in some cases. Just noticed one. We use revolution and coup d'etat and overthrow for two TOTALLY DIFFERENT sets of events. (1) Using force to replace a colonial or occupying government by a native government; (2) Using force to replace one native government by a new native government.
Because we don't distinguish these with words, we conflate them in concept. The RESULTS are completely separate and nearly opposite.
Pushing out a colonial power is sort of net neutral. Leads to better life 1/3 of the time, worse about 1/3, net wash about 1/3. Depends on fine details, can't be predicted easily.
Replacing one native gov't with a new native gov't leads to better life exactly ZERO% of the time. Always drastically worse. No exceptions.
A third case appears after cleanly separating the first two. Many colonial pushouts are headfakes sponsored by a different colonial power. African countries got rid of France by bringing in Russia, then brought in China when Russia departed.
A fourth case is rare but maybe the most interesting. Eject the occupying power, then keep everything in place because you like it that way. Belarus.
¶ 6:15 AM 
