Why are nouns a better trellis?
In previous item I mentioned a question that has been itching me for a while.

Why are noun forms more helpful than verb forms as a trellis or matrix to hold our thoughts in place when buffeted by the tornadic winds of Deepstate confusion?

The answer appeared immediately and serendipitously.

I was looking through the latest additions to the American Radio Library. This 1944 British engineering journal includes an obituary for Nikola Tesla, who died in '43. The obit was written by a man who had worked with Tesla, and focused on engineering, not cult worship.

Nikola had One Big Idea, based on steam-era thinking.

Storing energy and transferring energy are opposite processes with opposite needs.

The best way to STORE the results of labor is an inert mass like carbide or coal or wheat or gold. The stored material can't be active or reactive on its own. It must wait for the addition of water or heat or form.

The best way to TRANSFER the results of labor is a wave.

Why? Because a simple DC flow carries mass. Transfer works best with a reciprocating element, whether it's a piston on a crankshaft or a light wave in the ether or a rotating magnet inside a static field. The mass remains centered on one location, and its motions create fields that transfer only the energy.

Ideally, transfer grows more efficient with increasing frequency because the reciprocating mass moves less, so you're diverting less energy into reactance and friction. Higher frequency means shorter wavelength, shorter reciprocation, more penetration of the energy field itself.

Nikola's One Big Idea was More Frequency. His career was More Frequency.

Unfortunately a complete power distribution system has practical limitations that counteract this ideal formula. First: Whether AC or DC, it's better to use high voltage and low current for the long wires. Voltage is field, current is mass. High voltage is impractical for household use, so the HV mainline must be turned into low voltage power for houses. Second, as frequency increases, the energy pulls out toward the surface of the wire, so there's less cross-sectional area available to carry the electrons. The second limitation means that DC is actually somewhat more efficient for a high-voltage power line, but the first limitation requires some kind of "lever" to transform high voltage and low current into low voltage and high current. Until recently the best "lever" was a magnetic transformer, requiring AC. After solid state inverters matured, the main lines could be DC again to avoid the surface effect. Edison understood the whole system, and he ultimately won.

= = = = =

Now let's think about storing and transferring the most important products of labor, thoughts and culture. The situation is partly different because storage and maintenance are separate.

How do we maintain thoughts in our own brains? Not as inert carbide or coal or wheat. Thoughts are maintained as an infinitely complex resonance within the neurons and glia of the brain and body and muscles.

Culture is maintained as reciprocal and resonant interactions between people.

We can dry out a thought and turn it into a sentence or a painting or a song, which can then be stored like wheat or carbide, waiting for a buyer to activate it with fire or water or perception.

But most of the time a thought is a formant or harmonic within the infinite resonance of a brain, and most of the time a culture is live resonances between people.

Here's where noun vs verb comes back into the picture. The matrix of noun forms describes relatively static positional relationships. Number, gender, containment, location. Cases explicitly pin down interactions between people, so cases retain culture. Thus nouns are a better and more stable trellis or harp to maintain a growing and changing resonance.

Deepstate's chaotizers are smashing all the categories of grammar, from gender to relationships to tenses. A stricter and more algorithmic grammar helps to withstand ALL of these assaults, but the nouns are somewhat more important because of the resonant nature of thought.

Labels: defensible cases, defensible spaces, Language update, storage

  ¶ 2:06 AM