Another pointless puzzle
Since I'm in random puzzle mode today, here's another.

Differential measurement is HUGELY DOMINANT in our nervous system and other body processes, from circulation to digestion.

Diff instruments are equally dominant in serious lab settings, for chemistry or acoustics or electronics.

The diffness of measuring tools is mostly hidden in consumer products like cars and even weighing scales. Modern scales no longer have two pans and a fulcrum; they just use well-calibrated piezo pressure sensors.

Diff is also dominant in math on paper. The equation is a balance, and algebra (by exact definition) is a process of adding and removing weights from the two pans to null out the = sign in the middle.

I've asked before why diffness doesn't show up in computer languages. Analog computers had been STRICTLY AND ENTIRELY about diffs and balancing. The whole concept never appeared at all in the digital world, even though every single CMOS gate in a CPU is a diff amp.

Some languages halfway distinguish between the proper algebraic meaning and the computer meaning, at least in a declarative way. The usual computer meaning of X=Y is actually "take the number stored in Y and put it in the box labeled X." This is not the same as saying "X and Y are identical."

But no language has a provision for balancing. There's no command to keep the totals on both sides of the = balanced while fiddling with one or both sides.

Well, how about real human language? Even more surprisingly, there's no built-in function for balancing. We can certainly compare the two sides. We can say my house is bigger than yours, or my house is the same as yours. We can form balance-ish sentences to describe our intrinsic balances: The colder it gets, the more I shiver. But as with digital computers, these are only descriptive. There's no fulcrum in the sentence, no mirror, no forced reflection between the two sides of the balance.

There is some natural fulcruming between inflective endings. In languages with lots of redundancy between noun and adjective endings, or redundancy between subject and verb, adding more weight to one side can reduce the other side so the sum of morphs remains constant. This shows up in German strong vs weak adjectives and articles. When you add an article that bears the weight of the case form, the adjective loses the case form. In Latin languages, when the verb ending includes the person and number of the subject, the pronoun is often omitted. Even in relatively morphless English, specifying a number relieves the noun from bearing the plural weight. (How many feet of lumber do you need? Five hundred foot.)

Labels: Equipoise, Language update

  ¶ 1:02 PM