Genady

How do we know that it is "slightly"? What is the metric for this and how it is measured?

Does anybody here know of the method for engineering problem solving called, TRIZ? TRIZ - Wikipedia

I don't remember if this link has been mentioned already -- I think this Wikipedia article summarizes the principle quite well: A vehicle with a bladed rotor mechanically connected to the wheels can be designed to go at a speed faster than that of the wind, both directly into the wind and directly downwind. Upwind, the rotor works as a wind turbine driving the wheels. Downwind, it works as a propeller, driven by the wheels. In both cases, power comes from the difference in velocity between the air mass and the ground, as received by the vehicle's rotor or wheels.[7] Relative to the vehicle, both the air and the ground are passing backwards. However, travelling upwind, the air is coming at the vehicle faster than the ground, whereas travelling downwind faster than the wind speed, the air is coming at the vehicle more slowly than the ground. The vehicle draws power from the faster of the two media in each case and imparts it to the slower of the two: upwind, drawing power from the wind and imparting it to the wheels and, downwind, drawing power from the wheels and imparting it to the rotor—in each case in proportion to the velocity of the medium, relative to the vehicle.[7] In summary:[7] Upwind, the rotor harvests the power from the oncoming air and drives the wheels, as would a wind turbine. Downwind, when the vehicle is traveling faster than the windspeed, the ground is the fastest-moving medium relative to the vehicle, so the wheels harvest the power and impart it to the rotor, which propels the vehicle. Blackbird (wind-powered vehicle) - Wikipedia

I call a concept behind the word 'glass' whatever experiences this word represents. There is no word in Russian that represents exactly the same experiences. What related words in Russian represent are not narrower or broader either. They overlap. I see that they need to say the same thing differently, because their components slice and dice the same outside world differently.

I didn't say that everything is different. This specific example might be similar or same. There are differences and similarities. Generally, we both say that different languages have different ways to say the same thing. Here what is different in our description: You emphasize that different languages have different ways to say the same thing. I emphasize that different languages have different ways to say the same thing.

I've started the OP with three examples of concepts in English and Russian, which don't have mutual correspondence. Since Russian was my native language, even after years of speaking English and not speaking Russian, I have to slow down and to think for a second when I need to say either 'shade' or 'shadow' - they are not clearly different concepts in my mind. There are myriad examples like this. Say, I read an English sentence, "He was looking for his glass". It is unambiguous to you, I guess. However, it is not translatable into Russian as it is, because there is no such a concept as 'glass' in Russian. There are at least five different concepts that could be 'glass' in different situations, depending on its shape, size, texture, purpose: 'stakan', 'fuzher', 'riumka', 'bokal', 'vaza'. On the other hand, 'stakan' in Russian could be any of 'cup', 'glass', 'mug' in English in different situations. Again, to me it is completely automatic to use the right Russian word out of the five 'glass' choices in any given situation, but it is not so automatic to chose between the three 'stakan' words in English, and perhaps my choice is wrong from time to time. In describing a motion, English verbs generally emphasize a conceptual component of manner of the motion, e.g. "The bottle floated", while additional information like a path of the motion may be added later, e.g. "The bottle floated into the cave." In Spanish, however, the main description of the motion emphasizes a conceptual component of its path, "La botella entró a la cueva", while its manner is added as an extra information, "La botella entró a la cueva (flotando)." Accordingly, there are many manner-specific motion words in English, some very particular, e.g. 'scramble up'. Russian has a corresponding manner-specific verb, 'vskarabkat’sja'. However, Hebrew would have to use a neutral 'letapes' (to climb) and Papiamenu (a Portuguese creole) would use even more generic 'subi' (to ascend), and they will have to add a lot of description to convey the 'scrumble up' concept; e.g. in Papiamentu, 'subi lihe ku man i pia', 'ascend fast with hands and feet'. Enough for one post, I think. But to answer the last questions above, Yes, I could actually think about a chair in a different way; and, Yes, I could've needed to ask in a different way.

I think this approach to linguistics didn't work out. Plus, from my personal experience (speaking 1 Germanic, 1 Semitic, 1 Slavic and understanding 1 Romance and 1 Sign languages) I don't see syntax and grammar rules as a central /critical /defining aspects of human languages. It is a conceptual content of languages that I consider a defining feature, i.e. how they - similarly and differently - slice and dice our experience. Yes, 'digital' was a wrong word. Abstraction and compression seem better. I try to be a bit more technical and tentatively describe language as a "layer of indirection". 1. It is far from being clear if a mix of digital and analog effects on the neurotransmission level has anything to do with a large-scale cognitive activities. 2. This article was published in 2006. Seemingly, it did not have much effect in the field because now, 16 years later, the signaling between neurons is taught and investigated as being essentially digital.

Bravo! +1 I think it nails it. In other words, without a wind a vehicle with a speed V relative to the ground would have to have the same speed V relative to the wind. While with the wind having a speed v < V, the same vehicle has to have only V - v relative to the wind!

Yes, in the terms of biological evolution.

It might be easier to understand how it works by considering it in the vehicle's reference frame at the moment when it moves with the wind at the wind's speed. At this moment, in the vehicle's RF, there is no wind, the air stands still, and the ground moves under the vehicle backward. This movement of the ground rotates vehicle's wheels. The rotating wheels rotate the propeller. Propeller pushes the air backward and the vehicle forward. This accelerates the vehicle and it starts moving relative to air. In the ground RF, it starts moving faster than wind.

@Peterkin. I see the weaknesses of this hypothesis. Back to the drawing board then. Thanks a lot for the discussion! Got it. I will elaborate on the background next time. If I only have received that mod-note... Anyway, no problem, moving on.

Many, or most, of the mutations leading to a new structure are repurposing some other structures. E.g. a brain grew, some structure became bigger than necessary, or duplicated, and then a duplicate or a part of it gets repurposed. Unfortunately, so few details are known about cognitive functional, as opposed to anatomical, structures in the brain, that there is no way to guess what mutation it could be. Regarding the environmental requirement, I don't know if this specific solution or any specific solution is ever required. There are many ways to be fit. So yes, these aspects are difficult. I don't see any of this questions being answered soon. My impression of cognitive science is, a lot of factual knowledge and missing theoretical core. Akin biology before Darwin, genetics before Crick and Watson, electrodynamics before Maxwell, astronomy before Newton, geometry before Euclid, chemistry before atoms... what did I miss? I am in the middle of the Romanian orphans story. Horrible. In what way is it personal, if I may ask? And, thank you, and thank you @StringJunky.

That is my question, too, and that's why I called this a 'hypothesis.' I didn't put it in a Speculations forum because if this: I don't have any speculative or, even worth, a pseudoscientific theory. I have a question which I have formulated as a statement of hypothesis. A hypothesis, ideally, is either supported or refuted. Somebody has moved my post into the Speculations forum, which to me personally is offending. I do base my hypothesis on some knowledge of cognitive science and it does not deviate from the science. It is an open question in the mainstream science, and my hypothesis does not contradict any established and tested theory. I don't like to see my name as an OP of a speculative thread and would ask an admin to remove this thread completely, or move it to a Lounge, Amateur Science, Other Science, something like that rather than leaving it in Speculations.

This is right. Dogs learn, similarly, humans learn and become multilingual. Perhaps, it is wrong to characterize their language as fix /static. So, I'll try to focus my argument. I focus on first languages. Dogs grown in the US understand a language of dogs grown in China. Human languages are not like that / don't work that way. We find other ways to communicate if we don't know each other's language, but not linguistically. I bring it only as a difference between human and not-human languages. Nothing about intelligence, learning abilities and such. Regarding babies, I am referring to documented cases when children were found being locked after birth for years in attics or basements. They were fed, but were not talked to. They didn't have or use any language for communication, after being rescued. Some of them learned some limited language later, others did not. I think it is like a difference between three levels of a network depth vs. four levels. Is it kind or degree? Doesn't matter. I think that what happened in our evolution is, our brain got an ability to make new 'hubs' connected to other networks, which were acquired from experience. These hubs function as entities themselves, which allows to make new relations between them, such as, 'oak is a tree, tree is a plant', where 'oak', 'tree', 'plant' are hubs or "concepts", as I referred to them elsewhere.

There will not be any redshift even after millions and billions of years. Glad that @MigL thinks so, too (above). Putting it the other way, to observe the cosmological redshift, the observer has to be a co-moving observer. In the co-moving reference frame the fixed walls of the box move against the expansion, and thus cancel the cosmological redshift.

Yes.

The metric is a local thing, there is no one universal metric of the universe. The cosmologically expanding metric is metric of a homogenous isotropic space. It works for places which are far away from inhomogenous gravitational sources and also for scales at which the universe 'becomes' homogenous and isotropic. I think this scale is of the order of 100 Mpc. In fact, we observe today galaxies at redshift of order 1 and more. They would be twice or more larger than the galaxies close to us. But they are not.

If this atom is placed in a local gravitational field, especially close to a large mass like black hole for example, its frequency will decrease. That's why I insist in the thought experiment above that the box is away from such bodies. The atom's frequency will stay constant in those conditions.

Yes, absolutely unconditionally sure. Bounded systems do not expand with cosmological expansion. Galaxies are gravitationally bound.

To the contrary, we can and we do. The exact modern definition, from the National Institute of Standards and Technology is: "The second, symbol s, is the SI unit of time. It is defined by taking the fixed numerical value of the cesium frequency ΔνCs, the unperturbed ground-state hyperfine transition frequency of the cesium 133 atom, to be 9192631770 when expressed in the unit Hz, which is equal to s⁻¹." (wiki) For a standard unit of distance you can take a distance that light covers in one standard unit of time.

The box keeps its shape and size. The atoms of the material it is made of do not expand, distances between atoms do not expand as the universe expands. The walls of the box do not move relative to each other. E.g. the distances between far away galaxies increase, but the galaxies themselves do not grow as the universe expands.

Imagine a box with internal walls covered with mirrors. A light /photon bounces inside the box from mirror to mirror. The box is placed far away from gravitating bodies, somewhere in the homogenous and isotropic universe. As the universe expands, will the light inside the box redshift? (My answer, No.)

No, I just mean mirrors. I take a box with internal walls being mirrors, let light in, say, through a little opening. Light just bounces inside from mirror to mirror (we can close the opening to make sure it doesn't escape). The mass of the box increased.

This is surprising. We once had adopted a rottweiler from a foreign speaking family and she had to do the same, except one other dog rather than two. She was fluent in a couple of weeks. She was 2 yo, maybe that was a factor, if your shepherd was older. It was interesting to observe how the other dog taught her the rules of the house.

Of course. I should've said "such as that of light" or something similar. Otherwise, yes, this is what I mean. I have a picture in mind where the light remains light, i.e. is not absorbed in a sense of being converted into something else. It will be there with no mass, but the entity will gain mass still.