

The Hidden Connection Between Morality and Language - dnetesn
http://nautil.us/blog/the-hidden-connection-between-morality-and-language

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jcr
>" _Decisions made by people speaking their non-native languages appear to be
less concerned with morality and more concerned with rationality and
utilitarianism._ "

Well, now that explains my embarrassingly immoral uses of Perl.

Speaking of embarrassing, I'd still really like to know why every time I hack
Perl code, the following song comes always to mind?

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HPkTGm4RtVM](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HPkTGm4RtVM)

On a more serious note, I wonder if our "favorite" (native?) programming
languages are the cause of some of the far too common overly emotional
responses seen in language discussions?

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Asbostos
I wonder if people will ever realize their morals are wrong despite being
popular. We're so quick to judge people in the past or other countries (gay
sex is illegal, say) but ignore our own backyards (sibling sex is illegal).

The comedian Lois C K made some bold steps exploring this. "I'm not saying I
would kill a kid and fuck him, I'm saying that if I found a dead kid in a
field, and it wasn't raining, I might take a shot, I don't know." I wonder if
in another 100 years we'll escape our cultural cage and realize it's harmless
to have sex with a dead child after all. It's a huge hurdle and there are lot
of smaller ones on the way, but we overcame the sex between two men thing,
maybe we're making some kind of gradual progress?

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quesera
> I wonder if in another 100 years we'll escape our cultural cage and realize
> it's harmless to have sex with a dead child after all.

The problem is that dead children are not yet public property, so any
defilement becomes an issue of vandalism.

Even if the child is subsequently buried on public land and allowed to decay
into the earth, any aspiring terraphiliacs would then create a tragedy of the
commons problem.

Of course, if you're Vinod Khosla, you could buy adjacent land, lock a gate,
call upon ancient ancestral rights, have your way with the dirt, and tie the
case up in the courts for years.

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pramalin
// “the use of a foreign language, as opposed to a native language, elicited
less harsh moral judgments.”// I thought this is a common observation.

Indian movies, writings, conversations openly curse in English, but the exact
words in native language would be considered as blasphemy.

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Mikhail_Edoshin
I can attest to the observation about being more open in second language. I'm
native Russian speaking English and I find that I can talk e.g. about sex in
English much easier than in Russian where the right words seem too loaded,
obscene, scientific, or euphemistic. But then, I think, the experience oozes
back to the native part as well. Maybe speaking more than one language should
steer people into being more open and accepting in general? If so, then Dutch
people should be among the champions :)

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abalashov
I'm a native Russian speaker as well and can second that exact perspective.

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madaxe_again
An interesting corollary to this is the effect that the specific symbol map
and grammar of a language has on native speakers. Do languages which have only
an active voice, or only the imperative, lead to a more authoritarian culture?
What of languages like basque which almost exclusively use the gerund?

I don't know the answer but it'd be fascinating to find out.

~~~
nine_k
There is a number of widely spoken languages that lack a grammatical future
tense. Chinese and Japanese spring to mind, but there are more, like Finnish
and Hungarian. There must be an extensive body of research comparing cultures
that have a future tense in the language to those who don't.

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astazangasta
Say, wasn't it yesterday we were talking about how science in psychology is
crap and full of poor reasoning and overdrawn conclusions? I mean, how can you
go from this narrow laboratory observation to "illegal immigrants have
different morals" without pause?

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dang
This is redirecting to the Nautilus home page.

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jcr
I got redirected too.

It seems this is the correct url:

[http://nautil.us/blog/the-hidden-connection-between-
morality...](http://nautil.us/blog/the-hidden-connection-between-morality-and-
language)

~~~
dang
Thanks! Fixed.

