
Why is linguistics such a magnet for dilettantes and crackpots? - tintinnabula
https://aeon.co/essays/why-is-linguistics-such-a-magnet-for-dilettantes-and-crackpots
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Sniffnoy
Interesting article. The sort of bad linguistics it covers though seems pretty
different from the sort of bad amateur linguistics I'm used to seeing. I don't
have time right now to try to do any sort of full explication, but it involves
mistakes like: 1\. Identifying the language with the written language, or
thinking of the written language as primary 2\. Confusing statements about
language with statements about the actual world the language is meant to
describe (see also: "linguification") 3\. Various prescriptivist crap

People just seem to have a really hard time thinking about language, and in
particular keeping separate things separate while doing so, and if I may
speculate, I think it has a lot to do with the fact that people largely think
_in_ language. (And, assuming you're literate, often in written language.)
Everyone knows that the word "tiger" is not in fact a tiger, but you take more
complex examples and people can't process it all and the indirection just
collapses, is what it seems like roughly. That's my speculation, anyway...

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DenisM
Choice quote. We're going to see a lot more of this in the years ahead as more
people get their hands on machine learning tools.

[...] The fantasists and dilettantes trawl through source after source in the
hope of pulling aboard what seem to be relations and other connections. But in
fact, the more documents they sift through, the more likely they are to find
chance similarities and connections and draw spurious conclusions. [...]

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knrz
Not sure about how well it answers the question, but it's definitely light and
entertaining to read :)

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c517402
Why is Physics such a magnet for dilettantes and crackpots?

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randcraw
Because because arguing linguistics is a step below arguing semantics?

