
Umberto Eco: Texts, sign systems and the risks of over-interpretation - apollinaire
https://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/public/umberto-eco-texts-sign-systems-risks-interpretation/
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brownbat
"Foucault's Pendulum" by Eco deeply impacted how I interacted with ideas. I
took it as a parable about the danger of mixing dogmas or untestable
hypotheses with crowds, conspiracy theories in that case. Ultimately, probably
against Eco's intentions, it left me skeptical and increasingly dissatisfied
with of a lot of his peers in continental philosophy.

His view, from this article, that “semiotics is in principle the discipline
studying everything which can be used in order to lie” adds an interesting
spin on that. Maybe you can lie by crafting an entire belief system, start at
the root and people will interpret all incoming contradictory information as
falsified. That happens in a few domains.

It's hard to get good antibodies in the system for those kinds of
manipulation.

~~~
floathub
Could not agree more.

In fact, I find Foucault's Pendulum, in many ways, very strongly supports
skepticism in all realms. And adds the sort of lovely literary tinge that if
anything can be made to "prove" anything (in "The Plan"), then of course
nothing truly proves anything. And so the age of modernity/reason leaves us
flailing in uncertainty (science is always skeptical, never certain).

And it's such a hoot to boot.

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rumcajz
One Eco's book relevant, IMO, for programmers: "The search for the Perfect
Language". In a way, it can be thought of as a prequel to the history of
programming languages.

[https://www.amazon.com/Search-Perfect-Language-Umberto-
Eco/d...](https://www.amazon.com/Search-Perfect-Language-Umberto-
Eco/dp/0631174656/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=umberto+eco+language&qid=1566138362&s=gateway&sr=8-1)

~~~
genericacct
He also wrote a short piece comparing operating systems to religion which is
is quite amusing. It boils down to:

Windows = Protestantism Macs = Christian Unix = Talmudic

(if i recall correctly)

~~~
genericacct
Previously on HN too
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11137982](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11137982)

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based2
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kant_and_the_Platypus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kant_and_the_Platypus)

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ianamartin
One thing he did was use a serial comma to reduce the risk of mis-
interpretation.

