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🔗 Philosophy 🔗 Cognitive science 🔗 Linguistics 🔗 Linguistics/Applied Linguistics 🔗 Anthropology 🔗 Philosophy/Philosophy of mind 🔗 Neuroscience 🔗 Philosophy/Philosophy of language 🔗 Linguistics/Philosophy of language

The hypothesis of linguistic relativity, part of relativism, also known as the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis , or Whorfianism is a principle claiming that the structure of a language affects its speakers' world view or cognition, and thus people's perceptions are relative to their spoken language.

The principle is often defined in one of two versions: the strong hypothesis, which was held by some of the early linguists before World War II, and the weak hypothesis, mostly held by some of the modern linguists.

• The strong version says that language determines thought and that linguistic categories limit and determine cognitive categories.
• The weak version says that linguistic categories and usage only influence thought and decisions.

The principle had been accepted and then abandoned by linguists during the early 20th century following the changing perceptions of social acceptance for the other especially after World War II. The origin of formulated arguments against the acceptance of linguistic relativity are attributed to Noam Chomsky.

🔗 Mathematics 🔗 Statistics 🔗 Sociology

The friendship paradox is the phenomenon first observed by the sociologist Scott L. Feld in 1991 that most people have fewer friends than their friends have, on average. It can be explained as a form of sampling bias in which people with greater numbers of friends have an increased likelihood of being observed among one's own friends. In contradiction to this, most people believe that they have more friends than their friends have.

The same observation can be applied more generally to social networks defined by other relations than friendship: for instance, most people's sexual partners have had (on the average) a greater number of sexual partners than they have.

🔗 Video games 🔗 Computing

The VIC-20 (known as the VC-20 in Germany and the VIC-1001 in Japan) is an 8-bit entry level home computer that was sold by Commodore Business Machines. The VIC-20 was announced in 1980, roughly three years after Commodore's first personal computer, the PET. The VIC-20 was the first computer of any description to sell one million units, eventually reaching 2.5 million. It was described as "one of the first anti-spectatorial, non-esoteric computers by design...no longer relegated to hobbyist/enthusiasts or those with money, the computer Commodore developed was the computer of the future."

🔗 Medicine 🔗 Medicine/Neurology

Gourmand syndrome is a very rare and benign eating disorder that usually occurs six to twelve months after an injury to the frontal lobe. Those with the disorder usually have a right hemisphere frontal or temporal brain lesion typically affecting the cortical areas, basal ganglia or limbic structures. These people develop a new, post-injury passion for gourmet food.

There are two main aspects of gourmand syndrome: first, the fine dining habits and changes to taste, and second, an obsessive component which may result in craving and preservation. Gourmand syndrome can be related to, and shares biological features with, addictive and obsessive disorders. The syndrome was first characterized in 1997.

🔗 United States/U.S. Government 🔗 United States 🔗 Military history 🔗 Military history/North American military history 🔗 Military history/United States military history 🔗 Law 🔗 United States History 🔗 U.S. Congress 🔗 Military history/National militaries 🔗 Vietnam

The War Powers Resolution (also known as the War Powers Resolution of 1973 or the War Powers Act) (50 U.S.C. ch. 33) is a federal law intended to check the U.S. president's power to commit the United States to an armed conflict without the consent of the U.S. Congress. The resolution was adopted in the form of a United States congressional joint resolution. It provides that the president can send the U.S. Armed Forces into action abroad only by declaration of war by Congress, "statutory authorization", or in case of "a national emergency created by attack upon the United States, its territories or possessions, or its armed forces".

The bill was introduced by Clement Zablocki, a Democratic congressman representing Wisconsin's 4th district. The bill had bipartisan support and was co-sponsored by a number of U.S. military veterans. The War Powers Resolution requires the president to notify Congress within 48 hours of committing armed forces to military action and forbids armed forces from remaining for more than 60 days, with a further 30-day withdrawal period, without congressional authorization for use of military force (AUMF) or a declaration of war by the United States. The resolution was passed by two-thirds each of the House and Senate, overriding the veto of President Richard Nixon.

It has been alleged that the War Powers Resolution has been violated in the past. However, Congress has disapproved all such incidents, and no allegations have resulted in successful legal actions taken against a president.

🔗 Mathematics

Pattern theory, formulated by Ulf Grenander, is a mathematical formalism to describe knowledge of the world as patterns. It differs from other approaches to artificial intelligence in that it does not begin by prescribing algorithms and machinery to recognize and classify patterns; rather, it prescribes a vocabulary to articulate and recast the pattern concepts in precise language. Broad in its mathematical coverage, Pattern Theory spans algebra and statistics, as well as local topological and global entropic properties.

In addition to the new algebraic vocabulary, its statistical approach is novel in its aim to:

• Identify the hidden variables of a data set using real world data rather than artificial stimuli, which was previously commonplace.
• Formulate prior distributions for hidden variables and models for the observed variables that form the vertices of a Gibbs-like graph.
• Study the randomness and variability of these graphs.
• Create the basic classes of stochastic models applied by listing the deformations of the patterns.
• Synthesize (sample) from the models, not just analyze signals with them.

The Brown University Pattern Theory Group was formed in 1972 by Ulf Grenander. Many mathematicians are currently working in this group, noteworthy among them being the Fields Medalist David Mumford. Mumford regards Grenander as his "guru" in Pattern Theory.

🔗 Computing 🔗 Computing/Computer science

m4 is a general-purpose macro processor included in all UNIX-like operating systems, and is a component of the POSIX standard.

The language was designed by Brian Kernighan and Dennis Ritchie for the original versions of UNIX. It is an extension of an earlier macro processor m3, written by Ritchie for an unknown AP-3 minicomputer.

The macro preprocessor operates as a text-replacement tool. It is employed to re-use text templates, typically in computer programming applications, but also in text editing and text-processing applications. Most users require m4 as a dependency of GNU autoconf.

🔗 Psychology

The Truman Show delusion, informally known as Truman syndrome, is a type of delusion in which the person believes that their lives are staged reality shows, or that they are being watched on cameras. The term was coined in 2008 by brothers Joel Gold and Ian Gold, a psychiatrist and a neurophilosopher, respectively, after the film The Truman Show.

The Truman Show delusion is not officially recognized nor listed in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of the American Psychiatric Association.

🔗 Computing 🔗 Computing/Early computers

The IBM 7030, also known as Stretch, was IBM's first transistorized supercomputer. It was the fastest computer in the world from 1961 until the first CDC 6600 became operational in 1964.

Originally designed to meet a requirement formulated by Edward Teller at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, the first example was delivered to Los Alamos National Laboratory in 1961, and a second customized version, the IBM 7950 Harvest, to the National Security Agency in 1962. The Stretch at the Atomic Weapons Research Establishment at Aldermaston, England was heavily used by researchers there and at AERE Harwell, but only after the development of the S2 Fortran Compiler which was the first to add dynamic arrays, and which was later ported to the Ferranti Atlas of Atlas Computer Laboratory at Chilton.

Since the 7030 was much slower than expected and failed to meet its aggressive performance estimates, IBM was forced to drop its price from $13.5 million to only $7.78 million and withdrew the 7030 from sales to customers beyond those having already negotiated contracts. PC World magazine named Stretch one of the biggest project management failures in IT history.

Within IBM, being eclipsed by the smaller Control Data Corporation seemed hard to accept. The project lead, Stephen W. Dunwell, was initially blackballed for his role in the "failure", but as the success of the IBM System/360 became obvious, he was given an official apology and, in 1966 was made an IBM Fellow.

In spite of Stretch's failure to meet its own performance goals, it served as the basis for many of the design features of the successful IBM System/360, which shipped in 1964.

🔗 Mathematics 🔗 Philosophy 🔗 Philosophy/Philosophical literature 🔗 Books 🔗 Philosophy/Logic 🔗 Philosophy/Contemporary philosophy 🔗 Linguistics 🔗 Philosophy/Philosophy of language 🔗 Linguistics/Philosophy of language 🔗 Philosophy/Analytic philosophy

The Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (widely abbreviated and cited as TLP) is the only book-length philosophical work by the Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein that was published during his lifetime. The project had a broad goal: to identify the relationship between language and reality and to define the limits of science. Wittgenstein wrote the notes for the Tractatus while he was a soldier during World War I and completed it during a military leave in the summer of 1918. It was originally published in German in 1921 as Logisch-Philosophische Abhandlung (Logical-Philosophical Treatise). In 1922 it was published together with an English translation and a Latin title, which was suggested by G. E. Moore as homage to Baruch Spinoza's Tractatus Theologico-Politicus (1670).

The Tractatus is written in an austere and succinct literary style, containing almost no arguments as such, but consists of altogether 525 declarative statements, which are hierarchically numbered.

The Tractatus is recognized by philosophers as one of the most significant philosophical works of the twentieth century and was influential chiefly amongst the logical positivist philosophers of the Vienna Circle, such as Rudolf Carnap and Friedrich Waismann and Bertrand Russell's article "The Philosophy of Logical Atomism".

Wittgenstein's later works, notably the posthumously published Philosophical Investigations, criticised many of his ideas in the Tractatus. There are, however, elements to see a common thread in Wittgenstein's thinking, in spite of those criticisms of the Tractatus in later writings. Indeed, the legendary contrast between ‘early’ and ‘late’ Wittgenstein has been countered by such scholars as Pears (1987) and Hilmy (1987). For example, a relevant, yet neglected aspect of continuity in Wittgenstein’s central issues concerns ‘meaning’ as ‘use’. Connecting his early and later writings on ‘meaning as use’ is his appeal to direct consequences of a term or phrase, reflected e.g. in his speaking of language as a ‘calculus’. These passages are rather crucial to Wittgenstein’s view of ‘meaning as use’, though they have been widely neglected in scholarly literature. The centrality and importance of these passages are corroborated and augmented by renewed examination of Wittgenstein’s Nachlaß, as is done in "From Tractatus to Later Writings and Back - New Implications from the Nachlass" (de Queiroz 2023).