[HN Gopher] Semantic Satiation
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Semantic Satiation
Author : annowiki
Score : 106 points
Date : 2021-04-23 15:30 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (en.wikipedia.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (en.wikipedia.org)
| adamrezich wrote:
| anyone have any favorite examples of one-word variable or method
| names that have caused this for you? (where you type it over and
| over and eventually you start to question if it's really a word
| at all)
| dsr_ wrote:
| The word "lunch" does it for me within five repetitions or so.
| rzzzt wrote:
| Thunk in Redux. Thunk, thunk, thunk. It's just an onomatopoeia
| for me at this point.
| aaronbrethorst wrote:
| I don't have this problem with variables or method names, but
| the type "double" does this to me.
| Jtsummers wrote:
| In college (undergrad and grad school) I did a _lot_ of
| graphics programming and _color_ lost all meaning on many
| occasions. It wasn 't the whole variable name (well, typically,
| maybe on occasion but not normally) but often things like
| _BackgroundColor_ or _ForegroundColor_ and so on. On many busy
| coding days at some point I 'd just see this word scattered
| about the screen and have to convince myself that it was in
| fact the correct word and used correctly and spelled correctly
| (though perhaps British English speakers would disagree on the
| spelling).
|
| I haven't experienced it in quite a while, though. And I don't
| do any graphics programming anymore anyways so when that word
| shows up in my code it's usually in the very minimal bit of GUI
| programming I touch anymore. I'm not sure any other word ever
| gave me quite as much trouble.
| Igelau wrote:
| Oh my god yes. I had a Jasper Report I was working on once that
| had totals, subtotals, totals of those subtotals...
|
| Suddenly I just froze wondering "wtf is a total?!"
| dgritsko wrote:
| Roads. Ro-ads. Row-ads.
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KT3vOCWA-J0
| bitwize wrote:
| At $WORK the word "leverage" is used as a verb so frequently,
| usually with no meaning other than "use", that it begins to
| sound like noise. A sort of grunt that must be periodically
| uttered, from time to time, to indicate the speaker is a member
| of the glorious tribe of passionate, devoted $WORK employees,
| like a radio callsign periodically interrupting a transmission
| to assure the listener of the station's identity. What scraps
| of meaning it still clung to -- even as a buzzword -- began to
| fade.
|
| I have resolved to assiduously use "use" when I mean "use".
| themodelplumber wrote:
| Damn, that's a shame. Leverage deserves much better treatment
| than that. It's an amazing concept. "To use" has some
| interesting points to it as well, but eh...
| kgeist wrote:
| Now, after 25 years or so, I finally know how it's called! I
| remember, as a kid, I found out that if I repeat a word often
| enough, it stops being registered as a word, suddenly it's just a
| bunch of unrelated sounds. It amused me but I never shared it
| with anyone, and, turns out, there's even a term for it (and a
| lot of research). It's one of those things that happen to many
| people but rarely talked about; post-nasal drip and blue field
| entoptic phenomenon also come to mind.
| milesward wrote:
| Sorta like this?
|
| Yes Yes Yes YesYes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
| Yes Yes Yes YesYes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
| milesward wrote:
| oh sure, fine, thanks hackernews formatting for turning my rad
| ASCII art "NO" into just a string of Yes
| twic wrote:
| Built-in memetic defences. Take your low-tier basilisks
| elsewhere.
| [deleted]
| Jtsummers wrote:
| YesYes Yes YesYes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
| Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
| Yes YesYes YesYes
|
| My best effort to recreate. You need 2 spaces in front of
| each line in order to get code blocks which will preserve
| your ASCII art.
|
| If you can still edit your original, your line breaks and
| spacing should be preserved in the raw form so you'd only
| need to add the spaces in front of each line to get your
| version showing correctly.
| yantrams wrote:
| Thank you for sharing this. I read about this on Wikipedia a
| decade or so ago and for the life of me couldn't find it again.
| All I could remember was that G.K.Chesterton was mentioned in the
| Wikipedia article and tried many times to google his name with
| different keywords ('Chesterton words repetition' etc)to no luck
| whenever this phenomena happened with me.
|
| PS: Chesterton isn't mentioned in the current version of this
| article but I see a lot of hits when I search his name with
| semantic satiation.
| slver wrote:
| That seems to be an example of our general tendency of treating
| all stimuli relative to their surroundings (both spatially, in
| time, and in abstract sense). A word's meaning only matters in
| contrast to other words combining it into some composite
| expression. If no such expression comes up, the brain tries to
| break down the word and look at a lower level.
| bluetomcat wrote:
| Exactly. Say you are standing on the side of an empty road.
| You'll certainly notice the first car that passes, maybe the
| second and the third. As the traffic intensifies, you'll
| eventually stop noticing the individual cars and assume they
| are part of the background.
| pjc50 wrote:
| Seems naturally very close to Shannon's theory of information;
| a symbol has meaning in proportion to how unexpected it is.
| guerrilla wrote:
| Also to de Saussure's original structuralism.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferdinand_de_Saussure
| annowiki wrote:
| This makes sense, but it reminds me a lot of how we filter out
| sensations after so long (i.e., we can't smell a bad odor after
| a certain amount of time, or we stop noticing a certain
| annoying sound after so long).
|
| I cannot remember or find the term for this but iirc it's Psych
| 101.
|
| I found these though:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cocktail_party_effect
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selective_auditory_attention
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stimulus_filtering
| slver wrote:
| I think it's the same basic process.
|
| Lay down in bed, looking at the ceiling, the main light just
| to the side of your central vision. And the lamp disappears
| (until your move your eyes) :-)
| asplake wrote:
| Habituation? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Habituation
| annowiki wrote:
| Yes! That's exactly what I was thinking of!
| ironmagma wrote:
| I would add that it's almost all stimuli. One could only wish
| that pain worked this way (unfortunately, no matter how many
| body parts hurt, it doesn't mean only the one that hurts the
| worst is the only one that appears to hurt).
| anon_tor_12345 wrote:
| illustration of this that was clear enough that i got it at age
| 10
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KT3vOCWA-J0
| johnghanks wrote:
| How is linking a wikipedia page considered a good submission?
| hooande wrote:
| This happens to me when programming. A common term like "array"
| will jump out at me and I'll think "...that doesn't look right"
|
| I saw a term for it many years ago and have googled for it many
| times since then. Thanks to annowiki for posting this!
| annowiki wrote:
| Enough people have expressed difficulty googling for it so I
| thought I'd share my google search to find it:
|
| https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=word+do...
|
| Sometimes the simplest search is the most effective!
|
| And you're welcome. (I was taking a complicated job application
| test where you had to recognize the color of a word and click
| the word that spelled the color. Everything was red or blue. As
| you can imagine...)
| topherjaynes wrote:
| Hope this came up from watching Ted Lasso... if not go watch Ted
| Lasso! Plan? Plan... no Plan!
| evanb wrote:
| My satirical take on this phenomenon in physics:
| https://arxiv.org/abs/1903.12201
| kazinator wrote:
| I've noticed that, when replaying an audio clip of a word or
| phrase repeatedly (like when "deciphering" something in a foreign
| language), after a few repetitions it no almost longer sounds
| like speech, but just some rhythmic sound.
| th0ma5 wrote:
| I've read the title of this post so many times I don't even know
| what it means anymore.
| layer8 wrote:
| This is also called Gestaltzerfall.
| onorton wrote:
| My all time favourite example of this
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8DySPDmCHgw
| emkee wrote:
| finally. I have a wikipedia page to reference when my friends
| think I'm being stupid lmao
| mcguire wrote:
| I've seen this while reading text, but does anyone have examples
| in any other sense? Verbally?
| yantrams wrote:
| Verbally is how I experience it exclusively as in not like
| saying it aloud but more like uttering it to myself internally
| if that makes sense. I should log this when it happens next
| time. Usually I happen to be mentally reciting/picturing* a
| word syllabically and not alphabetically and for a span of 3-4
| seconds it feels utterly alien. Happens with the simplest words
| like colour, market etc.
| jcims wrote:
| I wonder if this has anything to do with that phenomenon where
| you look at the word, and suddenly doesn't look like it's spelled
| correctly.
| anuragvermakhn wrote:
| Hi jcims
|
| Sorry I am trying to contact you in a non traditional way but I
| need your advice on something very important. My mom (53Y) got
| diagnosed with stage 3c ovarian cancer recently. The surgery
| has been done and chemo started 3 days back.
|
| I saw your comment on the HN post which is around 3 years old
| where you mentioned your wife took part in clinic trial for
| atezolizumab.
|
| Fingers crossed. I hope you guys are doing ok. I need to learn
| more about the treatment. I would be grateful to you for any
| advice/help you can give me. I don't know your email id. My
| email id is anuragvermaknn@gmail.com.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16279856
| jcims wrote:
| Hey buddy I'll send you a note out of band tonight. This
| space moves incredibly quickly and I don't know what things
| look like these days in terms of trials. We didn't have a
| good outcome ultimately but there is some evidence that my
| wife should have been staged at IV not IIIC. I'm still
| incredibly confident in the role that immunotherapy will play
| in cancer therapy, and it's likely that there have been
| advances since we had a go at it.
| [deleted]
| annowiki wrote:
| https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/6170/is-there-a-...
| hendzen wrote:
| Somebody watched Ted Lasso recently
| taliesinb wrote:
| Just thought the same thing. Funny that they spent probably an
| entire minute worth of skit on it.
| dointheatl wrote:
| I was listening to a podcast with Jason Sudeikis and he said
| that they specifically brought it up several times because
| they knew that later in the same episode they would be doing
| a riff on the Allen Iverson "we talking about practice"
| speech.
| motohagiography wrote:
| Literally every conversation I have about blockchain.
|
| Only half joking. Having worked in security and crypto, the
| solutions are often based on an opaque idea of fantastic
| complexity, which becomes a kind of mantra. It's like being in a
| movie called blockchain john malkovitch.
| jamiehall wrote:
| Ha, that's interesting. But have you come across the AI-linked
| crypto, ML Blockchain? It's completely distributed and secure
| blockchain through crypto. The ML is blockchain which
| blockchain crypto blockchain, blockchain sec blockchain
| distributed blockchain blockchain AI blockchain blockchain.
| Blockchain blockchain blockchain, blockchain bLoCkChAiN
| BlOcKcHaIn bLoCkChAiN BlOcKcHaIn bLoCkChAiN BlOcKcHaIn
| bCkOlcAnIh
| motohagiography wrote:
| Was just trying to parse that as a new brainfuck dialect
| called blockchain, which encodes the 8 brainfuck instructions
| in camelcase strings of the word blockchain, but just
| resembles a normal conversation about blockchain.
|
| I recently wrote a song that took a brainfuck program and set
| it as lyrics to a dance track because I had a suspicion
| Daftpunk's 'Work It' was a similar program. It started as a
| way to encode bf programs as lines from Rick Astley's 'never
| gonna give you up,' but I got lazy.
| [deleted]
| TuringNYC wrote:
| Reminds me of when all bugs and all features become "Top
| Priority" simultaneously.
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(page generated 2021-04-23 23:01 UTC)