Pem’s Tech Blog

This is a long-winded post that gives background to how it came to be that I am now planning to make blog posts that showcase GRE (SAT, GMAT, etc) words found in cards from Magic the Gathering.

I’ve always (I think even before high school) spent a lot of time outside of work and classes doing software development hobby projects, various autodidact (self-education) study (reading etc) mostly related to computer science (computers / technology / science / engineering / math, hardware, software, game development), philosophy / logic, and games (and game development).

Right now I’m trying to put some focus on learning vocabulary.  The original reason for this was simply for the GRE test.  But with my personality, I can easily end up in danger of getting lost in the joy of learning and analysis and projects, to the point where the original motivation (ie, productivity / goal) could become less important.

I’m also trying to make up for years of neglect based on kind of a negative about the questionable usefulness of having 10 or 20 synonyms for the same concept.

My distaste was never against practical useful technical terms, such as for Computer Science (or Philosophy, or Games) and to express academic ideas (concepts, science, algorithms, etc).

My complaint was that a lot of the words found on the GRE seem deprecated, redundant, useless, and almost never used in real conversation (or writing) – except when someone is just being pedantic / bombastic, or maybe artistic / poetic in style.  This could be worthwhile for a language specialist or historian, to better understand archaic texts (such as Shakespeare or Edgar Allan Poe).  But for people who aren’t specialized in language (or history), if you run into an antiquated (or just less commonly used) word, then it’s fine to just use context clues, or quickly look it up on your iOS dictionary app or FireFox ctrl+e dictionary search engine.  If you’re not a language specialist, then what’s the point in wasting brain cells on rote memorization of redundant words that don’t express new concepts, when those brain cells could be used for more useful (and/or interesting) knowledge?

Despite my initially negative attitude, I’ve since considered the other side.  For one thing, having more synonyms gives us more options to create technical terms (conceptual terms / academic terms).

Also, having additional words (or idioms, phrases, acronyms, titles, organization names, brand names, etc) can be useful to reference a concept in a more specific sense – with nuance and connotation.

Many of these synonyms could potentially expand our minds, because you can say (and write and think) more concisely and precisely – this allows you to be more laconic (so that you can express much in few words).

For example, extirpate and deracinate are both synonyms for uproot.  But the nuance to extirpate is destroy, exterminate, remove and totally do away with (so uproot to get rid of & destroy).  The nuance to deracinate is to isolate or alienate someone from a native or customary environment or culture (so you are uprooting them away from their familiar environment).

If words like extirpate and deracinate were more commonly used (and no one confused the nuances), then we could be more laconic, and allow more complex ideas (and thoughts) to be communicated more specifically with fewer words, and consciously chosen nuance / connotation.

The difference between the almost right word & the right word is really a large matter–it’s the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning. Mark Twain

In George Orwell’s 1984, Newspeak is used to do the opposite – reducing the number of words in the English language and thus reducing the expressiveness (and individuality or rebelliousness) of the government’s subjects.

The limits of my language are the limits of my world.  From Ludwig Wittgenstein’s one book (Logico-Tractatus Philosophicus).  The intended meaning is that only sentences that refer to something that we are capable of perceiving in the real world have meaning.  But on a similar train of thought (which is the way I’ve seen the quote misused), our minds are limited by (or expanded by) the tools we have to express our thoughts (which includes words).

Another specific example is how having more words can help us reduce the amount that we conflate distinct concepts.  Consider the GNU phrase “free as in freedom” vs “free as in beer” (unrestraint vs liberty vs costless, etc).  This sort of thing happens frequently, where someone gets confused or obstinately follows a specious argument, because he/she is conflating two distinct concepts.  Having more words can help us to better construct (or deconstruct) a line of reasoning, such as to more easily recognize when someone is conflating two different ideas.

Since this blog post is already longer than I’d like, I’ll get to the point.  I recently got into Magic: the Gathering.  There’s a lot to love about Magic, but for now I will avoid that tangent, and get to the point.

Part of any great fantasy game is its feel, such as how the game mechanics interact with visual art and writing (in other words – words).  Magic cards use color themes that correlate to the game mechanic (Black, White, Red, Green, Blue).  Each card has a card name, and many of the cards include flavor text (italics text that adds to the feel of the card, but does not affect the game mechanics).

I noticed that in these card names and flavor text, and even in some of the game rules, there are GRE words (GRE and other standardized tests).  So my plan is to post some Magic cards that use GRE words.  My initial favorite is the Augury Owl – but I’ll save that for my next post.

Pem (Admin) :: Aug.15.2010 :: Games, magic vocab, tcg :: No Comments »

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