Language Shapes Thought

How language, metaphor, naming, and visual representation structure cognition, communication, and the frameworks through which we make sense of reality.

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Posts (445)

2024-08-17 Truth-Seeking Modes
2024-08-15 Intellectual Menopause
2024-07-14 Imagination vs. Creativity
2024-06-14 Covid and Noun-Memory Effects
2024-05-12 Decision Brownouts
2024-04-07 Storytelling — Philosophical Stakes
2024-04-01 History is More Like Science Fiction Than Fantasy
2024-03-05 Civilizational Functionalism
2024-03-02 Poison-Depilling Problems
2024-02-23 Economics Memes
2024-02-15 The Dark Forest Marketing Agency
2024-01-24 Unknown Knowns
2024-01-17 Universal Kit Template
2023-10-23 Vastness
2023-09-07 Worlds in Waiting
2023-07-13 Worldly, Yet Carefree
2023-05-04 Life After Language
2023-03-30 Tessellations for the End of History
2023-03-01 Salt-Seeking
2022-12-07 Worldwinds
2022-11-03 Storytelling -- End-Times Tales
2022-09-29 Ark Head
2022-09-16 ε/δ Thinking
2022-08-04 A Dreaming World
2022-06-02 Storytelling -- Mediocre Metamodernism
2022-05-18 Crisis Mindsets
2022-05-05 The Map
2022-03-30 Fermi Estimates and Dyson Designs
2022-01-12 Storytelling -- Narrative Wet Bulb Temperature
2022-01-06 Random Acts of X
2021-12-06 Thinking in OODA Loops
2021-10-27 MJD 59,514
2021-09-02 MJD 59,459
2021-06-24 Storytelling -- Matthew Dicks
2021-06-17 Storytelling -- Mamet's Conflict Airing Theory
2021-06-04 Non-Contact
2021-05-03 Storytelling -- The American Tradition
2021-04-19 MJD 59,323
2021-04-08 Here's why we don't understand heavier-than-air flight
2021-02-25 Here's why we don't understand what electricity is
2021-02-16 Storytelling -- Harmon vs. McKee
2021-01-06 Boilerplate Advice
2020-12-09 Stoned Strategy
2020-12-02 Pascal's Market
2020-09-23 Epistemic Reserve Notes
2020-09-03 Wittgenstein's Revenge
2020-09-02 Hyperreality Prevails
2020-05-07 Leaking into the Future
2020-04-28 Alamut, Bosch, Gaddis: Introduction to Epochal Art
2020-04-14 Liminality?...Well, there's a free sample!
2020-04-02 Pandemic Dashboard: 2
2020-03-09 Plot Economics
2020-02-18 Weirding Diary: 11
2020-02-10 MJD 58,889
2020-01-24 How To See Voids
2020-01-18 MJD 58,866
2020-01-15 Predictable Identities 24: Anti-Identity
2020-01-07 MJD 58,855
2020-01-06 MJD 58,854
2019-12-10 Making Meaning
2019-11-13 Mediocratopia: 9
2019-11-05 From Pseudoevents to Pseudorealities
2019-10-29 The City as Weakly-Escaped Reality
2019-10-23 Predictable Identities: 19 - Labels
2019-10-15 Observability and Time
2019-10-08 Becoming the Internet
2019-10-02 Predictable Identities: 18 - Self-consistency
2019-09-17 Weirding Diary: 10
2019-09-11 Predictable Identities: 17 - Midpoint Review
2019-09-04 Worlding Raga 7: Worlds of Worlds
2019-08-15 Meaning as Ambiguity
2019-07-24 Predictable Identities: 14 - Frameworks are Fake
2019-07-17 Weirding Diary: 9
2019-07-16 Mediocratopia: 6
2019-07-11 Pleasure as an Organizing Principle
2019-07-10 Predictable Identities: 13 - Totalizing Ideologies
2019-06-26 Predictable Identities: 12 - Fear, Myths, and the Outgroup, Part II
2019-06-19 Mazes as Mirrors of Creation
2019-05-30 The Age of Diffraction
2019-05-22 Predictable Identities: 10 - Big Updates
2019-05-08 Predictable Identities: 9 - How to Change
2019-05-06 Domestic Cozy: 4
2019-04-25 Worlding Raga: 5 -- World How?
2019-04-23 Elderblog Sutra: 6
2019-04-17 Predictable Identities: 8 – Roles People Play
2019-04-03 Predictable Identities: 6 - Creeps
2019-04-02 Worlding Raga: 4 - Who Worlds?
2019-04-01 Weirding Diary: 6
2019-03-28 What If We Already Know How to Live?
2019-03-21 Constructions in Magical Thinking
2019-03-20 Predictable Identities: 5 - Outgroup Homogeneity
2019-03-15 Domestic Cozy: 2
2019-03-07 Mediocratopia: 3
2019-03-05 Worlding Raga: 2 - What is a World?
2019-02-27 Predictable Identities: 2 - Active Inference
2019-02-20 Predictable Identities: 1 - Guess What's Coming
2019-02-05 Elderblog Sutra: 2
2019-02-04 Weirding Diary: 3
2019-01-30 Weirding Diary: 2
2019-01-24 Weirding Diary: 1
2019-01-17 Stack Luck
2018-12-20 Why We Slouch
2018-12-07 “Something Runs Through The Whole Thread”
2018-11-08 May You Live in Epic Times
2018-11-02 Treasure Hunting
2018-10-05 Light of the American Whale
2018-09-20 Dodo Thoughts
2018-09-11 Think Entangled, Act Spooky
2018-09-07 Social Media Consciousness
2018-09-02 Refactorings Roundup 08/26/2018 09/1/2018
2018-08-30 How Do You Value a Human Being?
2018-08-23 Flying Blind into the Anthropocene
2018-08-09 Tarpits and Antiflocks
2018-08-02 Boilerplate
2018-07-19 Quiver Doodles
2018-06-14 Chekov's Gun and the Principle of Sufficient Reason
2018-06-12 The Well-Being Machine
2018-05-29 Reality Maintenance
2018-04-19 Symmetry and Identity
2018-03-13 Justifiable AI
2018-03-06 A Quick (Battle) Field Guide to the New Culture Wars
2018-02-15 Make Your Own Rules
2018-02-08 Justice Fantasies
2018-02-01 (Don't) Be the Gray man
2018-01-18 The Unapologetic Case For Bullshit
2018-01-11 Cringe and the Design of Sacred Experiences
2018-01-09 Boat Stories
2017-12-14 A Glitch in the Theocratic Matrix
2017-12-07 Feeling the Future
2017-11-30 Prolegomena to Any Dark-Age Psychohistory
2017-11-16 Folk Concepts
2017-11-09 CEOs Don't Steer
2017-09-28 The Internet of Electron Microscopes
2017-09-26 Common Sense Eats Common Talk
2017-09-14 How to Make History
2017-09-07 The World As If
2017-08-10 Questions Are Not Just For Asking
2017-07-26 On Being Nosey
2017-07-25 I Can’t Be Your Hero, I’m Too Busy Being Super
2017-07-20 The Ominouslier Roar of the Bitcoin Wave
2017-07-11 Memory Transplants and Climate Risks
2017-07-06 The Power of Pettiness
2017-06-27 Been There, Done That
2017-06-15 How I Hired Your Mother
2017-06-06 Thingness and Thereness
2017-06-01 Why Books Are Fake
2017-05-16 Arguing About How the World Should Burn
2017-05-09 A Priest, a Guru, and a Nerd-King Walk Into a Conference Room...
2017-04-18 Entrepreneurship is Metaphysical Labor
2017-04-13 Idiots Scaring Themselves in the Dark
2017-04-11 Zorba, Spock, or Voldemort?
2017-03-30 Nobody Expects The Mongolian Earthship
2017-03-21 The Winter King of the Internet
2017-03-14 Sanity on the Weird Timeline
2017-03-07 Sulking Through a Subprime Presidency
2017-03-02 The Limits of Epistemic Hygiene
2017-02-23 The Strategy of No Strategy
2017-02-21 Prescientific Organizational Theory
2017-02-16 Unbuilding the Wall
2017-02-14 Caring and Reality
2017-02-07 Shift Register Code Breaking Out of the Echo Chamber
2017-01-31 The Throughput of Learning
2017-01-26 Games, Videogames, and the Dionysian Society
2017-01-24 Lies, Caffeinated Lies, and Operating Systems
2017-01-12 Cannon Balls, Plate Tectonics, and Invisible Elephants
2017-01-10 Rolling Your Own Culture and (Not) Finding Community
2017-01-05 Tendrils of Mess in our Brains
2016-12-21 The Computational Condition
2016-12-15 Robert Martinson and the Tragedy of the American Prison
2016-12-08 The Strategy of (Subversive) Conflict
2016-11-03 A Bad Carver
2016-11-01 Ribbonfarm Longform Blogging Course: Nov 10 - 22
2016-10-27 The Cyberpunk Sensibility
2016-10-19 The Future of Compromise
2016-10-06 The Art of the Conspiracy Theory
2016-09-29 Overpowered Metrics Eat Underspecified Goals
2016-09-27 Mapping Organizational Realities
2016-09-22 Speak Weirdness to Truth
2016-09-07 Startups, Secrets, and Abductive Reasoning
2016-09-01 The Origin of Authenticity in the Breakdown of the Illusion of the Real
2016-08-11 Trace of the Weirding
2016-08-04 The Quality Without a Name at the Betsy Ross Museum
2016-07-13 Welcome to Nixonland
2016-07-07 The Systems of the World
2016-05-26 How to Take Your Brain Off-Road
2016-05-19 Examining the Accidental Life
2016-04-28 Immortality Begins at Forty
2016-04-14 A Good Name Points to You
2016-03-24 The Holy Grail of Self-Improvement
2016-02-25 The Epic Struggle between Good and Neutral
2016-01-28 Productivity for Precious Snowflakes
2016-01-07 On Some Possibilities for Life as a Joke
2015-12-17 We Are All Architects Now
2015-12-10 Field Theory of Swords
2015-12-03 An Ecology of Beauty and Strong Drink
2015-12-01 Can You Hear Me Now?
2015-11-12 The Awe Delusion
2015-11-05 Ritual Epistemology
2015-10-29 Quasiparticles and the Miracle of Emergence
2015-10-22 Distinctions and Differences
2015-10-01 Meaning and Pointing
2015-09-29 What is the Largest Collective Action, Ever?
2015-09-24 Samuel Beckett's Guide to Particles and Antiparticles
2015-09-22 Significance Appreciation
2015-09-10 Why Nerds Have Bad Taste
2015-09-03 Cartographic Compression
2015-08-20 A Children’s Picture-book Introduction to Quantum Field Theory
2015-08-18 Extraordinary Laboratories
2015-08-13 Executive Engagement
2015-08-04 The Four Forces for Sociology
2015-07-30 The Chinese Compressibility Parable
2015-07-21 Inbox Zero versus Flow Laminar
2015-07-16 Cooperative Ignorance
2015-06-23 Where do Electric Forces Come From?
2015-06-18 The Boydian Dialectic
2015-06-12 The Things You Carry
2015-06-04 Puzzle Theory
2015-05-28 The Amazing, Shrinking Org Chart
2015-04-22 A Better Art Vocabulary, Part 1
2015-03-26 The Art of Gig II
2015-03-19 The Art of Gig
2015-03-12 The Art of Agile Leadership
2015-02-25 The Mother of All 2x2s
2015-02-18 A Dent in the Universe
2015-01-21 Let's Play! Narrative Discovery vs. Expert Guides
2014-12-18 Learning from Crashes
2014-12-11 Striving, Surviving, Suffering and Slacking
2014-11-16 When Monitoring a Behavior Makes it Worse
2014-11-05 Don't Surround Yourself With Smarter People
2014-10-29 Crash-Only Thinking
2014-10-08 The Adjacency Fallacy
2014-09-24 The Rhythms of Information: Flow-Pacing and Spacetime
2014-09-09 Geopolitics for Individuals
2014-09-03 How to Fall Off the Wagon
2014-09-02 When is a Year not a Year?
2014-08-20 The Veil of Scale
2014-07-09 A Koan is not a Riddle
2014-06-25 Language and Strategy
2014-06-25 Portals and Flags
2014-06-18 The Physics of Stamp Collecting
2014-06-16 Time, Money and Bandwidth
2014-06-11 The Deliberate Practice of Disruption
2014-06-05 The Rumsfeld Behavioral Landscape
2014-05-20 The Logic of Uberreaction
2014-05-15 Power Gradients and Spherical Cows
2014-04-24 Product-Driven versus Customer-Driven
2014-04-16 A Life with a View
2014-04-09 The Legibility Tradeoff
2014-03-20 The Message is the Medium
2014-03-12 Authors and Directors
2014-02-20 The Cactus and the Weasel
2014-02-07 An Information Age Glossary
2014-01-28 Technical Debt of the West
2014-01-27 Discovery-Heavy Projects
2014-01-15 Resident Bloggers for 2014: Sam, Jordan, Kartik, Keith
2014-01-01 Free, as in Agent
2013-12-09 Our Diurnal Civilization
2013-12-09 The Three Clocks of Trial and Error
2013-11-25 The New Human Wilderness
2013-11-19 Deep Play: An Impressionistic Theory of Innovation
2013-10-24 On Lifestyle Rigidity
2013-10-18 Frictional and Structural Unknowns
2013-10-02 Truth in Consulting
2013-08-26 On Thinking Caps
2013-08-14 An Archetypes Map
2013-08-11 Personality Ambidexterity: Or How to Turn Yourself Inside-Out
2013-07-31 The Quality of Life
2013-07-25 The Networked Narrative
2013-07-23 Inside the Miscellaneous Folder
2013-07-01 Coincidences and Correlations
2013-06-26 Players versus Spectators
2013-06-24 Lagrangian and Eulerian Decision-Making
2013-06-06 On the Unraveling of Scripts
2013-05-21 Schleps, Puzzles, and Packages: Solving Complex Problems the Iron Man Way
2013-05-16 The Gervais Principle VI: Children of an Absent God
2013-05-14 Deliberate Practice versus Immersion
2013-04-17 So I Shall be Written, So I Shall be Performed
2013-04-08 Overtake on the Turn, Overwhelm on the Straight
2013-03-27 The Wave of Unknowing
2013-03-26 Allowing Personality to Flow
2013-03-22 Social Dark Matter: On Seeing and Being Seen
2013-02-19 The Cloistered Hedgehog and The Dislocated Fox
2013-02-13 Resilient Like a Fox
2013-01-16 Eternal Hypochondria of the Expanding Mind
2013-01-02 Schumpeter's Demon
2012-12-30 Roundup of 2012 Tempoblog Posts
2012-12-14 The Ultimate Lifestyle Planning Guide and Map
2012-12-08 Should You Count Near-Misses as Successes or Failures?
2012-11-27 Patterns of Refactored Agency
2012-11-19 Notes on Spatial Metaphors for Social Systems
2012-10-29 The Examined Life
2012-10-02 Annealing the Tactical Pattern Stack
2012-09-20 Money as Pain Relief
2012-09-17 Demystification versus Understanding
2012-09-11 Romanticism and Classicism (Assembly Required)
2012-08-16 Realtechnik, Nausea and Technological Longing
2012-08-09 The Interesting Times Triangle
2012-07-30 Literary Darwinism
2012-07-24 Happily Almost Ever After: Towards a Romantic Account of Détente
2012-07-16 Positioning Moves versus Melee Moves
2012-07-13 The Generalized Hawthorne Effect
2012-07-09 Stress Failures versus Decay Failures
2012-07-03 Five Years of Blogging
2012-07-02 Not Important, Not Urgent
2012-06-25 Fertile Variables and Rich Moves
2012-06-18 Analysis-Paralysis and The Sensemaking Trap
2012-06-11 Appreciative versus Manipulative Mental Models
2012-06-04 Time Lensing
2012-05-31 The Art of Refactored Perception
2012-05-17 Discussion Note: Sartre's Nausea vs. Future Nausea
2012-05-14 How Life Imitates Chess by Garry Kasparov
2012-05-09 Welcome to the Future Nauseous
2012-05-03 Rediscovering Literacy
2012-04-26 Thinking in a Foreign Language
2012-04-16 Hacking Grand Narratives
2012-04-10 Trigger Narratives and the Nuclear Option
2012-03-29 Lawyer Mind, Judge Mind
2012-03-22 Can Hydras Eat Unknown-Unknowns for Lunch?
2012-03-19 The Fundamentals of Calendar Hacking
2012-03-09 Routine, but Cannot be Automated
2012-02-29 Just Add Water
2012-02-20 Live Life, Not Projects
2012-02-07 The Greater Ribbonfarm Cultural Region
2012-02-02 How to Name Things
2012-01-28 Does Culture Eat Strategy for Lunch?
2012-01-19 Steer, Ready, Fire
2012-01-11 Seeking Density in the Gonzo Theater
2011-12-07 What Really Happened Aboard Air France 447
2011-11-21 The Towers of Priority
2011-11-16 The Evolution of the American Dream
2011-10-03 Mental Models and Archetypes Explained
2011-09-29 Ubiquity Illusions and the Chicken-Egg Problem
2011-09-22 Forgivable Sloppiness: The Art of Epoch-Driven Time Management
2011-08-31 Bandwagon Timing verus Biding Your Time
2011-08-26 The Scientific Sensibility
2011-08-19 The Calculus of Grit
2011-07-22 Tempo and OODA: The Backstory
2011-07-14 Diamonds versus Gold
2011-07-13 Storytelling for Problem-Solving
2011-06-16 The Las Vegas Rules II: Stuff Science
2011-06-03 Towards Thick Strategy Narratives
2011-05-24 IARPA Starts Metaphor-Based Decision-Making Research
2011-05-16 Startup Deathwatch in Memphis
2011-05-16 Strategies, Counter-examples and the UnAha! Experience
2011-05-12 Functional Fixedness and Kata Learning
2011-05-09 Time Travel for Ghosts
2011-05-08 Darwin, Some Rationalists and the Joker
2011-05-04 The One Way of the Beginner
2011-05-04 An Evening of Pace, Pace, Lead with Chuck
2011-01-19 Boundary Condition Thinking
2010-12-07 Socratic Fishing in Lake Quora
2010-11-29 What Does it Mean to Work Hard?
2010-11-05 Ancient Rivers of Money
2010-10-20 Coloring the Whole Egg: Fixing Integrated Marketing
2010-10-07 How Good Becomes the Enemy of Great
2010-09-28 Learning from One Data Point
2010-09-21 The Seven Dimensions of Positioning
2010-09-14 Cricket as Metaphor
2010-08-17 The Greasy, Fix-It 'Web of Intent' Vision
2010-08-15 Cultural Learnings of Blogosphere for Make Benefit Glorious Blog of Ribbonfarm.
2010-07-26 A Big Little Idea Called Legibility
2010-07-22 The Right Question, Review of Shallows, Insight vs. Mind-Candy
2010-07-13 The Eight Metaphors of Organization
2010-05-27 In the Real World...
2010-05-12 A Bumper May Harvest of Good Reading
2010-05-04 The Lords of Strategy by Walter Kiechel
2010-03-23 Amy Lin and the Ancient Eye
2010-03-18 The Turpentine Effect
2010-02-13 Safar aur Musafir: The Hero's Journey in Bollywood
2010-02-09 Bright-Sided by Barbara Ehrenreich
2010-01-13 Conceptual Metaphors (Mashable), Gervais Principle (Fugitive Philosophy)
2009-12-27 Work-Life Balance: Juggling, Spinning or Surfing? (Rerun)
2009-12-07 Social Objects: Notes on Knitting in America
2009-11-11 The Gervais Principle II: Posturetalk, Powertalk, Babytalk and Gametalk
2009-10-26 Fear of Improvisation (and Clunkers)
2009-10-02 A Brewing Storm in Psychology
2009-09-28 The Tao of Frogger
2009-09-23 The Allegory of the Stage
2009-08-31 How to Think Like Hercule Poirot
2009-08-24 The Pregnancy Metaphor
2009-08-16 The Tragicomic Exasperations of Expertise
2009-08-12 Two Manipulative Ways to Close Conversations
2009-08-10 Humor as Massage
2009-08-03 The Brain of the World
2009-07-01 The Rhetoric of the Hyperlink
2009-06-22 Neurotic Leaders, Paternalistic Managers and Self-Absorbed Workers
2009-06-15 Marketing, Innovation and the Creation of Customers
2009-06-07 Zen and the Art of Google Wave Mechanics
2009-05-15 The Discovery of Money
2009-04-20 How to Draw and Judge Quadrant Diagrams
2009-04-08 Design and Architecture
2009-03-02 Fools and their Money Metaphors
2009-02-21 The Solemn Whimsies of Larry Morris
2009-02-03 Who: The A Method for Hiring by Smart and Street
2008-12-15 How to Make New Year's Calibrations
2008-11-14 Spanning Silos by David Aaker
2008-10-16 Mastering the Hype Cycle by Fenn and Raskino
2008-09-11 How to Measure Information Work
2008-09-06 Organizing to Disrupt
2008-09-04 Maslow for Market Segmentation
2008-08-24 How We Fly: Aircraft as Career Metaphors
2008-08-13 Some Pointers to Thinking Styles
2008-08-05 The Next Level of the Game
2008-07-23 Acceleration as Strategy, Urgency as Doctrine
2008-07-07 Dipity, Or, How to View Time, 2.0
2008-06-11 Groundswell by Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff
2008-06-09 How Geniuses Think
2008-06-03 Context-Switching Metaphors for Work-Life Blending
2008-05-26 Information Overload and the FOOD IS THOUGHT Metaphor
2008-05-05 Art for Thought
2008-04-17 The Other Games Indians Play
2008-04-07 CEO Badger Picks a CSO
2008-03-30 The NAE's Grand Challenges vs. Mine
2008-03-16 Bargaining with your Right Brain
2008-03-05 The UnAha! Experience
2008-02-16 A Map of Communication
2008-02-11 Book Review and Summary: Strategic Intuition
2008-02-06 Creative Destruction: Portrait of an Idea
2008-02-04 How the Internet is Really Evolving
2008-01-24 How to Pick Business and Self-Improvement Books
2008-01-14 Coarse Actions, Fine Actions
2007-12-16 Sapir-Whorf, Lakoff, Metaphor and Thought
2007-12-05 The Fine Art of Opportunism
2007-11-25 Clockspeed and Business Genetics Reconsidered
2007-11-22 Visual Thinking with Triangles
2007-11-19 The Deeper Meaning of Kindle
2007-11-14 How to be an Idea Person
2007-11-05 The Age of Speed by Vince Poscente
2007-11-01 Personal Brands, Identity and Perception Management
2007-10-25 An MBA in Gordon's Restaurant
2007-10-22 Iron Filings on Your Brain
2007-10-09 Whales are Trees
2007-09-24 Strategy, Tactics, Operations and Doctrine: A decision-language tutorial
2007-09-19 Work-Life Balance: Juggling, Spinning or Surfing?
2007-08-13 The Parrot
2007-08-06 Book Review: Blue Ocean Strategy
2007-07-30 Breadth-Depth Metaphors and Beyond
2007-07-22 Book Review: Competing on Analytics
2007-07-20 Harry Potter and the Cuaron Slam
2007-07-17 Visualizing the 2d World with Cartograms
2007-07-14 The 15 Laws of Meeting Power
2007-07-06 Harry Potter and the Concept of Magic
2007-06-21 How to Define Concepts
2007-06-20 The Silo Reconsidered
2007-06-14 Concepts and Prototypes