The Goodness of Morning

post by YanLyutnev (YanLutnev) · 2025-01-27T23:25:38.273Z · LW · GW · 1 comments

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• Good morning!
• Mornings aren’t good.
• What do you mean “aren’t good”? They totally can be.

Familiar scene? I think most people have heard something like this before.

Now imagine an alternate reality where the participants of this dialogue are in the habit of reasoning in a way similar to mine. What would change? (Besides the word count of sentences jumping 2–3 times.)

• I want your perception of the current environment during the morning time frame to be pleasant.
• My perception of this current morning time frame isn’t pleasant... wait, I can recall mornings that were pleasant. Like when I got enough sleep, for example.
• What do you mean “aren’t”... oh, stop. I can’t even go down this argument thread without cringing. You already said that sometimes your perception is one way, sometimes another. For a moment, I imagined an alternate universe where people who save words in sentences get confused and start arguments because of it.
• Cringe.
• Yeah. Let’s discuss plans for today.

In this new reasoning system, a debate like “What do you mean mornings can’t be good? They can!” wouldn’t happen because the phrasing has changed, and the confusion that triggered Example 1 doesn’t occur in Example 2.

But what exactly changed? In Example #2, the property of the morning being “good” is absent.

There’s only the speaker’s perception, indicating their current state. The listener accepts this state without delving into doubts or digging for the “true” property of the morning’s state. They could go down that path but aren’t interested right now.

So I expect that in a language where mornings aren’t described using adjectives like “good,” but instead expressed as, “My perception of where I direct my attention follows such-and-such patterns,” arguments like “No way, this morning isn’t good” wouldn’t happen—until someone decides to save words in a sentence, and another person stops signaling their confusion.

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Now imagine a language where people decided to call a sensation resembling frustration over unmet expectations “zyuzel.”

The pen falls—someone in this culture yells “zyuzel!” Missed the train—“zyuzel!” Spouse left—“zyuzel!” A jacket arrives with a slightly off color—“zyuzel!” The word “zyuzel” in this case is linked to a person noticing a specific feeling. Even if it’s slightly different each time, the overall resemblance is enough to justify exclaiming it.

When a person reflects on the rule behind calling something “zyuzel,” they recall what they learned as a child: “I used this word for a feeling that was unpleasant in the moment.”

In this alternate universe, Yan Lyutnev’s reasoning system is universally taught in schools. After a pen falls and you want to signal to your friend or the crowd what type of feeling you’re experiencing, you’d comfortably say, “When the pen fell, I felt a sensation of zyuzel.” Your friend and the crowd nod, understanding.

---

But then someone didn’t get enough sleep, and now it hurts to think. They decide to save words in their sentence and declare, “The pen is zyuzel.” At first, the friend interprets this as a puzzle. What does “zyuzel pen” mean? In their society, “zyuzel” refers to a specific sensation, tied to the state of your perception. But the sentence structure makes it sound like the pen itself possesses the feeling of zyuzel, or something else they can’t grasp.

The friend asks:

• “What do you mean by a zyuzel pen?”

Our sleep-deprived hero feels their irritation is tied to the pen, and that’s it. Further mental effort for additional operations is painful. However, they’re also uncomfortable giving a response that would lead to even more misunderstanding, so they answer:

• Obviously, I called it that because of my feelings.

The friend replies that they understand.

---

Society continues to speak in long sentences. At some point, the sleep-deprived hero’s friend also doesn’t get enough sleep and finds it painful to think.

There was already a precedent where the sleep-deprived person used a new strategy of conveying information by shortening sentences, and there were no unpleasant consequences for either party. They “understood” each other, and there was even a bonus of word economy. Sure, the friend had to exert more effort to translate the unfamiliar reasoning system, but oh well—new neural connections were built, and they can now be used. The initial discomfort won’t happen again.

A month later, the reasoning system “the pen is zyuzel” spreads across the entire city because, at some point, everyone got sleep-deprived and wanted to save words, as the new strategy had proven to work without issues.

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• What a zyuzel pen!
• What do you mean, zyuzel? It’s not zyuzel at all.
• Well, what’s your argument?
• There’s no such thing as non-zyuzel pens.
• Sure there are. Read philosopher Zyuzel Zyuzelovich—he wrote a series of books proving that all pens are, in fact, zyuzel.
• My philosopher Anti-Zyuzel argues that the property of zyuzel-ness in pens doesn’t exist. It’s an illusion. We’re all just tangled in words.
• You’re so annoying—uh, I mean, zyuzel.
• You’re so un-druzel!
• Remind me, what does “druzel” mean?
• Oh, you zyuzel, it’s written on the internet that it means “pleasant feeling.” Wait, that was an old dictionary. The new one says “pleasant something.” The new authors were sleep-deprived and saved words in their sentences. And you’re unpleasant, which makes you un-druzel. That’s logic!
• Oh yeah? Well, take this punch to the face!
• Punching faces is zyuzel!
• No, it’s druzel!

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