created 2025-06-20, & modified, =this.modified
rel: Stability of Concepts Stability of Concepts You Speak To
I was imagining an imaginary written language that changed each time it was encountered, only the detection of this change was not noted in the reader on subsequent encounters.
For example, you would read a manual and say it describes the process of installing a door. You throw it away into a drawer. Years later, you encounter the text because you need to fix the door (now loose) and it is completely changed (by some impossible manner). But this change is not detected in the reader.
It’s just a bit of a disconcerting thought, if I could be mislead like that.
Would it be more interesting if it happened sooner? Like if things shifted so quickly that the words on the page became so drifted and unintelligible. As if the rate of language change was so quick that it became incomprehensible without aid. I know if I did leave the book in the drawer long enough this would happen, but what about speeding that process up.
Not by contact induced change. Not by deliberate language planning.
Maybe generational replacement (within your own mind, like if you survived for eons and saw something you had written at age five) or technological disruptions are more interesting for me to think about right now.