Episode: 3541
Title: HPR3541: The case of missing ideas.
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr3541/hpr3541.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-25 01:10:48

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This is Haka Public Radio episode 3541 for Monday, but 28th of February 2022, today's show
is entitled, The Case of Missing Ideas, It is hosted by One of Spoons, and is about 16
minutes long, and carries an explicit flag. The summer is, with negotiation painful
robotic voices will dim out a bit of beautiful, expressive music.
Hello Haka Public Radio. This is One of Spoons. I could not describe a grammar if I tried. I
do not have the vocabulary, nor possibly the concepts. Some of the words in this episode will have a
heavy Slavic accent. Many times when I've been trying to install or configure software for
electronic computers, I have found myself using documents, which assume contextual knowledge,
which I do not have. Sometimes I think myself lucky that there are any notes at all, because
often people who are trying to solve a problem in software engineering, say, in my case,
software cobbling would be a more accurate term. I think when they find the answer to their own
problem, they shoot off and do, they have that eureka moment, and they shoot off and do the thing
that they need to do, and they leave their notes as they were without the next crucial piece of
information. They say, I click on this, I copy this, you enter these three commands, or 300
commands, and it works on my machine. Fair enough, and thanks for the notes. Other times,
the document has been written by someone clearly intending to give comprehensive instructions
to implement some state of configuration, say. But in good faith and after close analysis to
the best of my ability, I've found their document to be a literal misdirection, maybe even
fatally ambiguous. Sometimes it helps if you can imagine them speaking what they've written,
and permutating in one's mind the possible emphasis, ruling out the absurd or contextually
barred results, and hoping the remaining option doesn't result in some non-reversible execution.
Other times, I think they genuinely do not realize that what they wrote does not mean what they
think they wrote in their own language. Maybe what they said described a set of situations
of which one member is the correct executive instruction. I don't want to drift into trying to
describe pre-definition and scope. Perhaps I'm observing that in technical recipes, as in mathematics,
associative priority is key, and which object or entity is performing a function or taking an
argument or parameterizing a variable must usually be not ambiguous. Between humans having fun,
all of that ambiguity and possibility is really chucklesome and creatively useful. But when you're
essentially building a clock, an abstracted clock where the cogs need to mesh correctly in order to
turn the, you know, to integrate the results that you're looking for, then I'm talking about
clocks again. I'm trying for an interesting example, but you need not worry about the detail,
such as the meaning of the individual words. I shall here attempt to present the case of the missing
ideas. The grammatical cases of nouns to which I will now refer probably exist in the minds of a
language user without them needing to specifically reference those by use of spoken words.
More concretely, if you're an English speaker, you might be aware that English language does not
modify the noun to code for the case. To provide cognitive handles for the many already missing
ideas, I will give some examples using Russian language. For each of the six cases which are
all mentioned in this episode, the Russian language alters the noun to indicate the case of that
noun. Further to those implied six forms of each noun, they also conjugate each noun for gender
and also for number. So you can try to do the arithmetic, but there will be exceptions as well.
Remember I'm not trying to teach you Russian language, so you don't need to worry about any of that.
It's just an idea which can give new cognitive tools. The nominative case answers the questions
who and what. The default case of nouns you would find in an English dictionary. In Russian language,
the subject will be in the nominative case. I think I saw that in English language the nominative
was also the subjective case. The Russian language refers to case as padi-ish and the nominative case
is imenitilni padi-ish and answers the questions kto i shto. I think in English language, you'll find
that most nouns are nominative case. I mean they have one form. This is not the case in other languages
where the form of the word depends on the function that the word is performing in their sentence.
That is the context of the idea. The genitive case answers the questions who's or what. In English,
you might say to whom does this belong? Maybe even to what does this belong? Padi-ish.
Raditilni padi-ish. Raditilni padi-ish. The question's being kavo i chevo. So where is this going
spoons? I guess I'm trying to talk about how different languages code information into sound
in different ways. And when it comes to decoding a language or a stream of information,
there is not necessarily a simple cipher of a one to one translation. In English, we tend to add
apostrophe s to indicate possession. For example, the worker's contribution. We also use
of to indicate possession. For example, the attitude of Boris. Before long, it becomes apparent
that you need to invent vocabulary to analyse the language which you are using. So you become
conscious of a thing and then attempt to describe the new thing. While we're on the genitive case,
an interesting construction in Russian is how they say, I have, or we have, in terms of possessing
a thing. While they do have a verb for possession, they don't use it in this context. They say,
to say, I have something, or more accurately, by me exists, or at me exists, or same construction
for unassiest by us exists, or unich near them exists, or would you be a yeast? Apparently,
similar constructions are used in Hindi language, Irish language and Finnish languages. I do believe
that conceptual constructs can affect the psyche of a culture. More interesting territory, the
dative case which in English will indicate to whom or to what. Dative is the case of the non-direct
object. I'm not a fan of the prefix in to describe non. Non seems much more descriptive and less
ambiguous. However, all of the literature is using indirect as the tag for my non-direct object.
Example, we gave the kernel to skynet. We are the subject, the kernel is the direct object,
and skynet is the indirect object. So in English, we say to whom, in this case, to skynet. The Russian
is camel for to whom. So they don't use a preposition to construct the to whom idea. And the
word skynet will be altered to have an ending which indicates that it is the indirect object.
For example, skynet 2 or skynet tier was skynet tam, depending on the gender or number which you
might describe to a monstrous hardware attachment to a potentially meek and possibly misunderstood
conscious entity. The useful knowledge which you can derive from this is that Russian words can
be put in different places in the sentence, and the same meaning can result. So in English, the
order, the syntax within the sentence, goes a long way to determine the meaning, like what happens
to whom and which object causes that. But with the Russian, you can really put your words all over
the place. But the original meaning will be retained. The silly example is man bites dog and dog
bites man. That happens in English language. So, native looks a bit like datalini if you go to the
underlying transcription mutations. English language, accusative case, answering the questions
whom or what. I should add to the question at korda which I will translate as towards which place.
For reasons which I will obscure for the sake of clarity, I mentioned earlier the object of an action,
the kernel in our example, the direct object to be specific. Russian language calls this
Vinitalini by Dyesh, answering the questions, qavo i što, qavo meaning whom and što meaning what.
Clues in the name, accusative case. So Vinitalini by Dyesh, one of the excuse me phrases in Russian is
is Vinitia, excuse me, to get somebody's attention. There is another one Prastitia which is when you
accidentally tread on somebody's foot and you're really asking for forgiveness. But is Vinitia?
Excuse me. So Vinitia, accused, maybe there's a recuse and a pre-cuse and a post-cuse. Oh, the missing
ideas and missing words in languages, but each of those things, those constructed ideas or those
referenced ideas because the ideas existed already, right? You're just permutating, if you like,
to add the different prefixes and suffixes to make new words to reference those ideas.
Instrumental case, answering the questions with whom and with what.
Viritalini by Dyesh, answering, qim i čim. This form would denote an instrument which helps to
make something. English language would use prepositions like with or by. So maybe with money or by train.
Or are the kinds of tools like guitars or the police, persuasion, not just hand tools. Whereas the
Russian language would modify the noun to indicate that the item referenced by that noun was an
instrument being used as an instrument or instrumental. Finally, the prepositional case,
answering the questions about whom and about what. Pre-adlogingly by Dyesh. The name of the
prepositional case might be misleading in the sense that most prepositions do not seem to
be included as targets for this case transformation. To clarify, I'll mention those which are targets.
More accurately, they would be target frames, so the prepositions would frame the target for transformation.
Then I will not mention another thing which I don't want to confuse. Really, this
by Dyesh covers the question where in the sense of the current location of an object. The prepositions
involved will be v for in, na for on and ob or o. Which both mean about the b in ob just accommodates a
following vowel. In the same way as the English add an n to transition between vowels.
So if you hear where is the dog? Gdye sabaka? You can answer on na ulitha he on street. While he
might be a masculine dog, the noun for dog is a feminine noun. But sometimes you just don't need
to worry about how you might write something down. I learned that phrase by ear. Before I
recognised how many of the phrases I was learning seemed to have different words in for the same
object. Then I recognised why my brain was having so much difficulty in figuring out which word was
which just by trying to match words for words between languages. Anyway, the where is the ulitha?
Not the dog, so ulitha would be modified into the prepositional case. So I would be thinking
that's all about where and not about the preposition in terms of any idea which you can derive
from the signal. The other cases are named more helpfully, more descriptively. I think more information
is transmitted by the names of the other cases. It seems like for the sake of completeness,
I should add examples for some of the endings. But I'm mindful that I'm just recreating some
set of information which I suppose that could then stand by itself when I inevitably run out of time.
Spot the behaviour. If I prematurely close the prepositional case, I'll mention that adjectives
are also modified for case and also pronouns. Personal pronouns are a good way to get a key
into all of these cases and how to modify or conjugate. I might spell to thee while fault was
not thine, but thou hast lost thy cases and those remind me of this and these. I don't imagine
that to fly by will improve my future understanding of configuration instructions relating to software.
Nevertheless, I'm calling it an episode. You could contact me via email at hpratspoons.1.
I did try to find some advice on how to make nice show notes for Hacker Public Radio,
but I drew blanks. Sorry, I will try again, I've got to plan for the next episode.
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