Lex Fridman: preference

Transcript context

…If you keep the meaning constant, how can I phrase whatever it is I need to say? I got to pick the right words and I’m going to pick the order so it’s easy for me. That’s what I think is probably- I think I’m still tying meaning and form together in my head, but you’re saying if you keep the meaning of what you’re saying constant, the optimization, it could be The primary objective of that optimization is for production. That’s interesting. I’m struggling to keep constant meaning. I’m a human, right? So for me, without having introspected on this, the form and the meaning are tied together deeply because I’m a human. For me when I’m speaking, because I haven’t thought about language in a rigorous way, about the form of language- But look, for any event, there’s I don’t want to say infinite, but unbounded ways of that I might communicate that same event. Those two dogs entered a room I can say in many, many different ways. I could say, :Hey, there’s two dogs. They entered the room.” “Hey, the room was entered by something. The thing that was entered was two dogs.” That’s kind of awkward and weird and stuff, but those are all similar messages with different forms, different ways I might frame, and of course I use the same words there all the time. I could have referred to the dogs as a Dalmatian and a poodle or something. I could have been more specific or less specific about what they are, and I could have been more abstract about the number. So I am trying to keep the meaning, which is this event, constant. And then how am I going to describe that to get that to you? It kind of depends on what you need to know and what I think you need to know. But let’s get control for all that stuff and I’m just choosing, but I’m doing something simpler than you’re doing, which is just forms, just words.…

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