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the-promise-of-words.html
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<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">
<head>
<meta charset="utf-8">
<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1">
<title>The promise of words</title>
<meta name="description" content="Beautiful, and binding, but are they any good?">
<style>
:root {
--bg: #841b2d;
--fg: #ceb588;
}
body {
margin: 4em;
line-height: 1.5;
font-family: sans-serif;
background-color: var(--bg);
color: var(--fg);
}
p {
margin-block: 2.25em;
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h1 {
font-family: serif;
font-style: italic;
text-transform: lowercase;
padding-inline: 1rem;
margin-block-end: 3rem;
}
@media (width < 30em) {
body {
margin: 2em;
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.prose {
max-width: 34em;
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.prose hr {
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</style>
</head>
<body>
<h1>The promise of words</h1>
<section class="prose">
<p>
Writing words, logical arguments. It is fun when I am constructing these
elaborate structures, but is it useful? I can make them as elaborate as I want,
but are they true?
</p>
<p>
This very village of words right here, growing in front of my eyes to be a
metropolis, does this have any semblance to reality?
</p>
<hr>
<p>
Words are beautiful. Each word is a frozen metaphor, spanning ages and
languages. Each sentence takes these already extraordinarily beautiful,
extraordinarily complex structures in abstract space that our minds can
comprehend but our bodies can't, and then hooks some of their appendages to some
those of the other words around.
</p>
<p>
Sentences are thus a linear rendition of an intricate sculpture in a very large
dimensional space. The fact they are linear isn't a problem, really; books can
transport us to realities that moving pictures just cannot. Maybe this linearity
is why code has been the highest fidelity approach we've had for capturing the
multi-faceted connectedness of what we're trying to communicate to a computer.
Over time, code will perhaps be subjugated to natural language as computers gain
the ability to talk. Or maybe not, since maybe code is not just linear like
sentences, it has a fraction more dimension than that. Not quite 2 D, but say
1.3, like a poem.
</p>
<p>But I digress.</p>
<hr>
<p>
Most people are unaware of the absolute monstrosity of the abstract kingdom of
mathematics that has been constructed over thousands of years by a few tens of
thousands of people disconnected in space and time. A castle of unimaginable
proportions, with deep dungeons and intricate tapestry, all constructed in
abstract space, without any solid ground underneath it, yet still standing
solid, and growing on. A castle that does not exist in material space, but yet
is the basis of the physical computer that I write these words on, and whose
laws make possible the programming languages that animate the souls of those
machines.
</p>
<p>So yes, words can be useful. Words can be useful, that's why people talk.</p>
<p>
But then why am I having this sinking feeling, as if I'm following the wrong
trail in a deepening evening, as I go about constructing these elaborate,
meaningless sculptures?
</p>
<p>
Is it because they bind me to some truth that I know, for sure, is contingent
currently and ultimately false?
</p>
<p>
Or am I to realize that words don't have the power to bind me, and I can play
in, and with, them regardless of the shadows they may cast to the people looking
on?
</p>
</section>
<hr>
<section class="poem">
<p>
Every word is a promise<br>
That binds me down<br>
Ever so little<br>
Until I can't move under<br>
The weight of all the tales<br>
I've told
</p>
<p>
Every word<br>
A promise<br>
That holds me down<br>
In a cage of my own making<br>
Until I can't fly anymore
</p>
<p>
Yet, I write <span class="blink"> </span>
</p>
</section>
</body>
</html>