Night Cities, Impossible Taxis, and the "Purpous" of Turing Machines: Are Things Different Than They Are?
That previous post was pretty grim, and I’m sure I haven’t heard the last of the controversies it must have generated. So this time I’m going back to lighter fare. As always: book reviews, words, and the self-promo. I'll deal with the latter first and get it out of the way: My novel "Ussers and the Echo of Nothing" (surrealism, magical realism) may soon be pulled from publication. Get it now before it's gone! The Tond series (epic high fantasy) is still available. Both deal with other worlds, maybe worlds where things aren't as they are; but in different ways. Also, check out the sister blog, The SoundScroll, about music.
Today’s Words: Mandela Effect, Turing Machine, Purpous (yes, I mean “purpous”, not “purpose”, “propose”, or “porpoise”!).
The Mandela Effect: A lot of people remember the exact time and place where they were when they heard that Nelson Mandela died in prison. But Nelson Mandela didn’t die in prison; he was released and later became president of South Africa. The “fact” that he died in prison is a false memory. Some commentators suggest that this kind of “memory” indicates that the multiverse exists and we’ve gone from one node to another. But there may be a more prosaic reason: simple psychology predicts that similar facts (there were anti-apartheid activists who died in prison) may be confabulated in the mind to produce a new “fact”, and if mentioned from one person to another, can spread. A sort-of rumor that everyone remembers. Brain science also indicates that if a memory gets “deleted” (for whatever reason; maybe a misfiring of a neuron), the brain may spontaneously produce a new or altered one. If this new memory gets shared, again from person to person, the result is the same.
Turing Machine: Not a machine that takes tours, but a “hypothetical computing device introduced in 1936 by the English mathematician and logician Alan M. Turing. Turing originally conceived the machine as a mathematical tool that could infallibly recognize undecidable propositions—i.e., those mathematical statements that, within a given formal axiom system, cannot be shown to be either true or false.” (Turing machine | Definition & Facts | Britannica)
Purpous: A (mis)spelling of “purpose” that may exist somewhere else in the multiverse, if the multiverse exists. More on that later.
False memories that everyone remembers anyway; theoretical machines; misspellings that aren’t misspellings (or are they?)… Glitches in the matrix? Is there a matrix? Is there a multiverse? I’m going to blog about worlds that are not what they seem (or are not what they are). This doesn’t really have anything to do with Everything Everywhere All at Once (though I enjoyed that movie), but these topics came up in some books I read and in a recent Social Media discussion. I’ll begin with three books on these topics. One is historical fiction, the other two are speculative fiction about worlds that are (and are not) ours. I first posted these reviews on the local public library’s website.
A Madman Dreams of Turing Machines
By Janna Levin
(Vague spoilers ahead, though I'm guessing that anyone interested in this book will probably already know its basic gist.) This is a fascinating semi-fictional account of the lives of two eccentric (?) geniuses whose discoveries (inventions, theorems) changed the course of mathematics but were in some ways opposite. (Gödel theorized that in any mathematical system there would always be some problems that are unsolvable, while Turing set about breaking the "unbreakable" code and invented a machine to do so. This machine was the forerunner of the computer, though the more general-use "Turing machine" remained hypothetical.) The storyline itself reads like an algebraic equation: incidents are inserted (parenthetically) into other incidents to be solved (read) first, while they balance out with similar (or opposed) chapters about the other character. Much of the story of Alan Turing is retold in the movie "The Imitation Game".
Kabu Kabu
By Nnedi Okorafor
Beginning with a hilarious send-up of an insulting trope, this is a fantastic (and fantastical) collection of sci-fi, fantasy, and "magical realist" stories (and one horror story). There is frenetic story about a transdimensional taxi; a story about befriending an otherwise dangerous spiderbot who inspects oil pipelines, and stories about people who can fly. Nigeria, where the author was born and grew up, becomes something new: not a country that one may find on a map or travel to, but a sort-of mythic otherworld: Narnia in Africa, and almost a recurring character in its own right. Some of the stories are better than others, and three of them are different versions of the same story (though the repetition is more interesting than redundant), but altogether they form a good introduction to the author of the Binti series.
The City in the Middle of the Night
By Charlie Jane Anders
A triumph of world-building; the human and alien cultures seem real and are well thought-out (even the languages, which aren't constructed as conlangs but described in detail), and the characters fit into their world perfectly. At first I thought the plot would be familiar from Dune, and to a lesser extent, Hamlet and the Lion King (the protagonist is sent into exile but comes back with an army) but after a few chapters I realized that that's not where the story is going at all. Near the end there's an eerie Lovecraftian twist, and then the end seems hopeful but is unresolved; so there will probably be sequels. I will be waiting.
A Discussion with(out) a Purpous
Now, back to this world. Or not. I made the following post in Facebook linguistics group earlier this week:
ME: A question, or rather an enigma, about English orthography rather than linguistics per se. It concerns the spelling of the word “purpose”. I learned it as “purpous” as a kid, and that’s how I spelled it for years. I don’t remember anyone ever commenting on it. Then, while teaching in Japan, I encountered the spelling ”purpose” in a textbook; at first I didn’t even recognize the word (I pronounced it “per-POZE”) and asked what it meant. When I was informed what it was, I assumed it to be a British spelling (since the textbook was published in England). Then I started seeing the spelling ”purpose” everywhere, even in American-published books. At some point I read a book on psychology (not initially a related endeavor) and found how false memories can sometimes form spontaneously; I assumed ”purpous” was one of these and thought little more about it. So here’s the mystery: lately, the spelling ”purpous” has turned up in a couple of books I’ve read, and also spell-check doesn’t flag it. Does anyone reading this know if “purpous” is some kind of alternate spelling? (Googling it turns up nothing.) If so, what might be its origins? Did anyone else learn it that way as a kid? Is this a version of the Mandela Effect? Any clues? I’m very curious.
Answers came in from various directions. Here are some of them (names changed and abbreviated, except for “ME”.)
QC: Nope. Never even seen that spelling variation.
OE: Me, neither.
CX: (This doesn’t help, but) I had a rude awakening on the spelling of "Prerogative" when studying Latin prefixes and etymology in high school. To this day I have yet to hear someone pronounce that first R in any significant way.
ME: I say the first R in prerogative; but then again I say the H in "why" and "whale' (etc.; hwai, hweil) and pronounce two T's in thirteen, fourteen, and eighteen.
CX: Me too, all of that.
ME: Are you from Seattle?
CX: No, Texas, Berkeley, Hawai'i, Israel, DC among other places but not Seattle.
KW: “Purpous” was one of the spellings of the verb form in Middle English according to the OED. But would be very surprised if you found it in a standard language publication these days.
ME: So, Ian McGilchrist, Maya Angelou, and Kim Stanley Robinson were using a Middle English spelling. They're the authors of the books in which "purpous" has shown up, or where I've noticed it, anyway. (I'm not arguing, I'm just stating where I've seen it, which is what prompted me to ask this question.)
KW: Interesting. It does seem to appear on occasion - I wonder if in these places you noticed it, it was part of narration or dialogue, and whether it was surrounded by otherwise standard orthography/dialect?
ME: One was a speculative novel about the year 2312; one was an autobiography filled with poetry, and one was a carefully-presented new theory in brain science. All cases were surrounded by otherwise standard orthography; the poetry one had some unexpected sentence constructions (of course; poetry!) but most of the spellings were "normal" except for some nonstandard words, of which "purpous" is not one.
ME: As Spock would say, "Fascinating."
RR: Here is a really good article that I read on BBC a couple of days ago about spelling in different writing systems. I wish we had this article when we taught our unit on spelling system in Intro Linguistics last year.
ME: Looks interesting! I'll give it a read when I get a little time.
ME (later): I read it. Interesting. With hiragana and katakana (and kanji), there are none that look like mirror images of each other (like "b" and "d" in the Latin alphabet) but there are some that differ only in the order in which the strokes (lines) are made when writing -- this wouldn't seem to make any difference in the resulting letter but it actually creates subtly different angles. ソ and ン, for example. It seems like the differences in motor skills used in writing them voids any possible perceptual errors.
ME: A very good Hindi movie about dyslexia. It's actually free on Youtube. (It's a musical: beware of earworms! LOL)
SS: Google turns up a lot of results for me with the spelling you learned. Be sure to use quotation marks so that they don't give results of the main spelling.
ME: Hmmm, you're right. I added the quotes and got several results; I never saw any before but I never thought about using quotes for just one word.
CX: Somehow makes me remember... my wife (we're American) was teaching English in Israel, and the textbook had a section on "used to." Only thing, the negative was "usen't to." We'd never heard such a thing, but no, they insisted she teach that. I learned later that somewhere they DO say that.
ME: Some of the teachers in Japan insisted that I teach "John likes an apple" instead of "John likes apples" because John could only eat one apple at a time. I've never heard that anywhere else either.
CD: I'm smiling. When we were growing up, my family subscribed us to Highlights Magazine. The tagline on its cover was "Fun with a Purpose." At six and seven, I pronounced it "per-POZE" until, at eight or so, I found out that it was a word I already knew. (At least when I said it.)
GV: I am from a universe in which purpose has been spelled "purpose" through my entire 45 years of existence. However you come to find yourself in this universe, welcome!
I spelled "recommend" wrong as an eighth grader, but I remember adding my incorrect spelling to my Commodore's spell check dictionary. In the universe I'm from "variation" and "unnerve" are spelled as I've spelled them, which is why I missed them in two consecutive spelling bees.
One thing I am quite certain of is that "Berenstain" used to be "Berenstein." Interestingly, there are a few pieces of swag that reflect this.
If, however, there is no Mandela funny business going on, your teachers may not have noticed that "purpose" was misspelled.
ME: "Variation" and "unnerve" are spelled correctly there...
GV: I misspelled them "veriation" and "unerve" in the school spelling bees in fourth and fifth grade respectively. We always remember the words we miss...
Berenstein Bears is cemented in my memory because, at age 7, I agonized over whether it was pronounced "Berenstine" or "Berensteen." The current spelling poses no such problem for second-graders. Interestingly, in the current universe, the spelling I remember was the original spelling but in our current reality's history, the Berenstein family changed the spelling to Berenstain when they came to America. There are some serious "Back to the Future" timeline shenanigans going on...
ME: I would be unlikely to misspell "unnerve" (as "unerve", anyway) because I pronounce it with two N's. However, I never pronounced "purpous" to rhyme with "her house". ...The Mandela effect got me once with the first Lord of the Rings movie (the old animated one). I'm sure that the first time I saw it, it ended with Frodo, Sam, and Gollum walking off towards Mordor; but then when I saw it years later (at two different times!) there was another scene added onto the end. Also, some scenes appear to be mirror images. … And don't ask me about the notation of rests in sheet music. I'm still trying to figure that one out. I'm sure that they changed at some point; I can even recall the mnemonic device I learned (not “made up!”) as a kid to remember them (and it's completely wrong).
Conclusion
"Barenstein Bears" is probably due to familiarity: there are a lot of surnames that end in "stein" but few that end in "stain". However, "purpous" and some of the other strangeness in this conversation is just plain, well, strange. (As is Tony Bradner's experience in "Ussers and the Echo of Nothing"; and "usser" is not a misspelling of "user".) Maybe all of this is simply unsolvable, as Gödel would postulate, or maybe we need a Turing machine to figure out these alternate realities and multiverses. Or not.
Today’s Words: Mandela Effect, Turing Machine, Purpous (yes, I mean “purpous”, not “purpose”, “propose”, or “porpoise”!).
The Mandela Effect: A lot of people remember the exact time and place where they were when they heard that Nelson Mandela died in prison. But Nelson Mandela didn’t die in prison; he was released and later became president of South Africa. The “fact” that he died in prison is a false memory. Some commentators suggest that this kind of “memory” indicates that the multiverse exists and we’ve gone from one node to another. But there may be a more prosaic reason: simple psychology predicts that similar facts (there were anti-apartheid activists who died in prison) may be confabulated in the mind to produce a new “fact”, and if mentioned from one person to another, can spread. A sort-of rumor that everyone remembers. Brain science also indicates that if a memory gets “deleted” (for whatever reason; maybe a misfiring of a neuron), the brain may spontaneously produce a new or altered one. If this new memory gets shared, again from person to person, the result is the same.
Turing Machine: Not a machine that takes tours, but a “hypothetical computing device introduced in 1936 by the English mathematician and logician Alan M. Turing. Turing originally conceived the machine as a mathematical tool that could infallibly recognize undecidable propositions—i.e., those mathematical statements that, within a given formal axiom system, cannot be shown to be either true or false.” (Turing machine | Definition & Facts | Britannica)
Purpous: A (mis)spelling of “purpose” that may exist somewhere else in the multiverse, if the multiverse exists. More on that later.
False memories that everyone remembers anyway; theoretical machines; misspellings that aren’t misspellings (or are they?)… Glitches in the matrix? Is there a matrix? Is there a multiverse? I’m going to blog about worlds that are not what they seem (or are not what they are). This doesn’t really have anything to do with Everything Everywhere All at Once (though I enjoyed that movie), but these topics came up in some books I read and in a recent Social Media discussion. I’ll begin with three books on these topics. One is historical fiction, the other two are speculative fiction about worlds that are (and are not) ours. I first posted these reviews on the local public library’s website.
A Madman Dreams of Turing Machines
By Janna Levin
(Vague spoilers ahead, though I'm guessing that anyone interested in this book will probably already know its basic gist.) This is a fascinating semi-fictional account of the lives of two eccentric (?) geniuses whose discoveries (inventions, theorems) changed the course of mathematics but were in some ways opposite. (Gödel theorized that in any mathematical system there would always be some problems that are unsolvable, while Turing set about breaking the "unbreakable" code and invented a machine to do so. This machine was the forerunner of the computer, though the more general-use "Turing machine" remained hypothetical.) The storyline itself reads like an algebraic equation: incidents are inserted (parenthetically) into other incidents to be solved (read) first, while they balance out with similar (or opposed) chapters about the other character. Much of the story of Alan Turing is retold in the movie "The Imitation Game".
Kabu Kabu
By Nnedi Okorafor
Beginning with a hilarious send-up of an insulting trope, this is a fantastic (and fantastical) collection of sci-fi, fantasy, and "magical realist" stories (and one horror story). There is frenetic story about a transdimensional taxi; a story about befriending an otherwise dangerous spiderbot who inspects oil pipelines, and stories about people who can fly. Nigeria, where the author was born and grew up, becomes something new: not a country that one may find on a map or travel to, but a sort-of mythic otherworld: Narnia in Africa, and almost a recurring character in its own right. Some of the stories are better than others, and three of them are different versions of the same story (though the repetition is more interesting than redundant), but altogether they form a good introduction to the author of the Binti series.
The City in the Middle of the Night
By Charlie Jane Anders
A triumph of world-building; the human and alien cultures seem real and are well thought-out (even the languages, which aren't constructed as conlangs but described in detail), and the characters fit into their world perfectly. At first I thought the plot would be familiar from Dune, and to a lesser extent, Hamlet and the Lion King (the protagonist is sent into exile but comes back with an army) but after a few chapters I realized that that's not where the story is going at all. Near the end there's an eerie Lovecraftian twist, and then the end seems hopeful but is unresolved; so there will probably be sequels. I will be waiting.
A Discussion with(out) a Purpous
Now, back to this world. Or not. I made the following post in Facebook linguistics group earlier this week:
ME: A question, or rather an enigma, about English orthography rather than linguistics per se. It concerns the spelling of the word “purpose”. I learned it as “purpous” as a kid, and that’s how I spelled it for years. I don’t remember anyone ever commenting on it. Then, while teaching in Japan, I encountered the spelling ”purpose” in a textbook; at first I didn’t even recognize the word (I pronounced it “per-POZE”) and asked what it meant. When I was informed what it was, I assumed it to be a British spelling (since the textbook was published in England). Then I started seeing the spelling ”purpose” everywhere, even in American-published books. At some point I read a book on psychology (not initially a related endeavor) and found how false memories can sometimes form spontaneously; I assumed ”purpous” was one of these and thought little more about it. So here’s the mystery: lately, the spelling ”purpous” has turned up in a couple of books I’ve read, and also spell-check doesn’t flag it. Does anyone reading this know if “purpous” is some kind of alternate spelling? (Googling it turns up nothing.) If so, what might be its origins? Did anyone else learn it that way as a kid? Is this a version of the Mandela Effect? Any clues? I’m very curious.
Answers came in from various directions. Here are some of them (names changed and abbreviated, except for “ME”.)
QC: Nope. Never even seen that spelling variation.
OE: Me, neither.
CX: (This doesn’t help, but) I had a rude awakening on the spelling of "Prerogative" when studying Latin prefixes and etymology in high school. To this day I have yet to hear someone pronounce that first R in any significant way.
ME: I say the first R in prerogative; but then again I say the H in "why" and "whale' (etc.; hwai, hweil) and pronounce two T's in thirteen, fourteen, and eighteen.
CX: Me too, all of that.
ME: Are you from Seattle?
CX: No, Texas, Berkeley, Hawai'i, Israel, DC among other places but not Seattle.
KW: “Purpous” was one of the spellings of the verb form in Middle English according to the OED. But would be very surprised if you found it in a standard language publication these days.
ME: So, Ian McGilchrist, Maya Angelou, and Kim Stanley Robinson were using a Middle English spelling. They're the authors of the books in which "purpous" has shown up, or where I've noticed it, anyway. (I'm not arguing, I'm just stating where I've seen it, which is what prompted me to ask this question.)
ME: One was a speculative novel about the year 2312; one was an autobiography filled with poetry, and one was a carefully-presented new theory in brain science. All cases were surrounded by otherwise standard orthography; the poetry one had some unexpected sentence constructions (of course; poetry!) but most of the spellings were "normal" except for some nonstandard words, of which "purpous" is not one.
ME: As Spock would say, "Fascinating."
RR: Here is a really good article that I read on BBC a couple of days ago about spelling in different writing systems. I wish we had this article when we taught our unit on spelling system in Intro Linguistics last year.
ME: Looks interesting! I'll give it a read when I get a little time.
ME (later): I read it. Interesting. With hiragana and katakana (and kanji), there are none that look like mirror images of each other (like "b" and "d" in the Latin alphabet) but there are some that differ only in the order in which the strokes (lines) are made when writing -- this wouldn't seem to make any difference in the resulting letter but it actually creates subtly different angles. ソ and ン, for example. It seems like the differences in motor skills used in writing them voids any possible perceptual errors.
ME: A very good Hindi movie about dyslexia. It's actually free on Youtube. (It's a musical: beware of earworms! LOL)
SS: Google turns up a lot of results for me with the spelling you learned. Be sure to use quotation marks so that they don't give results of the main spelling.
ME: Hmmm, you're right. I added the quotes and got several results; I never saw any before but I never thought about using quotes for just one word.
ME: Some of the teachers in Japan insisted that I teach "John likes an apple" instead of "John likes apples" because John could only eat one apple at a time. I've never heard that anywhere else either.
CD: I'm smiling. When we were growing up, my family subscribed us to Highlights Magazine. The tagline on its cover was "Fun with a Purpose." At six and seven, I pronounced it "per-POZE" until, at eight or so, I found out that it was a word I already knew. (At least when I said it.)
GV: I am from a universe in which purpose has been spelled "purpose" through my entire 45 years of existence. However you come to find yourself in this universe, welcome!
I spelled "recommend" wrong as an eighth grader, but I remember adding my incorrect spelling to my Commodore's spell check dictionary. In the universe I'm from "variation" and "unnerve" are spelled as I've spelled them, which is why I missed them in two consecutive spelling bees.
One thing I am quite certain of is that "Berenstain" used to be "Berenstein." Interestingly, there are a few pieces of swag that reflect this.
If, however, there is no Mandela funny business going on, your teachers may not have noticed that "purpose" was misspelled.
ME: "Variation" and "unnerve" are spelled correctly there...
GV: I misspelled them "veriation" and "unerve" in the school spelling bees in fourth and fifth grade respectively. We always remember the words we miss...
Berenstein Bears is cemented in my memory because, at age 7, I agonized over whether it was pronounced "Berenstine" or "Berensteen." The current spelling poses no such problem for second-graders. Interestingly, in the current universe, the spelling I remember was the original spelling but in our current reality's history, the Berenstein family changed the spelling to Berenstain when they came to America. There are some serious "Back to the Future" timeline shenanigans going on...
ME: I would be unlikely to misspell "unnerve" (as "unerve", anyway) because I pronounce it with two N's. However, I never pronounced "purpous" to rhyme with "her house". ...The Mandela effect got me once with the first Lord of the Rings movie (the old animated one). I'm sure that the first time I saw it, it ended with Frodo, Sam, and Gollum walking off towards Mordor; but then when I saw it years later (at two different times!) there was another scene added onto the end. Also, some scenes appear to be mirror images. … And don't ask me about the notation of rests in sheet music. I'm still trying to figure that one out. I'm sure that they changed at some point; I can even recall the mnemonic device I learned (not “made up!”) as a kid to remember them (and it's completely wrong).
Conclusion
"Barenstein Bears" is probably due to familiarity: there are a lot of surnames that end in "stein" but few that end in "stain". However, "purpous" and some of the other strangeness in this conversation is just plain, well, strange. (As is Tony Bradner's experience in "Ussers and the Echo of Nothing"; and "usser" is not a misspelling of "user".) Maybe all of this is simply unsolvable, as Gödel would postulate, or maybe we need a Turing machine to figure out these alternate realities and multiverses. Or not.
Comments
Post a Comment