AI Died the Day It Was Born

On the power — and the harm — of naming things

I.

A guy who goes by Henry tweeted this:

there should be a name for the phenomenon where naming something kills it

Someone answered: Vergegenständlichung.

It’s a German word that means turning a vague feeling into a clear object. Sadly, I don’t understand German, so it didn’t work on me. In English, it loosely translates to objectification (without the political connotation) or, to be unambiguous and academic, thingification.

Perhaps the most interesting question about our tendency to name abstract stuff into concrete, tangible, perceivable stuff is why. Why do we need to anchor the world in language instead of letting it blur, morph, and merge back into patterns of sensation? Because our brains can’t stand an illegible world: We draw maps. We build measurement tools. We formalize habits into rules and standard practices. We confabulate stories to explain phenomena we can’t grasp. We believe in protective gods. And we name things.

If reality isn’t legible, can it be said to exist at all? If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound? Perception precedes reality. Intelligibility does as well. And it makes a stronger case: you can perceive the territory a map describes, but it’s not until you draw the map that the territory takes its full meaning. And then we kill it.