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Old January 16th 21, 04:06 AM posted to rec.bicycles.tech
Joy Beeson
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Posts: 1,638
Default Does Slow Johnny still pull the wings off flies

On Thu, 14 Jan 2021 20:34:41 -0800, Jeff Liebermann
wrote:

On Thu, 14 Jan 2021 18:58:23 -0500, Frank Krygowski
wrote:

On 1/14/2021 6:04 PM, Jeff Liebermann wrote:

I suspect that the next translation of the bible will be into text
message abbreviations and acronyms, which is the common language of
todays youth:
https://www.webopedia.com/reference/text-message-abbreviations/


Long ago I read a science fiction novel (probably by Heinlein) that
featured some sort of secret society. As I recall, to be inducted one
needed a high degree of intelligence; but once inducted, trainees
learned a new language, one that was heavily abbreviated. The claim was
that we think by internal use of language, so learning a language whose
information was very dense (in terms of ideas per syllable) allowed much
faster processing of data - i.e. faster and more efficient thinking.


I read the same story, but can't recall the name or author. I did
some random Googling for clues, but can't recall enough of the story
to construct a working key word search. As I vaguely recall, my first
thoughts were that high speed thinking was of marginal value because
it also accelerates one's rate of making mistakes and reduces the
available time to consider side effects and "what can go wrong"
thoughts after the high speed decisions are reached. While one can
probably learn to communicate at high speeds, there's no guarantee
that they will also think at high speeds.


Found it! It's _Gulf_ by Robert A. Heinlein.

Wikipedia says that the story was written after the table of contents
for the magazine was composed, which explains why it fits its title
very loosely.

--
Joy Beeson
joy beeson at centurylink dot net
http://wlweather.net/PAGEJOY/

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