Fascinating paper: [*Your Morals Depend on Language* (Costa et al., 2014)][1].

[hongminhee@hollo.social]

Fascinating paper: Your Morals Depend on Language (Costa et al., 2014). People make significantly more utilitarian choices in moral dilemmas when the dilemma is presented in a foreign language, apparently because a foreign language dulls emotional responses and shifts the balance toward deliberative thinking.

It matches my own experience. Thinking in a foreign language feels like rendering graphics without GPU acceleration: everything runs on raw CPU, slower and more laborious. After a full day of conversations in English or Japanese, I'm physically exhausted in a way that Korean never does to me. What I didn't quite register until reading this paper is that the “GPU” doing all that fast, effortless processing is largely the emotional system. When it steps back, you end up doing more of the reasoning yourself. Whether that's a feature or a bug probably depends on what you're deciding.

[julian@fietkau.social]

@hongminhee I have often noticed that it's a lot easier to swear in a second language, because the emotional hurdle is lower. I've always considered that it could be because I wasn't raised in it. Maybe it's a related mechanism.

[hongminhee@hollo.social]

@julian@fietkau.social Yes, that's actually cited in the paper as supporting evidence: swearwords in a foreign language produce weaker physiological responses than in a native one, so it very likely is the same mechanism running in reverse. I personally avoid swearing in foreign languages because I can never be fully sure of the nuance, but I do notice people around me swear more freely in their second languages, which fits the pattern exactly.

[some@hachyderm.io]

@hongminhee "Thinking in a foreign language feels like rendering graphics without GPU acceleration" is such a good way to put it!

[hongminhee@hollo.social]

@some@hachyderm.io Thank you! It's actually a metaphor that came to me when I first learned about System 1 vs. System 2 thinking. A foreign language seems to throttle the GPU, which forces more work onto the CPU, and it turns out a lot of that “GPU work” is the emotional system quietly pre-computing your judgments for you.

[some@hachyderm.io]

@hongminhee seeing this made me think of my own personal experience learning languages as an enthusiast but also as in immigrant. I find that getting emotional in a foreign language, forces the processing from the CPU to the GPU. Nothing sensible will come out, but with 'driver updates', the GPU learns it. 😄 I think this also supports the claim why it's easier to learn curse words than others.

[hongminhee@hollo.social]

@some@hachyderm.io Ha, that's a great extension of the metaphor. Emotional experiences as driver updates; it makes sense that curse words install so fast, they basically come bundled with the driver package. 😂

[mariusor@metalhead.club]

> that the “GPU” doing all that fast, effortless processing is largely the emotional system

@hongminhee I don't think so... to me it sounds more plausible that the neural pathways that are used for native language are a lot more used than the ones for foreign languages so they trigger with less energy expenditure.

Speaking your native language is basically "muscle memory", speaking in a different language is like navigating a maze: you have to plan your route, change direction often, sometimes backtrack all together, and as such is requiring a lot more brain power.

Caveat emptor: these are non scientific musings, I have no citation for anything. :D

[mariusor@metalhead.club]

@hongminhee but then again, perhaps the reason why those neural pathways are so well tuned to work together for the native language is indeed that limbic system. :D

[hongminhee@hollo.social]

@mariusor@metalhead.club That's a fair point, and your caveat at the end might actually reconcile the two: the pathways got so well-worn partly because the limbic system kept reinforcing them.

[mariusor@metalhead.club]

@hongminhee and perhaps something which is not entirely related to the discussion.

A check failure in the game Disco Elysium brings the "Limbic system" character to the forefront to give one of the most "emotional" renditions of a song I've heard in a game: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jn2x9CSSvhs

If this does not make sense to anyone, but has you intrigued, you should go and play the game, it's really good.

[mariusor@metalhead.club]

@hongminhee for contrast the successful check song rendition (courtesy of the Reptilian Brain): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hcsZsLLuUhQ

[hongminhee@hollo.social]

@mariusor@metalhead.club Oh, I actually tried Disco Elysium once but gave up partway through. There was just so much to read, and I hit it on a low-energy stretch. It's on my list to return to someday. That clip is a good reminder.