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Day: December 19, 2015
Evolutionary changes often hold improvements out of natural selection. Does the memetic evolution of languages hold any improvements, and if so, in what sense?
Very, very good question, and I don’t know if I will answer it satisfactorily. Yes, language evolves, and yes, particular features of language are “naturally selected” because they count as an improvement. The catch is that humans have conflicting criteria for what is desirable in human language. These seem to result in an equilibrium: languages […]