obsession with the nominative form

• Concepts called “links” or “tags” or “labels” in Scrapbox, Wiki or Evernote

• Often, this leads to the implicit assumption that only the noun form should be used

• Technically, that’s not true at all.

• As for my personal skin feeling.

  • First, realize that you have a bias to think of the noun form as good.
  • Actively tag where you think it is important, not just the noun form.
  • It is beneficial to discover unexpected connections (connections to distant fields that one might not think of in one’s head).

• Examples of “dodging the contraption”

• If I were to describe it in noun form, would it be something like “aversive behavior”?

• Subjective image of “a harmful sharp object is advancing toward me, and I can shift the line of motion by applying a lateral force to the cutting edge or by moving myself laterally, and then I can release the force by rotating myself.”

• The diagram shows a bird’s eye view, but as for myself, I can also imagine a first-person perspective.

  • My drawing skills are not good enough to draw a first-person view of the figure.

The term “aversive behavior” seems to me to be overly abstract and far removed from a concrete behavioral image.

Including verbs, etc. rather than restricting to noun forms increases the likelihood that you can choose words that are closer to the concept you want to express. It is important to remove the limitations that the mind sets for itself.

Related: Wiki is not a dictionary Thinking of it as a dictionary also reinforces nominalization bias

This page is auto-translated from /nishio/名詞形へのとらわれ using DeepL. If you looks something interesting but the auto-translated English is not good enough to understand it, feel free to let me know at @nishio_en. I’m very happy to spread my thought to non-Japanese readers.