From an article on the psychological effects of bi-lingualism. For our real translators. And pynchon.

[Joseph Tracy]

 I wonder if those biases that mislead are really emotional /affective in origin or are they a tendency to be swayed by a system of belief and an unrealistic confidence in that system: the stock market is now trending up…, this analyst has a great record…, when tech stocks rise then….. It might seem a subtle distinction, but i think there is an important difference here. Could it be that the left brain tendency to believe in it’s ability to “crack the code” of a random system is more of a natural tendency within one’s native language which comes not just as a usable linguistic code but a  culturally patterned system of biases guided by its own intrinsic precepts.

Here I re-post an earlier description of a hemisheric brain experiment which seems highly relevant: An  example of one experiment is given of a person with impairment to the right hemisphere, and a person with left hemisphere impairment facing the same task. They were to guess which color, red or green, would be displayed next from a bi-colored light. The pattern was randomly changed but there were always 4 greens for every red. The persons with intact right brains saw the overall pattern and always guessed green to get 80% correct. The person with an intact left brain tried to figure out the actual random pattern and guessed green 4 times more than red but with far more incorrect guesses. In accord with other experimental data, the left brainers continued, despite a lower percent, to be  sure they could crack the pattern. Later the experimenters started to provide whatever color the left brainer guessed. The left brainers were then sure they had figured out the pattern and went to lengths to explain their system. Obviously their theories were wrong. There seems to be, in the left brain a greater need for certainty and to be right and a confidence in the systems it has created, despite slim or impossible chances of success. 

I am not writing this to one-up the reasonable interpretation of the writer, but because it was so obvious from the experiments I am reading about that there is another possible interpretaion of the reasons behind risky guesses. Unreasonable self confidence may not be so much an emotion as a result of intrinsic left-hemisphere processing and decision-making biases.


> On Feb 8, 2016, at 5:23 AM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> People self-report that they feel like a different person when using their different languages and that expressing certain emotions carries different emotional resonance depending on the language they are using.
> 
> When judging risk, bilinguals also tend to make more rational economic decisions in a second language. In contrast to one’s first language, it tends to lack the deep-seated, misleading affective biases that unduly influence how risks and benefits are perceived. So the language you speak in really can affect the way you think.
> 

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Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l