Philosophy in general abounds with type errors. Many gotchas in gedankenexperiments rely on mucking about with reference-referent relations at different points in the chain of reasoning. Changing language so this sort of switcheroo is more easily seen was Korzybski’s main goal.
The tl;dr version imo (science and sanity is very long):
“Why” can refer to at least 4 different things, and more if you split up the dimensions of time, and variance/invariance. Repeated why steps at different levels of abstraction can switch freely between them.
The to-be verb form is doing lossy compression disguised as lossless compression.
Positive and negative evidential types are freely switched between without us noticing. Consider how much you need to pause to really understand the potential differences between “I perceive that she does not have a cup” vs “I do not perceive that she has a cup.”
Standard set theory problems wrt language ala Wittgenstein.
Philosophy in general abounds with type errors. Many gotchas in gedankenexperiments rely on mucking about with reference-referent relations at different points in the chain of reasoning. Changing language so this sort of switcheroo is more easily seen was Korzybski’s main goal.
The tl;dr version imo (science and sanity is very long):
“Why” can refer to at least 4 different things, and more if you split up the dimensions of time, and variance/invariance. Repeated why steps at different levels of abstraction can switch freely between them.
The to-be verb form is doing lossy compression disguised as lossless compression.
Positive and negative evidential types are freely switched between without us noticing. Consider how much you need to pause to really understand the potential differences between “I perceive that she does not have a cup” vs “I do not perceive that she has a cup.”
Standard set theory problems wrt language ala Wittgenstein.
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Just kidding, but the compression ratio in this comment was awesome.