Sapir-Whorf, slicing reality and professions

Sapir-Whorf, slicing reality and professions. The reference of Villeneuve’s film, Arrival, is very strong for me. Ted Chiang’s short story gave me several provocations.

I believe that, in particular, the popularization of the Sapir-Whorf theory is the one we commonly know as: language shapes the way we think, express ourselves, understand? With those examples now considered outdated, that a certain Eskimo people, the Inuit, have dozens of words for white, that other tribes don’t have some numbers, and several other examples that have even become pop culture.

I remember it was this film that first made me bring up more strongly the perception of the multidisciplinary professional. If you have more than your own view of the business, the product, your work, it helps you solve problems, it unblocks you.

I remember very well giving a talk about the T-shaped professional that used language a lot as an example: from the moment you understand that perception, you have another perception of reality, one that may be wide open in front of you but that you never paid much attention to.

What was interesting is that today I listened to Nerdcast number 1039, about languages (a Brazilian podcast, in Portuguese). Unlike me, it has depth on the subject: several neuroscientists and psychology professionals debating. They use the expression “cut of reality”. And they even give examples of prepositions in English where in Portuguese we usually use the same one. They ask the question: could it be that for Brazilians, for Portuguese speakers, it doesn’t matter much whether you put the ring in a box or put the ring on a finger? In English you would use different prepositions for these same examples.

Obviously one can understand the other, but maybe it makes you notice better the relationship with the object: whether the ring is being placed on top, outside, around. Do you give more importance to these facts than you would if you only knew Portuguese? English speakers notice it better. They give examples of verb tenses, but obviously some languages have agglutination, others have declensions, others have perfect and imperfect for basically every verb tense, with different verbs.

I really liked this expression, cut of reality, and I even wanted to use “slice”. Because if you think about this new mechanism of work, where specialties mix and gain importance in the corporate world, you have a general breadth. Someone who knows, sells a product, but has a bit of a design view, can see the same product through another slice and with that move the conversation forward.

I think the provocation of professionals working more by the stage the product is in, instead of having a specialty, makes even more sense. You’ll have more professionals who work on exploration, others more in the growth phase, others in the product build phase, others in market fit. This doesn’t depend on whether the person is a designer, a product person, a programmer, a business or data analyst. But all of them will have a little of the slice of reality that the other profession, the other specialty, has. That gives you more muscle to solve that problem.

Ever since the term T-shaped professional was coined, there have been these examples, right? A group discussing many ideas, someone comes along and makes a music analogy and that helps clarify the question.

This reinforces that need, both because of this market pressure and from life experience itself. The more repertoire we have of languages, of programming languages, of professions, of diversity of background among the people who make up your team, all this experience makes you better able to solve more complex problems.

And again, considering that artificial intelligence will be able to solve specific, small, very specialized problems better and better, what’s left for us are complex problems, which need a multifaceted view to find the best angle of attack.