On the potency of language..

We say "good music gives you goosebumps". Very reductively, you could argue the whole point of a musician's entire career is literally just to get good at making your skin hair wiggle. What if we're overlooking the possibility that the presence of a physically-sensed reaction would make us value something more?

I think the future of communication could involve something kind of like that, for better or for worse. Optimizing communications for physical reactions. The value prop may just be too high, if the causal direction of this effect (on salience) is actually real.

I read a news article about Trump's re-election in Nov 2024, where they interviewed one of his supporters - they said something to the effect of "when I heard the news, my whole nervous system just suddenly relaxed." I wouldn't be surprised if forms of communication get more and more optimized, whether via RLHF or recsys likes or some other means, for their ability to target, for lack of a better term, "embodiment goals"