Branch 1
The Written and Spoken Word
Every conversation begins with a translation problem. Before we can discuss anything — intelligence, suffering, God, self, or each other — we need to establish whether we mean the same thing by the same word. This branch examines the limits of language to describe phenomenon and lived experience, and the need for a common vocabulary as the prerequisite for honest conversation.
Essays
Essay
Every Reader Is a Translator
Reading is not passive reception. It is an act of translation — the reader's interior work of carrying meaning across. What becomes visible when we notice that every act of reading is an act of carrying meaning across, and that the translator is never a neutral conduit.
Essay
Translator's House
A companion essay on inwardness and identity through the translator frame. The translator's own house is always at stake in the carrying-across — the person who moves between languages is never unchanged by the work.
Essay Series
Dear Fellow Humans: We Have a Large Language Problem
A series of essays arguing that humanity's largest problem today is a language problem. The words we share conceal different realities. Before we can solve anything, we need to ask what we mean — and whether those are truly the only meanings available.
Essay
Cognitive Labor Consolidated
AI as reorganizer, not replacement. The central essay on how artificial intelligence exposes the invisible mental operations behind professional work — and why adoption fails until professionals develop a vocabulary for their own thinking.
Essay
The Phenomenology of Translation
What translation reveals about the relationship between language and thought. Includes companion essays on Ibn Tibbon's philosophical Hebrew and his introduction to the Guide for the Perplexed — the translator who understood that carrying-across is not matching but deciding.