“Talk English, Think Something Else” by J Bostock

There's an adage from programming in C++ which goes something like "Yes, you write C, but you imagine the machine code as you do." I assumed this was bullshit, that nobody actually does this. Am I supposed to imagine writing the machine code, and then imagine imagining the binary? and then imagine imagining imagining the transistors? Oh and since I don't actually use compiled languages, should I actually be writing Python, then imagining the C++ engine, and so on? Then one day, I was vibe-coding, and I realized I was writing in English and thinking in Python. Or something like it. I wasn't actually imagining every line of Python, but I was imagining the structure of the program that I was describing to Claude, and adding in extra details to shape that structure. Pub Philosophy Bros This post is actually about having sane conversations with philosophy bros at the pub. People like to talk in English (or other human languages) because our mouths can't make sounds in whatever internal neuralese our brains use. Sometimes, like in mathematics, we can make the language of choice trivially isomorphic to the structures that we're talking about. But most of the time we [...] ---Outline:(00:57) Pub Philosophy Bros(02:19) Beetle Problems(04:09) Solutions --- First published: April 12th, 2026 Source: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/ry9bz8aQcxDcu6HjR/talk-english-think-something-else --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.