Cats and dogs have more in common than you think.

For example, did you know that both cats and dogs have four legs? Yeah… There’s even more similarities, I hear…

Well the images are already dumb AI slop. I don’t know who the article is for but the images scream “don’t think about me!”. For me it’s hard to take it seriously at that point.

…or any inanimate objects, really.

LOL next time I wait for tram I’ll just imagine meaningless alien symbol arrive instead of it. :D

But really, I think the abstraction is kind of fascinating. The “closeness” of a route 34 to route 36 means nothing. Or the number of “34” in route 34 has nothing to do with gate 34 on an airport. So much is kind of obvious to most adult humans. (I think–and I suppose there might be interesting cases with neurodiversity.)

Now what if instead of numbers it was happy cartoon-like animal symbols like they use in day cares. Again, I can state the obvious: duck is a bird and hen is a bird, but the “duck route” and “hen route” don’t need to have anything to do with each other. And sure, duck route and duck airport terminal have nothing to do with each other as well. Again, sort of obvious, right?

Then if it’s alien symbols: sure, now I can’t do the connections like “32 vs 34” or “duck vs hen” anymore, can’t I? Well … no matter meaning in any other context, as long as I can recognize difference between two symbols I can also recognize similarity between other potential pair of symbols. Eg. if two alien symbols had a dominant vertical line then I could still have the same space for connections.

My point is that this need of separating the abstraction from concretion is inevitable, regardless of whether the symbol has a conflicting meaning used elsewhere. As long as we attach some understanding to the symbols, there are still some relations we might want to attach to them. That’s even if we did not use the same symbols elsewhere, which we do.

The next stage of the thought experiment: what if it’s not symbols but just the real things. Can I recognize a tram from another one? (Literally one physical vehicle from another?) Well it would be really hard but actually also counter-productive in the modern world, because the whole point of the abstraction in those arbitrary numbers is that they represent the route – which is also completely abstract concept. Ie. it does not have to be the same vehicle, and the same vehicle could be re-assigned to another route.

I don’t know where on this axis would the radio frequencies mentioned in OP be placed, though. Frequencies exist in range(s) so a certain frequency currently on your radio receiver being higher or lower than the target one does tell you how to twist the knob. (Yeah, I’m 45 years old so I have used analog radio, although it was like 30 years ago…) There must be at least one other axis to it.

We sort of do, sometimes, at some point, “stop” reading.

For example, I live in a city. My stop is served by about 5 different routes, but since I’m so close to center, the remaining part of the route is basically the same for 3 out of 5 of these. Most trips go to center though, the one that does not only goes once an hour, while the rest total up to maybe 25 per hour. (One of those takes significantly longer but would still get me there.)

Initially I would read the signage, but eventually I don’t think I really need to, since in 99.9% of cases I can just see a big thing arriving and hop on it. That’s because I already have the context of where I am, what is the time and what kinds of trips are likely. Also, the 3 optimal routes are served by tram and 2 trolley buses, while the one “bad” route is served by a regular-sized bus and the one “sub-optimal” route is served by a long bus. So just by looking at the shape of thing is arriving (or listening to the sound it’s making) I can already make a really good guess if it’s ok for me.

So my (kinda weak) point is in really common situations we kind of stop needing to look at (or even stop looking at) the numbers, although we would still remember them for other reasons.

“job” … I mean, I barely did anything but I’m happy to take the paycheck for my grandgrandgrand…(cell, or a weird pool of mixing liquids or whatever…)

If you live in a society, you’ll probably end up memorizing the meanings of arbitrary symbol sequences.

I’m talking, of course, about place names, people’s names and … what’cha call’em … words.

(Disclaimer: I’m not in a shower right now.)

All cheese is made by bacteria who live there, so it’s pretty much a building to them!

So I hereby define every cheese by relationship to a building.

(I’m fun at parties.)

The building, used by several hundred employees, had a security systems with 4-digit codes. I’ve been part of group of people who liked to work late times, and the building would lock at midnight – the box by the door would start beeping and you would need to unlock it within a minute or so, or “proper alarm” would ensue.

However, to unlock the alarm you did not need your card – all you needed to do was to enter any valid code. Guess what was the chance that, say, 1234 was someone’s valid code? Yes.

We’ve been all using some poor guy’s code 1234, and after several years, when he left the company we just guessed some other obvious code (4321) and kept using that.

By the way, after entering the code to the box by the door, it would shortly display name of the person whom the code “belonged” to. One of our colleagues took it as a personal secret project to slowly go through all 10000 possible codes and collect the names of the people, just for the kick of it.

(By the way, I don’t work for that company anymore, and more importantly, the company does not use that building anymore, so don’t get any ideas! 🙃 )