Genady

No!

It needs more data than personal experience and reflection.

Well, I've read about proto-syntax, agree with you that it is a speculation, but I don't "buy" it. I think that order and relation between words could very well be acquired from comparing them with the order and relations between actions, without any proto-syntax. Moreover, I think that phrases as whole units could be acquired before words, with words and syntax appearing later from "intersection" of the phrases. I always try to compare between different languages, the more different the better. In ASL and in Russian, for example, there is no rule for order regarding (subject)/(action)/(object). The same result is achieved by different means. In ASL and in Russian, there is no verb (be) to connect (subject) and (attribute). In English, ASL and Russian, (attribute) comes before (subject), while in Hebrew (and in Spanish, as you know better than me), (attribute) comes after (subject).

Given this sign only, I don't see any of them having a disorder.

No, I am not familiar with them.

Toss a coin.

Here, I asked my wife to email me the latest such meme and I got this: Can be converted to a rule for increasing happiness.

I think context is crucial.

No problem. I've suddenly thought of FB. I don't use it, but my wife does, and she sometimes shows me something there. I often notice memes posted by her FB friends advising on how to be happy. One could make a book of these, converting them to rules.

If you realize it, report here: Today I Learned - The Lounge - Science Forums

I believe it was the happy day and it lasted until he soon discovered that it is not so and he will have to learn more.

A neighbor of mine, a good guy, when he heard that I'm studying QM exclaimed that graduating from college was the happiest day in his life -- because he will never have to learn anything anymore. Scenario 176.12b: No time. Scenario 176.12c: He knows that somebody in the law enforcement is involved with the terrorists, but he does not know who. ... Really, with all the books and movies, can't YOU come up with more and more scenarios?

What if it is in the US and the shooter knows that there is in fact a meeting of terrorist sleeping cells going on there? What if that poor person could not flee? (in the SS officers scenario) What if that person decided to stay and fight the Nazis? How many scenarios can YOU imagine?

What if the theatre is full of SS officers?

There is a way to quote from other pages. Go to a post and click on + sign (near the "Quote"). The quote will be in memory, and you can place it in your response by clicking on the floating box (in the right lower corner, in my browser.) Also, if you have already started writing, you still can go away from the page; when you return and click in the edit box, your draft will reappear. Apologies, if said nothing new.

Surveys don't work. Results are biased, skewed, unreliable, unrepresentative, etc. Anyway, why wouldn't you learn what people have done already in this area? For starters, there are free online academic courses, e.g., here: Top Happiness Courses - Learn Happiness Online (coursera.org) Also, if you didn't see this movie and didn't read this book, I'd recommend checking it - described, e.g., here: Simon Pegg: 'We have no context for happiness' - BBC News

What does it mean operationally?

Not a useful rule, I think. But more fundamentally, how the ideas for the rules, aka hypotheses, are tested before becoming the rules? Who and how makes decisions about the rules?

Sure. IMO, the "rules-based" approach is wrong. Human psychology and social behaviors constitute an infinite-dimensional continuum. One would keep adding rules, clarifications to the rules, exceptions, special cases, etc., and will never sufficiently approximate that continuum. Moreover, after a while, children and grandchildren of the "father" of the system will have to modify older rules, delete some, replace some with their opposites, etc., because the continuum evolves.

Yes, the direct association holds only for very basic signs. Most signs have more information in them then just imitation. However, it does not make the signs arbitrary. I'd say to the contrary, it makes them more systematic. One cannot guess the meaning of a sign by seeing it. But, when one is told the meaning, one often says, Ah, of course. Especially if one already is familiar with the patterns. This is very instrumental when learning sign language. Also, if one arbitrarily replaced signs then they'd start looking really silly in most cases.

That too would be limited to phonetic alphabets and not necessarily hold for other systems of writing.

Perhaps so. But then, they (Saussure?) need to clarify that they refer only to verbal symbols.

Does not seem so in a sign language, though.

It is not without value. It is without fixed value. It allows for any value to be assigned.

No, The sum of anything. I have never asked this. I've asked,