Words are code. Most people never get an interpreter.

Words are code. Most people never get an interpreter.

Philosophy has a name for it.
J.L. Austin, 1962, How to Do Things with Words.

Most sentences describe the world. A small class of them changes it by being said. He called them performatives. 🗝️

The examples are all commands in disguise:

I now pronounce you husband and wife.
You are fired.
Guilty.
I name this ship.
I promise.
I resign.
I declare war.

None of those report anything. Before the sentence, one state of the world. After it, another. The sentence is the mechanism, exactly like a line of code.

Austin noticed these only execute under conditions. The right person, the right place, the right procedure. Say "I now pronounce you married" to a couple in a bar and nothing happens 😁.
Same words, no interpreter.

Which means words are code only when somebody runs them. The difference between a spell and a law is not the language. It is who is standing behind it. Abracadabra fails for the same reason a verdict works: one has an institution executing it, the other does not.

And the modern turn: for the first time, ordinary people have a machine that executes sentences directly. No court, no priest, no office. You type and it runs. Prompts are performatives with a new interpreter, and almost nobody has noticed that is what they are.