“Essentially, it is a game of slang invention which ratchets up both personal and group lexical intelligence in a series of phases, of which each further iteration is a pluralized expansion upon previous developments. It is possible, in this way, to establish entirely new forms of thought, perspective, action, or capacity.

Children can be observed playing the precursors of such a game with all possible innocence. They have no idea that these activities comprise an intelligence ratchet, and that, effectively, they can render themselves senselessly stupid — or prodigiously intelligent, by the effect on their own minds of the constant application of certain linquistic principles within their most tightly-knit social creches.

What we call slang, is, effectively, the alchemist’s alembic of representational cognition. Unfortunately, it too often produces the deleterious transformations of the living substrate.”

— an anonymous informant