Maybe the Chinese case is explained by the lack of initialisation, but the puzzle goes a bit wider than that. For example: why does Hebrew lean into acronyms _so much more_ than any other language (that I know of)? Basically half of Rabbinic literature is either asserting that some word should really be interpreted as an acronym, or else creating a new acronym. They do this to the point that almost every possible combination of Hebrew letters has at least two possible acronym meanings, almost certainly many more [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Hebrew_abbreviations]. If your claim is "logographic languages use numbers, alphabetical languages use acronyms", the question isn't just why Indian languages use numbers, but also why Hebrew uses acronyms *way more*.
Chris Olah, another Anthropic founder, famously does not have an undergraduate degree.
Maybe the Chinese case is explained by the lack of initialisation, but the puzzle goes a bit wider than that. For example: why does Hebrew lean into acronyms _so much more_ than any other language (that I know of)? Basically half of Rabbinic literature is either asserting that some word should really be interpreted as an acronym, or else creating a new acronym. They do this to the point that almost every possible combination of Hebrew letters has at least two possible acronym meanings, almost certainly many more [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Hebrew_abbreviations]. If your claim is "logographic languages use numbers, alphabetical languages use acronyms", the question isn't just why Indian languages use numbers, but also why Hebrew uses acronyms *way more*.
I did not know about this. You should email it to Gwern.
(of course, Hebrew writings also have lots of meaning embedded in the numerical / numerological... [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gematria])