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Portable Ideas

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Re: Portable Ideas

#31

Post by adrianhoward »

stcredzero wrote: post #7

Fundamental ideas are portable ideas. Lisp didn't start out as a programming language. It was an abstract model of computation. As an ex-Symbolics employee friend of mine says, "Math never goes out of style." Eschew what's popular and what gets attention. Seek the fundamental instead. This is the difference between learning about Ruby because Rails is the current big thing versus knowing enough to be interested in Ru…

From this argument "Lisp" is a portable idea... and much as I love Lisp (and I do :-) it doesn't seem to have been a very portable outside of the kind of people who love Lisp.

Re: Portable Ideas

#32

Post by adrianhoward »

It's sometimes very hard to create "universally" portable ideas - the metaphor or story that's going to get everybody to understand and communicate an idea. You often need to bring people together a bit first so that all the groups can actually see the common ground - even if they've not reached it yet.

For example - I have some fairly strong beliefs, based on the teams that I've worked with, on how design/UX and development fit together. I've learned from experience that I usually can't just jump to the "you need to play nice - look at all the advantages" pitch. Instead I have a bunch of arguments and points for developers, and a bunch of arguments and points for designers.

The talk I giving at the mostly developer GOTO Copenhagen next week is going to be very different from the one I gave at UX Cambridge last year - because of the audience not the ideas.

Once you nudge folk a little out of their comfort zone - then you can sell the larger changes that either side would have initially rejected.

Keep looking for the portable ideas - they always help. But in the mean time I'd also pay a lot of attention to why different groups reject ideas, and use the knowledge you gain there to hone your presentation to that group.

(BTW for folk who've not already come across it "Resistance as a resource" is a good read http://dhemery.com/articles/resistance_as_a_resource/ )

Re: Portable Ideas

#33

Post by jkn »

kika wrote: post #30
gfodor wrote: post #22

This is an insightful post. I think a stellar example of what you get when you run with this concept and try to use it as a tool to influence others is seen in the right wing propaganda machine in the U.S. Often one has to sit back and wonder how reasonable, decent people can support horrible policies such as banning gay marriage, torture, and so on. At least part of the reason for this is because those in power who…

s/right wing propaganda/propaganda/gn this is a basic principle of all propaganda, right wing, left wing, anti gay, pro gay, white suprematism, black power, the list goes on. Let's give these banks just a little trillion dollars or our country would suffer. Let's burn just a few Jews in the furnace or they would sell our country. Let's take all the money from the rich and kill them and make everyone equal(ly poor). L…

It's true this pattern of "Accept to prevent " has nothing to do with left or right. However I don't think it applies to pro-gay propaganda, because the whole point of the left-wing stance on this issue is that there is nothing wrong with being gay in the first place.

Side note: the pattern "accept to prevent " is of course not bad in itself, but rather when false assumptions are used to connect and ...

Re: Portable Ideas

#34

Post by adrianhoward »

abraxasz wrote: post #6

I will have to disagree. Or rather, I think that while some bubble are pretty closed, some are very permeable. I'll take Hacker News for example. Although some people complain about the fact that there are strong biases on HN, I actually think that it is not that bad, and there are plenty of topics on which the community is divided (on top of my mind: internet piracy is acceptable vs bad, windows is a good tool vs it…

I like using the word "genre" instead of "bubble" as a metaphor for this sort of thing.

Genre's are useful - they act as a nice shortcut in the bookshop if you're looking for a particular kind of book. But I never pop my head outside of the SF section I'm going to be missing out on a lot of good reading and some interesting outlooks on life.

Re: Portable Ideas

#35

Post by kika »

jkn wrote: post #33
kika wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

s/right wing propaganda/propaganda/gn this is a basic principle of all propaganda, right wing, left wing, anti gay, pro gay, white suprematism, black power, the list goes on. Let's give these banks just a little trillion dollars or our country would suffer. Let's burn just a few Jews in the furnace or they would sell our country. Let's take all the money from the rich and kill them and make everyone equal(ly poor). L…

It's true this pattern of "Accept to prevent " has nothing to do with left or right. However I don't think it applies to pro-gay propaganda, because the whole point of the left-wing stance on this issue is that there is nothing wrong with being gay in the first place. Side note: the pattern "accept to prevent " is of course not bad in itself, but rather when false assumptions are used to connect and ...

I stand corrected - being a liberal (in the original sense, not a leftist) I used to consider all propaganda as bad. But there's indeed a 'good' propaganda. Or at least 'not bad'.

Re: Portable Ideas

#36

Post by raganwald »

adrianhoward wrote: post #31
stcredzero wrote: post #7

Fundamental ideas are portable ideas. Lisp didn't start out as a programming language. It was an abstract model of computation. As an ex-Symbolics employee friend of mine says, "Math never goes out of style." Eschew what's popular and what gets attention. Seek the fundamental instead. This is the difference between learning about Ruby because Rails is the current big thing versus knowing enough to be interested in Ru…

From this argument "Lisp" is a portable idea... and much as I love Lisp (and I do :-) it doesn't seem to have been a very portable outside of the kind of people who love Lisp.

Many ideas from Lisp have proven themselves very portable, and we see them in JavaScript, Scala, Haskell, and many other places today.

Some, like homoiconicity and macros, have been shot down whenever they tried to “achieve escape velocity"

Re: Portable Ideas

#37

Post by moldbug »

gfodor wrote: post #28
moldbug wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bear in mind that whatever it is the enlightened citizens of your enlightened country (presumably European) believe today, that country was far more right-wing than America until (approximately) 1945. Indeed for approximately the last millennium, these horrible right-wing ideas were considered normal and only a few people doubted them. I can't be sure whether your country's mind was changed by our Eighth Air Force, o…

Whoa there. I'm just a (American) liberal who hates seeing Fox News et al manipulate and divide people by compelling them to believe fervently in things not by making convincing arguments, but by appealing to their higher ideals of fairness, safety, and justice, and painting those who oppose them as opposed to those ideals. It's almost as if you didn't read my post at all. You claim that I hate the people who disagre…

You certainly sound like a citizen of the world to me. Are you sure you wouldn't rather consider yourself a citizen of the world?

One of the strange things you might discover, if as an American communist ("liberal" being, of course, a euphemism) you try living abroad, is the number of cultural tropes you share with American fundamentalists and don't share with European communists. (This discovery is forced on all Foreign Service brats by the fact that our embassies, while staffed by State Department communists, still have to be guarded by Marine fundamentalists.)

Your sympathy could be quite easily mistaken for contempt. And you don't think NPR is ever manipulative, at all, ever? When you try watching Fox News, you're eating very, very low off the hog. Try reading, say, the Claremont Review of Books.

Or here - test your open-mindedness in one step. Read a book by a Confederate:

http://archive.org/details/serviceafloatwar00semmrich

Nyah nyah nyah, I dare you.

Re: Portable Ideas

#38

Post by anamax »

gfodor wrote: post #22

This is an insightful post. I think a stellar example of what you get when you run with this concept and try to use it as a tool to influence others is seen in the right wing propaganda machine in the U.S. Often one has to sit back and wonder how reasonable, decent people can support horrible policies such as banning gay marriage, torture, and so on. At least part of the reason for this is because those in power who…

> Often one has to sit back and wonder how reasonable, decent people can support horrible policies such as banning gay marriage, torture, and so on.

What definition of "torture" are we using?

For example, suppose someone comes from a culture that stones gay men. Is it "torture" to force them to witness a gay marriage? How about two men kissing? How about two men making love? If said "torturee" is male, how about having him be kissed by a man?

I note that some folks have serious problems with menstrual blood. How about wiping fake blood on them, telling them that it is MB?

Re: Portable Ideas

#39

Post by gfodor »

moldbug wrote: post #37
gfodor wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whoa there. I'm just a (American) liberal who hates seeing Fox News et al manipulate and divide people by compelling them to believe fervently in things not by making convincing arguments, but by appealing to their higher ideals of fairness, safety, and justice, and painting those who oppose them as opposed to those ideals. It's almost as if you didn't read my post at all. You claim that I hate the people who disagre…

You certainly sound like a citizen of the world to me. Are you sure you wouldn't rather consider yourself a citizen of the world? One of the strange things you might discover, if as an American communist ("liberal" being, of course, a euphemism) you try living abroad, is the number of cultural tropes you share with American fundamentalists and don't share with European communists. (This discovery is forced on all For…

You certainly seem to like putting my words in my mouth (assuming that I don't think NPR can be manipulative as well) and also seem to be characturing me based upon a few sentences on an internet message board. First, I'm a well-to-do European who loathes Americans and has no respect for history, now I am surely an arugula-munching socialist/communist sympathizer hippie. It's rather ironic you're painting me as somehow looking down upon people whom I disagree because I'm labeling them as a "conservative" (which, as I've stated, I'm not and I don't) when you are the one so quickly to label others. I use the word "liberal" loosely here, since I do have viewpoints that fall to the right of of mainstream liberalism, but you certainly seemed to jump on the chance to label me as yet another mental stereotype. Projecting much?

If you have a problem with my argument as it relates to the original post of this thread, why not address it directly so we can all learn something, instead of us taking us so far afield with these personal attacks on these cartoonish strawmen that you are constructing? It's hard for me to take it personally since you are arguing with a figment of your imagination.

Re: Portable Ideas

#40

Post by moldbug »

gfodor wrote: post #39
moldbug wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You certainly sound like a citizen of the world to me. Are you sure you wouldn't rather consider yourself a citizen of the world? One of the strange things you might discover, if as an American communist ("liberal" being, of course, a euphemism) you try living abroad, is the number of cultural tropes you share with American fundamentalists and don't share with European communists. (This discovery is forced on all For…

You certainly seem to like putting my words in my mouth (assuming that I don't think NPR can be manipulative as well) and also seem to be characturing me based upon a few sentences on an internet message board. First, I'm a well-to-do European who loathes Americans and has no respect for history, now I am surely an arugula-munching socialist/communist sympathizer hippie. It's rather ironic you're painting me as someh…

I didn't put the word horrible in your mouth. Nor did I make you suggest that American conservatives are deluded by dark, sinister forces which have cleverly led them to believe the evil things they believe.

You were being patronizing, which is an easily recognizable form of contempt. I'm taking the same attitude toward you, in the perhaps vain hope that it might help you see how rude you're being. I'm also quite happy to classify you culturally as a function of your belief system, which is once again good for the gander.

As it happens, I don't have a problem with either "torture" or gay marriage. However, because I have been exposed to plenty of perfectly intelligent arguments for waterboarding and against gay marriage, I can tell you haven't been. No, I would not recommend Fox News as an introduction to conservative thought - try Burke. Or better yet Maistre. And have some more arugula, preferably with the chevre.

(Also, if you think there's a meaningful difference between American communism and "socialism" or "radicalism" or "progressivism" or "liberalism," I suggest the following exercise - pick an arbitrary NYT obituary of anyone over 80, ie anyone who was an adult in the '40s, and try to classify your subject as "communist," "socialist," "progressive" or "liberal." Unless you say that only a card-carrying CPUSA member can be a "communist," which is an abuse of the English language, you'll find no basis for any such distinction.)

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