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Media for Thinking the Unthinkable

worrydream.com

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Re: Media for Thinking the Unthinkable

#71

Post by FkZ »

nightski wrote: post #54
felipeerias wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, but that is not the point. This is not just about simplifying scientific notation so it is easier to digest for an untrained audience: it is about using tools to remove as much cognitive "shit work" as possible, so that our minds (including those of experts) are free to think the "unthinkable thoughts" of the title.

But you see, once you get the point where no one can draw pretty pictures about what you are working on requires your mind to be trained in this cognitive shit work (imagination?). So we'll develop a generation of people who never really learn to think creatively. Everything is just handed to you in a pretty little interactive diagram. Learning is hard, but that is a good thing. It's like exercise. The more you work…

Are you seriously saying that if scientific papers contain parts that lets us visualize their contents interactivity human being will lose the ability to think creatively?

Re: Media for Thinking the Unthinkable

#72

Post by pnathan »

swalsh wrote: post #61
felipeerias wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, but that is not the point. This is not just about simplifying scientific notation so it is easier to digest for an untrained audience: it is about using tools to remove as much cognitive "shit work" as possible, so that our minds (including those of experts) are free to think the "unthinkable thoughts" of the title.

Don't get me wrong, I understand what you're saying. The point I was trying to make is that this opens up new potential. Years ago, before there were power tools, all furniture was crafted by hand. Painstakingly. It would take a craftsman years to develop his craft. Eventually though, power tools lifted a lot of the learning curve. It became easier and faster to create furniture. Eventually a lot of those power tools…

Not a good analogy really. CNC requires careful programming of the machines; now you wind up with CNC object creators and people who work the assembly line feeding the machines.

Not only does it reduce the time to create, it reduces the skill required, the flexibility of product, and the overall level of craft.

Ignorance is not something we should aspire to or assist others in attaining.

Re: Media for Thinking the Unthinkable

#73

Post by nightski »

FkZ wrote: post #71
nightski wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But you see, once you get the point where no one can draw pretty pictures about what you are working on requires your mind to be trained in this cognitive shit work (imagination?). So we'll develop a generation of people who never really learn to think creatively. Everything is just handed to you in a pretty little interactive diagram. Learning is hard, but that is a good thing. It's like exercise. The more you work…

Are you seriously saying that if scientific papers contain parts that lets us visualize their contents interactivity human being will lose the ability to think creatively?

What I am saying is that the intended audience of those scientific papers rarely need the interactive diagrams (the equations & math are enough - most of us for example can visualize logarithms quite trivially).

But those who do not have the necessary math background - this will not really help them at all. Sure they might have some understanding of this particular algorithm - but when it comes to abstraction and extending that knowledge to other problems I do not believe it will scale. You do not have the fundamentals to think creatively (in a mathematical sense).

The circuit for example. They might now understand how that circuit behaves. But if I show them a completely different circuit can they infer how it behaves? Likely no, they were not able to pick up on all the non-linear behavior that occurs within circuits.

Re: Media for Thinking the Unthinkable

#74

Post by calinet6 »

IanCal wrote: post #59
kevinflo wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The we you're referencing includes very few people in the world.

I would think the number of people who are free to do this is significantly higher than the number of people who actually do it.

Freedom is a continuous unit. Just because I can take risks doesn't mean I will, or that I am necessarily "free" to do so, or that that freedom isn't highly limited (for example, I may be free to start a company with a 2-year ramp and some expected gain, but I'm not able to take 10 years with no income to pursue some ideas that interest me).

If so many people are truly free to pursue higher callings, why don't they? Look at reality, not theory. Find some answers to that question and you'll start to discover the wide and complex range of restrictions on true freedom.

Re: Media for Thinking the Unthinkable

#75

Post by felipeerias »

nightski wrote: post #54
felipeerias wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, but that is not the point. This is not just about simplifying scientific notation so it is easier to digest for an untrained audience: it is about using tools to remove as much cognitive "shit work" as possible, so that our minds (including those of experts) are free to think the "unthinkable thoughts" of the title.

But you see, once you get the point where no one can draw pretty pictures about what you are working on requires your mind to be trained in this cognitive shit work (imagination?). So we'll develop a generation of people who never really learn to think creatively. Everything is just handed to you in a pretty little interactive diagram. Learning is hard, but that is a good thing. It's like exercise. The more you work…

Yours is a very sad comment.

The author gives a good example here, if you choose to read it:

http://worrydream.com/MediaForThinkingTheUnthinkable/note.ht...

Basically, Claude Shannon was able to create his information theory because he could use things like calculus, probability, stochastic processes and graph theory to aid his thought process. He needed those tools to be able to think things that would have been unthinkable without them.

Re: Media for Thinking the Unthinkable

#76

Post by spion »

austenallred wrote: post #55
spion wrote: post #51

I'm always torn whenever I see a Bret Victor talk. On one hand, I agree with almost everything he says in the talk, amazed by the prototype tools he presents, the concepts he discovered to make those tools usable. And I can see that in each talk he has some new insights to present, deeper connections, better and more general creations - and thats really exciting. On the other hand, his attitude that he doesn't plan t…

One particular tweet from Victor explains his point of view quite poignantly, in what he calls the dichotomy between industry and research: "An 'Industry vs Research' dichotomy that I sketched at a conference. I probably should elaborate on it sometime. https://twitter.com/worrydream/status/392335781374619648/pho... One can understand why, given the options as viewed by Victor, one would choose "research" if given th…

Going through that list, this is what I think github style open-source prototype publishing would mean for the points made there:

Left side of the board:

- No need to ship anything. Its possible to just put whatever you have out there and let people play with it by forking it. It doesn't even have to "build", e.g. other people could start by making it build reliably. There really are no limits.

- All code is immediately applicable for builders, even prototype code. Immediately applicable means that they'll be able to read it, study it, toy with it (possibly interactively), see how it works, make some changes => get inspired

- github is not results-driven. No pressure to "ship it", on the contrary - if you want to ship something, the common path is to fork and get it there by yourself, right?

- build and exit - the exit part doesn't even apply.

Right side of the board:

- Source code does export knowledge to be built upon - and its even more knowledge than just old-fashioned media (videos and articles) - it exports hands-on, interactive, reshapeable, remixable, engaging knowledge.

- its perhaps not long-term enough, but on the plus side it actively engages a much larger number of people.

- it could indeed distract from deeper, foundational work but I think there is enough room for anyone to choose what kind of work they want to do - no need to centralize it all. For example, people could "pull" new foundational work from Victor into their own projects.

- its definitely exploratory - massively exploratory as it engages more people actively on many levels and causes an innovation ripple effect.

A tiny example: as soon as V8 implemented generators in JavaScript, the node.js community started experimenting with async runners. Lots of async runners were produced and ideas are still studied, analyzed and exchanged between various projects. But before V8 published it, it was all just excitement and discussion about the possibilities with zero hands-on experimentation and a much smaller number of ideas.

- it is indeed ongoing - nothing needs to be shipped, no project need necessarily be done.

Additionally:

- it represents extreme transparency - everything open to the public - which nicely matches the scientific method.

Percieved but non-existant downside:

- personal recognition is harder - not quite true. Its easy to think that some things may get lost in the mass of people, but usually the contrary happens - the pioneers always get the recognition. [citation needed - this one is based on personal observations]

Possible downsides:

- academic recognition: no idea how academy (and related publishers) treat open-source in general. It seems like they would be a perfect match for each other as they share a lot of common principles, but so far it hasn't engaged researchers more massively...

Its a third category - different from traditional research and different from industry. I believe its worth considering.

Re: Media for Thinking the Unthinkable

#77

Post by seivan »

jacobolus wrote: post #28
seivan wrote: post #12

Bret Scares me. He makes feel inadequate on so many levels. Am I alone on this? I don't care for most 'successful' startup people and others, but Bret in particular - is amazing.

Bret is a lovely and amazing person, but don’t sell yourself short. I guarantee you if you come up with a topic or problem to work on, and devote 10+ years to full time reading/tinkering/inventing/implementing in the field, allowing yourself to be creative, sweating the tiny details, and worrying more about making your inventions wonderful than profitable, you will be able to amaze yourself and all of the rest of us…

Thanks for the encouragement, needed it.

Re: Media for Thinking the Unthinkable

#78

Post by nightski »

felipeerias wrote: post #75
nightski wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But you see, once you get the point where no one can draw pretty pictures about what you are working on requires your mind to be trained in this cognitive shit work (imagination?). So we'll develop a generation of people who never really learn to think creatively. Everything is just handed to you in a pretty little interactive diagram. Learning is hard, but that is a good thing. It's like exercise. The more you work…

Yours is a very sad comment. The author gives a good example here, if you choose to read it: http://worrydream.com/MediaForThinkingTheUnthinkable/note.ht... Basically, Claude Shannon was able to create his information theory because he could use things like calculus, probability, stochastic processes and graph theory to aid his thought process. He needed those tools to be able to think things that would have been unt…

Of course I read it. Just like I watched all of his videos. There is no substance. Of course he was able to create information theory because of calculus, probability, stochastic processes, and graph theory. Yet for none of those did he need Brett Victor's cute little animations. I am merely stating that Brett is adding nothing to the equation here.

Re: Media for Thinking the Unthinkable

#79

Post by tmerr »

6ren wrote: post #46

Counterpoint: he notes our techniques are based on writing, but it goes deeper: our symbolic writing (including mathematical notation) is based on speech, for which we have dedicated linguistic structures in our brains, much as we have a visual center. It is deep-seated, and many have argued fundamentally entwined with sapience. Thus, even if it's not theoretically the best way, it might be the best way for us . But…

Albert Einstein in a letter to Jacques Hadamard:

The words or the language, as they are written or spoken, do not seem to play any role in my mechanism of thought. The psychical entities which seem to serve as elements in thought are certain signs and more or less clear images which can be 'voluntarily' reproduced and combined. .... This combinatory play seems to be the essential feature in productive thought before there is any connection with logical construction in words or other kinds of signs which can be communicated to others

Good thought doesn't have to be linguistic.

I speculate that the reason most of us only think in words because it's the way we're taught. We can hear the word "dog" because at a young age we were told about the association from each letter => sound. "What does A sound like? aaaaah". But what if instead our parents and teachers taught us that A was a picture? A could be a red square, and B a purple box. "DOG" might be a pink triangle next to a red and a green circle. Great, then you start to remember those three shapes as one image, just as you remember the sounds "duh" "aww" "guh" as one. And you would learn to assemble them together in all the same ways. I bet you would get very good at it.

I think that every verbal system could be represented in a visual system by just replacing each sound with a shape. I actually know of people who do this, who do this fully, just not with boxes and circles. The deaf. They can learn how to read despite having no hearing. They will report that instead of using sounds they think in a combination of hand signs and images. This is the only group of people I know that replaces all sounds with images, but there are a lot of examples of in-betweens too.

Vladimir Nabokov, the author of Lolita:

The long "a" of the English alphabet has for me the tint of weathered wood, but a French "a" evokes polished ebony. This black group also includes hard "g" (vulcanized rubber) and "r" (a sooty rag being ripped). Oatmeal "n", noodle-limp "l", and the ivory-backed hand mirror of an "o" take care of the whites. I am puzzled by my French "on" which I see as the brimming tension-surface of alcohol in a small glass.

Richard Feynman:

When I see equations, I see the letters in colors – I don't know why. As I'm talking, I see vague pictures of Bessel functions from Jahnke and Emde's book, with light-tan j's, slightly violet-bluish n's, and dark brown x's flying around. And I wonder what the hell it must look like to the students.

tl;dr you can do everything visually. Or you can mash up visuals and words. The problem of "choosing between hierarchies" isn't actually a problem, because just as you can make a sound to decide, you can make a visual symbol. If this were false then you would have to explain how sign language works.

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