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Importance of Conceptual Integrity in System Design

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Re: Importance of Conceptual Integrity in System Design

#21

Post by Ozzie_osman »

So I've always felt that this is true not just of technical architecture, but also of companies and products. Does your company's strategy have conceptual integrity? Can employees and investors understand it, and is it congruent? Same for your product. Do users understand the information architecture?

That said, I've definitely worked at some pretty successful places that seem more like organized chaos. I think it's just easier and more fulfilling to work on products and at companies that have that conceptual integrity.

Re: Importance of Conceptual Integrity in System Design

#22

Post by tenaciousDaniel »

Ozzie_osman wrote: post #21

So I've always felt that this is true not just of technical architecture, but also of companies and products. Does your company's strategy have conceptual integrity? Can employees and investors understand it, and is it congruent? Same for your product. Do users understand the information architecture? That said, I've definitely worked at some pretty successful places that seem more like organized chaos. I think it's…

Agreed. One of the most difficult things to get right is conceptual integrity from the product perspective. Bad conceptual integrity leads to poor product requirements, which leads to unclear technical requirements, which leads to poor engineering and technical debt.

Re: Importance of Conceptual Integrity in System Design

#23

Post by _vvhw »

DyslexicAtheist wrote: post #14
_vvhw wrote: post #11

I agree with the main point that conceptual integrity in system design is important, and it's a great article over all. However, I really think that the immediate examples given by the author are actually not great examples of conceptual integrity, because the author too quickly conflates "conceptual integrity" with "consistency" (note the repeated use of "everything is a" in the examples given): Smalltalk ("everythi…

the paper "a city is not a tree" is a perfect example of the fallacy and makes a point of the complexity of systems and the fallacies in systems thinking. The parallel is very useful to illustrate the stupidity that is "smart cities" engineering (& marketing). System thinkers envision highly complex "systems of systems" as tree-like structures (in the CompSci/Mathematical sense). It applies to all systems and models…

Thanks, Christopher Alexander is great.

Re: Importance of Conceptual Integrity in System Design

#24

Post by imbnwa »

musingsole wrote: post #13
_vvhw wrote: post #11

I agree with the main point that conceptual integrity in system design is important, and it's a great article over all. However, I really think that the immediate examples given by the author are actually not great examples of conceptual integrity, because the author too quickly conflates "conceptual integrity" with "consistency" (note the repeated use of "everything is a" in the examples given): Smalltalk ("everythi…

Everything in the human body is a collection of cells.

I feel like this is downvoted so harshly with only a single reply at this writing because there was some sentimental value to grandparent's post, but their analogy was fundamentally broken when they started talking about the design of human life from the high-level perspective of Aristotle's definition of a living thing as "being-at-work-being-itself", essentially.

More importantly, the perceived conceptual integrity of the human body is rather philosophical was put to question by Roger Penrose in his JRE episode where he talks about why the distribution of motor functions makes no sense ("the foot and walking are over here", "running is all the way over there", to paraphrase) all and we likely need a new physics model to explain consciousness as it arises in the physical brain.

Biology moved on from such an Aristotelian perspective for good reason, to slightly alter something Spinoza once said, we don't know what a cell can do. Our physical being is a radical aggregate that we don't even fully understand yet.

Re: Importance of Conceptual Integrity in System Design

#25

Post by dwohnitmok »

_vvhw wrote: post #11

I agree with the main point that conceptual integrity in system design is important, and it's a great article over all. However, I really think that the immediate examples given by the author are actually not great examples of conceptual integrity, because the author too quickly conflates "conceptual integrity" with "consistency" (note the repeated use of "everything is a" in the examples given): Smalltalk ("everythi…

Do you think there is any long-running complex system that does not have conceptual integrity? For example, does a city have conceptual integrity? Does a country have conceptual integrity?

Conversely do you think there have been any failed and therefore short-lived complex systems that did have conceptual integrity?

Re: Importance of Conceptual Integrity in System Design

#26

Post by [deleted] »

dwohnitmok wrote: post #25
_vvhw wrote: post #11

I agree with the main point that conceptual integrity in system design is important, and it's a great article over all. However, I really think that the immediate examples given by the author are actually not great examples of conceptual integrity, because the author too quickly conflates "conceptual integrity" with "consistency" (note the repeated use of "everything is a" in the examples given): Smalltalk ("everythi…

Do you think there is any long-running complex system that does not have conceptual integrity? For example, does a city have conceptual integrity? Does a country have conceptual integrity? Conversely do you think there have been any failed and therefore short-lived complex systems that did have conceptual integrity?

[deleted]

Re: Importance of Conceptual Integrity in System Design

#27

Post by yokaze »

1penny42cents wrote: post #6
qznc wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If everyone is responsible then nobody is.

This is true in situations where there is no social contract for the event at hand, like emergencies and other one-off situations. It doesn't apply where there is a social contract. Everybody is responsible for obeying the traffic laws, for example. And everybody can be responsible for maintaining conceptual integrity.

> Everybody is responsible for obeying the traffic laws, for example.

Well, we do have traffic police and courts and lawyers.

Yes, everyone should follow the rules. But the point of having an individual responsible for conceptual integrity does not mean, no one else should care and do whatever they want, but that there is, if needed, "police and judges" in place...

But there is another point: the fewer people the easier it is to have a consensus about what the conceptual integrity entails. If you have a single judge, you are more likely to expect consistent rulings, so to speak.

Re: Importance of Conceptual Integrity in System Design

#28

Post by Layke1123 »

musingsole wrote: post #19
Layke1123 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not true. Your extracelluar matrix is vital for your survival, as well as the gases dissolved into it and in your lungs. Your bones, while they have stem cells inside and have osteoblasts scattered throughout an extra cellular material. Do the cells build all this? Yes, but not everything inside of you is strictly speaking made of cells.

I knew my post had a 100% chance of a follow-up "aksually!". Thank you for the irrelevant information.

Or you could admit you spoke incorrectly like an adult and move on.

Re: Importance of Conceptual Integrity in System Design

#29

Post by musingsole »

Layke1123 wrote: post #28
musingsole wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I knew my post had a 100% chance of a follow-up "aksually!". Thank you for the irrelevant information.

Or you could admit you spoke incorrectly like an adult and move on.

I didn't speak incorrectly. You didn't understand my point and apparently not the GP's either. Diving into the construction of the human body isn't relevant to a discussion on design philosophy weighing homogeneous vs. heterogenous constructs.

"But the body isn't homogeneous! It's just mostly homogenous" is a splitting hair argument even if I'd believed you'd kept the plot.

Re: Importance of Conceptual Integrity in System Design

#30

Post by Layke1123 »

musingsole wrote: post #29
Layke1123 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or you could admit you spoke incorrectly like an adult and move on.

I didn't speak incorrectly. You didn't understand my point and apparently not the GP's either. Diving into the construction of the human body isn't relevant to a discussion on design philosophy weighing homogeneous vs. heterogenous constructs. "But the body isn't homogeneous! It's just mostly homogenous" is a splitting hair argument even if I'd believed you'd kept the plot.

It is not mostly just homogenous as previously described. It is a hefty mix of cells and extra cellular material, or are you going to argue that hair is made of cells too and that distinguishing between alive and dead cells is splitting hairs?

The fact that you even acknowledge it is splitting hairs indicates that you are aware that your analogy is flawed as you can't really think of the body as just cells and that is in direct contrast to systems we discuss in which everything, not mostly, are a certain way. Your body is not mostly cells in the strictest of senses. It is lot of non living material that is a mix or organically made structures as well as various gases, liquids and solids.

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