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Media for Thinking the Unthinkable

worrydream.com

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Re: Media for Thinking the Unthinkable

#61

Post by swalsh »

felipeerias wrote: post #32
swalsh wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point is now someone who isn't the average reader of Nature can understand the concept... Sometimes I feel like nerds kind of enjoy the exclusivity provided by "cryptic" notation. What Bret is doing is not genius level stuff, he's just doing what a lot of people don't have the balls to do. Attempt to make "hard" things easy enough for "regular" people to understand by appealing to the right side of their brain.

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 were replaced with automated CNC machines. With these machines you can pretty much throw anyone from the street who can read on the machine. Productivity has increased so much that you can pretty much buy furniture these days for not that much more than the cost of materials alone! It really is an incredible statement.

Now not to take the metaphor to far. I realize you can't turn science into an industrial process... it is a creative process as much as anything. The main point is that as you lower the learning curve, you enable a few more people to gain the new skills required.

Again, i'm not suggesting this was ACTUALLY the point which motivated him to come up with the concept. But to me, this is the really cool potential outcome.

Re: Media for Thinking the Unthinkable

#62

Post by mietek »

anfedorov wrote: post #7

I'm a big fan of Bret Victor's thinking, but this part struck me as indicative of the criticisms he'll receive: "here, they are discussing some relationships: the regular latice, L grows linearly with n, we see L growing linearly with n, and we see C is staying constant. In the random network, L grows logarithmically, and we see L growing logarithmically, we see C going as a reciprocal relationship. When we read the…

> Does the average reader of Nature need to be shown a graph of what a linear, constant, logarithmic, and inverse relationship looks like? I don't think so.

Representing simple, familiar relationships visually and interactively may indeed not offer much clarity, just as a single brick may not offer much shelter.

Re: Media for Thinking the Unthinkable

#63

Post by fit2rule »

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…

As a developer I really appreciate his position personally. I think one of the reasons he's so brilliant is that he's a pioneer in pushing interface abstraction back and forth between the science and art worlds. I'm not sure he'd be so competent were he working under the constraints of commercial development.

What I yearn for is about 20 more Bret Victors to appear in such a way that they'd all get together in the same room for a few weeks and do some cool shit. Maybe thats where he's headed?

Re: Media for Thinking the Unthinkable

#64

Post by fit2rule »

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.

He's kind of woken up my personal motivation to do cool shit, actually. He doesn't scare/intimidate me; its more a sort of reminder that in fact if you work hard on something you love, you do it well and have a good time. So I'm getting on with it, all the while appreciating the genius that I am able to access ..

Re: Media for Thinking the Unthinkable

#65

Post by fit2rule »

anfedorov wrote: post #7

I'm a big fan of Bret Victor's thinking, but this part struck me as indicative of the criticisms he'll receive: "here, they are discussing some relationships: the regular latice, L grows linearly with n, we see L growing linearly with n, and we see C is staying constant. In the random network, L grows logarithmically, and we see L growing logarithmically, we see C going as a reciprocal relationship. When we read the…

> average reader of Nature

His point is, this average can change, and its the quality of the symbols which deduces the set of readers.

Re: Media for Thinking the Unthinkable

#66

Post by gbog »

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…

I don't know, maybe the good old separation between soft and hard science can help here. On the speech side, in soft science, I think the most powerful transmission of knowledge if by pure speech, oral speech, like in podcasts. A good lecturer will branch his brain on yours and will have a very high and precise throughput, only by spoken words. That's for history, politics, philosophy, soft sciences. The best example I know of this effect is the courses of Jankelevitch (in French), it's really like a good ride on the back of an experimented motorbike driver knowing the region like the back of his hand.

On the other side, the pinnacle of hard sciences, geometry, logic, topology, are very visual and symbolic by essence. A proof is only an explanation of a truth that is already there, that some can "see in their mind". I wouldn't imagine being able to follow a math class without a black board, that would be like a piano lesson without a piano.

Re: Media for Thinking the Unthinkable

#67

Post by thatthatis »

systemtrigger wrote: post #52

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/17455578/unthinkable_tho... "Evolution, so far, may possibly have blocked us from being able to think in some directions; there could be unthinkable thoughts." Which prompts today's startup idea: 1. Use Silk Road imitators to send hallucinogens to Amazon Mechanical Turk workers 2. Ask workers to solve impossible problems 3. Pass responses into machine learning algorithm 4. Gain god…

Your algorithm becomes a bit implausible at step 4 & 5.

Re: Media for Thinking the Unthinkable

#68

Post by chm »

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…

I get an error that the page doesn't exist.

Re: Media for Thinking the Unthinkable

#69

Post by austenallred »

chm wrote: post #68
austenallred wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I get an error that the page doesn't exist.

The last " is sticking to the link. Delete that and it works. https://twitter.com/worrydream/status/392335781374619648/pho...

Re: Media for Thinking the Unthinkable

#70

Post by Glench »

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…

Don't you see? Just by giving these talks he is building a community. Releasing the products makes everyone focus on the specific things he's made and not the things these products represent. The ideas are much more important, and he wants people to push past the things he's made and invent entirely new things.
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