Comments within, but first, Peter, please, for the love of
readability, edit your messages when you respond, you don't need to
quote everything. (01)
On Thu, 15 May 2003, Peter P. Jones wrote: (02)
> > > > I wouldn't call it fogging the picture, I'd call it, perhaps,
> > > > layering.
> > >
> > > Which implies that distinguishability is retrievable. That's fine as
> > > long as the algorithm for retrieval is not hidden.
> >
> > I suppose that depends on what you mean by algorithm.
>
> I used the term algorithm because of your use of the term layering -
> layering implies an ordering in my mind. (03)
I'm thinking of different colored lenses, lined up in a row, the
light that comes through is altered by all the lenses. Things are
both added and taken away. Shuffle the stack, get a different
view. (04)
> > Wiki is a _tool_ not a method. It can be a tool that is a part of a
> > method. Like most tools it works for some people and not for others.
> > There is no one true tool. It's clear that it doesn't work so well for
> > the goals you have mentioned (natural language processing, well
> > defined classes of information rather than fuzzy categories of
> > context).
>
> Yes, but my sole point really is that the obstacles to that
> interoperability are small almost to the point of being trivial to
> remove (i.e. allowing few spaces in a link labelling term). (05)
Have you seen when Bill, Eugene, Tom and I write email we
sometimes used WikiWords for no apparent reason? It's because
they are a cognitive aid for us and in the community of people
who use them they are a signifier. WikiWords means something not
quite the same as wiki words. Much of it having to do the with
a sense of belonging and membership that some might describe as
cliquey. (06)
Under some circumstances, though, groupness is a very important
part of production. (07)
When Jack dropped WikiWords out of NexistWiki in favor of more
intentional, described and formal linkages my interest flagged
somewhat (sorry Jack!) because I felt like the system had lost a
great deal as a tool for creative thought. Formal links, for me,
come after the writing stage, they occur during the refactoring
period and maybe by someone else. I'm certainly not trying to
suggest that there is no place for them, simply that there is
(for me) a different time. This is why I think of Wikis as a
piece of a pie, not the whole pie. (08)
> > I like this because I was (happily) brainwashed by a physics
> > teacher in high school who said that the true genius is someone
> > who can draw connections between seemingly disparate ideas.
>
> But you have to be able to communicate those insights of genius
> otherwise people with influence will think you are just another
> raving loon. (09)
Yes, no doubt. I'm often described as a raving loon. Sometimes I
react to that by thinking I'm inarticulate. Other times I decide
that the man and his rules does not dig on my hippy ways. (010)
Actually, here's a quote from a message I sent to Kathryn (on
this list) today. I was reading a posting in Dave Pollard's blog: (011)
http://blogs.salon.com/0002007/2003/05/15.html#a227 (012)
and that pointed me to the stumble in the message. I think this
fits in here: (013)
-=-=-
Stumbled across this article: (014)
http://tompaine.com/feature2.cfm/ID/7747 (015)
and thought, huh if you replace conservative and liberal in this
conversation with some sort of formalisms emergence balancing
thing, it sort of (but not quite) still fits. (016)
What you think? (017)
Also, have you seen this before: (018)
http://www.mentoringforchange.co.uk/pdf/04MfCNew.pdf (019)
On the second page is a values map which seems to explain an
awful lot.
-=-=- (020)
If it doesn't explain an awful lot, it certainly explains many of
my biases. A comment in Dave's blog points to Spiral Dynamics and
Gravesian Psychology, which I guess are models for human
evolution, which in the end is what we're talking about here. (021)
What the hell does this have to do with Wikis? Well, I think we
keep stumbling across barriers in communication put up between
holists and reductionists. We may not do it intentionally but our
chatter looks like that (when I stack up the colored lenses and
see what there is to see). (022)
Wikis takes a holistic emergent attitude: let's throw some stuff
at the wall and see what sticks. (023)
> I find I have to struggle to communicate ideas clearly all the time,
> but I think it is important that I make my best effort, however short
> of the mark that falls in actuality. (024)
I struggle with the following question: (025)
What's better: communicating effectively to the largest
audience, or speaking soon so that at least some people can
hear you and help you refine the ideas? (026)
(That's (again) Wiki in a nutshell.) (027)
The physics world has been changed by quick access to preprints.
I can't make much sense of those things, but the people who can
streak onwards into the future. (028)
> For me then, it would be good to have a tool that supports both
> connecting ideas and empowering communication in one move. (029)
Sure that might be great, but I'm not sure it is possible:
there's something necessary about deliberate conversation (with
others or even with oneself) that leads to understandable
synthesis. (030)
A barrier we might be having in this conversation is that I'm
rather thouroughly convinced that true synthesis (call it
inference) can't be done by machines. This is my whole
classification versus categorization issue that I think I've
mentioned before: only humans can make true categories, computers
fake it. (031)
> > Yes, I understand that. With your goals that overloading leads to
> > dissonance. With my goals that overloading leads to harmonic
> > resonances.
>
> I'm all in favour of harmonic resonances of ideas as long as I can
> understand them and use them. Resonating fog might be pretty to look
> at but... (032)
Pretty is good for you. (033)
> > What's great about all this, though, is that I can go around
> > creating piles and shouting eureka every now and again and you
> > can eventually gain something from my product. Meanwhile, you can
> > create clear, well-defined ideas that help other people like you as
> > well as people like me who will stack them up and squeal with delight
> > and say, "See, look, it's really AllTheSameThing".
>
> I'm interested in getting the bright ideas to meet at that same point
> faster, stronger, better... (034)
Yeah, me too. That's why work on "formalisms" is so important
because it enables the referencing that allows people to
effectively do the thinking that they need to do. (035)
> > My personal philosophy, though, is that when trying to solve
> > wicked problems that are so wicked they don't really have a name
> > one puts a significant limitation on oneself if one chooses to be in a
> > world of conceptual clarity.
>
> Sorry, but I disagree massively. I think conceptual clarity is a
> crucial part of the approach. I understand (I hope) what you are
> trying to say, but I see no reason why conceptual clarity places any
> restrictions upon insights. (036)
Because if you want to name something before you know what it is,
but you have insisted on conceptual clarity, you can't yet name
it and your foisted. This all goes back to Tom's stuff about the
named void, which I think can be found from here (037)
http://collab.blueoxen.net/forums/tools-yak/2003-04/msg00000.html#nid016 (038)
or maybe he'll step in here with some comments. (039)
> We don't need answers to questions we are
> > able to articulate.
>
> Sorry to pick, but how is it possible to answer when there isn't a
> question articulated? (040)
My point was that the questions are not yet able to be
articulated, therefore we need some fuzziness before we can even
get to the questions; we need to break down barriers between
things. Once we have questions they can be researched. (041)
--
Chris Dent
cdent@blueoxen.org (042)
--
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