😕 Unreasonable Words

Applications on a Mac are a beautiful thing, less so on Windows, while on Linux they look like crap. The operating system is context which comes with unspoken virtues and taboos, and as all human creations are social things, it reflects the culture of and relationships between those involved. So Mac apps are as slick as they are shallow, Linux ones needlessly complex and technical, and Windows business software can act obnoxiously via the screen in ways no human would dare act to your face. Not if they value an unbroken nose.

Any perspective comes with preferences that steer choices, and with selection comes survival and its filter. Survivorship drives evolution and is why matter itself exists, and it also applies to memes. It shapes our culture and our beliefs, it shapes lens through which we see the world.

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I think that’s a trap and the solution is the other way around - yes you need sharp mental constructs to explore problem spaces, and that does mean creating the tools/words to do the digging. But you also need to come up for air, as they need to survive daylight.

Memes are what really matters.

I should probably write about on this… I think what happens in philosophy is similar to technical debt in software, it’s all made of words and concepts just the same - and the structure of the literature/codebase puts constraints on its future shape. Technical language sets a high bar for contribution and filters out eyeballs, but it filters in more technical language. Like how Mac and web projects attract UX specialists but Linux ones repel them. Denseness and complexity are self-affirming, as they filter for people who are smart enough, but the cognitive load makes it easier to make mistakes. Everyone loves bit-twiddling hacks, but should also know to avoid them if they care about creating working code at a decent pace. Conceptual depth is another problem. Thinking is a tree search in a graph of abstractions, digging further from reality at each node - each layer adds constraints, and every abstraction leaks. If you don’t resurface and collapse the concepts then you’re in a fractal of self-constriction until someone else does. Like technical debt, enough of it and the interest payments will bankrupt you.

The worst thing though, is if you don’t optimize for accessibility and low cognitive load, you get all the stuff above plus the survivorship filter. Only those fluent in complexity survive, so the system optimizes for that, making a maze of traps baited for the smartest people, nudging solutions deeper into the darkness over time.

So my general aim is to simplify ideas until they pass a “uwotm8?” test. If a bloke in the pub can get it then argumentation can be applied. If it can’t, it’s worse than unfalsifiable - in practice it’s literally unreasonable.

I think there’s much bigger problems on the horizon though, I suspect models that can refactor code can do the same to all human knowledge. Science and philosophy as modular, composable structures like software = at least 3 orders of magnitude of progress. That scares the shit out of me.