19 Matching Annotations
  1. Jan 2024
  2. Mar 2023
    1. We know from modern neuroscience that prediction is a core property of human intelligence. Perhaps the game of predict-the-next-word is what children unconsciously play when they are acquiring language themselves: listening to what initially seems to be a random stream of phonemes from the adults around them, gradually detecting patterns in that stream and testing those hypotheses by anticipating words as they are spoken. Perhaps that game is the initial scaffolding beneath all the complex forms of thinking that language makes possible.

      Is language acquisition a very complex method of pattern recognition?

  3. Nov 2022
    1. “pattern language” to describe the show’s plot formulas, which they and ultimately other users would then apply to a variety of programs.

      Tropes are shorthand storytelling methods that rely on a common storytelling grammar or pattern language to quickly relay information to the viewer or listener.

  4. Aug 2022
  5. Dec 2021
  6. Jul 2021
  7. Mar 2021
  8. Nov 2020
    1. With Lotus Notes, I can combine a hierarchically organized outline view of the documents, with full text searching, hypertext links and traditiona l relational database like reports (for example, a sorted view of items to do).

      What Lotus Notes allowed you to do is to combine a hierarchical organized overview, achieved through an outliner, with search, hyperlinks and relational-database-like reports. Lotus Notes also allowed you to organized different document formats (Word, emails, etc.)

    1. Before the publication of the ‘Gang of Four’ book that popularised software patterns [4], Richard Gabriel described Christopher Alexander’s patterns in 1993 as a basis for reusable object‐oriented software in the following way:Habitabilityisthecharacteristicofsourcecodethatenablesprogrammers,coders,bug­fixers,andpeoplecomingtothecodelaterinitslifetounderstanditsconstructionandintentionsandtochangeitcomfortablyandconfidently.

      Interesting concept for how easy to maintain a piece of software is.

    1. Connected to this are Andy Matuschak’s comments about contextual backlinks bootstrapping new concepts before explicit definitions come into play.

      What Joel says here about Contextual Backlinks is that they allow you to "bootstrap" a concept (i.e. start working with it) without explicit definitions coming into play (or as Andy would say, the content is empty).

    2. Easily updated pages: don’t worry about precisely naming something at first. Let the meaning emerge over time and easily change it (propagating through all references).

      Joel highlights a feature here of Roam and ties it to incremental formalisms.

      In Roam you can update a page name and it propagates across all references.

    3. Cognitive Overhead (aka Cognitive Load): often the task of specifying formalism is extraneous to the primary task, or is just plain annoying to do.

      This is the task that you're required to do when you want to save a note in Evernote or Notion. You need to choose where it goes.

    4. The basic intuition is described well by the Shipman & Marshall paper: users enter information in a mostly informal fashion, and then formalize only later in the task when appropriate formalisms become clear and also (more) immediately useful.

      Incremental formalism

      Users enter information in an informal fashion. They only formalize later when the appropriate formalism becomes clear and/or immediately useful.

    5. It’s important to notice something about these examples of synthesis representations: they go quite a bit further than simply grouping or associating things (though that is an important start). They have some kind of formal semantic structure (otherwise known as formality) that specifies what entities exist, and what kinds of relations exist between the entities. This formal structure isn’t just for show: it’s what enables the kind of synthesis that really powers significant knowledge work! Formal structures unlock powerful forms of reasoning like conceptual combination, analogy, and causal reasoning.

      Formalisms enable synthesis to happen.

    1. Systems which display backlinks to a node permit a new behavior: you can define a new node extensionally (rather than intensionally) by simply linking to it from many other nodes—even before it has any content.

      Nodes in a knowledge management system can be defined extensionally, rather than intensionally, through their backlinks and their respective context.

  9. Mar 2020
  10. Jan 2020
    1. Fundamental to any science or engineering discipline is a common vocabulary for expressing its concepts, and a language for relating them together. The goal of patterns within the software community is to create a body of literature to help software developers resolve recurring problems encountered throughout all of software development. Patterns help create a shared language for communicating insight and experience about these problems and their solutions. Formally codifying these solutions and their relationships lets us successfully capture the body of knowledge which defines our understanding of good architectures that meet the needs of their users. Forming a common pattern language for conveying the structures and mechanisms of our architectures allows us to intelligibly reason about them. The primary focus is not so much on technology as it is on creating a culture to document and support sound engineering architecture and design.

      Without reference to software development, this reads as:

      Fundamental to any science or engineering discipline is a common vocabulary for expressing its concepts, and a language for relating them together. [...] Patterns help create a shared language for communicating insight and experience about these problems and their solutions. [...] Forming a common pattern language for conveying the structures and mechanisms of our architectures allows us to intelligibly reason about them. The primary focus is not so much on technology as it is on creating a culture to document and support sound engineering architecture and design.

  11. Jan 2016
    1. “participation architectures.”

      I much prefer this nomenclature especially since it allows me to add Christopher Alexander to the mix. He argued that there are machine systems and growing systems. Or perhaps we can think of the distinction as between engineered and rhizomatic? Or using James Scott's terms: legible v illegible.