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Over the years, I've learned things from different domains -- gongfu (martial arts), Go (the game not the language), various computer languages, and most recent

by hosh 6y ago

Over the years, I've learned things from different domains -- gongfu (martial arts), Go (the game not the language), various computer languages, and most recently, gardening. It's been my experience that for every expiring skill, there is hidden, a more essential, permanent (or rather, "timeless") skill. The technical skill for drawing and recording the battlefield topography is no longer relevant. But you can bet that spatial reasoning and situational awareness / situational reasoning and topography is still relevant for the military professional, whether someone is drawing the maps by hand, or using modern navigational devices. Having to construct maps (mapping the actual terrain with an abstract representation) helps construct a model in the mind, and doing so lays the foundation for developing spatial reasoning. An artist's eye is trained to see things as they are seen, not as they are interpreted, thus disciplining one's perceptual skills, which enhances situational awareness. One of the things I have learned from gongfu, is that once you have refined the essential skill, it can be applied broadly in many other domains, outside the one you initially learned. Those seemingly disparate domains I listed (martial arts, Go, computer languages, gardening), all share essential skills that allow me to transfer things that I learned in one domain into another (with modifications).

rmellow 6y ago
Can you concretely explain how these domains share the same skills?
- hosh 6y ago
  In one example: One of the things in martial arts is to use footwork to control space, and the possibility space in which someone can move or respond. There is a similar thing with Go, changing direction of play, or reducing potential eyes, etc. Those two are adversarial examples. The latter two don’t have to be. With language platforms, the chosen semantics and primitives for library code defines a possibility space. It can be created in a way to encourage or discourage best practices when other people use it. In gardening, we are really talking about an ecology. In a simple example, you are taking into account the path the sun takes and the vertical space a plant takes (canopy layers), which can encourage or discourage growth. Add things like companion planting, water cycle, carbon cycle, ecological succession, crop rotation, succession planting, integrated pest management etc. it is more about shaping the possibility space of the site.

by hosh 6y ago

rmellow 6y ago

Can you concretely explain how these domains share the same skills?

hosh 6y ago
In one example: One of the things in martial arts is to use footwork to control space, and the possibility space in which someone can move or respond. There is a similar thing with Go, changing direction of play, or reducing potential eyes, etc. Those two are adversarial examples. The latter two don’t have to be. With language platforms, the chosen semantics and primitives for library code defines a possibility space. It can be created in a way to encourage or discourage best practices when other people use it. In gardening, we are really talking about an ecology. In a simple example, you are taking into account the path the sun takes and the vertical space a plant takes (canopy layers), which can encourage or discourage growth. Add things like companion planting, water cycle, carbon cycle, ecological succession, crop rotation, succession planting, integrated pest management etc. it is more about shaping the possibility space of the site.