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Beginners need some (although leaky) abstractions to start from, otherwise they will be unable to make decisions at all. This is why asking questions as a begin

Beginners need some (although leaky) abstractions to start from, otherwise they will be unable to make decisions at all. This is why asking questions as a beginner is really important. Trying to think of knowledge as house of cards is stupid because it somehow implies that knowledge is inherently unstable, which is not true.

idiotsecant 4y ago
>Trying to think of knowledge as house of cards is stupid because it somehow implies that knowledge is inherently unstable, which is not true. Not to be a pedant, but actually to be a pedant : Are you sure? I think the list of absolutely true things 200 years ago and the list of absolutely true things now are probably pretty divergent!
- fernandohur 4y ago
  Nassim Taleb's Black Swan is also a great read on the instability (or in his words, fragility) of knowledge. A single observation is quite often enough to break what has been considered solid knowledge for years.
  - pixl97 4y ago
    Eh, you also have to discern between individual bits of knowledge and systems knowledge when considering systems stability. You can have complete knowledge of a component, but that may not be helpful when attempting to determine the affect of that component in a system where you have incomplete knowledge of other components. Nonlinear systems that trigger at thresholds are a good example of this.
- xmprt 4y ago
  That's fair. But is it helpful to anyone to think about knowledge shifts on timescales that are longer than two lifetimes?
pintxo 4y ago
Card houses can be quite stable though: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5F6j4e1C4Zk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5F6j4e1C4Zk
danielmarkbruce 4y ago
The point is, it is unstable if it's wrong. Almost all "knowledge" is a simplification of reality anyway, so it still holds even if it's more right than wrong.
- ben_w 4y ago
  Philosophically, all knowledge has the Agrippa/Münchhausen trilemma: everything must ultimately rely on itself (circular reasoning), infinite regression (which can’t be fully enumerated), or assertions that are not further justified (dogmatism).
kurthr 4y ago
I guess I'd go the other way and say that all abstractions are leaky... except perhaps abstract math? At least more CS folks have started to realize that not only are their libraries useful, but questionable... so are their floats, their compilers, their databases, their OSes, instruction caches, RAMs, etc. Knowing the boundaries of your abstraction is crucial! The key is knowing where your abstraction is likely to break down and having some bounds checking and fault tolerance to deal with to makes things robust. At the same time having abstractions (or models for Engineers and Physicists) that are all encompassing tends to make them so complex that they aren't very useful or even comprehensible. To the extent that knowledge is a model for how the world works that we can hold in our heads and reason about... the usefulness of the model is often inverse to the accuracy outside of its bounds. Including general rel or quantum effects in most earthly trajectories is so complex and useless that it's silly... and yet at the same time we "know" newtonian mechanics is "wrong". I'd be happier to say that I know how to build a robust house of cards for the situation. That I know there are gaps in the foundation, and I know when it's important to fill them in, and how much. At the same time, stress testing, realizing fundamental dependencies, and knowing how things can fail often just comes from experience.
percent 4y ago
The object is not the true form of knowledge - the post is about a person's knowledge in the context of debugging layered systems.

idiotsecant 4y ago

>Trying to think of knowledge as house of cards is stupid because it somehow implies that knowledge is inherently unstable, which is not true. Not to be a pedant, but actually to be a pedant : Are you sure? I think the list of absolutely true things 200 years ago and the list of absolutely true things now are probably pretty divergent!

fernandohur 4y ago
Nassim Taleb's Black Swan is also a great read on the instability (or in his words, fragility) of knowledge. A single observation is quite often enough to break what has been considered solid knowledge for years.
- pixl97 4y ago
  Eh, you also have to discern between individual bits of knowledge and systems knowledge when considering systems stability. You can have complete knowledge of a component, but that may not be helpful when attempting to determine the affect of that component in a system where you have incomplete knowledge of other components. Nonlinear systems that trigger at thresholds are a good example of this.
xmprt 4y ago
That's fair. But is it helpful to anyone to think about knowledge shifts on timescales that are longer than two lifetimes?

pintxo 4y ago

Card houses can be quite stable though: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5F6j4e1C4Zk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5F6j4e1C4Zk

danielmarkbruce 4y ago

The point is, it is unstable if it's wrong. Almost all "knowledge" is a simplification of reality anyway, so it still holds even if it's more right than wrong.

ben_w 4y ago
Philosophically, all knowledge has the Agrippa/Münchhausen trilemma: everything must ultimately rely on itself (circular reasoning), infinite regression (which can’t be fully enumerated), or assertions that are not further justified (dogmatism).

kurthr 4y ago

I guess I'd go the other way and say that all abstractions are leaky... except perhaps abstract math? At least more CS folks have started to realize that not only are their libraries useful, but questionable... so are their floats, their compilers, their databases, their OSes, instruction caches, RAMs, etc. Knowing the boundaries of your abstraction is crucial! The key is knowing where your abstraction is likely to break down and having some bounds checking and fault tolerance to deal with to makes things robust. At the same time having abstractions (or models for Engineers and Physicists) that are all encompassing tends to make them so complex that they aren't very useful or even comprehensible. To the extent that knowledge is a model for how the world works that we can hold in our heads and reason about... the usefulness of the model is often inverse to the accuracy outside of its bounds. Including general rel or quantum effects in most earthly trajectories is so complex and useless that it's silly... and yet at the same time we "know" newtonian mechanics is "wrong". I'd be happier to say that I know how to build a robust house of cards for the situation. That I know there are gaps in the foundation, and I know when it's important to fill them in, and how much. At the same time, stress testing, realizing fundamental dependencies, and knowing how things can fail often just comes from experience.

percent 4y ago

The object is not the true form of knowledge - the post is about a person's knowledge in the context of debugging layered systems.