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s/complex idea/reality/ s/stupid copy/model/ After these substitutions it becomes clear where the author is mistaken. "Reality has a surprising amount of de

s/complex idea/reality/ s/stupid copy/model/ After these substitutions it becomes clear where the author is mistaken. "Reality has a surprising amount of detail." That's why we need an abstractions - models ("stupid copies"). We may have many different stupid copies, depending on a questions we want to answer, or problem to solve. Every stupid copy is wrong, but some are useful. Even a stick drawing of horse can be useful, if all we want to do is count the number of legs the horse has.

epgui 4y ago
While the point you're making in your comment is very valid, I really don't think "models vs reality" or "all models are wrong but some are useful" is what the article is about.
- nivertech 4y ago
  1. Maybe. But if the article is about communicating ideas, then I don't understand why to use a horse as an example? horse != idea Idea is by definition something abstract and/or intangible. 2. IMO, complex ideas by definition are bad ideas. Good ideas are simple, but they might be contrarian, seemingly impossible and/or non-obvious. -- EDIT: found a really stupid idea: a USB stick horse ;) https://www.amazon.com/Horse-Shape-Flash-Drives-Memory/dp/B07R7WNVN2 https://www.amazon.com/Horse-Shape-Flash-Drives-Memory/dp/B0...
d-us-vb 4y ago
This comment seems almost right. The author implicitly declares the existence of "memetic inoculation" as something they're describing, although they didn't specify cases where it becomes difficult to separate a bad idea from a bad description of an idea. As someone else pointed out, crypto is an example where there are obviously good and bad ideas: using cryptography for distributed and decentralized contracts is a at the very least quite intriguing. Using crypto for a scam is quite a bad idea. But, then there are ideas that are really good, but who's outworkings are usually described poorly. Take Emacs as an example. "text editor that does everything, including email, accounting, browsing the web, file management, and much more" sounds like a bad idea to anyone with a modicum of appreciation for the Unix Philosophy. "An app that makes programming and using practical text-oriented, highly-integrative applications in Lisp" is a better description of what Emacs really is. Notice that in the former case, crypto and scams using crypto are two distinctly different ideas. In the latter case, we have two descriptions of essentially the same thing, which was an implementation of the modern idea of Emacs, which is factually a Lisp interpreter with built in text display. Those two descriptions could in theory be the basis for creating different apps, and they'd probably look quite different.

epgui 4y ago

While the point you're making in your comment is very valid, I really don't think "models vs reality" or "all models are wrong but some are useful" is what the article is about.

nivertech 4y ago
1. Maybe. But if the article is about communicating ideas, then I don't understand why to use a horse as an example? horse != idea Idea is by definition something abstract and/or intangible. 2. IMO, complex ideas by definition are bad ideas. Good ideas are simple, but they might be contrarian, seemingly impossible and/or non-obvious. -- EDIT: found a really stupid idea: a USB stick horse ;) https://www.amazon.com/Horse-Shape-Flash-Drives-Memory/dp/B07R7WNVN2 https://www.amazon.com/Horse-Shape-Flash-Drives-Memory/dp/B0...

d-us-vb 4y ago

This comment seems almost right. The author implicitly declares the existence of "memetic inoculation" as something they're describing, although they didn't specify cases where it becomes difficult to separate a bad idea from a bad description of an idea. As someone else pointed out, crypto is an example where there are obviously good and bad ideas: using cryptography for distributed and decentralized contracts is a at the very least quite intriguing. Using crypto for a scam is quite a bad idea. But, then there are ideas that are really good, but who's outworkings are usually described poorly. Take Emacs as an example. "text editor that does everything, including email, accounting, browsing the web, file management, and much more" sounds like a bad idea to anyone with a modicum of appreciation for the Unix Philosophy. "An app that makes programming and using practical text-oriented, highly-integrative applications in Lisp" is a better description of what Emacs really is. Notice that in the former case, crypto and scams using crypto are two distinctly different ideas. In the latter case, we have two descriptions of essentially the same thing, which was an implementation of the modern idea of Emacs, which is factually a Lisp interpreter with built in text display. Those two descriptions could in theory be the basis for creating different apps, and they'd probably look quite different.