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For folks that agree with the post I am replying to: Take a look at the writings of Christopher Alexander. What is missing, this ungraspable "thing" that we o

For folks that agree with the post I am replying to: Take a look at the writings of Christopher Alexander. What is missing, this ungraspable "thing" that we only gain through experience is written about as "quality without a name". Yes, there are parts of our profession that are cold, calculating, black and white computer science and mathematics but there is a equal or greater part of what we build on top of these abstractions that is what we create. And that creativity drives us and is more powerful than the black and white calculations and ultimately is what comes out as we show up day after day building a product or a service. https://ryanaferguson.com/2017/01/quality-without-name/ https://ryanaferguson.com/2017/01/quality-without-name/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Timeless_Way_of_Building https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Timeless_Way_of_Building

smokel 3y ago
Thanks for the link. Might this be related to the concept of "quality" as brought up by Robert Pirsig in "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" (1974)? I don't think the "thing" is completely ungraspable. It is probably the same subject as that which philosophers have studied under the name of aesthetics for ages. Let's continue the rant from here: I tend to link everything back to the concept of evolution as a reason for existing, and aesthetics seems to me to be related to simplicity. If something is simple, it is most often better: i.e. a healthy body, instead of one full of pock marks, or a scientific explanation based on Occam's razor, instead of one based on the pattern of tea leaves. In the long run, simple things have proven to be extremely helpful to humans. Now, the problem with working on extremely complex things, such as societies, buildings, or software, is that these are not simple to begin with. So we have some humans finding extreme joy in trying to come up with ways to understand these in simple terms, even though the terms are still horribly complex to an uninitiated outsider. The building blocks do not always have, nor require, names. That makes them somewhat harder to grasp than your average object such as a table or a chair. But the entire process might be identified as quality, beauty, or cleanness. Or at least, that's what I think. Edit: To avoid common objections to the term "simple", consider that the reversal of something is only one hop away from the actual thing. That may still make a character with pock marks attractive, given that they have, say, an abundance of gold.
- leetrout 3y ago
  Fascinating... I've not read Pirsig's book but have, of course, heard of it. A quick search led me to wikipedia and this bit: > "Quality," or "value," as described by Pirsig, cannot be defined because it empirically precedes any intellectual construction of it, namely due to the fact that quality (as Pirsig explicitly defines it) exists always as a perceptual experience before it is ever thought of descriptively or academically. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pirsig%27s_Metaphysics_of_Quality https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pirsig%27s_Metaphysics_of_Qual...

smokel 3y ago

Thanks for the link. Might this be related to the concept of "quality" as brought up by Robert Pirsig in "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" (1974)? I don't think the "thing" is completely ungraspable. It is probably the same subject as that which philosophers have studied under the name of aesthetics for ages. Let's continue the rant from here: I tend to link everything back to the concept of evolution as a reason for existing, and aesthetics seems to me to be related to simplicity. If something is simple, it is most often better: i.e. a healthy body, instead of one full of pock marks, or a scientific explanation based on Occam's razor, instead of one based on the pattern of tea leaves. In the long run, simple things have proven to be extremely helpful to humans. Now, the problem with working on extremely complex things, such as societies, buildings, or software, is that these are not simple to begin with. So we have some humans finding extreme joy in trying to come up with ways to understand these in simple terms, even though the terms are still horribly complex to an uninitiated outsider. The building blocks do not always have, nor require, names. That makes them somewhat harder to grasp than your average object such as a table or a chair. But the entire process might be identified as quality, beauty, or cleanness. Or at least, that's what I think. Edit: To avoid common objections to the term "simple", consider that the reversal of something is only one hop away from the actual thing. That may still make a character with pock marks attractive, given that they have, say, an abundance of gold.

leetrout 3y ago
Fascinating... I've not read Pirsig's book but have, of course, heard of it. A quick search led me to wikipedia and this bit: > "Quality," or "value," as described by Pirsig, cannot be defined because it empirically precedes any intellectual construction of it, namely due to the fact that quality (as Pirsig explicitly defines it) exists always as a perceptual experience before it is ever thought of descriptively or academically. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pirsig%27s_Metaphysics_of_Quality https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pirsig%27s_Metaphysics_of_Qual...