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guslThis is something I wrote at ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
metaeducat10n. I'm not blockquoting it, because it's undergoing editing:
Transparency (check out the different meanings!) is an interesting metaphor for formalization.
Non-formalized processes are not transparent: you can't see inside the mind of the decision-maker, even if that means your own mind (although in the latter case, you can work towards slowly seeing it again).
Formalization is about making unconscious processes (and the implicit knowledge used in them) conscious. It is about establishing a good foundation for arguments and reasonings, as they may, upon inspection, turn out to be ill-founded. Formalization, like transparency, makes this inspection objective (since anyone can look at it, anyone can judge it), and easier to perform (because of the memoization provided by formalization, retrieval is quick).
--
Map-making is memoizing. In formalization, it can memoize both one's perceptions (for the writer who writes in a formal language) or the interpretation process (for a reader/interpreter of an informal text).
Formalization, like mapmaking, has two advantages:
* it makes future retrieval of the content quick and inexpensive.
* by shining light on a whole picture at the same time, it allows one to see the picture under different perspectives (in which one can check if certain supposedly-straight lines really are straight, thanks to free rides) and different zoom levels (where one can check whether the formalized local impressions are globally coherent). This way, one refines one's impressions, by correcting the incoherencies (e.g. contradictions, as well as weaker forms of absurdity).
Imagine someone who decided to formalize his knowledge about the geometry of a sculpture from memory, and ended up drawing an Escher cube. Upon seeing his whole cube, such a person would immediately revise his interpretations/formalizations of his local impressions, because they cannot all hold together.
metaeducat10n. I'm not blockquoting it, because it's undergoing editing:Transparency (check out the different meanings!) is an interesting metaphor for formalization.
Non-formalized processes are not transparent: you can't see inside the mind of the decision-maker, even if that means your own mind (although in the latter case, you can work towards slowly seeing it again).
Formalization is about making unconscious processes (and the implicit knowledge used in them) conscious. It is about establishing a good foundation for arguments and reasonings, as they may, upon inspection, turn out to be ill-founded. Formalization, like transparency, makes this inspection objective (since anyone can look at it, anyone can judge it), and easier to perform (because of the memoization provided by formalization, retrieval is quick).
--
Map-making is memoizing. In formalization, it can memoize both one's perceptions (for the writer who writes in a formal language) or the interpretation process (for a reader/interpreter of an informal text).
Formalization, like mapmaking, has two advantages:
* it makes future retrieval of the content quick and inexpensive.
* by shining light on a whole picture at the same time, it allows one to see the picture under different perspectives (in which one can check if certain supposedly-straight lines really are straight, thanks to free rides) and different zoom levels (where one can check whether the formalized local impressions are globally coherent). This way, one refines one's impressions, by correcting the incoherencies (e.g. contradictions, as well as weaker forms of absurdity).
Imagine someone who decided to formalize his knowledge about the geometry of a sculpture from memory, and ended up drawing an Escher cube. Upon seeing his whole cube, such a person would immediately revise his interpretations/formalizations of his local impressions, because they cannot all hold together.