"intellectuals are not very user-friendly"

[gusl]

Context: metaeducat10n is making me some logos for GusWiki (see also his post). We are focusing on the idea of my brain being uploaded & my ideas worked on: concepts refined, connected, etc. (the idea of my brain with an 'edit' button reminds me of Ramonsky's neurohacking book)



I suggest:

[04:17] GusLacerda: I could also cut out the lower half of my face
[04:18] GusLacerda: to make a bigger brain
[04:18] metaeducation: Hung up on this big brain thing are you? :)
[04:18] GusLacerda: yup!
[04:18] metaeducation: I think you might compromise your recognizability
[04:18] GusLacerda: I don't mind
[04:18] GusLacerda: it's not just for me
[04:18] GusLacerda: it's also for people who think alike
[04:19] GusLacerda: people of a "positivist temperament" :-)
[04:19] GusLacerda: who are interested in AI, CogSci, PhilSci, etc
[04:23] GusLacerda: maybe my logo should be Herbert Simon's brain
[04:23] GusLacerda: or Carl Hempel's
[04:23] metaeducation: I'm a fan of cool ideas and philosophy but I am particularly jaded. My technical knowledge spans a fairly wide area and my philosophy does as well; and I usually find that I am wading through terminology in order to have conversations with people who spend very little time standardizing their language
[04:23] metaeducation: I hate jargon
[04:24] GusLacerda: I feel the same way
[04:24] GusLacerda: intellectuals are not very user-friendly
[04:24] GusLacerda: which is why I'm into things like argument-mapping
[04:24] GusLacerda: encyclopedia-style reviews
[04:25] GusLacerda: even introductory coursework tends to cost too much effort
[04:26] GusLacerda: the insights that I would gain have already been gained in my other experiences... so taking courses in new subjects is no longer worth my time
[04:27] GusLacerda: let alone advanced courses...
[04:28] GusLacerda: jaded, (adj.) (3): Cynically or pretentiously callous.
[04:29] GusLacerda: cynically in our case

Comments

[chrisamaphone]

Your GusWiki idea has fascinated me since I first saw it. I now want to do something similar.

[gustavolacerda.livejournal.com]

Cool. I'm proud my wiki. By dangling the "edit" in front of my face, I am constantly tempted to fix things up.

What do you find so fascinating about it?

tangetially...

[dkmnow.livejournal.com]

"Though completeness is an ideal for any index, it is chimerical. Doing an index is a lesson to end all lessons in the vagueness and subjectivity of human categories ..."

--from remarks preceding the index in Le Ton beau de Marot: In Praise of the Music of Language, by Douglas R. Hofstadter.

:-)

[rdore.livejournal.com]

There is a lot of bad jargon out there to be sure. But good jargon is very useful. When there is an important complicated concept, technique, etc., having a precise name about it, in addition to making discussions about it a lot easier, I think helps to crystallize something as a concept in one's head rather than just a bunch of technical stuff put together. (This isn't to say you can't think about something you don't have a term for, that's an argument I don't want to get into.) To someone who isn't already familiar with the subject though, it is of course very confusing and annoying.

[gustavolacerda.livejournal.com]

Oh, I totally agree. As Sussman said, "when you name it, you have power over it". My point is more that such definitions should be easily accessible. Hyperlinking to glossary is a good way of doing this. Pop-up boxes in the page can be good too. But it's even better when the text has a user model (i.e. it is aware of what the reader knows): it could present the information in the optimal way for his goals. If looking up definitions interrupts the flow of text, then the dynamic text could e.g. replace instances of the jargon for the definition in-line. When a word occurs frequently enough however, it is better to learn the definition.

Maybe I read metaeducat10n too charitably.

[ronebofh.livejournal.com]

I don't hate jargon. I hate people who use jargon to obfuscate instead of enlighten.

[gustavolacerda.livejournal.com]

See my reply above.