I am pretty interested to see where this goes. Making good observations seems very dependent on what we are looking for, (and having a vocabulary for the observation). Ways to break through some of these borders?
I like where your mind is at here, particularly that you’re gesturing at the want for vocabulary.
Further questions:
Where does vocabulary even come from? How does it get made? What’s the process of creating new words for a field? Is observation actually dependent on having relevant vocabulary? What is a new concept made of?
What if you want to make progress in a new field that has no vocab yet? (How do you even know there’s a place to explore if no vocab exists yet? How is it found?)
To me vocabulary (which I think is a brain shortcut to a category/concept) is a big help in seeing. I read “Landmarks” (Robert MacFarlane) which was about specialised vocabularies and I enjoyed some of the odd words. One was “smeuse”—a hole in hedge or fence made by repeated passage of animals. The thing is, once I had read about it, I suddenly started noticing them. But to your question as where do the words come from? The vocabularies in Landmarks come from specialised needs of people in particular environments. Peat-diggers need more specialised words to describe peat bogs to survive and proper.
So observation does proceed vocabulary. Science is full of it -every field has to develop of specialized vocab to communicate observation. But once there is a vocab, then its strongly assists observation. Can this hinder seeing? Yes, that too. The brain will take whatever shortcut it can and schemata will miss plenty when the brain has more urgent things to do. Watson’s excuse for the not knowing the no. of stairs would be that he never needed to—he had more important things to think about.
But I think there are ways to employ both. Early in my career, I had do a fair amount of mudlogging from coal exploration wells—a boring but vital job. We had a standardized vocabulary for describing what we saw that was structured into a list. Working your way through it, metre by metre, kept you observing what was important even when bored out of your skull. And at the end of list was—“what is different?”. A key to make a novel observation that was outside the parameters of the list.
As a relatively non-verbal person, I always feel like someone is walking upside down with legs sticking out of their head when they make claims about vocabulary being necessary for things besides talking to each other. There must be quite the inferential gap here. Wh… Whyy? Why would having vocabulary for the observation be important to making a good observation? Maybe you mean something I’m not expecting by “good”? Or by “vocabulary”?
I also don’t understand “Making good observations seems very dependent on what we are looking for”. Do you mean something like, “Whether or not we deem an observation to be ‘good’ depends on why we’re making observations, since ‘goodness’ only exists in relation to goals?”
Perhaps I just somehow completely don’t understand this comment at all. But I guess Robin did? I wonder what Robin heard.
Do you mean something like, “Whether or not we deem an observation to be ‘good’ depends on why we’re making observations, since ‘goodness’ only exists in relation to goals?”
Frankly, yes. I would be regarded as a very absent-minded person, for the usual reason of spending a lot of time thinking and pretty much oblivious to other things. I like my daily life structured by habit so brain is unencumbered by paying attention to the mundane. I dont claim this as a good thing, but it is the what I am. The meaning of “Observation” to me is strongly rooted in my training and something I “turn on” when required (or when it suits as when out tramping or exercising). I notice landscapes, I notice plants, I notice rocks as these are things that I have some training in seeing. I like people-watching but I would say that I am very much observing in relation to a goal.
A surprising amount of human cognition is driven purely verbally/symbolicaly—I recall a study showing that on average people with a native language that had much more concise wording/notation for numbers could remember much longer numbers. As a relatvely verbal person, my intuition about the relationship between observation and vocabulary would be that to know something is to be able to say what it means to know it, but then again it’s possible that my case doesn’t generalise and that I just happen to rely on symbol-pushing for most of my abstract cognition (at least, that portion of abstract cognition that isn’t computed using spacial reasoning).
I was going to write ”Making an observation isn’t an atomic action. In order to compress noisy, redundant short-term sensory data into an actual observation stored in long-term memory you need to perform some work of compression/pattern recognition, e.g. the sensory data of ▟ ▟ ▟ ▟ ▟ ▟ ▟ ▟ ▟ ▟ ▟ ▟ ▟ ▟ ▟ ▟ ▟ is compressed into the observation 17 steps , and how you do that is a partially conscious decision where you have to choose what type of data to convert ▟ ▟ ▟ ▟ ▟ ▟ ▟ ▟ ▟ ▟ ▟ ▟ ▟ ▟ ▟ ▟ ▟ into.” But in retrospect it’s possible that from your perspective ▟ ▟ ▟ ▟ ▟ ▟ ▟ ▟ ▟ ▟ ▟ ▟ ▟ ▟ ▟ ▟ ▟ is the thing-you’ve-been-using-the-word-observation-to-mean, and you can store that in your long tem memory just fine and I just happen to throw away or refuse to reason about everything that isn’t sufficiently legible.
I don’t think that observation has much to do with what you do or do not store in long term memory. I think that the more direct an observation is (the more it is like observation rather than seeing), the more difficult it will be to retrieve using your pre-existing conceptual framework as search methods. It will be harder, not easier, because the thought will be more like the world and less like you, but the you who looks for it later will be more like you and less like the world.
I think I spend an unusual percentage of my time making unusually direct observations, and I think this has something to do with how my memory is weird. In some ways I have an extraordinarily fantastic memory, and in other ways I have such an awful memory that I’d be worried about dementia if it hadn’t been like this my whole life. If you ask me what a movie I watched was about, I’ll say things like… Actually, how about I do that for real, so I can show you.
Recently I watched a movie whose name I’ve forgotten. Duncan will know what it was. The movie was about… I’m not sure, maybe something about independence, and I think the plot involved a funeral. I could probably piece it together and translate it into words if I thought about it for a while. But mostly I remember that there were chickens in a bus at the end, and a lot of green, and somebody killed a deer while wearing mud on their face, and a pretty red-haird girl reading a Brian Green book that was white, and there were really a lot of green plants, and a scary hospital beeping, and “Let’s go shoppiiiiiiingggg!”, and guitar music, and the guy shaved, and the dumb kids whose parents lied to them had to take showers. Just for a start.
But even though I can tell you details about the chickens a lot more easily than I can tell you about the plot (the chickens were white, and the eggs were tan, and the chickens made certain sounds I could imitate for you if you could hear my voice, and there were at least two of them, and I can describe the camera angle, and the clothes of the kids who were taking their eggs, and so forth), the overall large artistic message of the film had an enduring impact on me. I think slightly different kinds of thoughts now that I did before I saw it. I could probably approximately characterize the differences for you in words if I worked at it, but the fact that I would have to work at it, and that I wouldn’t be perfectly satisfied with the result, doesn’t change the fact that it meant something to me and I probably even understood the movie as a whole, in the sense that it had a (probably intended) impact on my thoughts and feelings and behaviors long after it was over, one that I continue to dialogue with and weigh and integrate.
I’m not sure what my point is here. I’m just saying things that apparently I wanted to say after reading your comment. I hope you like some of them.
I am pretty interested to see where this goes. Making good observations seems very dependent on what we are looking for, (and having a vocabulary for the observation). Ways to break through some of these borders?
I like where your mind is at here, particularly that you’re gesturing at the want for vocabulary.
Further questions:
Where does vocabulary even come from? How does it get made? What’s the process of creating new words for a field? Is observation actually dependent on having relevant vocabulary? What is a new concept made of?
What if you want to make progress in a new field that has no vocab yet? (How do you even know there’s a place to explore if no vocab exists yet? How is it found?)
To me vocabulary (which I think is a brain shortcut to a category/concept) is a big help in seeing. I read “Landmarks” (Robert MacFarlane) which was about specialised vocabularies and I enjoyed some of the odd words. One was “smeuse”—a hole in hedge or fence made by repeated passage of animals. The thing is, once I had read about it, I suddenly started noticing them. But to your question as where do the words come from? The vocabularies in Landmarks come from specialised needs of people in particular environments. Peat-diggers need more specialised words to describe peat bogs to survive and proper.
So observation does proceed vocabulary. Science is full of it -every field has to develop of specialized vocab to communicate observation. But once there is a vocab, then its strongly assists observation. Can this hinder seeing? Yes, that too. The brain will take whatever shortcut it can and schemata will miss plenty when the brain has more urgent things to do. Watson’s excuse for the not knowing the no. of stairs would be that he never needed to—he had more important things to think about.
But I think there are ways to employ both. Early in my career, I had do a fair amount of mudlogging from coal exploration wells—a boring but vital job. We had a standardized vocabulary for describing what we saw that was structured into a list. Working your way through it, metre by metre, kept you observing what was important even when bored out of your skull. And at the end of list was—“what is different?”. A key to make a novel observation that was outside the parameters of the list.
As a relatively non-verbal person, I always feel like someone is walking upside down with legs sticking out of their head when they make claims about vocabulary being necessary for things besides talking to each other. There must be quite the inferential gap here. Wh… Whyy? Why would having vocabulary for the observation be important to making a good observation? Maybe you mean something I’m not expecting by “good”? Or by “vocabulary”?
I also don’t understand “Making good observations seems very dependent on what we are looking for”. Do you mean something like, “Whether or not we deem an observation to be ‘good’ depends on why we’re making observations, since ‘goodness’ only exists in relation to goals?”
Perhaps I just somehow completely don’t understand this comment at all. But I guess Robin did? I wonder what Robin heard.
Do you mean something like, “Whether or not we deem an observation to be ‘good’ depends on why we’re making observations, since ‘goodness’ only exists in relation to goals?”
Frankly, yes. I would be regarded as a very absent-minded person, for the usual reason of spending a lot of time thinking and pretty much oblivious to other things. I like my daily life structured by habit so brain is unencumbered by paying attention to the mundane. I dont claim this as a good thing, but it is the what I am. The meaning of “Observation” to me is strongly rooted in my training and something I “turn on” when required (or when it suits as when out tramping or exercising). I notice landscapes, I notice plants, I notice rocks as these are things that I have some training in seeing. I like people-watching but I would say that I am very much observing in relation to a goal.
A surprising amount of human cognition is driven purely verbally/symbolicaly—I recall a study showing that on average people with a native language that had much more concise wording/notation for numbers could remember much longer numbers. As a relatvely verbal person, my intuition about the relationship between observation and vocabulary would be that to know something is to be able to say what it means to know it, but then again it’s possible that my case doesn’t generalise and that I just happen to rely on symbol-pushing for most of my abstract cognition (at least, that portion of abstract cognition that isn’t computed using spacial reasoning).
I was going to write
”Making an observation isn’t an atomic action. In order to compress noisy, redundant short-term sensory data into an actual observation stored in long-term memory you need to perform some work of compression/pattern recognition, e.g. the sensory data of ▟ ▟ ▟ ▟ ▟ ▟ ▟ ▟ ▟ ▟ ▟ ▟ ▟ ▟ ▟ ▟ ▟ is compressed into the observation
17 steps, and how you do that is a partially conscious decision where you have to choose what type of data to convert ▟ ▟ ▟ ▟ ▟ ▟ ▟ ▟ ▟ ▟ ▟ ▟ ▟ ▟ ▟ ▟ ▟ into.”But in retrospect it’s possible that from your perspective ▟ ▟ ▟ ▟ ▟ ▟ ▟ ▟ ▟ ▟ ▟ ▟ ▟ ▟ ▟ ▟ ▟ is the thing-you’ve-been-using-the-word-observation-to-mean, and you can store that in your long tem memory just fine and I just happen to throw away or refuse to reason about everything that isn’t sufficiently legible.
I don’t think that observation has much to do with what you do or do not store in long term memory. I think that the more direct an observation is (the more it is like observation rather than seeing), the more difficult it will be to retrieve using your pre-existing conceptual framework as search methods. It will be harder, not easier, because the thought will be more like the world and less like you, but the you who looks for it later will be more like you and less like the world.
I think I spend an unusual percentage of my time making unusually direct observations, and I think this has something to do with how my memory is weird. In some ways I have an extraordinarily fantastic memory, and in other ways I have such an awful memory that I’d be worried about dementia if it hadn’t been like this my whole life. If you ask me what a movie I watched was about, I’ll say things like… Actually, how about I do that for real, so I can show you.
Recently I watched a movie whose name I’ve forgotten. Duncan will know what it was. The movie was about… I’m not sure, maybe something about independence, and I think the plot involved a funeral. I could probably piece it together and translate it into words if I thought about it for a while. But mostly I remember that there were chickens in a bus at the end, and a lot of green, and somebody killed a deer while wearing mud on their face, and a pretty red-haird girl reading a Brian Green book that was white, and there were really a lot of green plants, and a scary hospital beeping, and “Let’s go shoppiiiiiiingggg!”, and guitar music, and the guy shaved, and the dumb kids whose parents lied to them had to take showers. Just for a start.
But even though I can tell you details about the chickens a lot more easily than I can tell you about the plot (the chickens were white, and the eggs were tan, and the chickens made certain sounds I could imitate for you if you could hear my voice, and there were at least two of them, and I can describe the camera angle, and the clothes of the kids who were taking their eggs, and so forth), the overall large artistic message of the film had an enduring impact on me. I think slightly different kinds of thoughts now that I did before I saw it. I could probably approximately characterize the differences for you in words if I worked at it, but the fact that I would have to work at it, and that I wouldn’t be perfectly satisfied with the result, doesn’t change the fact that it meant something to me and I probably even understood the movie as a whole, in the sense that it had a (probably intended) impact on my thoughts and feelings and behaviors long after it was over, one that I continue to dialogue with and weigh and integrate.
I’m not sure what my point is here. I’m just saying things that apparently I wanted to say after reading your comment. I hope you like some of them.
(Captain Fantastic)