1. If you understand how to regenerate a concept in an inside view way, there’s an important sense in which it really doesn’t matter who originated it, because you can correct any distortions in the concept yourself. In the same way that if you hear someone state a theorem and reprove it yourself, you can discover that they slightly misstated it and find the correct statement yourself. So it seems to me that this distortionary effect is more important the more your reasoning is outside view-flavored.
2. This all seems fine if you have an active project of seeking out good ideas, but I don’t expect everyone in the community to actively be wanting to do this as opposed to the many other things they could be wanting to do. Said another way, I don’t think you’re engaging with the opportunity cost of paying attention to this as opposed to something else.
If you understand how to regenerate a concept in an inside view way, there’s an important sense in which it really doesn’t matter who originated it, because you can correct any distortions in the concept yourself. In the same way that if you hear someone state a theorem and reprove it yourself, you can discover that they slightly misstated it and find the correct statement yourself. So it seems to me that this distortionary effect is more important the more your reasoning is outside view-flavored.
This isn’t actually how ideas work. For one thing, this presupposes that the version of an idea which has been passed down to you is ‘correct’/its most useful version in the first place. For example, Alan Kay invented Object Oriented Programming several decades ago, and most modern computer languages implement ‘Object Oriented Programming’. The version they implement is of course significantly degraded from the version that appears in say, Smalltalk. But it’s an improvement over what existed before in C, so nobody really notices that OOP could theoretically be something better. This is a stable situation that doesn’t look like it’ll be changing anytime soon.
The object level argument against this of course is that Alan Kay is wrong about the utility of his original version of OOP. On such things I have no comment.
The object level argument against this of course is that Alan Kay is wrong about the utility of his original version of OOP. On such things I have no comment.
The counter-argument, of course, is that sure, maybe Alan Kay is wrong about how useful his original version of OOP is, but is everyone who ever proposed an older-but-more-advanced version of an idea always wrong about the usefulness of that idea? Do implementations never degrade from prior visions for anything but the most unimpeachable reasons of effectiveness (as opposed to, say, market pressures, or contingent historical matters, etc.)?
I think it would be absurd to take such a position. The counterexamples are legion. To maintain any such view is to ascribe, to the market (both the actual market where products are offered and sold, and the “marketplace of ideas”), a sort of definitional correctness which it manifestly does not have.
Which is all to say that I agree with this:
For one thing, this presupposes that the version of an idea which has been passed down to you is ‘correct’/its most useful version in the first place.
And I concur that this presupposition is often mistaken.
1. If you understand how to regenerate a concept in an inside view way, there’s an important sense in which it really doesn’t matter who originated it, because you can correct any distortions in the concept yourself. In the same way that if you hear someone state a theorem and reprove it yourself, you can discover that they slightly misstated it and find the correct statement yourself. So it seems to me that this distortionary effect is more important the more your reasoning is outside view-flavored.
2. This all seems fine if you have an active project of seeking out good ideas, but I don’t expect everyone in the community to actively be wanting to do this as opposed to the many other things they could be wanting to do. Said another way, I don’t think you’re engaging with the opportunity cost of paying attention to this as opposed to something else.
This isn’t actually how ideas work. For one thing, this presupposes that the version of an idea which has been passed down to you is ‘correct’/its most useful version in the first place. For example, Alan Kay invented Object Oriented Programming several decades ago, and most modern computer languages implement ‘Object Oriented Programming’. The version they implement is of course significantly degraded from the version that appears in say, Smalltalk. But it’s an improvement over what existed before in C, so nobody really notices that OOP could theoretically be something better. This is a stable situation that doesn’t look like it’ll be changing anytime soon.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QjJaFG63Hlo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YyIQKBzIuBY
The object level argument against this of course is that Alan Kay is wrong about the utility of his original version of OOP. On such things I have no comment.
The counter-argument, of course, is that sure, maybe Alan Kay is wrong about how useful his original version of OOP is, but is everyone who ever proposed an older-but-more-advanced version of an idea always wrong about the usefulness of that idea? Do implementations never degrade from prior visions for anything but the most unimpeachable reasons of effectiveness (as opposed to, say, market pressures, or contingent historical matters, etc.)?
I think it would be absurd to take such a position. The counterexamples are legion. To maintain any such view is to ascribe, to the market (both the actual market where products are offered and sold, and the “marketplace of ideas”), a sort of definitional correctness which it manifestly does not have.
Which is all to say that I agree with this:
And I concur that this presupposition is often mistaken.