Well said Carl!
+1 for spending some time on the ‘fundamentals’ but also an acknowledgement
that choosing the proper level of ‘fundamentals’ is also very important, and
indeed sometimes it is the outsider/maverick that makes new progress in a field
just because they don’t know the ‘proper’ way to approach a problem.
—joshua
On Feb 17, 2014, at 11:46 PM, Carl Tollander <c...@plektyx.com> wrote:
>> What I think I'm hearing from Glen is that while it's nice to use
>> power-planers and router tables to shape wood, one should know how to use
>> the right type of hand-plane, chisels, and scrapers in case you lose
>> electric power.
> Well, I dunno. Several points along these lines.
>
> - What is foundational for one is not foundational for another. As an
> example, for drum music, I may worry a great deal about the welds on the
> tacks, the speed of sound in the wood, distribution of force laterally in a
> drum shell, various details about adhesives and even what they fed the cow
> that supplied the cowhide, but that doesn't necessarily make me a better
> drummer than somebody worried about kinesthesiology of the forarm and
> shoulder and how it relates to the mass and dimensions of their drumsticks.
>
> - Knowing too well what is apparently foundational may prevent you from
> innovating. For example in wood joinery instead of cutting biscuits, I may
> know enough about epoxy strength to design a situation in which a bead of
> epoxy is its own biscuit and thus make a stronger joint that I would be able
> to if I had kept to wood joinery fundamentals.
>
> - The ability to perform a task at all depends on the capabilities at hand.
> In the power tool example, losing electricity does not necessarily mean
> one can effectively fall back to hand tools. It such a case it may no
> longer be economical to perform the task at all, given alternatives.
>
> - Then there's time. One could of course say that flint knapping an
> obsidian hand axe from scratch will make you more proficient with a hand
> chisel. At some point one has a task to do, a time constraint, and a power
> planer at hand.
>
> That said, yes, its good to know some hand drafting before you get into CAD.
> But "fundamentals" and "foundations" can be slippery concepts.
>
> Carl
>
> On 2/17/14, 10:39 AM, Parks, Raymond wrote:
>> What I think I'm hearing from Glen is that while it's nice to use
>> power-planers and router tables to shape wood, one should know how to use
>> the right type of hand-plane, chisels, and scrapers in case you lose
>> electric power.
>>
>> In terms closer to most on the list - programming in the scripting language
>> du jour is fine for productivity, but just in case it falls out of fashion
>> and loses support, you should be able to fall back on a HLL, and, just in
>> case, assembly.
>>
>> In both of my examples, learning the more primitive methods means that one
>> learns the foundational knowledge that makes using the modern methods easier
>> and higher in quality.
>>
>> Ray Parks
>> Consilient Heuristician/IDART Program Manager
>> V: 505-844-4024 M: 505-238-9359 P: 505-951-6084
>> NIPR: rcpa...@sandia.gov
>> SIPR: rcpar...@sandia.doe.sgov.gov (send NIPR reminder)
>> JWICS: dopa...@doe.ic.gov (send NIPR reminder)
>>
>>
>>
>> On Feb 13, 2014, at 2:40 PM, glen wrote:
>>
>>>
>>> TL;DR -- but you asked...
>>>
>>> Well, I was being purposefully provocative, of course. When serious, I
>>> advocate agnosticism. Use everything as often as you can.
>>>
>>> For me, it's less about diversity and more about core skills. In my
>>> experience (which is admittedly peculiar), the primary skill is the
>>> ability to try something out, figure out the basic use cases, then move
>>> on to the next tool. If your purpose is to get something done, then use
>>> the first tool you try/learn that actually works. Do the job; move on.
>>> If, however, your purpose is to understand, then use as many tools as
>>> you can, taken to the extent of some predefined test.
>>>
>>> RE: platforms. It seems to me platforms are primarily a way to avoid
>>> learning, especially the more closed they are. Ease of use is the bogey
>>> man. It's the scapegoat upon which all platform closures hang their
>>> debt to society. This is why I cringe when I hear things like "They
>>> [Apple's devices] are also the easiest to learn to use and the most
>>> durable." This is antithetic to what I would teach a child. If you
>>> always/only use the easiest tools to use, then you're only hurting
>>> yourself. And you're setting yourself up to be exploited by nefarious
>>> agents.
>>>
>>> Sure, it's OK to (mostly) use easy to use tools... but only AFTER you've
>>> become at least adequate at using the other tools in the same domain.
>>> (In fact, anyone who claims something like OS X is the easiest or most
>>> intuitive OS is just ASKING to be grilled about, say, the difference
>>> between Gnome 3 and Unity. And if they show _any_ hint that they know
>>> those aren't operating systems, then we get to grill them on Plan 9 or
>>> the Hurd ... or maybe VMS if I'm feeling generous.) My point being that
>>> ubiquity = ignorance.
>>>
>>> If I were to try to write it down, it would read more like a book for
>>> kindergarten. Pay attention. Poke everything that looks like it'll do
>>> something when you poke it. Don't be afraid to break it. Actually, try
>>> to break it. You learn more about a thing by learning what breaks it
>>> than by doing what it's supposed to do. ("Bending" is the real
>>> cognitive target, of course. http://www.moogfest.com/circuit-bending)
>>> You learn even more if you try to fix it after you broke it.
>>>
>>> Anyway, my main point is that if you want to "survive" the next "mass
>>> extinction" event, learn the _domains_ and their use cases. The
>>> devices/tools that implement the use cases are interchangeable and
>>> largely irrelevant.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On 02/13/2014 11:49 AM, Owen Densmore wrote:
>>>> Good points. But diversity? Do you buy into that?
>>>>
>>>> I certainly use services outside of Google. Twitter mainly (have but don't
>>>> use Facebook) but many forums which are not Google Groups.
>>>>
>>>> I try to use cross platform apps where possible. Sublime, for example, as
>>>> a text editor. Chrome/Firefox. Terminal w/ standard CLI. Dropbox
>>>> (mac/windows/linux) for files. iOS apps that are cross platform for the
>>>> most part, although my cant-live-without-it Italian dictionary is iOS only
>>>> and they tell me that it's the best choice for their market. Possibly iOS
>>>> folks are more willing to pay? They seemed sincere.
>>>>
>>>> The article was about survival in a limited extent: how to deal with being
>>>> jerked around by the demise of a popular service or platform.
>>>>
>>>> How do you deal with it? Could you teach a non-techie to follow your lead?
>>>> Would write down a simpler set of rules that are easy to follow?
>>>
>>> --
>>> ⇒⇐ glen
>>>
>>> ============================================================
>>> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
>>> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
>>> to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
>>
>>
>>
>> ============================================================
>> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
>> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
>> to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
>
> ============================================================
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
> to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
