Errors vs bugs and the end of stupidity
celandine13.livejournal.com
celandine13.livejournal.com
(I recall it as arguing against the naive tendency of considering machines as continuous devices).
Interestingly, Dijkstra also uses a musician as example, for the alternative view:
if the violinist slightly misplaces his finger, he plays slightly out of tune
[0] http://www.cs.utexas.edu/~EWD/transcriptions/EWD10xx/EWD1036...
This depends on whether the slightly misplaced finger ends up on the correct string, correct? I suppose to a violinist, however, a finger that was no longer on the correct string would not be slightly misplaced.
Most people seem to do it the opposite way, which probably leads to a lot of classification errors. Fixing an intrinsic problem is so hard that it's considered a waste of time by most, whereas fixing an extrinsic problem is within the realm of possibility.
I figure it's better to waste time trying to do the impossible if the alternative is to leave a lot of low hanging fruit untouched.
So, firstly, is that essentially the same thing? And second, any good reading on this idea?
Is traffic created by individuals, or is traffic created by a larger systematic effect?
If you have the first perspective, then you're likely to be upset at people and at the traffic. If you take the second perspective, you're likely to understand its true nature and possible ways of fixing it.
In my experience, the systematic perspective is almost always the correct one. Individuals are merely operating their best within their system. Exactly as in the original post with her fingers and the piano. Brilliant analogy.
We need more systems thinking, beyond just intrinsic/extrinsic understanding.
I don't know any good reading on the psychological effect you speak of, but good reading to start on systems thinking is Deming and go from there: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._Edwards_Deming
Same for math, no-one said everyone must love them, because it is not that lovable, and to be good at it math lover have a head start. So before getting to the learning disability bug fixer you might want to make your kids fall in love with math or grammar or whatever.
That's how I remember my love affair with math: one day a math teacher did trigger love for math in me. It was a mix of telling me I was good at it, showing me how powerful and wonderful a machine it is, and so on.
This goes back at least as far as W. Edwards Deming in the 1930s.
Thanks for sharing. This is indeed right up his alley.
Then, if you learn singing or violin, and you are "tone-deaf" or near tone-deaf, then it is not a bug, it is an inability to love and learn music, and no amount of patching will fix it for real, even if it could hide the problem under the carpet for a while, in the case of piano learning. (Because a "tone-deaf" could play piano relatively well, but probably won't be able to play violin.)
I would love to be convinced that "math-deaf" do not exists or is only very rare, but it simply do not match with my experience. To take an example: When I was young, and still now: I find the "open" and "closed" segment symbolised by ]----[ and [----] to be a very enlighting and powerful piece of mathematics. But when I tried to explain it to people who are not in love with math, I just get blank stares: they would understand it, be able to use it, but would never have tears in their eyes when trying to explain it to someone else. I think they just don't see the beauty of it.
Not seeing the beauty in math is not to be considered a defect or a bug. I'd say on the contrary: seeing beauty in math is borderline psycho and an anomaly, just like seeing music graphically or being haunted with stories (Balzac was). But it helps a lot for math studies, just as loving music will help learning music. And math studies are important for most scientific or engineering careers.
To wrap this up, it means that nature is not fair: some kids are gifted, some are not. In fact I do not see any reason for nature to be fair, and many events show enough it isn't (See Lisbon earthquake). The "bug theory" of the OP is trying to hide this fact, as is the "learning disability" movement.
Fairness is an invention of human beings.
Couldn't we include symbolic math at a much earlier age? Children enjoy the building block properties of Legos starting at age 7 I'd say. How about we give them basic problem solving tools in math at age 10? I think we need to bring the potential feeling of achievement with mathematical tools to a much lower age. That could be geometry or color theory or basic physics (calculations with distance, velocity and time as an example).
I can only speak for myself but for me, the fact that math did not have any daily life application was one of the greatest reason to love it.
I despised physics even if I was fairly good at it. I considered physics was taking pure math virgin to a mud field and raped her there with "daily life" problems.
Simultaneously we could also come from the other end - describing a new world in a structured language (programming) - in order to awaken desires to learn new expressions. I remember, when I was a kid I wanted to program an 'Asteroids' clone, but I couldn't get the flying behavior quite right. I was excited when I learned about vector geometry - finally I had the tool I need to model that.
Is that your best metaphor?
The major exception to this is intent. When a person isn't interested in solving the problem this technique will be less effective. And since all pre-college education is compulsory there will always be a significant percentage of students in need of an attitude adjustment.
As an aside, no one commenting on this post really understands it.
She's saying: look, it's not a person problem, it's a systematic problem. If you look at everything this way, it's a better paradigm; it opens doors, it allows you to grow, instead of shutting down based on incorrect assumptions and false pretenses.
In fact, I'll go broader: few people on HN or in the business community at large really understands that people problems are really systems problems.
Systems thinking. That's what she's talking about. And she's absolutely right, it's the most powerful paradigm shift available, and more people need to have it.
This guy applied it to management: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._Edwards_Deming
Her music teacher applied it to piano. Both geniuses.
Everyone here should apply it to business. Trust me.
"It's crashed" --> "It has failed".
"It's behaving buggily" --> "There is a fault / it is faulting".
"It's a bug" --> "It's a defect".
The one to me that really matters is "defects". It's a matter of taste, but I find that the term "bug" implies mysterious agency. "Defect" correctly describes that ... there's a defect. Something is wrong and it can be fixed.
The answer is the system; not the individual. And that is one of the greatest leaps in understanding possible for a person.