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How Much Do Models Influence Our Thinking?
OCatenac writes: "Frank Schirrmacher, head of the arts and science department for the influential German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, considers the question of how much metaphor and model influence our view of the world."
If you rely too much on metaphors and models to base your decisions on then you are going to get burned. The real world is never as clean and perfect as a modeled environment. Models should only be used for an initial inspection of how something should be approached. Prior to implementation, a more direct, hands-on method needs to be used in order to work out any bugs. This applies to any sort of project where modeling is used; software, hardware, geological exploration, architecture, sociology, etc.
Chris DiBona
--
Grant Chair, Linux Int.
Pres, SVLUG
Co-Editor, Open Sources
Open Source Program Manager, Google, Inc.
I think that our brains are "wired" to use models to describe thing. They are useful - no, essential - for communicating complicated ideas to other people.
A mathematical equation such as a line, curve, or a plan can't really be imagined without a model using the Cartesian co-ordinate system. After hundreds of years, it's still the best thing that we have. Models are also important in science, which is replete with things that cannot be directly observed - and therefore require modeling. The atom. The quark. String theory.
The model is a valuable human mental tool.
This is a little bit more lofty than most of the prose I've seen pointed to here, but it looks like the gist of it is that people define themselves and their lives in the lore of the day. This is not new--what's new is that soon, the media are going to be able to manipulate the presentation of this lore in ways never before possible.</flameproof underwear>
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Sci-fi almost seem like scripts for self fulfilling prophecies: a few years ago I read about a company building a "tricorder" (where do you think they got the idea?)
Perhaps recognizing that popular media and culture produce "group think" of sorts in intellectuals is a powerful tool for innovation in itself. Maybe if one wants to come up with radical thoughts, immerse in non-mainstream cultures is good medicine?
Perhaps anything influenced by popular media is "in the box" thinking.
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Give me LIBERTY, or give me a check.
A model, in a way, is language to express ideas. Much of our knowledge today that we take for granted today is built on the knowledge from our ancestors.
George Orwell said it well in 1984... If you control the language, you control thoughts:
If you breed breed out the concept of "freedom" and take related words out of the lexicon, you can control your population so that they don't know that they're free. Even if someone has a thought in his head that he's not free, he can't communicate that idea to others.
Similarly, if you create new language (or models), you allow new thoughts to form.
In the post-modern era, discussions like this are a bit pointless. To speak of how "metaphor and model" influence our view of the world is unnecessary when it is realized that we create our world by the metaphors we use to view it.
[sarcasm on] from Claudia Schiffer(sp?), to Iman (sp?) to Kate Moss(sp?) and everyone in between, models have exerted great influence on the mainstream culture, both in the USA and abroad. I would like to extend my hand in thanking these beautiful women, for being such a strong foundation in the minds of the world's youth. I also would like to thank them for many many years of great sports Illustrated Swimsuit editions. Thanks you, lovely ladies! [sarcasm off]
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"I would say that 99 per cent of what my father has written about his own life is false." - L. Ron Hubbard Jr.
When I was a young kid, I was totally overwhelmed by the complexity of our world: elementary particles and forces, quantum mechanics, equations of fluid flow, relativity... It's a good thing I learned metaphors like "chair" and "apple". Before that it was just too confusing.
I hereby proclaim that all jokes about fashion models have already been made. To ensure no more are permitted, I will assert that mentioning fashion models is equivalent to being a Nazi.
Some psychology guy proposed this decades ago... The Whorfian hypothesis. It is a neat idea, although I don't recall why, it was discounted.
A google search reveals oodles of material.
I think 1984 was written around the time this was a big idea.
Language doesn't control our thoughts, but it does strongly affect how we express them (for obvious reasons.) To steal an example from Pinker, 1994: The fact that you can be unable to find the right words to express "what you meant to say" is, among other possible illustrations, a demonstration that lingustic determinism just doesn't totally make sense.
Creating a new model doesn't necessarily allow new thoughts to form -- but it gives a different way of looking at a situation, and lets the creator of that model express his thoughts more clearly to himself and to others, which can lead to better-developed theories and better communication of thoughts.
You can't not have a concept just because you don't have a word for it. It's just that you can't talk about it without the words.
The question of model and metaphor do bring up interesting questions about the cognitive process of human thinking ... but the background given for who this person is I question to be writing anything about Model & Metaphor .... much less attributing anything like that to him.
How many of you have read the article?
There's a gorilla from Manilla whose a fella that stinks of vanilla and has salmonella.
When I see Schiffer it changes my train of thought completely.
Buyt seriously, yes, of course models do vastly affect thinking. Is this even a question? As more and more of our daily interactions are with information-driven systems, the metaphor used to convey that information is the determiner of how we interpret it.
The desktop metaphor and the command line metaphor (and it is a metaphor) define how we think of, and consequently, utilize computers. Even something seemly obvious and basic as the telephone, the pager, or the palmpilot are all used defined by their metaphors.
Kevin Fox
Kevin Fox
Models, when flawed, can really hinder breakthroughs (the celestial sphere models come to mind). This was not only true then, but now, as even current elemtary and middle school science classrooms still present the atom as miniature solar systems. Models of electric current are also often wrong, as they try to show it as water flowing (the direction is wrong).
o/~ she's a model and she's looking good, I'd like to take her home, that is understood o/~ --Kraftwerk
The main question of the article is how the mental models we all keep in our heads influence our thinking and our actions. It's not talking about simple models that help us survive (i.e. things tend to fall, don't let fast things touch your head, etc); rather the article deals with the models that people use to think about more abstract things.
I think that the models we think with are largely a product of the culture we as individuals are exposed to. Not to mention the culture we choose to expose ourselves to.
I think it's important to question the models we think with (as damnably introspective, and as difficult, as that may be) because the models we think with become the origins of our behavior. You have to wonder: "Am I thinking independently, or am I only thinking within the model of a 'techie'? Is the 'techie' model the best model to think with? How did I come to think using the 'techie' model?"
The most interesting (to me) idea that I got from the article was about examining the models that scientists/technologists appear to be using, or the models that they may be helping to create for others to adopt? Is it dangerous, or just interesting, or amusing that lots of scientists/technologists seem to be operating on models that are heavily influenced by science fiction?
Personally, I'd like to be able to base my own thinking on the most fundamental logic and divorce myself from any particular culture, so that I don't have to worry whether my thoughts and behavior are purely mine or if they're tainted by my environment. Unfortunately, I don't know if it's possible to that; I'm sure some of my thinking must be constrained by some kind of culture at the moment; I also don't know how I'd ever be able to tell if my thoughts were free of cultural contamination.
-------------------- the list is long. dirac angestung gesept
Some years ago, frustrated by what I felt were deficiencies in the typical business models of the day, I found myself writing a paper on developing a more organic model for analysis/description of system processes for a class in organization theory.
The article talks about HAL, "2001", and nanotechnology as well as the concept of the invention overtaking the inventor. My paper used certain ideas I found in the "Dune" series. Interesting that part of the Golden Path most clearly described in "God Emperor of Dune" involves a response to the foreseen possibility of the annihilation of humans by Ixian technology.
I think the ongoing challenge is to develop technology that supports a more organic model of ourselves and our world. The old business models of the pyramid or concentric layers are deficient not only because they inadequately describes the organization, but becauses they shape thinking into seeing organizations in static terms.
Life, it's possibilities and dangers, is less adequately described in terms of the linear dynamics of classic vectors then by elements of fractal modeling which is essentially based on clear boundaries, but my, the surprises within!!
We have met the enemy and he is us - Pogo (Walt Kelly)
If you breed breed out the concept of "freedom" and take related words out of the lexicon, you can control your population so that they don't know that they're free.
The only problem with that type of reasoning is that languages are not set in stone, and removing a concept from a populus isn't as simple as erasing some words in a dictionary. As long as the people feel the need to express "freedom", weather longing for it, celebrating it, or even removing it from others, there will be some term used to express it.
Language and concepts are tied very closely, but words themselves are only one form of communication. Also, there is always the tool of the anecdote and the metaphore. Suppose all the words relating to freedom vanished. Now, suppose an author wrote a book about a slave escaping his masters to live without their rule. Because that book's plot and theme relate to freedom so strongly, people could then use the anecdote of that book to express the concept. There are a thousand other examples, but suffice it to say that as long as there are any artists, storytellers, or visionaries around, a concept that exists in the minds of the people will have no problem finding a term by which to be expressed.
--
Feminism is the wild notion that women are human beings.
Read The User Illusion by Norretranders. He makes a good case for the conclusion that all we ever perceive are models of reality. The "real world" is as much a model as anything else.
Actually, a good argument against this (for us CSC folks) is as follows:
Sure, you *could* write a C interpreter/compiler in LISP, but why would you want to?
;)
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
Models and metaphors exist primarily for one reason. That is to supplement the understanding of those of us who have limited spatial intelligence. (thats everyone except Linus and Carmack)
Inherently they influence our view of the world as no one (except for the aforementioned individuals) can possibly keep track of all the specifics of a problem/system.
I believe the main reason that it was discounted was the fact that when there is the lack of a term for an idea, a new word is created in its place. Just because there was no word for quark before doesn't mean that it can't be invented by someone. Matt Leese
No, Karma really is meaningless now.
However, back when it was meaningful, he would have posted that without the bonus, so as to get moderated down less, and up more...
So explain to me: what is the point of being a member of the "I Hate Signal 11" club? I mean, really? Sure, he says some stupid stuff sometimes; I do too. And lots of people are members of the "I Hate Anonymous Coward" club, because he posts even *stupider* stuff. But why the vindictiveness?
I think you value Karma more than he does; that is to say, the answer here would be envy. Which is funny, since you're posting as an AC.
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
As a scientist I know all about models and the limitations inherent in them. Challenge the basic assumption and question the models based on them. Never be blinded by absolutism. Lord Kelvin was convinced that the Earth was much younger than that proposed by geologists. Kelvin based his model on the thermal cooling of a molten body. Unfortunately, he did not factor in an additional factor that was just discovered, radioactive heating.
I can't remember what T.C. Chamberlain's exact published quote was in response to Lord Kelvin, but it went something like this: The facinating impressionism of mathematical models with all their precision and elegance should not blind us to the deficits that premise the whole process.
This was published 100 yrs ago. If you need a translation, then here it is: If your fancy pants model is wrong, it is wrong. This also applies for those that choose to predict the future.
Media is pervasive and we can't really help but absorb it. It affects everyone's thinking. The fact that ideas from media is pervasive helps to propagate those ideas. People are more willing to bring it up during conversation, etc. Why do we have to distinquish between models and ideas that stems from our imagination everyday. OK, pure scientific research is pure scientific research. However, science fiction helps to dream up of applications scientific discoveries, etc. It's very easy to get sucked in into all the nitty gritty details. Sometimes you just need people to step back and take meta looks at what is there and what all the possibilities are. As a people, we are all contributing to the development of science. Most people are either dreamers or scientists...maybe that's why the "Models and Metaphors" issue has been raised.
Actualy, If some stupid moron had gotten the charges "right" on the electron a proton, then the direction of positive current flow and the direction of the movement of charge would match.
"You saved 1968." - Ms. Valerie Pringle to the crew of Apollo 8
If we didn't use models to at least partially influence our thinking, we might not know how DNA is shaped (the familiar double helix) -Ridge Racer
I don't remember anymore how exactly it was said in the play "Die Physiker" by the Swiss author Durrenmatt, but it went something like this:
All that is thinkable can't be taken back.
Brains, well fed, unchallanged by real world exposure, nurtured to allow the phantasy to run wild into new scientific territories, have always been at risk to formulate a world changing model/theory.
The persona's ego, character and rethorical talent makes the model a "religion" and the inventor a "missionary" and the masses the "disciples".
The danger arises, when those phantasies are exploited by the media and repetitively broadcasted worldwide, fed by politicians for profiling purposes or something worse, without having the mental discipline to demand the model to be tested in the physical world by an experiment first.
Without the restraining effort to consider ALL outcomes of a new scientific idea, a scientist with a "mission" can become a dangerous (and expensive) man to follow.
But I am not scared even about the most outlandish scientific ideas and futuristic prophecies. With any so called "progress" comes a "drawback". The more it changes, the more it stays the same. We won't outsmart that what created us.
Real social changes occured mostly through scientific or technical inventions made accidentally by very few men. Seldom those scientists invented that what they supposedly
were up to.
What do you think, will CERN be more rememberd as the origin of the hyperlinked www or as the European Research Lab for Particle Physics ?
Which invention caused more social changes, the quark or the hyperlink ?
Was that an expected result, according to a model or theory ?
Are we influenced by models ? A couple of people in academia may be, the rest is brain washed into it, if at all. Or they are forcefully polluted by subversive broadcasting techniques and don't even realize that they are followers of "something".
These are actually valid comparisons.
buttplug.
Blar.
Unlike your other dislikers, I'm not afraid to use my account name.
We know this to be false, because of studies of other cultures where there are very few color words (White, Black, and Red, for instance). These people can discriminate between pink and purple just fine, even though their vocabulary doesn't allow them to verbally make distinctions between these colors. So people can perceive what their hardware is set up to perceive, even if they don't have any words to describe what they are perceiveing.
On the other hand, people also have a short-term memory limit of 5 to 9 (7 +/- 2) chunks of information. A good model can turn 15 to 20 unrelated pieces of informaion into three or four chunks -- which can all be held in short-term memory at one time and mentally manipulated. So having a good model will make some thoughts possible that would be impossible (because of the limitations of short-term memory) without the model.
It's 2000. No moon base. No quarter mile wide rotating office complex in orbit. No regular operating commercial space shuttle with velcro-wearing stewardesses.
No HAL.
This nonsense about science fiction being the essence of prophesy has gotten out of hand when we start redefining "myth" as "model" in some pseudoscientific sense.
Models yield precise, quantifiable and accountable predictions -- not a bunch of mumbo-jumbo for parasitically castrated engineers to opiate the pain of their existence with falsely inspired visions of "tomorrow".
Yeah, Arthur C. Clark had a hit on geostationary satellites. OK, so let's rename geostationary orbit "Clark orbit" but, please, can't you just face the fact that you've been screwed out of the future you could have built if you'd merely been given the chance by the scum who provided you with false inspirations while they centralized control?
Seastead this.
I'd have to agree with you on the Bronowski series (and it really was better than watching Sagan staring in wide-eyed wonder out of his spaceship in Cosmos). I was taking some physics courses at the time AoM was being shown and for some reason the show was popular with just about everyone in the class. Some memorable discussions invariably followed each week's segment.
At one time you could purchase VHS tapes of the series. Well, that was a long time ago. Since PBS cannot see fit to re-air great programs like AoM (they might upset someone who really needs to see another Antique Roadshow) I decided to re-read the book that was written along with the series. Still a recommended read.
Cheers...
--
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
Everything Liguistic (at the very least, probably everything conceptual at all) is a metaphor if we take de Saussure seriously, along with all european Semiotics. If everything we say or concieve points at and is "reperesentative" of something else...then shazaam...all metaphor. remember coherance doesn't just mean truth it comes from a model of truth whereby items don't interfere with each other and refer to each other...one huge train of reference.... (mind you this is a horrible paraphrase) "everything is metaphor, metonomy, or anthropomophism" , Nietzsche for those of you who hate systems. the trick is making sure our models, scientific or not, reinforce a world that we'd like to live in.
Computers are tools. Thats it, tools. Course I'm probably a tool as well.
However, there may be many different "models" depending on your worldview. Consider something as simple as a brick. A geologist would say its a silicate/fused clay in rectilinear form, an egineering would say it has structural/compression/torsion strength of xyz, a builder will say its costs k available in quantities of l deliverable in m days, and I say great, but how do you build a wall? I suppose from a more philosophical world we can talk about perceptions of reality and common reference frames but then that's a more AI type problem.
The problem comes down to resolving conflicts among different world perceptions ... in the extreme this can lead to holy crusades. Even a brick can be viewed as anything from a unit of building art to a handy weapon for Seattle protesters. Metaphors are merely one tool in the repeitoire of techniques of people attempting to "persuade" us that their viewpoint is "superior". That is why democracies tend to be slightly less self-destructive than other forms of society in that there is enough rotation of thoughts in the power structures (no old geriatics sticking to out-moded social theories). For those trained in critical thinking/analysis, they have the rare skill of being able to perceive reality and act accordingly (probably one reason why engineers dislike marketeers but I digress).
So, to survive, you need to build up a really good/accurate mental model of how the world works, whether a bushman in desert survival or a cynical politician scrounging for votes, and thus how you can interact within this perceived structure without wasting too much energy. And if you're really really good (philosopher, social entrepreneur or genius inventor), you get to form completely new models.
ObJoke and commentary on human nature
LL
Come on now, i'm drunk and i can still hit you up with shit thats eleet. All I can say is that mothafuckas is gay as shit, and you gotta hav balls., most of you act high and mighty, but when it comes down to the real shit, you are chiken shits... lets try to act like fucking neandrathals, survial of he fittest, nothing wrong with that, don't be a fuxoring pussy.. Ok, enuff saicd, keep it real.. Haxoring the double 0 later, and done fucking confront , you bitch asses.. ^_^ -= Griffis =-
I have to disagree with this. All of our consciousness is based on metaphor. Are you going to propose an exact copy of the world exists in your mind? To (attempt to) coin a phrase: "All Consciousness Is Metaphor".
Starting with simple metaphors for the world (mom, dad, food, wet, warm, Barney) we construct ever more complex metaphors for the world as we increase the complexities of our thoughts and actions.
Credit for these ideas goes entirely to Julian Jaynes and his ideas of metaphor (metaphiers and metaphrands). His book, "The Origin of Consciousness and the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind" describes this idea very elegantly.
There is no trap so deadly as the trap you set for yourself
There is no trap so deadly as the trap you set for yourself
-Raymond Chandler, The Long Goodbye
n/t
I think the fact that we must acknowledge is that the way humans perceive the world and process information is really a type of real-time modeling of the data we gather through perception. If you consider both the vast amount of information gained through perception and the truly continuous nature of nature, the use of some model is really the best the human brain can do. It is a necessary tool for making discrete and comprehensible what is in reality continuous and loaded with irrational and stochastic processes.
Now, supermodels... that's an entirely different topic...
Although a drunken sot. most sotten. I must say this. that is, our current understanding of the world via the "language" of mathematics and physics(arguablly really just mathematics) would be nill without models. Think of freshman physics and what not where commonplace things like friction are neglected to examine the more fundamental behaviors of matter such as velocity. Indeed the modern concept of modelling can be traced back to galilleo and his early experiments. Point, well, I guess the point is is that we humans have used modelling as a useful contruct, albeit a non-perfect human construct, to gain greater understanding. It is a tool of our invention rather than an impedance.
this is an old, old branch of psychology that has the following premise, if I remember correctly: all human behavior at a moment in time is determined by the person's perception of the situation at that given time. By understanding or manipulating that perception, you can predict and/or control the behavior.
Basically, the idea is that we carry models of our world around with us, and we act in accordance of that given model at all times. We also try and perserve those models, which leads to various things like defensive behavior, acting out, etc.
I'm not sure if this branch of psychology is active, but a search on amazon for 'perceptual psychology' turned up 100 books.
This kind of stuff is amazingly useful to interface designers, because it gives a good framework for understanding the user(s).
--- only for the squeamish
oh, checked again. Look for stuff by Arthur W. Combs et al. The book I mentioned was "Perceptual Psychology: a humanistic approach to the study of persons." Looks like Combs has been doing lots of stuff (that one was published in the 50's?). Just ordered a bunch of stuff myself, just to see how the field has been doing.
--- only for the squeamish
The magazine Scientific American went so far as to suggest that our anthropomorphic view of machines can be attributed almost exclusively to Kubrick's movie.
I dunno about this. I think people have been naming machines for the last few centuries. After all, sailors name their ships (they dont just call them "the boat"), train drivers name their machines, and you have to admit, everyone has now and then spoken to your car whenever something's wrong.
What's interesting, tho, is that they're female names, most of the time. goes to show you that geeks with no social life have been around even before there were computers...
Tongue-tied and twisted, just an earth-bound misfit, I
Learning to fly, Pink Floyd.
If we think in more than one model, how do we choose? The instant we use more than one model, or are affected by more than one model, a meta-choice is called for: which model influences our choice of the appropriate model? Secondly, do we go through a sequence of models over time? Are there are higher order model that control which lower-order models will replace earlier ones? Ah, postgradute courses in the history of ideas - how it all comes back to me now ... and I left it all behind to play with Linux. Or so I thought.
I am anarch of all I survey.
you don't sniff the glue as you put them together.
Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
Sometimes you get burned when you rely too little on models. The young obstetrician Semmelweis, around 1840 as I recall, developed a conceptual model to explain why so many women got sick and died after giving birth. The medical establishment ridiculed his crackpot notion and he was ostracized from the most prestigious hospitals.
Semmelweis conjectured that the women were healthy when they entered the hospital, then something made them sick. In particular, something in the hospital made them sick. Conventional wisdom blamed it on bad air or other vaguely defined culprits. Semmelweis came to think that something outside the body came and inhabited it and made it sick; and that disease-causing agent could be transported to another healthy body and would then cause sickness there also. What a lunatic!
Armed with an explicit model, he could put it to experimental test, which he did: one ward of his hospital carried on as usual, while on another ward Semmelweis rocked the boat. He insisted that doctors and students wash their hands after dissecting in the morgue, before they delivered babies in the ward. This outraged the respectable doctors and they avoided the experimental ward and its wacko ritual.
It took twenty years for the handwashing practice to catch on against the opposition of the experts. Women, of course, caught on immediately. Semmelweis' much-reduced mortality rate made his obstetrical service the busiest as well as the safest in town. That pissed off the old guard even more.
The mental baggage that we are unaware of, because it is too common to notice, is what holds us back the most.
When one's conceptual furniture is made explicit, models can be tested, and progress is possible.
Everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler. -Albert Einstein
target acquired: Christy Turlington
investigating outfit... ALERT: outfit transparency over 50% Initializing arousal subroutine... locating twin peaks... WARNING: approaching climax! fluid containment tragedy averted, continuing perusal..."Ancillary does not mean you get to rule the world." --U.S. Circuit Judge Harry Edwards, speaking to the FCC's lawyer
Bruce Sterling's comments are spot on:
Speaking of Newt Gingrich as a "science fiction novelist" he argues that there are nobody left to assess technology and its impact on society. "Nobody but hobbyists, day-traders and cranks."
Science, models, thinking about the future and thereby shaping the future is too important to leave to Hollywood. We need informed debate, constructive arguments and a vision that can once again make Americans (and the rest of the world) passionate about science and the future. There are no great dreams anymore because, perhaps, there are no great dreamers.
Dream, then, but know that dreaming in itself is not enough.
Hi!
Our emobodied perception and experience of the world, coupled with our sensory and brain architecture, create our lowest level mental models - the stuff of our thoughts. The chunking provided by higher level language based concepts adds to our set of models. Models do not so much control our thoughts as being the basis of our thoughts. Lanuage per-se (as opposed to the concepts/models we aquire via language) is just the means of expression of our thoughts.
I just wanted to point oput that I think most people did NOT fully read the article and jumped to the conclusion that either the author didn't know what he was talking about or timothy didn't know what the author was talking about. Actually, the whole article *while it does take a few to get to the point* is talking about the presence of role-models and their affect on the scientifc community.
Cheers
Chris
-- Humans, because the hardware IS the software.
Models influence my thinking quite a bit.
Models like:
Cindy Crawford
Naomi Campbell
Tyra Banks
Linda Evangelista
Patricia Ford
Just to name a few....
Co-founder and designer at Music Nearby: http://musicnearby.com
Models are necessary to deal with concepts that go beyond our normal capacity to deal with or phenomena that are unobservable. They can also be useful in observing trends, and creating projections of possible events. The danger of models is fact that the layman takes the model to be real. This danger is amplified, when the creator of the model takes it to be real. In this way models do effect our thought processes. Our belief in models make it much harder to deal with events that don't conform to those models.
Some stories are so vague, they desperately need humor.
"Ancillary does not mean you get to rule the world." --U.S. Circuit Judge Harry Edwards, speaking to the FCC's lawyer
From the article>>>Yet HAL has inspired countless scientist to make fantasy a reality.
The article trying to fine line a debate between Bill Joy and Robert Freitas, but in the end shows it really doesn't matter.
As a young child enthralled with the neato stuff of Star Trek. I wanted to travel to space or be able to zap Klingons with Phasers. A later version of Cowboys and Indians. However I didn't that doesn't mean others didn't make jumps to bring fantasy into reality.
Deforest Kelly was always amazed by the fact that some of the fans of the show became real doctors.
The models have influence but if you limit yourself to just the vision of the model it won't work. In SciFi Models you lie on a chair and everything is diagnoist. MRI and CAT scans aren't quite that exact but their model was that chair.
But lets also give the model makers credit Arthur C. Clarke may not have invented AI but the communcation satalitte is his baby. Waterbeds invented by a sci-fi writer and there is even more of the same. How much of that became inspiration for their books? How much did those books influence others?
Sci-fi has also gone on to try and show the dangers of technology gone amuck as a warning for us to be prepared that a good idea may not be enough Issac Ashimov and the Laws of Robotics. When Michael Crichton wrote Jurrasic Park, He cited the fact that Genetic Reasearch was completly unregulated and that if something didn't change that fear would be the first reaction, the US government now holds a moritorium and genetic cloning. MC wrote that almost 10 years before the Clinton administration went into panic mode. How much good reasearch is now on hold because of fear? Then again how much of a fantasy was Dolly 10-15 years ago?
A lot of the true sceintfic community are sci-fi fans they just don't bring the whole idea to work with them they bring the dream that is inspired by it.
What is this guy's point? That scientists have too much imagination?
Metaphors: Wow, that's heavy. Whoops, over my head. Hard to grasp. Big idea. Stop, too fast! We can't even talk about metaphors without using them.
We are the first generation of Morlocks. Eat the rich!
Models are necessary to think; Without a Model, you cannot think. Thinking involves manipulation. Unless your thoughts physically manipulate the world in real time, (in which case the world is in your mind, and could be considered to be... "only a model"), your thoughts manipulate a model in your head.
Consider that you wake up in the morning and you'd like to sneak off to eat a sandwitch. But, you're disoriented; your model in your head of how your house is layed out and where you are with respect to it is incorrect. But then you check yourself with the world, and align yourself correctly; you make your model and the world align correctly. Ah, now we can go on to get that sandwitch.
Similarly, if you are manipulating a program, you have a certain model in your head about how the program works. Sometimes we keep it in a hash in our heads (A->B, B->C, C->E, E->D, A->E as well), and sometimes we keep it as a planar graph. This is analygous to playing quake in two ways: One, you run ahead until you get to an intersection. At the intersection, you've memorized the response that you should turn right. This is good for quick response, but bad for cognizing a strategy. The other way, you keep an overhead map in your mind, and then consider your location on the map. This is better for formulating a strategy, but not good for running around in the maze quickly.
But both the hash and the map (cartography, not mathematics) are models in our mind; just different forms.
There really is no way to think without a model.
Now, as for the nature of these models, what do we need from these models?
They are like any tools; Speed of execution, accuracy, reliability, and cost of formation are all consderations.
Visual models are generally the best model for cognitive processing; Aural models are generally the best model for direction processing.
Visual models have two primary advantages over aural models:
- Visual models are 2 dimensional. Aural models, if they can be called models, are one dimensional streams of syllables. For example, mathematical computation (1.00794*2 + 15.9994) on paper is significantly easier than mathematical computation through a tape recorder. This is because the visual image. Visual models can tunnel through an Audio stream, but this is generally not as efficient as resorting to the visual models in their pure form, and using the aural form only for the elements that it excels at, such as conveying experience, which is fundamentally tied to temporality. For example, consider music, a song, or even the song, "5 'n' 8's 13." (It *is* a song.)
- Visual models persist. Aural models disappear as soon as the syllables pass through the mind, and are thus terrible for cognitive analysis. Again, consider a piece of paper vs. a sample on a tape player. It is trivial to to remove the 2D element and make the argument orthogonal. Now, the visual model can be shaped, manipulated, moved about. You can take your scissors, either physical or mental, and can move things about with ease. Now, let's consider the audio model. To manipulate it, we need to replay over and over, either on a tape player or in our mind, and reposition information slowly, tediously. While we are replaying, we have no queue's to our location other than the song stream that is going through us. This is what I mean when I say that sound does not persist, but images do.
Sound is good at conveying linear instructions, because they require step by step temporal guidance. Light is a little worse, because you have to consider your "current temporal location" on the instruction guide, and navigate your map. This is a small price, but it is a price. Do remember that it's easy to correct for missed steps by indexing back on a visual track, rather than with an aural track.Excellent examples of visual description are comic books (in which authors have finer control over their communication patterns), manuals for repairing cars with diagrams of the pieces of the car (also a comic), airplane guides for what to do in the event of an emergency (also a comic), and the Illustrated TCP/IP volumes I-III (Stephens; almost a comic).
I'd like to add that there is no such thing as 3 dimensional vision; the illusion of 3 dimensions derives completely from...
- the passage of time
- blurring of distant objects
- overlapping semi-transparent representation of objects
This lends to the primary reason that I believe that 3-D OS's are generally a bad idea: The essence of 3d is that something must be hidden in order for something else to be revealed (through turning, or whatever). There are many cases where this is actually a good thing (task bars), but generally, there is an equally good, or better, mechanism on recognized two dimensional surfaces.Yes, this is still entirely on-topic; desktops are one of the models that we use extensively. Note that icons and cartoons are the best depictions of our folders and files (rather than, say, physical pictures), since it better reflects the icons in our mind (and by extention, our model). For a better understanding of this principle and a better depiction of the argument, read Scott McClouds's "Understanding Comics". Stated briefly: If you see a cartoon picture of a knife and fork, you wouldn't be surprised if they started talking and dancing around; but if it was drawn realistically or photographically, the effect is quite different. One is an icon, and thus a symbol living in the mind, the other is a picture, and thus a depiction of something dropped in the world.
Some day, I plan to write a more elegant, cohesive, and comprehensive description of these ideas, but I am not there yet; this is just some Sunday morning Slashdot. Don't bother checking out taoriver.net just yet; I just moved, and DSL won't be up for another month.
Let me finish with a general association of mine: Light is for knowledge, understanding, and the mind. Sound is for experience, awareness, and life.
Models are just that...convenient ways to explain the universe around us. Unfortunately, the scientific community seems very establishment, and resistant to change. Nobody likes to see models they got Nobel prizes for torn down. I'm sure a lot of people didn't like Einstein's proposition that time and space are not absolutely flat as in Euclidean geometry. And until recently most of the medical world laughed at things like acupuncture and herbal remedies. But lo and behold, after doing scientific analysis, they find that all those "primitive" people who have been using "natural" methods of healing for millenia, actually got something right. Who woulda thunk?
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
It's called the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, and Brown and Lenneburg showed in their paper "Hanunoo color categories" (undoubtedly misspelled) that linguistic terms for colors did in fact affect color discrimination.
Now as to the strong form of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, that you can't think about things you can't say -- something neither Whorf nor Sapir ever said anything close to, but if they read about the work in deconstructionism that they're being called the originators of, they'd just shit -- of course that's nonsense. But there's enough evidence and has been for years that linguistic constructs affect such fundamental cognitive mechanisms as color discrimination, and we ignore the effects of language on thought at our peril.
Whorf and Sapir were linguists, not psychologists, though the field of psycholinguistics arose (in part) from their work.
Many, many years ago psycholinguistics was one of the things I took more courses in than many others.
The overall topic I am going to consider in these lectures is the way concepts mediate the relations between minds and the world. This is the first sentence of Mind and World by John McDowell (ISBN 0-674-57610-1) For those intertested in this topic I would recomend reading what is destined to become a classic in the field. It is probably the hardest book I ever read but it is definitely worth the time and effort put into it. A background in philosophy will prove very helpful (esp. Kant, Frege, Wittgenstein, and Donald Davidson).
I forgot to add Wilfrid Sellars exellent essay-book "Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind" (Harvard Press) as part of the useful background knowledge for reading McDowell's "Mind and World."
If anyone has seen Bryce then you will know that the interface was definately not influenced by any user-interface models available today.
Umm, yes they have, and some time ago, too... Jean baudrillard wrote on it back in 1976 in "Symbolic Exchange and Death". He defines the four orders of simulacra:
Humans interpret reality through a series of symbols and signs (indeed, language is just this). A sign, or a model might start out as a representation of reailty, and people substitute the sign for meaning. However, signs can become invested with other meanings and connotations; the sign can begin to distort people's notion of reality, the relation between the sign and reality can become tenuous, and even become wholly disconnected with reality. Signs begin to get their meaning, not from reference to reality, but by reference to other signs, and reality can become cut out of the picture altogether. The signs, rather than representing reality, construct reality for us. This led Baudrillard to make the claim that reality has ceased to exist (from the point of view of the person), since it has stopped giving out the signs which let us know it's there. The signs simulate the real for us, and the simulation seems to us more real than the real itself... the simulation is hyperreal.
Now, Baudrillard was a social theorist, and it's more the social and cultural that this is applicable to. But his basic arguent that there's too much meaning is appealing. Think of the connotations words or symbols such as lawyer, Democrat, socialist have. Think of the stock-market... hardly very strongly connected tothe real, and even the money on which it depends is pure simulacrum; it's not even tied to gold reserves any more, but when the various terms of the economic model are right, you can print more money than you have gold to cover. The economic model ? Simulacrum... what reality does it refer to ? Economic "laws"... and so on...
Think of the Cold War... a simulated war, and nuclear weapons the simulated threat. They were never used, and no country would have used them given that it would ensure their own destruction, but that didn't stop the arms race, and having them gave a country power.
Politics as well... it's negotiated through image, displaying the right signs. Al Gore kisses Tipper on TV, and his poll ratings show a dramatic boost. The right to bear arms, the holy cow which starts some frothing at the mouth, isn't even about carrying guns any more, it's a sign of freedom which has been magnified out of proportion (yay, karma suicide)... if guns were outlawed in the US tomorrow, it wouldn't be the fear of attack which causes the outrage, it'll be the outrage that freedom has been curtailed.
Politicians employ spin doctors to give out the right signs through the media -- most people don't directly experience the political reality directly, the signs given out by the media construct the political reality for them, and politicians manipulate not the real, but the simulation constructed by the media to further themselves. Businesses spend huge amounts on advertising to give their brand and their products the right image, to send out the right signs that make people want to buy it.
Fashion... the circulation and collection of signs which construct "beauty"... if clothes were truly beautiful, why would we have the fads of fashion ? Fashion is all about signs, people collect the changing signs of beauty in order to appear beautiful.
While this state of affairs can be partially evaded or at least minimised locally by direct experience, you can't directly experience everything in the modern world without missing out lots of it, and even when you do, the meaning is going to be parsed and understood in terms of existing concepts, which themselves may bear little relation to any reality. The simulacrum has become inescapable -- the real unreachable.
Of course, anyone at all familiar with Zen and its koans will note that some of Baudrillard's ideas weren't exactly new...
NP
Can you sum it up in a word? *No.* In a noise? *Whuuuurghhhhh!*
I can attest that models really do influence thinking. I had a girl-friend. She was a model. She did influence my thinking big time.
I belive that inside our world there are infinite possibilities and some mysterys of science we may never now
Say if you put a animal in a box for 60 minutes without air and when you opened the box it was alive the question from then would be while the cat was still trapped in the box also say In a horrible world possibilities is in the Cilvil War we didn't acheive piece from the north and the south we would probably be slaves of hitlers kids by now and not even be here working for our masters its a horrible thought as I am a human spock I have to say I think creationism is stupid apparently a man has to breed now for humans and what if in another world god was real and he controlled us everyday say in another world those fucking fags Eric harris and dylan Klebold control our lives to be a part of the trench coat mafia hell in another there could be porn everywhere On the sidewalks, houses, even covering our computer monitors right now it may seem stupid right now but if you have been studying this shit since you were 13 and you are about to turn 22 you will get my theorys also what would be truly scary is REAL LIFE QUAKE which most teenyboppers see as rel life anyway if there was a large enough force that could happen well this ends my rant please read it all all my theorys
I have said this before when I had a fake model in mind who? God! was because the people that have belived in him have turned into very violent models trying to influence everyone for a bad way trying to make them ride their backs agreed with everything they say but models never have influenced me
Mate Feed Kill Repeat
The models that I have met couldn't change a dog's thinking. I don't think that "Super Models" are any more influential. I thought that slashdot would be a little above any of this model stuff, it should be left to 'In Style' or any of that other fluf. Bahahaha.... DudeMan.
I admit I didn't read any article(s) in question, but rather only the Slashdot replies. It seems that readers took the notion of models and metaphors to mean pretty much anything, so I'll chime in as well.
We use models pretty much every waking moment. There are of course the obvious scientific models, where we try to model the physical "reality" around us and try to explain new unknown observations with these models, or try to predict as yet unobserved behaviours. This is what brought us from the dark ages of religiously-oppressed pseudo-science to where we are today.
Then there are the models that we use in everyday life. Typically we have different names for them: rules of thumb, old wisdoms, experience etc. All of these help us build a model of life around us in general that is supposed to make decisions easier. Once we've learned that fire burns, we don't have to find that out again and again, it's a safe assumption that it does. This carries over to interactions with other people, and we build models of certain types of people, the kinds of behaviours of adopt or avoid to be liked or not disliked etc. These accumulated models then make up a large part of one's personality. We all know how this or that friend will react if we do or say a certain thing.
While these model certainly make everyday life much easier and less stressful, I think models can become very limiting or even desctructive if relied upon to the exclusion of new learning. Take the old saying that you can't teach an old dog new tricks; while it seems that most people tend to follow this course with advancing age, many people adopt this rigid attitude much earlier.
The boss at my previous job was a classic example. He was a very conservative person, his entire life dictated by rules of thumb, generalizations, and only his own personal experiences. Unfortunately this carried over into his professional life of managing a software and hardware development team. While managers in general are served very well by their experience and a certain dose of cautious conservativism to prevent them from gallopping into every new direction they hear about, the almost complete exclusion of new approaches and the unknown can eventually transform them into dead wood. This is more true in the IT industry than almost anywhere else.
My boss would always try to make each new problem conform to his set of experiences, and if that didn't work, he would either dead-lock, or try to over-simplify it to where he felt it became a familiar problem. When he pulled out his bag of platitudes and wisdoms, and we tried to convince him that this problem was sufficiently different to warrant some new thinking, he would always ridicule us by saying that we always thought each new problem was unique. Eventually the standoff between the manager and the team became so debilitating that the team members started leaving the company one by one.
I guess the moral of stories like this is that while models and metaphors are vital in helping us deal with an ever more complex world, we have to follow the scientific world and discard models when they are proven wrong or inadequate by new observations. We can only make our models conform to reality, and not vice versa.
Uwe Wolfgang Radu
Hey, it was a joke, okay?
Be nice to your friends. If it weren't for them, you'd be a complete stranger.
still not sure where the poster pulled the topic out of that mess of an article....
Hey, you think your house is cool?
I can't understand why the name Douglas Hofstadter doesn't come up more often when there is question of the mind, creativity and models/analogies. Maybe his name's just hard to remember... Also see his book, which I stole to give this post a subject.
Well, I think most of the people at Slashdot are the ones charged with making science fiction reality, but come back to reality for a while.
Deal with the following:
1. We kept up with Moore's law, and we haven't reached talking intellegent computers yet. Oh well.
2. Steady and impressive advances have left rocketry still very hard and expensive. Oh well.
3. People just haven't been motivated to put stewardesses in velcro. In fact, velcro is out of style. Oh well.
Humankind is doing okay. The only reason it's called 2001 is because people can't see that far into the future. And aren't we happy another deadline year-named novel didn't come about?
-Ben
as Count Korbinsky once said of semantics. Espoused in A.E. Van Goyt science fiction books (before he became a Scientoligst, that is).
IMHO,
We must think in terms of ideals and metaphors becuase we reduce complex things to simple things. Knowing the vector of every atom is not as useful as knowing Newtons laws of physics. Humans reduce and simplify. This simplifications are what we convey to others.
The only danger is when these ideals and metaphors outlive their natural lifetimes. Racial prejidice in the US made the south an economic powerhouse (King Cotton), and later became the foundation of much hate and ignorance.
"Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not. Nothing is more common than unsuccessful men w
Exactly! Thus why we use the term "Orwellian" to describe the scary feeling that something is just not right in the world today and things seem to be only getting scarier! If only we could point to exactly what is causing that!
Christie Brinkley, Elle McPherson, and several others come to mind!
The Chaotes (I.O.T et. al) refuse to use the word "to be", claiming that things aren't, things DO. They consider that verb a virus, rotting away human potential.
Peter Carroll once pointed out that the word "grimoire" meaning spell-book derives from the same root as the word grammar.
Language itself, even, acts like a virus. You can't escape it, except to realise that you must deal with subtle programming.
"I am happy" OK, so if you feel unhappy, you wonder why you feel so, and until you recognise that you FEEL happy, as opposed to BEING happy, you cannot work on things that assist how you FEEL. People cannot define what IS (ask any philosopher) - they can only describe what DOES.
A side note - I actually went back and re-edited places where I used "to be" except for explicit references to the verb where needed.
Always, always, always analyze what you say and realise the implication of word choices you make. Even they can influence your perception.
--- Jump!! Fire!! Bullet time!! - Lego version of the Matrix
The question shouldn't be whether models influence our thinking as much as how a priori kernel's of thought come to interpret reality. If anyone has read Kant some interesting ideas come up. One is whether we have a priori knowledge of things, whether models are nothing more than an uncovering of our minds inner workings as applied to an external reality. Models are a product of our mind's introspection to an interpretation of facts. We interpret facts through our senses and in order to interpret we must use our brain to give all this information some coherence. Now this is the part which is troublesome because this interpetation of senses is not logically apodictic to what the object is sans all of it properties. In fact we can say that all objects are simply constructs of the mind that we can't know the true reality but we can know how our interpretaion of reality "works". A model would simply be an explicit elucidation(a kind of rational reinterpretaion of an object subject to the logical explaination of its behavior and correlations of how we interpret it to behave) of a mind construct that does have some explaintory and maybe even logical connection to the actual object. We would further elucidate along this path explaining more and more things until our mind construct is overextending and no longer has a connection to reality. We could even outline a general method to properly think about how to rationally reinterpret the object (reductionism), and hope it works for all phenomena. I think models help to guide our thinking but as to become our thought process is another issue. For if a model is a product of a thought process then the model in and of itself cannot be a thought process, this would be have some connection to Godel's theorem in that a formalized system like a model cannot be more complex than the system producing it, and the way we use it as affecting our thinking implies that it somehow is more complex than the system that produced it. We are quickly coming to the end of our abilities to use centuries old philosophies to modern phenomena. We relate to things via a correspondance to elements of thought. And these elements have evolved via natural selection to macroscopic phenomena and macroscopic physics. Our minds are intrinsically wired to think from a human scale point of view, our intuitive ability to use mind constructs of human scale physical phenomena to phenomena that has elements that our brains have not evolved to as an intrinsic part of our thinking is failing. Note how not one physicst truly understands Quantum theory, note the abstractness of all concepts. Note how we try to understand these concepts via primitive elements of macroscopic thought, and still we don't truly understand. Many a physicst has implicated that string theory is at the limit of our method of understanding. I for one hope it is simply a matter of "method" rather than a true limit to the types of concepts that we can comprehend using primitive physical mind constructs. I for one am working trying to find a method that doesn't rely upon such primitive physical mind constructs but rather on regular mind constructs used on a formalism that is logical in nature, much like the way we transform RF circuits to a laplacian form to much more easily analyze them. All in all we definitly need new approaches, new ideas, new methods, and a new paradigm.
Electric Angst said: The only problem with that type of reasoning is that languages are not set in stone...
Although languages evolve. There are a few languages that are controlled by a central authority. French comes to mind.
Even with English, you must ask yourself who controls the evolution of a language? Just because I freely create a word does not mean that it will be adopted into the languuage. Do the editors of the dictionary control our language? Do magazines and media conglomerate control the language?
Returning to the dicsussion at hand (models) the above is a perfect example of how a model has controlled your thinking. Your model of language controlled by the people, stiffles other potentially better models.
-- My Sig