Too much information
One of the main elements of any person’s activities related to the IT industry is obtaining new information, its analysis and application in practice. The programmer is constantly learning something, he is subject to a passionate desire to learn something new. Comparing the current level of accessibility of information, one can understand (and even feel) the most tragic problem of the homo programmer - too much interesting and too little time to figure it out.
That same instant access to knowledge greatly increases the amount of information a programmer digests per day. However, it is not always the flow of words and abstractions can easily and naturally fit into the mind - sometimes this is impossible for purely physiological reasons. “For your thought comes only to the facets to which the organ of your thinking permits it,” and in this Lem was damn right. So what to do?
This is how Clifford Saymak Jwayne's teaching, which in some way allows one person to absolutely accurately, easily and impartially understand the thought of another person. It looks beautiful and unreal. But to think about how to make your thought clearer for another person is quite a positive occupation. I will warn you in advance that I will not demonstrate anything superstitious. I just describe what in my opinion can benefit. And yes, it is quite possible, this is a bicycle)
So, we will solve problems as they become available. And to begin with, we deal with the question of the amount of information. More precisely, the costs of transferring from one person to another in the symbolic form of information that has internal logic (I emphasize this point - for knowledge of a different kind, for example, the classification of fighting hedgehogs, everything described below is hardly suitable). It is quite obvious that any three-dimensional thought, expressed with the help of a literate, literary, natural language, carries with it quite a lot of superfluous besides thought. The efficiency of this method of transmission is not the highest, because for information you have to shovel a large amount of text. Therefore, when we meet with this kind of information resource, we often unconsciously use methods of fast reading diagonally in order to catch the essence as quickly as possible.
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Since our goal is to simplify the perception of information, a legitimate desire arises to reduce the costs of its transmission. This can be achieved if you try to use a more economical way to exchange information, “compress” the description of a thought. I note that this desire is not always legal. For example, it is unlikely that someone will get the idea of ​​compressing the information contained in a fiction book into an extravagant head. Anyway, it does not make much sense to make any text that is distributed on paper more concise. Therefore, this idea is relevant only for the Internet. Moreover, in order not to take away from anyone the pleasure of reading the next literary delight of a famous blogger, there is a sense in duplicating information laid out for general use in two formats - the usual and “compressed”. Anyone who is not in a hurry and wants, like a gourmet who evaluates fine wine, to roll the words in his head, can use the first option. Anyone who is in a rush to find a solution to a global problem, can take advantage of the second.
So, a more economical way to transfer information ... I do not know for whom how, but for me these words are associated with schemes. Graphic representations are often used to make an idea difficult to understand more simple. And this is quite logical - the presentation of information in the form of a scheme satisfies the conditions of clarity and brevity. And armed with these blades, you can easily and unimportantly cut off all unnecessary from thought and make its understanding a trivial task.
But not so simple. By themselves, the schemes do not give enlightenment - with their help, you can realize your idea in a not very clear way.
In order to describe the course of your thoughts as simply as possible in the scheme, you need to be guided by the criteria of simplicity and consistency. Simplicity in the description of a thought means that we need to use atomic units of thinking, i.e. intuitive (well, or at least fairly reliable) ideas. The consistency lies in the fact that these atomic thoughts must be interconnected by logical transitions. Thus, every thought can be transformed into a set of logical chains consisting of prerequisites, a logical transition and the result of thinking in this step. Reading such a scheme, one can easily trace the movement of the author’s thoughts, and thus understand what he wanted to convey.
I note that this form of describing thoughts, among other things, pursues another important goal - mutual logic, both when reading information and writing it. The fact is that an attempt to formalize your idea in this way is an additional test, which can at the early stages reveal illogical and weak links in the chain of reasoning.
What I just described reminds mind maps. But in my opinion, there is a serious difference in the scope of application. The mind maps are designed to structure some knowledge so that it fits better in a person’s head. The scheme that I described above is aimed at structuring reflections, with a similar purpose.
So, the basic idea is ready - for the afflicted, to make specially written schemes. But this is still too early to stop. It is necessary to discuss the mundane practical side of the matter, because, if unsuccessfully implemented, it can spoil everything. What is required of her? It is clear that since we are limited to publishing ideas on the web, a certain software product should help. It should be simple and unobtrusive, requiring the user a minimum amount of unnecessary actions. A huge plus for him will be navigation through already formed logical chains. The output should be a file of graphic format)
I really wanted to make a prototype of such a thing (exclusively for my own use) and I could not resist the temptation. Everything that happened or will work out in the near future will be here . In short, I will go over what is now and what should be foreseen.
In order to simplify not only the perception of information, but also my difficult life, I decided to write a prototype in python . He also caught his Graphviz and python pydot interface. In the process of writing, I noticed some details:
Navigation. In order not to distract the thinker, it is necessary to show only the previous thought (premise), the logical transition that is applied to it, and the result of this application as another thought. But at the same time, for long chains it is necessary to be able to view the entire tree of reflections, but this should be done unobtrusively so as not to take the attention away from more important things.
Readability. In order to hold on to the eye when reading the received scheme, it is necessary to awaken the artist for a while. He will tell you that a very good idea is to use several (preferably 2) dim colors for the logical chain nodes, which, alternating, will not allow the pattern to turn into a monotonous spot. In addition, it makes sense to use nodes of the same size so that they do not introduce additional chaos. And lastly, it is worthwhile to select indents (in Graphviz the parameters ranksep and nodesep are responsible for them)
The direction of the scheme. I have been torn for a very long time between the standard layout of nodes from top to bottom and more familiar to read, but less compact from left to right.
As an epilogue, I will demonstrate how this could be expressed in a compressed format.
"The Information Age (English Information Age, also known as the computer era or the information age (electronic era)) is a conceptual idea that the modern age will be characterized by wide opportunities for individuals to freely transmit / receive information, as well as instant access to knowledge that would be difficult or impossible in previous epochs of human development.
© en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Informational_era
That same instant access to knowledge greatly increases the amount of information a programmer digests per day. However, it is not always the flow of words and abstractions can easily and naturally fit into the mind - sometimes this is impossible for purely physiological reasons. “For your thought comes only to the facets to which the organ of your thinking permits it,” and in this Lem was damn right. So what to do?
A person truly understands another person, perceives his thoughts not distorted, sees not only words, but also the meaning invested in them, evaluates the other's point of view as his own. And it includes it in the measurements with which it approaches this or that issue. The end of misunderstandings, the end of prejudice, suspicion, and altercations - a clear, full awareness of all the controversial aspects of every problem. Applicable in any field of human activity. In sociology, in psychology, in technology, what edge of civilization can you take. The end of discord, the end of ridiculous mistakes, an honest and reasonable assessment of the available facts and ideas.
This is how Clifford Saymak Jwayne's teaching, which in some way allows one person to absolutely accurately, easily and impartially understand the thought of another person. It looks beautiful and unreal. But to think about how to make your thought clearer for another person is quite a positive occupation. I will warn you in advance that I will not demonstrate anything superstitious. I just describe what in my opinion can benefit. And yes, it is quite possible, this is a bicycle)
So, we will solve problems as they become available. And to begin with, we deal with the question of the amount of information. More precisely, the costs of transferring from one person to another in the symbolic form of information that has internal logic (I emphasize this point - for knowledge of a different kind, for example, the classification of fighting hedgehogs, everything described below is hardly suitable). It is quite obvious that any three-dimensional thought, expressed with the help of a literate, literary, natural language, carries with it quite a lot of superfluous besides thought. The efficiency of this method of transmission is not the highest, because for information you have to shovel a large amount of text. Therefore, when we meet with this kind of information resource, we often unconsciously use methods of fast reading diagonally in order to catch the essence as quickly as possible.
')
Since our goal is to simplify the perception of information, a legitimate desire arises to reduce the costs of its transmission. This can be achieved if you try to use a more economical way to exchange information, “compress” the description of a thought. I note that this desire is not always legal. For example, it is unlikely that someone will get the idea of ​​compressing the information contained in a fiction book into an extravagant head. Anyway, it does not make much sense to make any text that is distributed on paper more concise. Therefore, this idea is relevant only for the Internet. Moreover, in order not to take away from anyone the pleasure of reading the next literary delight of a famous blogger, there is a sense in duplicating information laid out for general use in two formats - the usual and “compressed”. Anyone who is not in a hurry and wants, like a gourmet who evaluates fine wine, to roll the words in his head, can use the first option. Anyone who is in a rush to find a solution to a global problem, can take advantage of the second.
So, a more economical way to transfer information ... I do not know for whom how, but for me these words are associated with schemes. Graphic representations are often used to make an idea difficult to understand more simple. And this is quite logical - the presentation of information in the form of a scheme satisfies the conditions of clarity and brevity. And armed with these blades, you can easily and unimportantly cut off all unnecessary from thought and make its understanding a trivial task.
But not so simple. By themselves, the schemes do not give enlightenment - with their help, you can realize your idea in a not very clear way.
In order to describe the course of your thoughts as simply as possible in the scheme, you need to be guided by the criteria of simplicity and consistency. Simplicity in the description of a thought means that we need to use atomic units of thinking, i.e. intuitive (well, or at least fairly reliable) ideas. The consistency lies in the fact that these atomic thoughts must be interconnected by logical transitions. Thus, every thought can be transformed into a set of logical chains consisting of prerequisites, a logical transition and the result of thinking in this step. Reading such a scheme, one can easily trace the movement of the author’s thoughts, and thus understand what he wanted to convey.
I note that this form of describing thoughts, among other things, pursues another important goal - mutual logic, both when reading information and writing it. The fact is that an attempt to formalize your idea in this way is an additional test, which can at the early stages reveal illogical and weak links in the chain of reasoning.
What I just described reminds mind maps. But in my opinion, there is a serious difference in the scope of application. The mind maps are designed to structure some knowledge so that it fits better in a person’s head. The scheme that I described above is aimed at structuring reflections, with a similar purpose.
So, the basic idea is ready - for the afflicted, to make specially written schemes. But this is still too early to stop. It is necessary to discuss the mundane practical side of the matter, because, if unsuccessfully implemented, it can spoil everything. What is required of her? It is clear that since we are limited to publishing ideas on the web, a certain software product should help. It should be simple and unobtrusive, requiring the user a minimum amount of unnecessary actions. A huge plus for him will be navigation through already formed logical chains. The output should be a file of graphic format)
I really wanted to make a prototype of such a thing (exclusively for my own use) and I could not resist the temptation. Everything that happened or will work out in the near future will be here . In short, I will go over what is now and what should be foreseen.
In order to simplify not only the perception of information, but also my difficult life, I decided to write a prototype in python . He also caught his Graphviz and python pydot interface. In the process of writing, I noticed some details:
Navigation. In order not to distract the thinker, it is necessary to show only the previous thought (premise), the logical transition that is applied to it, and the result of this application as another thought. But at the same time, for long chains it is necessary to be able to view the entire tree of reflections, but this should be done unobtrusively so as not to take the attention away from more important things.
Readability. In order to hold on to the eye when reading the received scheme, it is necessary to awaken the artist for a while. He will tell you that a very good idea is to use several (preferably 2) dim colors for the logical chain nodes, which, alternating, will not allow the pattern to turn into a monotonous spot. In addition, it makes sense to use nodes of the same size so that they do not introduce additional chaos. And lastly, it is worthwhile to select indents (in Graphviz the parameters ranksep and nodesep are responsible for them)
The direction of the scheme. I have been torn for a very long time between the standard layout of nodes from top to bottom and more familiar to read, but less compact from left to right.
As an epilogue, I will demonstrate how this could be expressed in a compressed format.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/151417/
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