Developer tools: extend your reach (with some work)
Useful terminology: my tools are either ready-to-hand, unready-to-hand, or present-at-hand. I can notice the switch and deal with it consciously.
philosophy
Not about me
In a single-player video game, I’m a kid again, because the story is all about me. I am the main character, and every other character exists for me. They’re all standing around waiting for me to react to them. Everything they do, they do it to make me feel something. The decisions I make change the world, …
In defense of rationality and dynamic programming
Karl Popper defines rationality as: basing beliefs on logical arguments and evidence. Irrationality is everything else. He also defines comprehensive rationality as: only logical arguments and evidence are valid basis for belief. But this belief itself can only be accepted by choice or faith, so comprehensive rationality is self-contradictory. It also excludes a lot of …
direct aims, broad interests
You can want something, or you can just be interested in things. On a dating site, you can decide what you want in a partner and filter people for that and message them. Or, you can find many things about people interesting, and look for any of these traits or hobbies, and ask about them. …
Victory at life
In most (modern) board games, there’s a phase where you build an engine, and a phase where you use that engine to achieve victory. This is not explicit, it’s just that in the first part of the game you choose things that give you more power, while in the last few rounds you maximize victory …
Ascendency
What makes one system more organized than another? More developed, more … civilized? How can we measure advancement? In Ecology, the Ascendent Perspective, Robert Ulanowicz has an answer. Along the way, he answers even bigger questions, like: how do we reconcile the inexorable increase in entropy with the constant growth, learning, and making going on around …
Reading: Ecology, the Ascendent Perspective
Complexity in Ecological Systems. by Robert E. Ulanowicz It’s about ecology, complexity, and a considerable bit of philosophy. Very readable. Unfortunately only available in dead-tree. “Life itself cannot exist in a wholly deterministic world!” Concept: auto-catalytic loops This book explains how evolution works. Evolution works by “try shit and see what happens” — perturb and test, …
Horizonal goals
Video version here There’s this great, short book by John Kay called Obliquity. It’s about goals that you can’t achieve by aiming for them directly; you have to look for an oblique goal that will happen to get you there. Like, you can’t aim for “happiness;” you have to find something such that aiming for …