Re: Thought Before Action.

From: Laurent Bossavit (laurent_at_dontspambossavit.com)
Date: 11/13/04 

Date: Sat, 13 Nov 2004 14:17:26 +0100

Dmitry,

> > Since it impossible to act before you think,
>
> Really?

I'm worried that sooner or later this discussion is going to run
aground, for lack of a useful distinction between "thought" and
"action".

Observe a computer professional totally committed to thinking her
designs through before implementing them - that is, to thinking before
acting.

What will you see during her Thinking phase ? She moves the mouse
around, types on the keyboard, opens a book for reference, has a
conversation with a colleague.

What will you see during her Acting phase ? She moves the mouse around,
types on the keyboard, opens a book for reference, has a conversation
with a colleague.

It may well be that "thinking" will involve more physical action than
the actual act of implementation, if for instance domain analysis
involves traveling to distant sites to look at "live" processes, or some
other form of field research.

In the context of software, what this discussion seems to be about is
varying degrees of commitment to hypotheses or theories. In "thinking",
we are willing to falsify our hypotheses purely through reasoning of
some sort. In "action", we are committed to exposing our hypotheses to
falsification by the real world.

It's entirely possible to think "too much" if the real world falsifies
our hypotheses more cheaply or more effectively than our processes of
reasoning could.

Finally, observe that software development largely consists of
"offloading" some of our processes of reasoning into the real world, as
easily recallable configurations of physical equipment. Not just
software development, in fact - but most "advanced" cognition. (See
Daniel Dennett's /Kinds of Minds/, esp. chapter 5, p. 193.)

The better we think, the more tools we make that relieve us from most of
our thinking - until we become bored and decide to tackle problems more
complex than any we've faced so far, kicking off another cycle.

Laurent

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Aristotle and his tautological influence
    ... "...Those that confer an advantage will spread ..." ... also observe a static system where the distribution of all traits ... That too would falsify the theory. ... not be falisfied ("making your argument water tight, irrefutable, ...
    (talk.origins)
  • Re: Speculative Design Hypothesis (with predictions)
    ... universes, making matter or energy out of nothing, setting natural laws ... intelligence to observe and it's so far been obvious that we can't do ... There is no test that I can see that will falsify it since - if one ... route is falsified, you all will just appeal to another route. ...
    (talk.origins)
  • Re: thoughts on Jesus
    ... Circumstantial evidence _is_ a kind of scientific evidence. ... We draw conclusions based upon what we can observe. ... I don't think is scientific knowlege: mathematical knowledge. ... with scientific reasoning that is relevent to this context: ...
    (talk.origins)
  • Re: Book-able view of ID as speculative science
    ... but even evo is that way. ... would falsify evolution. ... >> Except we do observe it. ...
    (talk.origins)
  • Re: Latest developments (the ball is now in Mikes court)
    ... falsifiable theories that were about topics that were proven to not ... theory on the use of chi, you were trying to come up with a theory on ... I believe that in trying to "falsify chi " you're ... observe the chi, and presto, you have now been proven it exists". ...
    (rec.martial-arts)