Thinking in Public II
All writing by Chris DeLeon
August 2010 to December 2011
For more, see Thinking in Public Part I
Business
1 An engineer expects doing it right to always work. A designer or businessperson expects doing it right to occasionally work.
2 Many ideas that sound appealing don't work. Many ideas that work don't sound appealing.
3 Businesspeople aim to find the content wanted by the audience. Artists aim to find the audience wanted by the content.
4 When anything is possible, nothing gets done. Structure enables progress by defining progress.
5 We'll eventually find ourselves doing work for whoever gives us useful feedback. To work for yourself, give yourself useful feedback.
6 The more times we have retried a problem, the more dissimilar the situation we'll attempt to adapt a solution from.
7 It is important to have a high tolerance for the sort of imperfections that don't matter.
Expression
8 Researchers advance what anyone knows. Writers advance what everyone knows. Designers want everyone to benefit from what anyone knows.
9 People slow to start creative projects worry about getting stuck and needing to redo work. Experienced makers just accept this will happen.
10 The work has no meaning if it follows too many conventions. The meaning does not work if it follows too few conventions.
11 The people most confident in their ideas tend to be those that have acted upon none of them, subjecting none to implementation nor critique.
12 Making something is always a contest in which every participant wins a prize. That prize is the thing made.
13 We hold off on writing down or acting on ideas that we expect will change. But writing and acting on ideas changes them faster.
14 A common challenge in design is figuring out what's worth making that hasn't already been made that is currently something that can be made.
15 Everything that has ever changed anything began as something that someone didn't know how to finish.
16 Artists use ambiguity to present a different message to people that have the intended background than to people that do not.
17 Fiction increases how many factual ideas are only a few thoughts or errors from discovery, and it does so faster than fact.
18 Doing anything well begins by dealing with our own poorly done work so that no one else has to.
19 Even the best creative works are met with more disinterest than praise.
20 New ideas are seeds, not lumber. We don't build with ideas, we nurture and grow them, having no way to know what shape they'll take.
21 Creating something, but able to tell that it's bad? Great! Then you can change it until it isn't. The real problem is if you cannot tell whether it's bad.
22 Choice of words isn't only about meaning. How something is said can be so important that what's said is merely an excuse to express the how.
23 It's more work to do something simple correctly than to do something grand incompletely.
24 Don’t confuse the dance steps for the dance.
Helping
25 The more possessive someone is of their time and thoughts, the less they grow and matter, like a plant possessive of its fruits and flowers.
26 Any fool can turn their back on something falling to pieces. It takes a special kind of fool to bravely risk failure by pulling it back together.
27 The entertainment industry fails if it only entertains. At its best it inspires, and leads to new ways of seeing the world.
28 Frustration is a sign that we care. Working toward constructive resolution is a sign that we care enough to not get frustrated.
29 Most of what seems evil is insecurity or desperation. Fighting evil in the long-term requires helping people become secure, addressing sources of desperation.
30 If it disinterests most, harms no one, but helps anyone, that's better than winning the interest of all, harming anyone, and helping no one.
31 Look for how things are, then how they ought to be, then how that change could happen, then how to ensure that change happens.
32 How to answer the question is different than the answer and different than the question, yet we teach answers to questions.
33 Until we address the generative why, any how addressed will be replaced by another how, any who stopped will be replaced by another who.
Identity
34 The things that we do to take breaks from thinking and learning are the things that determine how we think and how we learn.
35 The first thing of a kind that we become familiar with tends to become the reference against which we learn about other things of that kind.
36 Looking outward every day for new information keeps us informed. Looking inward every day for new information keeps us us.
37 There is discomfort in thinking, and so it is tempting to interrupt thoughts before finishing them. This helps no one, least of all the thinker.
38 We argue over fact, method, and rule, however our real disagreement is in our values, our goals, and our measures for success and failure.
39 Tasks are not isolated. They leave us different. Doing what we don't have to do makes us better at doing what we do have to do.
40 Rebelliousness or cooperativeness seem like intelligence traits, but these are personality traits. Context can render either wise or unwise.
41 Some things that shouldn't matter do, some things should matter don't. That isn't going to change. Work hard on both.
42 Some of the important questions in our lives can't be answered by anyone else because the only answer is whatever we decide.
Intelligence
43 We translate events and the words of others into forms that we know how to express. If we don't have a way to express it, we cannot see nor hear it.
44 Through non-fiction, history's most intelligent, articulate people want to speak to us - in quantity limited not by their willingness but by ours.
45 Wise people argue to scrutinize their own ideas, not the other person's. We cannot make someone else learn, but we can make ourselves learn.
46 The lazy mind mistakes compelling for convincing, effortless for excellent, and trendy for true. It's generally the opposite.
47a In reading a non-fiction book we learn what is in it, and what is not in it. The latter, across many books, is of considerable value.
47b Very narrow domains notwithstanding, a single book cannot very well be written to identify what no other books have been written about.
48 Anecdote, emotional appeal, slogan, association, style: methods that persuade crowds arouse doubt among intelligent people.
49 Bad art isn't better with more paint, bad writing isn't better with more words, bad thinking isn't better with more detail.
50 Approval or disapproval says nothing - most wild animals can show these responses. Articulate. Improve the quality of discourse.
51 Discerning good advice from bad advice prior to acting on either is functionally equivalent to only receiving good advice.
52 Fools get mad at inanimate objects. Most people get mad at people. Smart people get mad about ideas. Very smart people don't get mad at all.
Motivation
53 We tend to behave as though people will be unhappy if we change. To the contrary: people are generally glad to see us grow.
54 Do not let other people doing something poorly demotivate you from doing everything that you can to do that something well.
55 It's easier to maintain motion than to start and stop. To have an easier time doing tasks that don't yet exist, keep doing.
56 When the feeling strikes to do something creative or productive, act on it promptly. Don't snuff it out with TV, web, snacks or socializing.
57 Independent work is only one step different from assigned work, and that extra step is always the same: Step 1 - come up with the other steps.
58 We sometimes regret quitting. We sometimes regret not quitting. We always regret staying without giving it everything we can.
59a Find something inventive you can create alone that you wish existed.
59b Find a skill you can improve at alone that you wish you could do well.
60 Saving, writing, remembering words doesn't prevent them from being wasted. Acting on words prevents them from being wasted.
Observations
61 Since the same side of the Moon always faces Earth, from there we do not appear to orbit, but to hover and spin near a fixed point in the sky.
62 A well-timed idea seems obvious after introduced. An ill-timed idea will be ignored for not seeming obvious enough.
63 The brain is not a thinking organ that can be used for survival, but a survival organ that can be used for thinking.
64 The answer to a seemingly unsolvable simple question is typically buried in the answer to a much more complicated question.
65 Straw Man Vaccinations: exposing people first to weak arguments for an idea raises their resistance to future consideration of that idea.
66a The world looks like the outside of things, but it works like the inside of things.
66b The world looks like many separate things, but it works like one connected thing.
67 Categories decrease our likelihood of finding something that we would have categorized differently.
68 Like tracing between points with our fingers, we simulate a ball's path not by pure imagination, but by moving our eyes physically in an arc.
People
69 Agreement makes it possible for us to communicate, disagreement makes it important for us to communicate.
70 Whether or not we intend for it to be, waiting to respond to a message is part of the response given.
71 Write for those willing to read, speak for those willing to listen, and teach for those willing to learn.
72 When we say something that offends people we disagree with, they no longer listen to us, ending any chance to persuade (or learn from) them.
73 Those that fare the best within civilization are the ones that would fare the worst without it, and therefore owe the most back to it.
74 Things may not be as they seem, however part of how things are, from a practical standpoint, is how they seem to others.
75 If everything you held secret became known to everyone, would people think better or worse of you?
Perspective
76 The whole world sounds suspiciously like whoever we choose to pay attention to.
77 Saying something of substance to fewer people rather than little of value to many people is not "reaching fewer people" - it is "reaching any."
78 Excess procrastination is bad, but so is anything in excess. Mild procrastination leads us to make novel connections.
79 If it has been done before - but it was done incorrectly, incompletely, or incomprehensibly - it has not been done before.
80 No amount of knowledge amassed will do so much as build a birdhouse. Thought can optimize physical effort, but it can't replace it.
81 It's more important for it to be done at all than for it to be done perfectly. Otherwise nothing would've ever been done.
82 Ancient ancestors struggled to survive. Recent ancestors struggled to survive comfortably. Today we are struggling to survive meaningfully.
83 Why is it that way? Because if it were not, then it would not be at all. Though now that it already is, with work we can make it another way.
Videogames
84 Games, movies, and books often depict solving problems as destroying enemies. That makes victory final, clear, satisfying, and pure fiction.
85 What a book, film, or videogame is about is a surface detail that guides us to it, but how it's done is what affects us.
86 When we say 'play' about a videogame we often mean it not as in playful, nor as in playing a sport - but playing a DVD, or playing a guitar.
87 Indie developers rely on talent and good judgment to make up for team size and good process. Some large companies do the opposite.
88 Game developers don't aim to make whatever happens to be in our heads, but to make something worth making. Ideas only help give us direction.
89 A poem is not a short novel. Why should people assume that a small videogame ought to have much in common with a large one?
90 A beginner interprets a videogame by how it looks; a novice, by what happens in it; an expert, by the strategies it rewards.
91 As a player, I'm not what the camera is or points at, I'm what I control. When a game takes away control, that's no longer me on the screen.
92a Magic in videogames - invisibility, walking through walls, stopping time - is what a program does by default.
92b Videogame developers invest a great deal of energy into reproducing the mundane coherence of reality, when unreality is far more interesting.
93 Digital distribution first changed the creative world by making it easier to be discovered, now it is making it unnecessary to be discovered.
94 No one played Mario or Zelda to save the princess. No one played Halo to stop the Covenant. Game story does not do what we act like it does.
Warnings
95 Something shared with the world incorrectly has a poor chance of reaching who it should, and a good chance of reaching who it shouldn't.
96 A great idea, over explained, can sound like a bad one. A bad idea, over explained, can sound like a great one.
97 When we evolved to like sugar, too much was unattainable. When we evolved to like novelty, too much was unattainable. We now require portions.
98 Fiction is not a hypothesis. That no one has the answer does not mean we are unable to spot the inconsistency and errors in fabricated ones.
99 Adding more elements to a completed system takes things away: first simplicity, then accessibility, then comprehensibility.
100 The trick to making one mistake is not thinking about it so much that it turns into two or more.
101 Innovating while learning fundamentals yields neither.
102 Uncompromising expectations are a trap, based on the assumption that because highways don't look like cities they cannot lead to cities.
103 Find an outlet for ideas that don't fit what you're doing - or they'll wind up in places they shouldn't until you learn to stop having them.
104 Non-fiction doesn't excuse bad writing; non-entertainment doesn't excuse bad design. But it does change what bad means.
105 Fear over finding out ought to be outweighed by fear of not knowing.
106 Too many people are preparing for yesterday and nostalgic for tomorrow.
For more, see Thinking in Public Part I.
E-mail me via chris@deleonic.com.