<story><title>Media for Thinking the Unthinkable</title><url>http://worrydream.com/MediaForThinkingTheUnthinkable/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>systemtrigger</author><text>&lt;a href=&quot;https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/17455578/unthinkable_thoughts.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;dl.dropboxusercontent.com&amp;#x2F;u&amp;#x2F;17455578&amp;#x2F;unthinkable_tho...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Evolution, so far, may possibly have blocked us from being able to think in some directions; there could be unthinkable thoughts.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;Which prompts today&amp;#x27;s startup idea:&lt;p&gt;1. Use Silk Road imitators to send hallucinogens to Amazon Mechanical Turk workers&lt;p&gt;2. Ask workers to solve impossible problems&lt;p&gt;3. Pass responses into machine learning algorithm&lt;p&gt;4. Gain godlike insight&lt;p&gt;5. Rescue humanity from self-destruction</text></comment>
<story><title>Media for Thinking the Unthinkable</title><url>http://worrydream.com/MediaForThinkingTheUnthinkable/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>6ren</author><text>Counterpoint: he notes our techniques are based on writing, but it goes deeper: our symbolic writing (including mathematical notation) is based on speech, for which we have dedicated  linguistic structures in our brains, much as we have a visual center. It is deep-seated, and many have argued fundamentally entwined with sapience. Thus, even if it&amp;#x27;s not theoretically the best way, it might be the best way &lt;i&gt;for us&lt;/i&gt;. But I&amp;#x27;m going to argue it &lt;i&gt;is&lt;/i&gt; the theoretically best way:&lt;p&gt;Linguistic descriptions have a key advantage over pictorial in that they represent or reference rather than show. This enables them to be compact, and omit unnecessary detail. (Of course, showing rather than telling is a strength of visual representation).&lt;p&gt;Yes, you can have a hierarchy of visual systems, and zoom-in or hide.  But a fundamental problem here I think is in &lt;i&gt;choosing&lt;/i&gt; the hierarchy - that is, the way the system is modularized.&lt;p&gt;Different modularizations of the same system are often appropriate for different uses of that system, or for considering different aspects of it.  For even a slightly complex system, there are a huge number of different modularizations possible, and not all of them are useful. Often, you&amp;#x27;ll start with a poor one, and eventually have insights moving you towards the ideal one. (Of course, sometimes the &amp;quot;right&amp;quot; modularization is obvious, especially for well-known families of problems).&lt;p&gt;All this is very difficult. My point is that it is easier to switch modularities linguistically than pictorially, by changing your concepts. Without the right modularity, it&amp;#x27;s difficult to pictorially show just the aspects of interest instead of the whole picture. In contrast, one can linguistically omit detail by referencing it (implicitly, as a separate module).&lt;p&gt;Maybe it&amp;#x27;s possible to do this visually, though I suspect it thereby would have &lt;i&gt;become linguistic!&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;[Though the above is a counterpoint, I&amp;#x27;m very impressed with the talk. He&amp;#x27;s working both ends of abstraction, with concrete working software demonstrating cool useful practical techniques that, while not universal, would be helpful in many domains; and also framing it within, and using it to illustrate, the deep universal and philosophical idea of unthinkable thoughts. BTW e.g. uncomputable numbers.]</text></comment>