Read on Twitter
Alright here we go, today's tweetstorm following up (kinda?) where I left off yesterday, as well as a few related threads. https://twitter.com/HelloMrHarvard/status/1337083120101756931
1/ First things first, I'm pretty happy that I'm even doing this a second time, but I still felt the same sort of barrier that I did towards writing blog posts. That being said, I still think the conscious act or decision to write publicly changes things even before it's posted.
2/ I think that I have a really good grasp of things, but as soon as I start considering putting it out there for public consideration, my sense of quality (or more accurately, the required rigor) increases dramatically. It's as if there's a "good enough" threshold...
3/ ... that is being disengaged when I decide to write about something publicly, and I think it's my finely honed sense of social context that really does shape the form a lot more powerfully than any other technique I can consider. I consider my words from many diff perspectives
4/ Even if the pervious tweet, the decision to write the words "finely honed" triggered a myriad of alarm bells in my head that it was too arrogant, or that regardless of it was too arrogant, would be perceived as such, but even after consideration I don't think it's wrong...
5/ Just could probably be softened a little bit to maintain the same sort of message but make the message a little bit easier to be received by my intended audience. Maybe because the people who are receiving it could be immunized to accepting information from arrogant people?
6/ Additionally, there's a further warning bell about approaching (and indulging) in manic tendencies. I think that I've overly clamped down on emotional reactions based on almost a fear of losing control and swinging too hard one way or another, but that's kinda off topic.
7/ Going back to the core OS discussion. What I mean about "core OS" is essentially what "programs" or concepts does a person use in order to decide how they behave, or in the absence of a conscious decision or construction, which programs are in place even if unknowingly?
8/ I think this is one of the reasons that it's been so hard for me to blog on superficial topics. Superficial doesn't seem like the right word tho... abstract maybe? That doesn't seem to fit either.... Topics that are higher-level abstractions of... what? Abstractions of what?
9/ Using a practical example, I've been wanting to write a blog post about the redesign of my twitch show, but actually going through the process of redesigning it and justifying it have been two completely different things entirely and I didn't expect the side effects:
10/There are some things that I just know from experimental evidence (aka experience) that will work, and other things that won't. I'll probably have a reasonably accurate assessment as to why that it's the case and be able to predict the performance of similar future content.
11/ The problem arises when I start thinking about the things that I "know" a little bit too deeply, and deconstruct it while doing what is essentially a root causes analysis on the viability of ~~things~~ in a social context or public domain.
12/ I firmly believe, and I feel that most would agree, that creativity is primarily the remixing of ideas. If I have two things that I know work very well, then they can either be utilized separately, or once you're aware of them, together to make a new third possibility.
13/ But with complex concepts or higher level abstractions for things within the realm of "manifest desires of an audience" the number of different influences that go into those are pretty hard to cope with, if I'm being honest.
14/ And if I have like 6 different core principles that go into making something enjoyable or successful to a certain subset of the public (which from hereon I'll just use the word "audience" for) then the ways that they can be remixed or creatively combined absolutely explodes.
15/ Going on a bit of a tangent here, I'm going to talk about the "5 Why's" because it recently came up in conversation (and then after that conversation, I brought it up on stream and talked about it in further depth) and it has been the source of a lot of new insights for me:
16/ I know this was originally about "my core OS" but really that was just a prompt, not an outline, and the fact that I'm getting any of these thoughts out AT ALL is a fucking miracle so if you're like "where is this going" then the honest answer is "who tf knows" ANYWAYYYY
17/ I don't remember the context in which the 5Y's was brought up to me, but it doesn't really matter, and if I felt it did I could just go back and find the conversation transcript but if you don't know what it is there's literally an article on it on Wikipedia for some reason.
18/ Well, I'll summarize it anyway, just for the sake of rigour and hedge. Basically, the 5Y's is a technique where someone is supposed to ask themselves "why?" five times in a row in order to arrive at the root cause of an issue or action. I won't give an example, you're smart
19/ The problem that I have with this, is...
"Why FIVE????"
"Why FIVE????"
20/ ... and well, here we go.
21/ Q: Why does the 5Y's have 5 as the required number of times in which to ask Y and not 4 or 6?
A: Because the technique is supposed to be a simple tool used to replace the need for a deeper understanding, and 5 is probably sufficient for the majority of use cases.
A: Because the technique is supposed to be a simple tool used to replace the need for a deeper understanding, and 5 is probably sufficient for the majority of use cases.
22/ Even here, my previous knowledge of working through this problem is making it hard to make up an example that works without actually preparing it in advance. The problems that arise, however, are kinda the main point that I'm trying to make so I'll just skip ahead.
23/ Let's generalize this to: "what happens if, instead of asking why 5 times, you just keeping asking why... forever?"
24/ Logically, you're going to get one of three results: The chain of questions will either continue forever, enter an infinite loop, or terminate.
25/ Furthermore, there are two additional confounding factors, namely that you may not know what the answer (next link in the chain of why's) is (or mistake it for a root cause/termination/principle/axiom) or that there are multiple branching chains that you could follow.
26/ The result of these factors is not only an explosion of complexity but unresolvable uncertainty as well. Pretty soon you'll start getting into epistemology (if we aren't there already), cognitive biases and blindspots, and other stuff.
27/ Suddenly, the answer of "just ask the question why 5 times and move on" makes a lot more sense because it's just good enough. 6 might be better but 5 is good enough. 4 will probably be good enough too, but you won't waste much time trying a 5th question regardless.
28/ And here we come ALL THE WAY BACK to what I was talking about with a person's core operating system. I've been toying with the idea for an article for a while now, that I will eventually call "Mapmakers, Backpackers, and Bricklayers" and now that I've said that it will be so.
29/ Someone who says "5 is good enough" and just kinda goes along with it will be a LOT more successful because the sheer effort involved in trying to find a more rigorous solution will be outweighed by the cost of finding that solution.
30/ This kind of person is the kind of person that I will call a "Backpacker" because they are constantly traveling, and they have PACKED a lot of TOOLS into the backpack and will use them as necessary but they don't really care how their tools work or if they could combine them.
31/ Honestly, I think this is the optimal strategy, and it drives me absolutely fucking bonkers that I just can't be satisfied with good enough and just roll with it.
32/ In contrast, the Mapmaker is someone who builds models. This could get a lot more conceptual, but basically a mapmaker, rather than carrying a collection of tools to overcome whatever they encounter, build one map that allows them to most efficient traverse the territory.
33/ I think in some examples, mapmakers can kinda forget that the point of a map is to actual travel through or navigate the territory and suddenly the making of maps becomes a task unto itself, making things more accurate, simple, or elegant beyond the point or reason or utility
34/ It's kinda like someone spending 10 hours to figure out a way to automate something that would only take 10 minutes to do. It might pay off in like.... 60 iterations of that task, but do that with enough tasks and you'll never get started at all.
35/ And if you're curious about the Bricklayer, then that's the guy who does one task over and over again, learns how to do it really fucking well, and makes some amazing/useful things through the emergence of that skill/action/behaviour (laying bricks makes a wall)
36/ I think that the bricklayer is actually the most admirable of the three "professions", and one where you actually learn the most since it's always practical and first hand. Anytime I've made major revisions to my "maps" it's come from the experience of "laying bricks".
37/ Oh goodness, where do I go from here. I guess this is also the point in time where I can safely signal some self-awareness? Even tho this is on an alt account, the likely hood is non-zero that this gets posted to reddit or my boss reads it.
38/ And a few pretty simple sanity checks can raise some pretty serious questions. I'm biploar - am I having an episode? Threads this convoluted and complex seem troubling, how can you get any work done?
39/ So if you're wondering how the hell I manage to function when this is what my brain is like, then the answer is that I'm kinda a hybrid in that regard, and most people probably are as well. The more I've learned the less I think that there's anything binary about anything.
40/ Ever since my breakdown last year, I've been compulsively driven to build maps that are generalized, elegant, and simple. (for reasons that I'll get into later) but pre-breakdown I was a Backpacker and a DAMN good one.
41/ Whenever I need to actually perform, I still use the tools in my backpack in order to actually do my job or function as a human being, but anytime that I get outside of that is spent pretty compulsively trying to build a more accurate mental model about ~~things~~
42/ It was a REALLY good idea to pick a prompt to start these threads. Anytime I get lost or find like 5 different ways that I could branch off, I can always just default to the original topic. Which in this case, was again core OS.
43/ I know where already using an analogy when we're talking about "maps" instead of "mental models" but let's move one more step and talk about a program as if it were an instruction set or algorithm with which to navigate a map. How do you get those things into your brain?
44/ This.... yeah this is a big topic. Which probably makes this a good place to end. I guess to summarize: what are you, a bricklayer, a backpacker, or a mapmaker, which would you prefer to be, and how does that model fit in your head?
45/ Again, I apologize for how disjointed these thoughts are, but I need some way to get them out because I need a tool to better organize and critically evaluate these thoughts and ideas and so far ranting in Twitter threads has actually been the most successful method. 
46/ Oh yeah.... I should do this. Wanna preserve formatting.
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