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Tools for thought are a beautiful ideaāinventions which can āchange the thought patterns of an entire civilization.ā But thatās a 30 year old quote. Why are they so hard to make? @michael_nielsen and I try to answer that question and suggest paths forward: https://t.co/nF8VOcKM53
@andy_matuschak @michael_nielsen Weāre building a platform that harnesses greed to empower curiosity: https://t.co/iDQMxsnLMq The first goal is to give the public an alternative to corporate narrative controlāultimately, it builds a more mature epistemology into societyās knowledge infrastructure. š
@michael_nielsen Modern design practice demands deep engagement with users' context: interviewing, embedding, reading, empathizing. Such a powerful disciplineā¦ yet it's hard to shake the sense that the people creating profound tools for thought are doing all those thingsāsomehow way more deeply.
In https://t.co/nF8VOcKM53, @michael_nielsen and I argue that the most powerful tools for thought express deep, novel insights into the underlying subject matter. It's not enough to empathize with usersāthe designer must be able to produce original research in the target domain. https://t.co/4UFRVsAJgu
On a personal level, that idea was the emotional core of the piece for me. I've really struggled with my relationship to design. I've felt enthralled and empowered by its remarkable practices, but also instinctively uneasy that the work I most admire seems subtly "apart" from it. https://t.co/z0WTjcfZpo
Developing this piece with @michael_nielsen has helped me tentatively resolve that tension: it's a yes-and. This was a huge relief! I saw that the practices were somehow limitedābut they were too predictive to write off, and I couldn't see how to subsume them. https://t.co/411H3Kzgzs
@andy_matuschak @michael_nielsen Tied some of this work together with @alexeyguzey's recent post on "Intelligence killed genius" -- think it might be worth considering... https://t.co/FUPjqF9mK6
@Conaw @michael_nielsen @alexeyguzey Yes, I think it's right not to over-index on "genius" in the quoted passage. The important claim is that substantial domain expertise is needed, beyond what can be soaked up through "ethnography" typically performed in IDEO-esque design methods.
@andy_matuschak @michael_nielsen @alexeyguzey Would you say top 5% (of domain practitioners) is sufficient... cause if so "Reaching 95%-ile isn't very impressive because it's not that hard to do people who are 95%-ile constantly make mistakes that seem like they should be easy to observe and correct" https://t.co/Ed6X329KCu
@Conaw @michael_nielsen @alexeyguzey Highly contingent and not binary, of courseā¦ I suspect a lot of great ideas become possible at p95 domain expertise; perhaps some exceptional things at p99, p99.9. Designers are often not p50 relative to their target domain. Not sure what the "exchange rate" is for dyads!
@andy_matuschak @michael_nielsen Finally finished reading! The impact of language on thought seems obviously boundless to me in a way that I can at least articulate the absurdity of what it would be like to be without. I'm struggling to do the same for writing. From your POV, is it mostly about durable memory?