"Whoso would be a man, must be a nonconformist."
There’s no skill called “being right,” there is only error correction. If you focus on finding where you’re wrong and correcting it, you have a chance at being right; if you seek out places where you’re right, you will find only what you have achieved by accident.
Oliver
Our document structures typically give us one or at best two dimensions, so we analyse our problems with one (black-white, left-right) or at best two (political compass) degrees of freedom. Thus, our view of the world is artificial, created by throwing out relevant information.
Oliver
My favourite things are non-linear and/or multi-dimensional: literary references, great music, strange physics. Usually, however, our most common modes of communication give us just two dimensions: in documents, linear order and hierarchy, and in tables, up-down and left-right.
Oliver
Dawkins said that the value of a theory = what it explains divided by what it assumes. For innovations, I say: value = the freedom offered divided by the number and strength of new handcuffs they bring: proprietary data structures, incompatibility, and limitations on imagination.
Oliver