Scaling Knowledge(scalingknowledge.substack.com) |
Scaling Knowledge(scalingknowledge.substack.com) |
A new blog/podcast about epistemology, AI, startups, and progress.
Inaugural pieces include: - Human Progress via Intellectual Progress (https://scalingknowledge.substack.com/p/human-progress-via-i...) - Knowledge: Burden or Boost? (https://scalingknowledge.substack.com/p/knowledge-burden-or-...) - Criticism and The Ascent of Man (https://scalingknowledge.substack.com/p/criticism)
Would love to hear your feedback and criticism!
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Articles I plan to write:
Optimistic Hard Sci-Fi
Recursive & Social Curiosity
Scaling Laws & Knowledge Infrastructure
Decision-making via hard-to-vary explanations
and much more...
Also tweeted about this here: https://twitter.com/MoritzW42/status/1597327210309885962/
> Scaling Knowledge
> about epistemology, AI, start-ups, and progress.
IMO the first step before any clear discourse about knowledge, is to clarify our knowledge about what this [discourse about knowledge] is about.
The twisted phraseology is just to show it "meta" nature. I could as easily use "clarify".
So, could you please clarify what "Scaling Knowledge” is? (Maybe using the above 4 words)
I assume Karl Poppers Epistemology (https://www.jstor.org/stable/284906) i.e. knowledge as the result of conjecture and criticism.
Yea I might add this in the about page (https://scalingknowledge.substack.com/about)
This is very much like the law of excluded middle, (there is a solution) ∨ (there is no solution). The point here I think is that there is no reason to not try to solve problems because either the problem is solvable and we make progress or it isn't and we figure out why which is again a kind of progress. This is certainly a reasonable perspective but Hamming and Heisenberg have quotes that provide more nuanced perspectives.
Hamming: Just as there are odors that dogs can smell and we cannot, as well as sounds that dogs can hear and we cannot, so too there are wavelengths of light we cannot see and flavors we cannot taste. Why then, given our brains wired the way they are, does the remark, “Perhaps there are thoughts we cannot think,” surprise you? Evolution, so far, may possibly have blocked us from being able to think in some directions; there could be unthinkable thoughts.
Heisenberg: What we observe is not nature itself but nature exposed to our method of questioning.
This is comparing ourselves with dogs lol. We are much more than that. We can build scientific instruments to smell what dogs smell or hear what they hear etc. See: https://publicism.info/science/infinity/7.html
I will try my luck on the "definition part" myself: According to Wiktionary, To Scale =
1. To climb to the top of : This upper movement looks like scaling toward "Wisdom/enlightenment" to me. (not very "Poppers")
2. To tolerate significant increases in throughput or other potentially limiting factors : The one is more like "Management" (as in KM)
3.To weigh, measure or grade according to a scale or system : here it is the "Value" aspect. what is valuable knowledge?
4. To change the size of something whilst maintaining proportion: The size is the easiest angle. I don't know how "maintaining proportion" would translate here.
At the personal level, that is one the biggest problem of "scaling knowledge" right there ! We just can't help "growing" it in article after article, because those ideas just keep coming to us. We need sometimes to step back and communicate the "meta". Not just the assumptions but also the definitions.
PS : Remnote rocks !
> We need sometimes to step back and communicate the "meta". Not just the assumptions but also the definitions.
Yes, good point. Do you think assumptions and definitions are something different? If yes, how are they different? The problem I solved with choosing a name for the blog was that I wanted to communicate a category of what will appear on this blog, which I think the less defined/fuzzy term solved well.
I guess, I was assuming none of these. But the word scale as in scaling a business/company[0].
> PS : Remnote rocks !
Happy to hear that!!
[0] for ex. https://www.lightercapital.com/blog/what-is-scaling-in-busin...
Nah, I'm sure we can go real deep into how they relate to each other. Here I was just stressing their importance together, not their distinctiveness.
> I think 4 comes closes > I guess, I was assuming none of these
Well, you are underestimating the genius of that choice. Now that I thought about it, IMO, the 4 meanings could be seen as equally important but complementary perspectives into engaging with knowledge (I’m sick of the KM acronym). You are warned, I'm gonna steal it!
> the less defined/fuzzy term solved well.
Yeah, that is what I thought. Over (pre)defining things could lead to predefined (=limited) thinking. No always good for exploring wide topics.
> Maintaining proportion
Ok, so it is the proportion of
1- Breadth/depth for Knowledge
2- Gain/Losses for Business
3- flexibility/simplicity for data structure.?
I just added the third one, like, how you could scale Remnote, not just as a business but also as a data-structure? what if, in the case of data-structures, scaling is seen as maintaining proportion between flexibility and simplicity?
I will just say this : I have a general theory on how Outliner+DB combos have an excellent flexibility/simplicity ratio [1] (= top-notch at scaling) , So I hope the new table feature will be implemented deeply into remnote (and not as an afterthought)
Good luck!