[CAUT] Requirements for contributing/posting; RPT status

[Alan McCoy]

Seems we've had this conversation before. The difference though in a forum,
as compared with, say, an encyclopedia, is that it is more fluid, dynamic
and changing by those who use it. And just because there is some order,
which is also put in "order" by those using it and that order changes over
time, doesn't mean that information is stripped out. In fact there would and
could be plenty of redundancy as well as unusual juxtapositions, thus
occasions for discovering the good stuff. But, at the same time easier to
find the mundane, or not so mundane, when you need it.

Comprehensive organization is possible only when you have all the
information already. But of course no one has all the information, so is all
organization impossible? If you organize in a static, linear way, then yeah,
it's lossy. Rebuilding a piano is, in part, an organizational endeavor. So
do you not rebuild because you don't have all the info? No you go ahead and
rebuild based on the info you do have. You learn some more in the process
and that goes back in the database in your brain. That organic database,
your brain, is organized, or else every day is a new day, tabla rasa, and no
learning is possible. Highly intelligent people, though, access that info
through many different pathways, lots of neural activity combining and
re-combining the info.

Of course you are right in that when you are on the edge of your
knowledgebase and pushing forward into new territory, the learning happens
fast and furious (and some mistakes too). It's what keeps me interested. But
I'm constantly trying to organize that new information so when I tread the
path again I may not stumble as much. No doubt, I also will not take the
exact same path again, based on the experience I've had.

If you organize (and you do if you are human), and cast that organization in
stone, then yep, the organization gets in the way. But I don't for a minute
think that organization of data is inherently lossy.

It's not so much your knowledge (or your belief, or your organization) that
matters, but how you hold onto it. As for me, I have a pretty loose grip.

Pesky Al


-- Alan McCoy, RPT
Eastern Washington University
amccoy at mail.ewu.edu
509-359-4627
509-999-9512


 
> Kind of like life. In my experience, organization is possible
> only when you have all the information already. Free range
> information is often highly volatile, and is only organized at
> the expense of loss of some of it, and the stuff that's least
> organizable and most likely to be stripped in the process is
> very often the most informative, if the hardest to grade.
> 
> But that's just my take.
> Ron N