Synthetic A Priori

Latest Episodes:

Feeling, Form, and Function Aug 16, 2020

Show notes

Part 1: 00:11
Digesting the experience from using Alexander's methods on a real building project, how feeling is different from analyzing

Mentioned:

For an intro to Christopher Alexander's work, see my lecture: Christopher Alexander: A Primer

Part 2: 14:19
How form and function are the same thing: better form has better function. Changing the design so it feels better and then finding out it now also works better.

Mentioned:

A school teaching Alexander's methods, hands-on: Building Beauty
The Building Beauty Software Initiative

Fundierung and the Level of Life Aug 08, 2020

Show notes

Part 1: 00:11
Alexander's definition of "living structure" and how to deal with it

Mentioned:

My livestream lecture: Christopher Alexander: A Primer
Alexander tells the story about objections to the Berkley development in this short video: The Application of Feeling
Nikos Salingaro's mathematical measure of living structure is in his book A Theory of Architecture
On eye movement in architecture, see Ann Sussman's work

Part 2: 13:18
Describing "life" as a function afforded by form, connection to Husserl's fundierung and Gibson's notion of affordances

Mentioned:

Stuart Kauffman's Screwdriver Problem
On the idea of a "hire" in Job To Be Done Theory, see Competing Against Luck for an introduction
Fundierung, function, and facticity are explained in Gian-Carlo Rota's 1989 paper Fundierung as Logical Concept
The book I meant to recommend is Gian-Carlo Rota's Indiscrete Thoughts, not The Star and The Whole (which is also interesting but not written by Rota).
J.J. Gibson's book on affordances: The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception
Alexander's 15 Properties are explained in The Nature of Order Book One.

Part 3: 23:47
What it "is" versus what it "does", three levels of software: the backend, the interaction layer, the layer of life. Music software example. Basecamp concept example.

Iterating the Form/Context Boundary Aug 01, 2020

Show notes

Part 1: 00:17
Point forecasts vs. system properties, estimating project length vs. the distribution of the error

Mentioned:

Nassim Taleb on EconTalk
His recent paper: On Single Point Forecasts for Fat-Tailed Variables (PDF)

Part 2: 04:39
Christopher Alexander and software in the 90s vs. today, implementation vs. product, Building Beauty

Mentioned:

The Building Beauty Software Initiative
My livestream lecture: Christopher Alexander: A Primer

Part 3: 09:22
Form/context and supply/demand boundaries, defining requirements once vs. iteratively, prototyping an affinitizing interface for an app to analyze job-to-be-done interviews

Part 4: 23:05

Moving the form/context boundary , inner and outer boundaries, recursively applying the same design process

Part 5: 31:03

Learning what language to use by trying to use it

Movement in Market Space Jul 25, 2020

Show notes

Part 1: 00:11
Introduction to a formal idea of market space, three jobs Basecamp does, turning the jobs into basis vectors for a neighborhood of a market space.

Mentioned:

If you aren't familiar with "jobs to be done" see Competing Against Luck for an introduction.

Part 2: 16:00
Vectors in market space as functional systems, locating struggles in existing systems, value as degree of struggle, struggle on the demand side as design requirements on the supply side.

Part 3: 23:46
Trade-offs, choosing where to "move" the product, supply-side motivations, how market space changes, how trends affect the stability of market locations.

Design as a Multi-Scale Network, Risk as Network Structure Jul 18, 2020

Show notes

Part 1: 00:12
Network theory, multi-scale networks, example of building a clustering feature on a side project, two scales of design: the feature level and the implementation level

Mentioned:

Barabasi's work on Network Medicine
Harry Crane's Probabilistic Foundations of Statistical Network Analysis
"More is different" is the title of an article by P.W. Anderson

Part 2: 13:54
Unfolding as a network dynamic, learning at the fine scale under constraints from the large scale

Mentioned:

Christopher Alexander describes unfolding processes in Book 2 of the Nature of Order

Part 3: 20:05
Risk, thin-tailed vs. fat-tailed variables, how underlying structure gives rise to different shapes of distributions, orthogonality and interdependence

Mentioned:

Nassim Taleb. See Probability, Risk, and Extremes (PDF) on thin vs fat-tailed variables. Re: the relationship between distributions and underlying structure: "... we cannot rule out that it is not fat tailed unless we understand the process." (emphasis added)

Part 4: 30:14
Patchiness of risk in a design problem, observation in science vs. active control in design, targeting unknowns, redesigning at the feature scale based on information from the implementation scale, example of designing for independence

Part 5: 38:35
Scopes in Shape Up as tangled network neighborhoods, structure vs. opacity in the network, alternation between identifying structure and removing "the fog"

Mentioned:

Scopes are explained in the Scope Mapping chapter of Shape Up

Outro: 46:05
Is this thing on? Say hello or just raise your hand with a DM to @rjs on Twitter.

System Design, Pattern Languages, and Cognitive Grammar Jul 11, 2020

Show notes

Part 1: 00:56
Patterns as functional pairings of context and form, pattern languages, generic patterns vs. unique languages designed for a project

Mentioned:

System design per Taguchi was discussed in Episode 4
Alexander defines form and context in Notes on the Synthesis of Form
The book: A Pattern Language
The pattern language for the Eishin School is detailed in Battle for the Life and Beauty of the Earth

Part 2: 11:26
Speaking the language of Basecamp's patterns: "bucket access" and "commentables"

Part 3: 16:38
Langacker's Cognitive Grammar, symbols, phonological and semantic poles, defining Shape Up as a system, how system components are like semantic poles of symbols, naming things

Mentioned:

Ronald Langacker's landmark books: Foundations of Cognitive Grammar Vol 1 and Vol 2
See also this newer introductory text by Langacker: Cognitive Grammar: A Basic Introduction
On unit status and the "chalk sharpener" example, see this Cognitive Grammar lecture by Martin Hilpert (29:08)
Repetition and scale transformation were discussed on Episode 3
For interdependent vs. modular architectures, see Chapter 6 of The Innovator's Solution

Walls in Space and Time, System vs. Parameter Design Jul 04, 2020

Show notes

Part 1: 00:46
Displaying data adjacent in space vs. adjacent in time, Stuart Kauffman's work-constraint cycles, time boundaries, eureka moments, an example of defining a system boundary from Basecamp 4

Mentioned:

Edward Tufte's The Visual Display of Quantitative Information
Stuart Kauffman describes the "Constraint Work Cycle" in Chapter 3 of A World Beyond Physics

Part 2: 20:44
System vs. parameter design in Taguchi's work, time constraints for R&D vs. production work, explaining parameter design and cost of quality improvements with an omelette

Mentioned:

Taguchi explains parameter design in Introduction to Quality Engineering: Designing Quality into Products and Processes
The form/context boundary in Christopher Alexander's Notes on the Synthesis of Form
Tweet on R&D vs. Production Mode
System design is another term for shaping. On shaping, see Shape Up, Chapter 2
Tweet on open vs. closed unknowns and knowing where an unknown "stops"

Scale Tradeoffs and Transformations Jun 27, 2020

Show notes

Intro: 00:00
Phases of concretizing: articulating the idea vs. getting to the idea

Part 1: 02:40
Scale transformations, scale tradeoffs, examples of multiscale systems

Mentioned:

The New England Complex Systems Institute's founder, Yaneer Bar-Yam
Yaneer's book Making Things Work. See Chapter 4 for scale tradeoffs and the military example.
Ashby's Law of Requisite Variety

Part 2: 16:45
Tweeting vs. writing an article as examples of different scales, bottom-up and top-down order

Mentioned:

Tweet on phases of new product development: R&D, Production, and Cleanup

Part 3: 29:49
Launching a new product, a scale transition from separate conversations to a group announcement

Mentioned:

Basecamp's new email app and service, Hey.com

Summary: 38:22
The end of "R&D mode" as a scale transformation, experiment at smalls scale to find parameters at large scale

Risk, Possibilities, Opacity and Creativity Jun 21, 2020

Show notes

Intro: 00:00
Going upstream along the path of concretizing an idea

Part 1: 02:38
Phenomenology, "bracketing"

Mentioned:

Twitter thread on affordances and phenomenology
The “ambient optic array” in JJ Gibson’s Ecological Approach to Visual Perception
Wikipedia pages on Husserl and Epoché (bracketing)

Part 2: 10:23
Uncertainty, two kinds of opacity: risk and richness, creative constraints

Mentioned:

The circuit breaker to manage uncertainty in Shape Up
On "opacity" see any of Taleb's books, especially Antifragile

Part 3: 25:18
Ontology, res extensa and res potentia, the adjacent possible

Mentioned:

Stuart Kauffman's Res Potentia and Res Extensa
On the evolution of tech, see the epilogue of Kauffman's A World Beyond Physics

Affordances, Category Theory, Convexity of Social Media Jun 13, 2020

Show notes

Introduction: 00:00
Introducing the podcast

Part 1: 00:30
Social media, convexity, and data ownership

Mentioned:

Bob Moesta, co-creator of Jobs to be Done theory
The New England Complex Systems Institute, NECSI
Nassim Taleb's Antifragile
Ben Thompson on owning your media

Part 2: 19:50
Category theory, affordances, jobs to be done, reference frames for types (when a temperature becomes a fever)

Mentioned:

The Khan-style YouTube video: Category Theory on a Desert Island
"Shaping" and "appetite" refer to my book Shape Up
J.J. Gibson's book on affordances: The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception
Wolfram's Physics Project, and Relations to Category Theory live stream
Rich Hickey, author of Clojure, and his talk on Values vs. Place-Oriented Programming
Stuart Kauffman's Screwdriver Problem

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