On Tue, Nov 11, 2008 at 7:20 PM, Jesse Aldridge <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> I read the first half. Seems like the moral of the story is: High > level thinking is more powerful than low level thinking. Maybe. I find the lower-level examples more compelling than the high-level examples. I wonder whether high level ideas are actually more effective. The limits to growth (world3) model was published more than 30 years ago. Has it changed any mind sets that matter? Not to my knowledge. Has anyone created a world model that has the slightest chance of refuting the world3 model? Again, not to my knowledge. Is there much doubt that the world is heading towards catastrophe on the present course? Not in my mind. There are literally *millions* of organizations whit high-level agendas. (See the book, Blessed Unrest). Do these high-minded organizations make much difference? I have grave doubts. > Does this apply to Leo? Software in general? > > It seems like from a low level to a high level we have: > - Lines of code > - Code structures (functions, classes, etc.) > - The program's overall design > - The programmers which designed the program > - The society which produces those programmers > - The forces that shape society > > Let's say that making changes on each level produces 10 times more > impact. Possible, but not proven. I think this whole notion of hierarchy is dubious. > So changing Leo's overall design would have 100x more impact then > changing a single line of code. Naturally. But the overall design affects every line of code, so that's not saying something very surprising. > And making the programmers who produce Leo smarter would have 100x > more impact than changing the design. Some ideas have had great impacts: e's script buttons, Paul's plugins, LeoUser's minibuffer/emacs support, Ville's ipython stuff and Bernhard's and Kent's @shadow nodes. Do putative levels of design/implementation get to the heart of the matter? Sometimes higher-level thinking does make a big difference. Python/tkinter/Qt is a much higher design space than C/C++. And @test nodes/trees are a much better unit-test environment than subclasses of UnitTest.TestCase. Etc. > I suppose the reason we focus on improving say, Leo's design rather > the society produced and shaped Edward K. Ream, is that it becomes > more and more difficult to understand systems as they reach higher and > higher levels of complexity. Leo's design is something that we have control of. In my mind, the essential point of the 12 leverage points is that the world needs *negative* growth in population, resource usage and environmental destruction. The bozo optimists disagree. They deny the costs of positive (cancerous) growth and expect science and technology to do the impossible. Edward P.S. It is becoming clear to all but the most self-interested that the costs of regulating financial markets and other complex systems is *insignificant* compared to the costs of letting those systems run to collapse. Maybe this "high level" realization will make a difference, but that is not a foregone conclusion. EKR --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "leo-editor" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/leo-editor?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
