

Ask HN: Is there something valuable in being imprecise? - read

I&#x27;m wondering if there&#x27;s something we lose when we are precise. And if it&#x27;s more valuable to be imprecise.<p>What alerted me to this is an article[1] naming historical figures who were bad at spelling. The one that stood out for me was &quot;The Queen of Crime&quot; Agathe Christie: she&#x27;s dyslexic. Dyslexia is interpreted as a big problem when you are a kid but depending on viewpoint it&#x27;s also a great gift. Agatha even goes to say &quot;My letters were without originality&quot;. Talk about a paradox.<p>(A tangential observation here is that the best programmer I ever worked with was a bad speller.)<p>Which begs the question: should we set as a goal to not try to be too good (for some definition of good)? Like most things there&#x27;s probably a line to draw in the sand here. But I&#x27;m looking for some guiding principles underneath.<p>What do fellow HNers think?<p>[1] - http:&#x2F;&#x2F;theweek.com&#x2F;article&#x2F;index&#x2F;246092&#x2F;11-historical-figures-who-were-really-bad-at-spelling
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david927
Most creative minds don't want to be precise at many things because it ties
them down. They prefer the chaos, as it feeds them. To learn more about this,
look into Carl Jung which are elaborated with Myers & Briggs's
Judging/Perceiving preferences.

But there's more here. Most great minds were not about being a vassel of
knowledge but being creative with that knowledge. Smart for its own sake is
worthless. And so I think you're picking up on the common thread of creativity
in great minds, and its ambient indicators such as poor spelling and being
messy, etc.

------
bwagy
There's a great book called Little Bets by Peter Sims:
[http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/1439170436?pc_redir=1397720852...](http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/1439170436?pc_redir=1397720852&robot_redir=1)

He demonstrates how big ideas come from making lots of little bets, which can
be imprecise but begin to give shape to a solution.

Ie you start wide to get your operating field then hone in as you get more
feedback or data.

So there's huge benefits in being imprecise... at the right time.

~~~
Tonysr
language stringing together a series of concepts. Concepts are formed by
creating a conceptual idea. These ideas are created by choosing concepts which
are similar (not the same in some way). The way they are not the same is by
leaving out the measurements. Which measurements are left off depends upon the
concept. Ex. the concept of wavelengths leaves out the measurements of the
wavelengths individually.

Therefore the language is already very imprecise to begin with. Other new
concepts are created and defined by previous concepts which will be used to
define the new concept.

So language is conceptual by definition. The actual definitions of concepts
are the referrents of the concepts. Ex. cat means all cats which have ever
lived and all cats which will ever exist. This language then is a translation
from existence to a mental re-presentation of existence then is a translation
from existential to a mental model. This process is VERY conservative (a
compression if you wish). One 3 letter concept can re-present a memory image
we have all learned and can therefore convey (? Some meaning) to another
person who has learned to duplicate the process. Notice however that we each
live separate lives and will have unique representations in our unique
memories of which cat we think the concept represents at this moment in time.

If you think of the memory as an operating system for each one of us, then we
each have to write that operating system as we live out our lives. They
(OS's/minds)then are all different to begin with in an extraordinary number of
ways.

So to rephrase your question, there is an illusion (only) of understanding.
The question is .... is this useful and if so in what way. In my opinion it is
only by a careful and slow dialogue that any real meaning or understanding is
EVER transmitted between any two individuals. Maybe this imprecise off the top
of my head answer will be a good example of this concept.

This brief does not even consider the slippage between the of the messages
between the reader and the writer and the reader.

The concept of context alone took me 5 years to sort out before I came up with
how it is established, so that I could begin to understand the problem of how
and why languages work at all.

~~~
Tonysr
edit

reader and the writer and the reader. .... should read:

the writer and the reader.

