This is the focus of General Systems, as outlined by Weinberg. That book is very good, by the way—I highly recommend reading it. It’s both very dense and very accessible.
It’s always puzzled me that the rationalist community hasn’t put more emphasis on general systems. It seems like it should fit in perfectly, but I haven’t seen anyone mention it explicitly. General Semantics mentioned in the recent historical post is somewhat related, but not the same thing.
More on topic: One thing you don’t mention is that there are fairly general problem solving techniques, which start before, and are relatively independent of, your level of specific technical knowledge. From what I’ve observed, most people are completely lost when approaching a new problem, because they don’t even know where to start. So as well as your suggestion of focusing on learning the existence of techniques and when they apply, you can also directly focus on learning problem solving approaches.
Also makes me think of TRIZ. I don’t really understand how to use it that well or even know if it produces useful results, but I know it’s popular within the Russosphere (or at least more popular there than anywhere else).
The impression I always had with general systems (from afar) was that it looked cool, but it never seemed to be useful for doing anything other than “think in systems”, (so not useful for doing research in another field or making any concrete applications). So that’s why I never felt interested. Note that I’m clearly not knowledgeable at all on the subject, this is just my outside impression.
I assume from your comment you think that’s wrong. Is the Weinberg book a good resource for educating myself and seeing how wrong I am?
This is the focus of General Systems, as outlined by Weinberg. That book is very good, by the way—I highly recommend reading it. It’s both very dense and very accessible.
It’s always puzzled me that the rationalist community hasn’t put more emphasis on general systems. It seems like it should fit in perfectly, but I haven’t seen anyone mention it explicitly. General Semantics mentioned in the recent historical post is somewhat related, but not the same thing.
More on topic: One thing you don’t mention is that there are fairly general problem solving techniques, which start before, and are relatively independent of, your level of specific technical knowledge. From what I’ve observed, most people are completely lost when approaching a new problem, because they don’t even know where to start. So as well as your suggestion of focusing on learning the existence of techniques and when they apply, you can also directly focus on learning problem solving approaches.
Also makes me think of TRIZ. I don’t really understand how to use it that well or even know if it produces useful results, but I know it’s popular within the Russosphere (or at least more popular there than anywhere else).
The impression I always had with general systems (from afar) was that it looked cool, but it never seemed to be useful for doing anything other than “think in systems”, (so not useful for doing research in another field or making any concrete applications). So that’s why I never felt interested. Note that I’m clearly not knowledgeable at all on the subject, this is just my outside impression.
I assume from your comment you think that’s wrong. Is the Weinberg book a good resource for educating myself and seeing how wrong I am?
I’m intrigued by your second paragraph—perhaps write a post about it?