Lately I’ve been explicitly trying to trace the origins of the intuitions I use for various theoretical work, and writing up various key sources of background intuition. That was my main reason for writing a review of Design Principles of Biological Circuits, for instance. I do expect this will make it much easier to transfer my models to other people.
It sounds like many of the sources of your intuition are way more spiritual/political than most of mine, though. I have to admit I’d expect intuition-sources like mystic philosophy and conflict-y politics to systematically produce not-very-useful ideas, even in cases where the ideas are true. Specifically, I’d expect such intuition-sources to produce models without correct gears in them.
Instead of just gears vs non gears it might be helpful to think of the size/complexity of the black boxes in question, with larger black boxes meaning less portability. Gears themselves are a black box but since we are rarely designing for environments at the extremes of steels properties we don’t have to think about it.
If you’re trying to understand literal gears then a simple model that says “the amount by which this one turns equals the amount by which that one turns, measured in teeth” (or something like that) is often sufficient even though it may break down badly if you try to operate your machine at a temperature of 3000 kelvin or to run it at a million RPM.
[EDITED to add:] I think you may have misparsed the end of romeostevensit’s comment. Try it like this: “Gears themselves are a black box. But, since we are rarely designing for environments at the extremes of steel’s properties, we don’t have to think about it.”
Lately I’ve been explicitly trying to trace the origins of the intuitions I use for various theoretical work, and writing up various key sources of background intuition. That was my main reason for writing a review of Design Principles of Biological Circuits, for instance. I do expect this will make it much easier to transfer my models to other people.
It sounds like many of the sources of your intuition are way more spiritual/political than most of mine, though. I have to admit I’d expect intuition-sources like mystic philosophy and conflict-y politics to systematically produce not-very-useful ideas, even in cases where the ideas are true. Specifically, I’d expect such intuition-sources to produce models without correct gears in them.
Instead of just gears vs non gears it might be helpful to think of the size/complexity of the black boxes in question, with larger black boxes meaning less portability. Gears themselves are a black box but since we are rarely designing for environments at the extremes of steels properties we don’t have to think about it.
″… at the extremes of steels properties we don’t have to think about it.”
?
If you’re trying to understand literal gears then a simple model that says “the amount by which this one turns equals the amount by which that one turns, measured in teeth” (or something like that) is often sufficient even though it may break down badly if you try to operate your machine at a temperature of 3000 kelvin or to run it at a million RPM.
[EDITED to add:] I think you may have misparsed the end of romeostevensit’s comment. Try it like this: “Gears themselves are a black box. But, since we are rarely designing for environments at the extremes of steel’s properties, we don’t have to think about it.”
Thanks, pesky phone grammar.