To be a good diagnostician, a physician needs to acquire a large set of labels for diseases, each of which binds an idea of the illness and its symptoms, possible antecedents and causes, possible developments and consequences, and possible interventions to cure or mitigate the illness. Learning medicine consists in part of learning the language of medicine. A deeper understanding of judgments and choices also requires a richer vocabulary than is available in everyday language. The availability of a diagnostic label for [the] bias… makes it easier to anticipate, recognize and understand.
Yeah, a good compression algorithm—a dictionary that has short words for the important stuff—is vital to learning just about anything. I’ve noticed that in the martial arts; there’s no way to learn a parry, entry, and takedown without a somatic vocabulary for the subparts of that; and the definitions of your “words” affects both the ease of learning and the effectiveness of its execution.
Also, wouldn’t it be better to call it a hash table or a lookup-table rather than a compression algorithm. The key is swift and appropriate recall. Example: Compare a long-time practicing theoretical physicist with a physics grad student. Both know most of basic quantum mechanics. But the experienced physicist would know when to whip out which equation in which situation. So, the knowledge content is not necessarily compressed (I’m sure there is some compression) as much as the usability of the knowledge is much greater.
Basically, yes. Much of the vocabulary has very long descriptions in English, but shorter ones in different arts’ parlance; some of it doesn’t really have short descriptions anywhere but in the movements of people who’ve mastered it. The Epistemic Viciousness problem makes it difficult, in general, to find and cleave at the joints.
-Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow
Yeah, a good compression algorithm—a dictionary that has short words for the important stuff—is vital to learning just about anything. I’ve noticed that in the martial arts; there’s no way to learn a parry, entry, and takedown without a somatic vocabulary for the subparts of that; and the definitions of your “words” affects both the ease of learning and the effectiveness of its execution.
Also, wouldn’t it be better to call it a hash table or a lookup-table rather than a compression algorithm. The key is swift and appropriate recall. Example: Compare a long-time practicing theoretical physicist with a physics grad student. Both know most of basic quantum mechanics. But the experienced physicist would know when to whip out which equation in which situation. So, the knowledge content is not necessarily compressed (I’m sure there is some compression) as much as the usability of the knowledge is much greater.
Interesting. So by somatic vocabulary, you basically mean composing long complicated moves from short, repeatable sub-moves?
Basically, yes. Much of the vocabulary has very long descriptions in English, but shorter ones in different arts’ parlance; some of it doesn’t really have short descriptions anywhere but in the movements of people who’ve mastered it. The Epistemic Viciousness problem makes it difficult, in general, to find and cleave at the joints.