The problem with not knowing the true origins of your concepts is that you can’t be sure whether the concept was distorted, intentionally or unintentionally by the person re-transmitting the concept to you.
For example, much of what is attributed to Clausewitz in the popular mind was actually written by Jomini, who interpreted and summarized Clausewitz’s ideas. In fact, Clausewitz actually disagreed with much of Jomini’s writing. One example is that when Clausewitz referred to political considerations in the lead up to war, he was primarily referring to internal political considerations—things like how much political capital the leadership had and whether the nation would be able to sustain the will to fight.
Jomini, however, translated Clausewitz’s dictums on politics as referring to diplomacy, that is, he took what Clausewitz was saying about internal considerations and rephrased it as being about relations between states. This was a huge distortion, one which lay undiscovered for nearly a hundred years, since Jomini was widely regarded as the authoritative translator and summarizer of Clausewitz.
History and philosophy are riddled with these kinds of distortions and misinterpretations. Just look at the varying interpretations of Nietzsche, for example, and contrast those with the source material. That’s why it’s important to know where an idea comes from. You want to be able to verify that the idea you’re receiving is the idea you think you’re receiving, rather than some related or distorted version of that idea.
Another important consideration is finding related ideas. If I can track an idea back to its original source, I can find other things that person has written, and see if they have other good ideas. I can’t do that if the original source is obscured or not cited.
1. If you understand how to regenerate a concept in an inside view way, there’s an important sense in which it really doesn’t matter who originated it, because you can correct any distortions in the concept yourself. In the same way that if you hear someone state a theorem and reprove it yourself, you can discover that they slightly misstated it and find the correct statement yourself. So it seems to me that this distortionary effect is more important the more your reasoning is outside view-flavored.
2. This all seems fine if you have an active project of seeking out good ideas, but I don’t expect everyone in the community to actively be wanting to do this as opposed to the many other things they could be wanting to do. Said another way, I don’t think you’re engaging with the opportunity cost of paying attention to this as opposed to something else.
If you understand how to regenerate a concept in an inside view way, there’s an important sense in which it really doesn’t matter who originated it, because you can correct any distortions in the concept yourself. In the same way that if you hear someone state a theorem and reprove it yourself, you can discover that they slightly misstated it and find the correct statement yourself. So it seems to me that this distortionary effect is more important the more your reasoning is outside view-flavored.
This isn’t actually how ideas work. For one thing, this presupposes that the version of an idea which has been passed down to you is ‘correct’/its most useful version in the first place. For example, Alan Kay invented Object Oriented Programming several decades ago, and most modern computer languages implement ‘Object Oriented Programming’. The version they implement is of course significantly degraded from the version that appears in say, Smalltalk. But it’s an improvement over what existed before in C, so nobody really notices that OOP could theoretically be something better. This is a stable situation that doesn’t look like it’ll be changing anytime soon.
The object level argument against this of course is that Alan Kay is wrong about the utility of his original version of OOP. On such things I have no comment.
The object level argument against this of course is that Alan Kay is wrong about the utility of his original version of OOP. On such things I have no comment.
The counter-argument, of course, is that sure, maybe Alan Kay is wrong about how useful his original version of OOP is, but is everyone who ever proposed an older-but-more-advanced version of an idea always wrong about the usefulness of that idea? Do implementations never degrade from prior visions for anything but the most unimpeachable reasons of effectiveness (as opposed to, say, market pressures, or contingent historical matters, etc.)?
I think it would be absurd to take such a position. The counterexamples are legion. To maintain any such view is to ascribe, to the market (both the actual market where products are offered and sold, and the “marketplace of ideas”), a sort of definitional correctness which it manifestly does not have.
Which is all to say that I agree with this:
For one thing, this presupposes that the version of an idea which has been passed down to you is ‘correct’/its most useful version in the first place.
And I concur that this presupposition is often mistaken.
While concurring entirely, let me add another, related motivation for wanting to know the origin of your concepts (one which applies quite strongly in, for instance, both philosophy and psychology):
Many concepts, conceptual frameworks, positions, etc., are born out of disputes. Concepts do not arise in a vacuum, and writers do not write in a vacuum; they are often responding to things other people—their contemporaries—have said, or are saying.
But if you don’t know what someone was responding to, you have no hope of grasping their motivations for saying what they were saying; and consequently you’ll fail to understand what they meant.
Often this takes the following form: there is some dispute, and one side takes position A, and the other side, position B. Much later, you—reading the latter side’s works out of context—encounter position B. It seems to you to be rather absurd, and obviously wrong, so you dismiss it. But what you’re missing is that “B” should really be read as “not A”—which is to say, that the thrust of the argument is “A is wrong; the truth is really more like B”. If you knew the context, you’d agree that A is absurd; and that B is a correction in the right direction. An overcorrection? Perhaps; but that is a secondary point.
Thus you dismiss the author of B as deluded, when in fact he may have been the one sane man in a dispute filled with madmen!
(Finding examples of this dynamic is left as an exercise for the reader…)
The problem with not knowing the true origins of your concepts is that you can’t be sure whether the concept was distorted, intentionally or unintentionally by the person re-transmitting the concept to you.
For example, much of what is attributed to Clausewitz in the popular mind was actually written by Jomini, who interpreted and summarized Clausewitz’s ideas. In fact, Clausewitz actually disagreed with much of Jomini’s writing. One example is that when Clausewitz referred to political considerations in the lead up to war, he was primarily referring to internal political considerations—things like how much political capital the leadership had and whether the nation would be able to sustain the will to fight.
Jomini, however, translated Clausewitz’s dictums on politics as referring to diplomacy, that is, he took what Clausewitz was saying about internal considerations and rephrased it as being about relations between states. This was a huge distortion, one which lay undiscovered for nearly a hundred years, since Jomini was widely regarded as the authoritative translator and summarizer of Clausewitz.
History and philosophy are riddled with these kinds of distortions and misinterpretations. Just look at the varying interpretations of Nietzsche, for example, and contrast those with the source material. That’s why it’s important to know where an idea comes from. You want to be able to verify that the idea you’re receiving is the idea you think you’re receiving, rather than some related or distorted version of that idea.
Another important consideration is finding related ideas. If I can track an idea back to its original source, I can find other things that person has written, and see if they have other good ideas. I can’t do that if the original source is obscured or not cited.
1. If you understand how to regenerate a concept in an inside view way, there’s an important sense in which it really doesn’t matter who originated it, because you can correct any distortions in the concept yourself. In the same way that if you hear someone state a theorem and reprove it yourself, you can discover that they slightly misstated it and find the correct statement yourself. So it seems to me that this distortionary effect is more important the more your reasoning is outside view-flavored.
2. This all seems fine if you have an active project of seeking out good ideas, but I don’t expect everyone in the community to actively be wanting to do this as opposed to the many other things they could be wanting to do. Said another way, I don’t think you’re engaging with the opportunity cost of paying attention to this as opposed to something else.
This isn’t actually how ideas work. For one thing, this presupposes that the version of an idea which has been passed down to you is ‘correct’/its most useful version in the first place. For example, Alan Kay invented Object Oriented Programming several decades ago, and most modern computer languages implement ‘Object Oriented Programming’. The version they implement is of course significantly degraded from the version that appears in say, Smalltalk. But it’s an improvement over what existed before in C, so nobody really notices that OOP could theoretically be something better. This is a stable situation that doesn’t look like it’ll be changing anytime soon.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QjJaFG63Hlo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YyIQKBzIuBY
The object level argument against this of course is that Alan Kay is wrong about the utility of his original version of OOP. On such things I have no comment.
The counter-argument, of course, is that sure, maybe Alan Kay is wrong about how useful his original version of OOP is, but is everyone who ever proposed an older-but-more-advanced version of an idea always wrong about the usefulness of that idea? Do implementations never degrade from prior visions for anything but the most unimpeachable reasons of effectiveness (as opposed to, say, market pressures, or contingent historical matters, etc.)?
I think it would be absurd to take such a position. The counterexamples are legion. To maintain any such view is to ascribe, to the market (both the actual market where products are offered and sold, and the “marketplace of ideas”), a sort of definitional correctness which it manifestly does not have.
Which is all to say that I agree with this:
And I concur that this presupposition is often mistaken.
While concurring entirely, let me add another, related motivation for wanting to know the origin of your concepts (one which applies quite strongly in, for instance, both philosophy and psychology):
Many concepts, conceptual frameworks, positions, etc., are born out of disputes. Concepts do not arise in a vacuum, and writers do not write in a vacuum; they are often responding to things other people—their contemporaries—have said, or are saying.
But if you don’t know what someone was responding to, you have no hope of grasping their motivations for saying what they were saying; and consequently you’ll fail to understand what they meant.
Often this takes the following form: there is some dispute, and one side takes position A, and the other side, position B. Much later, you—reading the latter side’s works out of context—encounter position B. It seems to you to be rather absurd, and obviously wrong, so you dismiss it. But what you’re missing is that “B” should really be read as “not A”—which is to say, that the thrust of the argument is “A is wrong; the truth is really more like B”. If you knew the context, you’d agree that A is absurd; and that B is a correction in the right direction. An overcorrection? Perhaps; but that is a secondary point.
Thus you dismiss the author of B as deluded, when in fact he may have been the one sane man in a dispute filled with madmen!
(Finding examples of this dynamic is left as an exercise for the reader…)