A distinction between objects (nouns) and features (adjectives) is that objects contain their own potential energy barriers that maintain the states of the objects, whereas features are often either generated by the objects they are features of, or generated by exogenous factors. Any given object can carry a lot of features, but it’s still just one object, so with features you have a source separation problem that you don’t have for objects.
That said, once you go away from simple objects and up to more advanced objects like people or computer files or organizations, most of the interesting dynamics are generated by features which originate from exogenous factors.
If you just want to predict the flow of features, you can do best by memorizing how well different kinds of features tend to persist or spread. However, if you want to act on these flows, the features themselves are often too big and tough to act on, and instead one needs to identify the root sources.
A distinction between objects (nouns) and features (adjectives) is that objects contain their own potential energy barriers that maintain the states of the objects, whereas features are often either generated by the objects they are features of, or generated by exogenous factors. Any given object can carry a lot of features, but it’s still just one object, so with features you have a source separation problem that you don’t have for objects.
That said, once you go away from simple objects and up to more advanced objects like people or computer files or organizations, most of the interesting dynamics are generated by features which originate from exogenous factors.
If you just want to predict the flow of features, you can do best by memorizing how well different kinds of features tend to persist or spread. However, if you want to act on these flows, the features themselves are often too big and tough to act on, and instead one needs to identify the root sources.