Sri and Conceptual Models
I've always wondered why I had such difficulty learning, but otherwise seemed to have a healthy scoopful of intelligence built on understanding. It seemed that other people did not have this problem absorbing new material quickly and rushing into new areas of endeavor with the greatest confidence. By comparison, I would get stuck on the tiniest things, like when I was forced to learn piano as a child: "Why are some keys white and others black?"
In adult life, the same hiccup happened when I had to learn Javascript back in 2014 to build a web app. Why are things like this? Am I stupid? I would wonder, until I read Douglas Crawfords Javascript: The Good Parts which confirmed that it wasn't me: it was the language design itself. Don't lose hope! Here are ways to use the good parts to implement clean concepts. Thus reassured, I could move forward with confidence and avoid the pitfalls that other people just seemed to take for granted.
This pattern of frustration-followed-by-epiphany has occurred many times over my life. I now realize that I am constantly building conceptual models of the world, whereas the vast majority of teaching materials try to describe the patterns without the underlying principles that give rise to them.
So that's the focus of this entire website, really.
Conceptual Models Elsewhere
Over time, this will blossom into a unique collection of concepts that is hopefully useful to others while also being an accurate reflection of "me". In the meantime, I'll maintain a list of other sources as I come across them.
Started assembling November 26, 2022
Reference: Model-based Thinking
- The Farnum Street site has a collection of mental models that is also available in book form!
Reference: Human Reasoning
Reference: Human Systems Modeling
- book: The 48 Laws of Power
- Visual Semiotics and Gestalt
- Cognitive Science, Psychology
Reference: Narrative Systems
- Three Act Structure
- Dan Harmon's Story Cicle
- The Hero's Journey
Reference: Transformation Systems
- State Machines
- Mathematics
Reference: Lore-driven Systemized Interpretative Synthesis
These are systems that are quite elaborate but based in lore to give it meaning. The systems built on top of the lore, though, can be quite interesting models of how humans understand human behavior.
- Tarot Cards and readings (Rider-Waite in particular)
- Astrology
- I-Ching
- Religon
- Narrative-based role-playing games like Dungeons & Dragons
Older Notes from Ghost Blog
category: this is the thinking process that is more about me. The impulse to even investigate them when I am doing something. Probably linked to A Conceptual Model for Conceptual Modeling I think the impulse I have is to believe that there IS a conceptual model for everything, and the model is the memorable system. Since most productive tasks are described as simple mechanics, they are often missing the elements for modeling. That is why Sri has to make the conceptual model in the first place. What do I want to do? I have an idea of what it is I want, need to figure out how to get to the end desire. In this case I'm starting with a rough conceptual model, the challenge is to find the conceptual models that map to mine and build a working system. I wonder if it's possible to do something. I have knowledge of some principle that I am imagining being applied to make something interesting, but I don't know offhand if such a thing exists. There's always a question to kick things off. My work is effective once I have a question to research and answer. To make progress on complicated projects, I have to ask myself a bunch of questions because this motivates me. For other people, it might be recipes to follow step-by-step, or facts to memorize for pattern matching. The Conceptual Model is one of the finished products of a successful inquest. The Tangible Product the other one. Both have value. I have only considered the Product, and the models as the color commentary I use to describe it. I'd like the conceptual model to be a product too. A lot of my Tangible Products are actually Conceptual Models formatted to be helpful to people. A learning aid or insight-generating aid! However, there might be conflicting models from the editorial clarity perspective. For example, the Concrete Goals Tracker has a model of the day based on motivational psychology, but it is executed through design conceptual models Things that I want to learn have no clear conceptual models. Instead they have recipes to follow, which I find frustrating when there are no concepts of why one does something that way. I can treat this as uncovering the conceptual models through doing because there is no one thinking like me to provide it. It's a rare treat when I come across something that uses a model to explain things. Terminology CONCEPTUAL MODEL vs WORKING SYSTEM CONCEPTUAL MODEL vs TANGIBLE PRODUCT
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