Medium that reveals flaws
A medium that reveals flaws is a medium that reveals that flaws of the content produced in it.
Examples:
- A table makes it obvious when one of its cells is missing information. Once you specify the column names and instances (rows), that automatically gives a spot for n*m cells which must be filled. If the same information is presented as an essay or new reporting, it is not so obvious which pieces of info are missing.
- Jonathan Blow makes the point that a video game designer must create a system with consistent laws/mechanics, whereas a novelist does not need to do so.
- "Do the math, then burn the math and go with your gut": writing down actual calculations and probabilities and so forth enforces consistency and a crisp model in a way that just using verbal reasoning + intuition doesn't.
- Redlinks on a MediaWiki wiki makes the divergence between intent and execution obvious, in a way that "just don't link to it if the page doesn't exist" (the default on the web) doesn't.
- Empty sections similarly make intent vs execution obvious.
Non-examples:
- Uncertainty fetish that Vipul complained about.
???:
- "future work" section
- "citation needed" on Wikipedia
- TODO/FIXME
I think one difference between me and most people is that I am much more likely to choose media that reveal flaws, to expose the limits of my knowledge.
How do we classify something as an example or non-example? some things to pay attention to: whether the thing is structural/a medium, rather than just a particular way to use an existing medium? whether there are other (e.g. social signaling) explanations for the behavior
To some extent, whether a medium reveals flaws is a matter of degree. For example, speech allows people to mumble their way through the parts they are uncertain about, which written text does not allow. So relatively speaking, even prose is a medium that reveals flaws, just not as much compared to something like a table.
