Difference between revisions of "Medium that reveals flaws"

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(more verbosely, something like "medium that reveals that flaws of the content produced in it")
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A '''medium that reveals flaws''' is a medium that reveals that flaws of the content produced in it.
  
 
Examples:
 
Examples:

Revision as of 00:56, 9 December 2020

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:

???:

  • "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