selection of primitives
Table of Contents
A set of selected primitives would have 2 properties of special concerns:
- reachable state space from starting point with this set of primitives
- vicinity of primitives of starting point(or easily reached region) in the state space
The reachable state space gives you theoretical capability of the primitives(useful in proofs and autonomous tasks), and vicinity gives you practical capability of the primitives(especially with distance to harmful states and rewarding states)
Backlinks
select thinking primitives to better mental state
(avoiding poisonous thoughts)
As selection of primitives affects the vicinity of the state space, poisonous thoughts could be avoided, simply by programming the set of thinking primitives to only a small, limited set all of whose elements are miles from those poisonous thoughts.
- example:
When think mainly with the following 5 primitives(they don’t cover all), it’s almost impossible to have any poisonous thought
- set
- growth mindset - I can do _ so that I get better at _
- define _
- examplify _
- illustrate _
- to write a program with _
- thinkings
all practical, functional and positive thinkings.
- “I can do some research on this paper, define the tech terms and examplify the technique, so that I would know one more technique in machine learning and get better at it.”
- “let’s illustarte this idea with a graph”
- “I can write a program with this technique(in lisp!) to experiment about it”
- set
primitive action
primitive action is defined as an atomic action that is simple and self-evident to you, such that you know how it’s done without reference. Examples would be Travel from Location A to Location B, Buy Alcohol, Cook meal.
graph and text as primitive actions in state space of ideas
selection of primitive action cause vicinity of state space to change. As primitive actions of both internal representation and output representation of ideas, graph and text have different vicinity in the state space of idea representation, and therefore determines efficiency of author presenting the idea, and reader reconstructing the idea.
- graph make idea with hierarchy, multiple relationships, geometry/spatial feature, visual feature easily reached. It take a lot of words to describe/understand list of lists of lists of elements, but only the simplist illustration with simple captions.
- text make idea that serializes, relationship involving only 2 objects, or things that are hard to visuallize closer.
emacs allow primitive programming
(merit)
As selection of primitives would impact vicinity of state space, by allowing easy primitive programming, emacs allow its user to programme their vicinity with their activities, to:
- avoiding harmful/painful states
when you had to go through a lot of step, make decision on filename/file location just to insert a screenshot, programme it into one primitive of M-x org-screenshot-take or a keybinding like SPC m s t could effectively avoid all those pain
- shorten distance to rewarding states
screenshot: 5 steps -> 1 steps. screenshot is good. accomplishing goal of inserting screenshot is good.
atomicity test: referred seperately?
(example)
When I first have the idea of vicinity of primitives, it is a part of selection of primitives, as one of the interesting properties a set of primitive would have.
At first I reference “selection of primitives” when I mentioned vicinity, but later I find myself using the idea of vicinity a lot without using much of other properties of “selection of primitives”, so I made a seperate zettel for “vicinity”.