I finally had a chance to read “Why Expert Systems Fail” by Michael Z. Bell. Its an old one and oft referenced, but hadn’t read it yet.

Many of the concerns it raises aren’t limited to just classic ‘expert systems’ but really to any decision-support tool.

• user acceptance (including too much/too little trust, legal liability, and so on)
• testability (including lack of consensus on correctness, scope, extraordinary events, and such)
• knowledge representation (possibly the least currently relevant)

Money quote:

Fun Stuff

New York City Things

Your story, well told by Corey Rosen¹

It was a fairly easy read, and I finished it in about an hour. The goal of the book is to teach you how to tell a ‘personal story’ in a genre most closely associated with The Moth An organisation dedicated to true, personal storytelling . Overall I recommend the book — especially if you struggle to find “interestingness” in your life or if you have something that happened to you that you wish to share with others. It includes specific techniques and worksheets to help you ideate and then structure your story. It pulls techniques from the field of writing, improv, and acting and teaches them in a practical and straightforward way.

Trouble In The World

“The fundamental cause of trouble in the world today is that the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt”

San Francisco Things

Not every war involves violence - or even people. Some do. These are some of them.

1. Great Emu War
2. Egg War
3. Pig War

Second Language Acquisition is the science of how one acquires the ability to both understand and produce a language that isn’t one’s native language.

In Seeing Like A State ¹ the author discusses how the state necessarily “makes legible” its people and resources — and in doing so necessarily loses information. The author in particular focuses on what is termed " high modernism" which is defined as the ability to design and operate the state. the book then becomes primarily around failed state planning. These are some thoughts I have about the content. It isn’t a summary but more of some weakly held thoughts.

As a general rule, we try to not believe things without sufficient evidence. What defines sufficient evidence is complicated. ¹

However, not everything can be discovered via direct comparison, randomised trials, or similar efforts.

Software Engineering is its own discipline and trying to directly transplant, e.g. medical research techniques aren’t conducive to generating understanding. "It needs to be studied with tools that borrow as much from the social and cognitive sciences as they do from the mathematical theories of computation."

Sometimes things are so useful, or so obvious, that you won’t find research supporting the claim. For example, no evidence that parachutes actually prevent death from falling exists. ² In fact, in one study, it was shown that parachutes do not reduce injury above a normal backpack. ³