John Woods writes...
> Abstractions are kind of human-created shorthand for universal stories
that can >manifest themselves in myriad specific ways amongst us individual
human beings >and all the stuff of the world with which we are involved. In
fact, all those stories
>wouldn't mean much to us without our abstractions and vice versa.
Where we humans get in trouble is because of a lack of artifacts about
this human-created shorthand you mention. What is manifested as your
abstraction of a particular universal story and my manifestation of the
same universal story is often different. In my workplace, I have
described a multi-faceted business dilemma as a three-headed dragon.
Because everyone I am explaining the problem to has seen movies
(artifacts) which had three-headed dragons in them, we all "see" the same
thing and can relate to the imagery. Without the artifacts and even with
them, collectively operating with the same abstractions is very difficult.
-- From the example above, I have difficulty getting people to focus on
the same "head" of the dragon.
-- Chris Michel chris.michel@daytonoh.attgis.com