Communication of Complexity LO4530

JOHNWFIELD@aol.com
Mon, 1 Jan 1996 07:26:19 -0500

Replying to LO4497 -- was "2-D Diagrams"
[Subject line changed by your host...]

As often said by members of this LO community, it is the assumptions we
make that damage us. I found it helpful to break the assumptions into two
types, which I distinguish as follows:

o Suppositions. Those assumptions we make in full awareness that we are
making them, and to verify that we are aware, we are also able to
articulate them with absolute minimum ambiguity.

o Presuppositions. Those assumptions we make without being aware that we
are making them and, if someone tells us that we have made one or more and
tells us what they are, we are surprised, and may have to reflect at
length upon whether what we azre told is true.

Again, some day, in a land far away, well into the future, someone is
going to articulate clearly the presuppositions that are being made about
how to communicate with others on issues involving complexity. Some of
them are:

o The more complex, the more useful to put everything in the computer,
preferably on a home page in hypertext.

o The more complex, the more important it is to avoid large, visible
displays of the underlying logic involved, if for no other reason than
that we cannot afford to devote significant interior wall space to helping
people understand complex subjects; especially when we can bring the
information to them on 14 inch screens or on size A paper.

o People who prepare communications for others have the capability to
understand the minds of others, knowing thereby what kind of
representations they can comprehend.

o It is not important in education to be expansive in teaching
representational systems, say in an eclectic mode, in which
representations are compared based on stringent criteria for quality
communication, established by experimentation with potential receivers of
the various representations

--
John Warfield
Johnwfield@aol.com