Tagging

Tagging is a very common feature in various database type applications nowadays. It's very tempting to try and use it as a hierarchical or disjoint categorisation tool, but this is obviously flawed! I have tried to use tags as such, but it doesn't work well, and breaks the real idea of what tagging is about.
Tagging is supposed to be haphazard and instinctive. If you scatter many tags everywhere, and use the tags, you will naturally settle into a vocabulary that unlocks a lot of extra information from your database, whether you're using a personal or a social tagging system.
A small number of well chosen tags that has the effect of causing a hierarchy or a disjoint categorisation reduces your flexibility in choosing tag names in the future, and makes things needlessly constrained.
As concerns social categorising systems, maybe we need parallel systems: tagging, hierarchies, sets and more. The more ways we have to link up data, the more useful it is I would say!

some musings on data and interpretation

Some ideas that came out easily, on the 9th of June 2005. It feels like they're going somewhere, but not without some thought, and probably a lot of maths and programming.

• Data is inextricably linked to the methods that process it.

• Memories have a language of their own, do humans share the language of memories? Could a goal of humanity be the effective translation of our language of memories? Could imperfection in translation be a huge source of conflict too?

• Information is symbolic, without a means of interpreting the symbols the information conveys nothing.

• Once the symbols can be distinguished, patterns within the symbols can be accessed. However, the original meaning (intent) may be lost and will generally be distorted.

• Given a set of symbols and an interpretative mechanism for those symbols, to what extent are the patterns spotted a result of information within the interpretative mechanism, and to what extent are the patterns spotted a function of the information within the symbols? I rather suspect that this question also misses a point: It falls foul of the fallacies of subject/object metaphysics. Within any interaction there is participation from both sides. For an interpretative mechanism to detect patterns within symbols there will have to be a contribution of information from both sides, at some level.

• Interpretative mechanisms range in style: some seek to minimize their input of information while maximizing the effect of the external data, others use external data as a randomizing element or mixing agent for expression of their own internal data (maybe this is a good framework for interpreting the occult/astrology/science etc.?).

• An interpretative mechanism which includes the assumption that it does't affect the data it processes is ultimately flawed. (See subject/object metaphysics). Science often falls foul of this.

• Data with no obviously associated interpretative mechanism is worth less, all other things being equal, than data with an interpretative mechanism.

• High quality data may be restricted by a low quality interpretative mechanism, and vice versa etc.

• Data can be represented by a set of symbols. An interpretative mechanism can be represented by a processor for that set of symbols, which may generate another set of symbols in response, or may create some physical output or whatever.

• Data never exists as a set of symbols (except in the universe of platonic forms...). Instances of data almost always have some elements of the interpretative mechanism held locally. That is to say, the interpretative mechanism has a large influence on the manifestation of the data. Usually data and an interpretative mechanism co-evolve together, and are intimately interconnected, even if only at substrate levels (eg, dependence on ASCII, or spoken language or whatever).

• An interesting model of reality is merely a seething array of interdependent information. The extent of this information is phenomenal, and the levels of structure range across the orders of magnitude widely.

loose thoughts on memory

You could think of perception as pattern matching. Matching patterns of mental states against other patterns of mental states. For example, perceiving a banana could be viewed as matching the 'live' perception of the banana on your senses against the stored perceptions in your memory. Without your memories you wouldn't, from your own perspective, be perceiving a banana, you would be perceiving something unknown, and you would be formulating a new memory for which you could later fill in the name 'banana'.

(nb: parallelism in pattern matching 'schemes', and fuzziness of pattern matching. Explore methods of pattern matching.)

It is quite easy to divide perceptions into live perceptions and stored perceptions. Live perceptions are perceptions that are currently being perceived, that are immediate, arriving through the senses directly. Stored perceptions are those that have been perceived and remembered, and are accessible for remembering again.

(nb: continuum between 'live' and 'stored', also stored perceptions can be viewed as budding off new live perceptions every time they are accessed/perceived again, leading to an expanding, evolving tree of memory.)

If perception is viewed as pattern matching, as matching patterns of mental states against other patterns of mental states, then combining that with the division of perceptions outlined in the previous paragraph, 3 obvious combinations become apparent.
We can pattern match between immediate perceptions, a sort of 'on-the-go' perception, we can tell that one animal in view is of the same kind as another animal in view, or that there are two similar forks side by side on the table.
We can pattern match between immediate and stored perceptions, ie, the fork on the table looks like a remembered fork.
And finally, we can pattern match entirely with the realm of stored perceptions, we can imagine various items of cutlery entirely with our mind's eye.
We can imagine complicated dancing patterns of this kind of pattern matching going on in our every day perceptions, and analysing these dances can shed a lot of light on the way our consciousness could work, as well as providing a neat framework against which consciousness could arise out of basic sensory mechanisms.