design-philosophy

Notes, work in progress…

Quotes

Design is simplifying, not complicating.

(I forget who said it but it would fit with Rich Hickey).

Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.

Leanordo Da Vinci

paraphrasing:
Leibniz: The world is intelligible because nature ('God') made the world from maximally simple rules, creating maximal content-level richness.
I call algorithmic level - rule level - the algorithm, skeletton that manipulates dynamical, content level data.
For instance natural selection is an algorithm, operating on the high dimensional data of real world things that happen.
This distinction for Leibniz are the Vernunftgruende - simple reasons that cannot be otherwise, and the Tatsachengruende - complicated reasons (historical, contingend) that could have been otherwise.
For instance, the reasons that we remble a fish during embryology is historical and could have been otherwise. A factual reason. Tatsachengrund. The negation of this could be true, we could not resemble fish during embryology.
The reasons for why a nand abstract circuit is performing a nand and why it can be build into a universal computer, are of a different kind. They don't depend on actual contingent facts. A rational reason, Vernunftgrund. The negation of this is perhaps non-sensical - A nand circuit not performing the logical operation nand - if this would be up for grabs, then anything would.

Leibniz: The world is the best possible world in the sense that from the smallest set of rules, the largest set of beauty was created.
The world grows from a set of simple rules - sometimes called kaleidoscope hypothesis.
Leibniz was putting his finger already on the fact of why science works in the first place. The world in it's complexity can be described by simpler rules (algorithms).
Leibniz also already understood that any sequence of data (content level) can be described by a function.
For a computer programmer, that is there exists a program that will output a string of N bit length:
```
;; N = 10
[0 0 0 1 1 0 1 0 1 0]
```
namely the program that just prints this string, so it has this string in it's source code and it uses strictly more memory than that bit string itself.

Hermann Weyl (paraphrazed): If you would allow any function to count as 'law of nature', the notion of law of nature would be vacuous.
In other words, science can find rules that compress the description of the world, make it predictable.
This interplay of simplicity and comlexity comes out everywhere (in science and explanation making) once you look.
We can describe the software of a program with a few simple statements, yet an epic story of bits, electricity in circuits, memory lookups - themselves on a considerable level of abstraction on top of the circuits etc. happen. It is more like the ocean in storm, and looking at the waves to know what it does seems a strange wrong way to understand it.
In complexity science, the term 'emergence' means that there is a higher level of description possible, that is there is a way to talk in simple terms about a thing - even though in reality it is made from many different interwoven parts.
Software is a great example.
Another example I love are the function-design abstractions of physiology. We talk of the heart as a blood pump. Using this abstraction gives leverage over describing what the heart does. You can make predictions: For example when it goes to slow the blood will not be pumped as well - causal reasoning, a lever of understanding.

The best design is not merely simple, it is even "self evident" (Stuart Halloway 2012).

Elegance is the property of good design (in Software design).
The Vitruvian Triad is "durability, convenience, and beauty".
Elegance is pragmatic, useful and delightful.
Elegance is mysterious, hangs together with truth, scientific discovery and art.
In pure math, an 'elegant' program is sometimes the shortest computer program with a certain input-output, given an axiomatic system A.

The best source code is usually not the shortest. But has to do with utilizing the material at hand, and doing so with a 'sensibleness', and 'straight forwardness';
The best source code displays 'artistic swag', 'conscinitious' or 'technical sweetness'.
One idea would be that by modeling real-world resources, combining 'short' and 'frugal' would yield a notion of elegance closer to the one in computer programing.
Beyond simplicity, the best design is self evident. Self-evidence is the true swag, beyond even beauty.
Elegance in biology in my feel has something to do with the range of possible uses of a thing. An elegant design is one that let's one win in the future.
Like planning for the unplanned to occur. Because problem solving in the real world is open ended.
G. Chaitin points out that adaptationism is wrong. It get's the open endedness 'keeps on going' part of evolution wrong!
Therefore, the problems of creativity and open endedness truly are at the cutting edge of theoretical evolutionary biology also.
Elegance is a creative problem and therefore open ended. I.e. there is no 'most elegant' solution to anything.
The same way as we can always find out better theories of the world (Popper), we can find new creative ways of solving problems.

Good desing is about winning (in the future), resourcefulness, usefulness and fun.
It is possible to have a feel for the future uses and fun of a thing, in the context of future elements (forming a harmonic whole).
This is on hand an element or module that simply 'fits many things well', therefore is safe to pick.
But there is also a 'I predict future fun, given this element'. This is more a kin to a vague hunch that some unkown future element could possibly exist.
A 'wild' move as it might be called in chess, changing the course of the game into fresh, unexplored configurations maybe.
In terms of the Gestalt, percieving some parts of a whole (the assembled system in the future) might already give us a feel for the Gestalt of the whole.

Braitenberg: "Butterflies are the flowers of the animal kingdom".