Portable Ideas

http://raganwald.posterous.com/portable-ideas

by llambda • 14 years ago

88 44 14 years ago

raganwald.posterous.com

Good points.

What does you mother think of this? I'd like to know her take on it, because she is an amazing example of someone who lives in the edge of the bubble. A black woman who became a programmer during the times when there were no women or blacks can put some insight into how to build portable ideas.

te_platt• 14 years ago

I thought this article sounded familiar but it took me a while to place it. It's the parable of the sower, Matthew 13:3-8.

3 And he spake many things unto them in parables, saying, Behold, a sower went forth to sow;

4 And when he sowed, some seeds fell by the way side, and the fowls came and devoured them up:

5 Some fell upon stony places, where they had not much earth: and forthwith they sprung up, because they had no deepness of earth:

6 And when the sun was up, they were scorched; and because they had no root, they withered away.

7 And some fell among athorns; and the thorns sprung up, and choked them:

8 But other fell into good ground, and brought forth fruit, some an hundredfold, some sixtyfold, some thirtyfold.

pilgrim689• 14 years ago

I think this is the wrong analogy... The parable seems to say that if you spread your seeds across many areas, it's bound to grow somewhere.

That would be a good analogy if the post was actually about spreading ideas in as many bubbles as possible and hoping one bubble picks it up.

The post is actually about making 1 idea of high enough quality and insight such that it can be transferred from one bubble (yours) to the next by the "edges".

So you'd have to find a parable that speaks of getting a good seed and planting it in your garden, in the hopes that the flower that grows from it spreads its seeds to your neighbors!

jneen• 14 years ago

Portable green ideas sleep furiously.

abraxasz• 14 years ago

I will have to disagree. Or rather, I think that while some bubble are pretty closed, some are very permeable. I'll take Hacker News for example.

Although some people complain about the fact that there are strong biases on HN, I actually think that it is not that bad, and there are plenty of topics on which the community is divided (on top of my mind: internet piracy is acceptable vs bad, windows is a good tool vs it sucks, google is evil vs it is awesome, linux will never be a good desktop environment vs it will, etc..).

I think that there is a distinction between bubbles that are created around certain opinions (windows is bad + piracy is good + linux rocks) and bubbles that are organized around values (I disagree with you but I like debating with you + I like to learn about different subjects + etc..).

adrianhoward4• 14 years ago

I like using the word "genre" instead of "bubble" as a metaphor for this sort of thing.

Genre's are useful - they act as a nice shortcut in the bookshop if you're looking for a particular kind of book. But I never pop my head outside of the SF section I'm going to be missing out on a lot of good reading and some interesting outlooks on life.

stcredzero4• 14 years ago

Fundamental ideas are portable ideas. Lisp didn't start out as a programming language. It was an abstract model of computation. As an ex-Symbolics employee friend of mine says, "Math never goes out of style."

Eschew what's popular and what gets attention. Seek the fundamental instead. This is the difference between learning about Ruby because Rails is the current big thing versus knowing enough to be interested in Ruby because it embodies the objects+messages model and you find that beautiful. (And if you value the objects+messages model because it was a big thing in academia at some point, you are still missing the point!)

Programming has many of the features of "pop-culture" because the rate of change in the field is faster than the rate of actual progress. Learn in-depth the actual progress.

EDIT: Switched the positions of fundamental and portable, since fundamental => portable.

_pius• 14 years ago

Portable ideas are fundamental ideas.

This is probably backwards.

stcredzero4• 14 years ago

True. Fundamental => Portable. But portability could be a function of something shallow but attractive.

signalsignal• 14 years ago

Everyone is some kind of fundamentalist, but people keep their ideas to themselves to keep an even keel because inexperience in expression tends towards bad outcomes. I have no scientific evidence for this, but this is my amateur reasoning in observing the personal growth in others.

stcredzero4• 14 years ago

Everyone is some kind of fundamentalist

This is an awkward phrase, as the word "fundamentalist" carries anti-intellectual baggage.

...inexperience in expression tends towards bad outcomes. I have no scientific evidence for this...

You now have one data point.

adrianhoward4• 14 years ago

From this argument "Lisp" is a portable idea... and much as I love Lisp (and I do :-) it doesn't seem to have been a very portable outside of the kind of people who love Lisp.

raganwald4• 14 years ago

Many ideas from Lisp have proven themselves very portable, and we see them in JavaScript, Scala, Haskell, and many other places today.

Some, like homoiconicity and macros, have been shot down whenever they tried to “achieve escape velocity"

wes-exp• 14 years ago

How do you make an idea portable?

raganwald4• 14 years ago

I honestly don’t know!

Here are some of the things I’ve tried. First, I’ve tried writing parables. Some of these seem very portable, but they also often annoy the people in the bubble who already embrace the idea and want more practical insights or advice. Nevertheless, parables have a way of side-stepping the logical critic in people’s brains and appealing directly to their emotions. Sometimes that’s a big win.

Second, I’ve tried to come up with sound bites. I’m not sure this is an effective example, but off the top of my head: “Discrimination doesn’t scale.” Sound bites are the refined sugar of ideas for good and for bad.

Third, I’ve tried to write without demonizing the people I disagree with. I tried to portray “Ted” as well-meanininged but a little too caffeinated here: http://raganwald.posterous.com/bob-and-carol-and-ted-and-ali.... But I think I blew it here: http://raganwald.posterous.com/a-position-of-the-highest-mor....

The truth is, I have no system or method for generating portable ideas, just some observations that many portable ideas have certain characteristics in common: They have emotional impact (tip 1), they are easy to remember (tip 2), and they avoid being divisive (point 3).

YMMV.

stcredzero4• 14 years ago

parables have a way of side-stepping the logical critic in people’s brains and appealing directly to their emotions. Sometimes that’s a big win.

Second, I’ve tried to come up with sound bites...Sound bites are the refined sugar of ideas for good and for bad.

As you note, those are equally applicable to ideas with and without substance.

I'd posit that looking for ways to popularize substantive ideas will produce portable ones.

dm1222e• 14 years ago

State it in terms that make it accessible to another group? Not universally portable, but improved a bit.

mcguire2• 14 years ago

Put a handle on it. Also, make sure it fits in the overhead bins.

mcguire2• 14 years ago

Less metaphorically, make sure your audience has some way to connect to it, for example emotionally. Also, do not try to pack too much into your message; a smaller, single idea will go farther than large, complex manifesto.

Oh, and don't be too abstract on Hacker News; they won't get it.

mattvanhorn• 14 years ago

Sounds to me like a cognitive escape velocity. An idea needs a certain amount just to get out of your head, and an even larger velocity to get out of the 'bubble.' People encountering the idea can either increase or decrease its velocity, like booster rockets. Now, I wonder if the escape velocity of a given bubble, or the current velocity of a given idea are measurable in any meaningful way, so that we could act to change them?

pitchups• 14 years ago

Love the concept of "cognitive escape velocity" - a perfect example of a portable idea that spans psychology, physics and social media!

digisth• 14 years ago

An unstated principle embedded in the post, sometimes made elsewhere (particularly in econ and political circles): change happens at the margins.

erikpukinskis• 14 years ago

"If you write an angry rant about sexism in the workplace, it may never leave the bubble. But a thoughtful piece may plant some ideas at the edge of the bubble that will escape"

I've been on Hacker News a while, and have noticed across many posts that raganwald often writes well meaning, but sexist comments. He seems like a nice guy, and I've actually considered writing him a polite email about it.

But I end up not doing it. For no other reason than it's really hard and time consuming. When you criticize someone, it's understandably met with resistance. And if you make any kind of rhetorical mistakes whatsoever, people will take the opportunity to discount your entire position. It's a minefield. And there's so much sexism in the world, there's not enough hours in the day to write "portable" responses to all of it. Writing an "angry" blog post is often as far as one can get.

And so while I appreciate raganwald's point, that it's incredibly powerful when you can write a gentle, persuasive, portable argument.... I just don't think that's enough of a strategy for us, as a group.

I think when someone calls you out on sexism, you have some responsibility to wade through the anger and rhetorical mistakes and try to understand what their beef is..

raganwald4• 14 years ago

I’m always interested in and grateful for criticism.

Feel free to make suggestions here if you think they will be instructive for others as well as for me. If you prefer to make them privately, I’m reg@braythwayt.com.

Sincere thanks in advance...

gfodor6• 14 years ago

This is an insightful post. I think a stellar example of what you get when you run with this concept and try to use it as a tool to influence others is seen in the right wing propaganda machine in the U.S.

Often one has to sit back and wonder how reasonable, decent people can support horrible policies such as banning gay marriage, torture, and so on. At least part of the reason for this is because those in power who want to enact these policies have mastered the art of making them portable outside their own extremist spheres. They do this by "attaching" these ideas to more innocent, pure, and (generally) positive beliefs that are universally held by many conservatives, if not all Americans: love of country, love of God, the fear of harm to your children, belief in fairness, belief that hard work begets success, belief in the benefits of family and community, and so on.

The magic that makes it possible for decent, loving, hard working people to support things like torture is by making the idea of torture "portable" into their worldview, by hanging it onto one or more of these core beliefs. If you don't support torture, you're not protecting your children. If you support gay marriage, you're laying the groundwork for families to unravel. It's all bullshit, of course, but these are the root things people are being convinced of: not that torture is good, or that gay marriage is evil (though it often morphs into that), but that these things are natural conclusions based upon beliefs you already have. It takes the work of an evil genius to figure out how to connect these two things together and make them portable towards groups of people who have otherwise innocent and positive beliefs, but we see it happening every day.

raganwald4• 14 years ago

V. insightful: One way to make an idea portable is to attach it to another idea that is strongly held in another “bubble."

gfodor6• 14 years ago

Thanks. One thing I forgot to mention is that this becomes a self-perpetuating cycle by turning those holding the opposing viewpoint into enemies: if you're against torture, you are putting my children in harms way, if you are for gay marriage, you are destroying my family and community, etc.

moldbug5• 14 years ago

Bear in mind that whatever it is the enlightened citizens of your enlightened country (presumably European) believe today, that country was far more right-wing than America until (approximately) 1945. Indeed for approximately the last millennium, these horrible right-wing ideas were considered normal and only a few people doubted them.

I can't be sure whether your country's mind was changed by our Eighth Air Force, or by our allies in the Red Army. Perhaps the first seeds of "change" were planted even earlier, by the British Navy. And of course we can't forget about Napoleon, now, can we?

What's certain, however, is that with the right application of military force, this same enlightened populace could be compelled to either return to its old views, or adopt new ones even more enlightened.

You should read more old books. It would teach you to be less confident in condemning people who disagree with you - as just about everyone born before the 20th century, in any country, did. Do you hate them all, and consider yourself morally superior? Really?

gfodor6• 14 years ago

Whoa there. I'm just a (American) liberal who hates seeing Fox News et al manipulate and divide people by compelling them to believe fervently in things not by making convincing arguments, but by appealing to their higher ideals of fairness, safety, and justice, and painting those who oppose them as opposed to those ideals.

It's almost as if you didn't read my post at all. You claim that I hate the people who disagree with me, when the entire point of my post is that I can sympathize with those who disagree with me if their basic assumption is that their viewpoints say, on torture, are grounded in the (misguided, force-fed) belief that torture is necessary to protect family and country.

kika2• 14 years ago

s/right wing propaganda/propaganda/gn

this is a basic principle of all propaganda, right wing, left wing, anti gay, pro gay, white suprematism, black power, the list goes on.

Let's give these banks just a little trillion dollars or our country would suffer. Let's burn just a few Jews in the furnace or they would sell our country. Let's take all the money from the rich and kill them and make everyone equal(ly poor). Let's bomb these Muslims into the Stone Age because they threat our children. Let's help those Muslims kill Serbs or World Democracy is in danger. Let's allow these morons squeeze our balls and tits or our airplanes would fall from the skies.

It's just marketing, a way to sell the bad idea to people and make them feel happy. It has nothing to do with right and left.

jkn• 14 years ago

It's true this pattern of "Accept <wrong> to prevent <worse>" has nothing to do with left or right. However I don't think it applies to pro-gay propaganda, because the whole point of the left-wing stance on this issue is that there is nothing wrong with being gay in the first place.

Side note: the pattern "accept <wrong> to prevent <worse>" is of course not bad in itself, but rather when false assumptions are used to connect <wrong> and <worse>...

anamax• 14 years ago

> Often one has to sit back and wonder how reasonable, decent people can support horrible policies such as banning gay marriage, torture, and so on.

What definition of "torture" are we using?

For example, suppose someone comes from a culture that stones gay men. Is it "torture" to force them to witness a gay marriage? How about two men kissing? How about two men making love? If said "torturee" is male, how about having him be kissed by a man?

I note that some folks have serious problems with menstrual blood. How about wiping fake blood on them, telling them that it is MB?

jes5199• 14 years ago

as an alternative to "going viral", I know a company that's trying to "go bacterial". Bacteria reproduce much more slowly than viruses - and yet they still have a viable contagion curve, and are at least as ubiquitous in nature as viruses.

adrianhoward4• 14 years ago

It's sometimes very hard to create "universally" portable ideas - the metaphor or story that's going to get everybody to understand and communicate an idea. You often need to bring people together a bit first so that all the groups can actually see the common ground - even if they've not reached it yet.

For example - I have some fairly strong beliefs, based on the teams that I've worked with, on how design/UX and development fit together. I've learned from experience that I usually can't just jump to the "you need to play nice - look at all the advantages" pitch. Instead I have a bunch of arguments and points for developers, and a bunch of arguments and points for designers.

The talk I giving at the mostly developer GOTO Copenhagen next week is going to be very different from the one I gave at UX Cambridge last year - because of the audience not the ideas.

Once you nudge folk a little out of their comfort zone - then you can sell the larger changes that either side would have initially rejected.

Keep looking for the portable ideas - they always help. But in the mean time I'd also pay a lot of attention to why different groups reject ideas, and use the knowledge you gain there to hone your presentation to that group.

(BTW for folk who've not already come across it "Resistance as a resource" is a good read http://dhemery.com/articles/resistance_as_a_resource/ )

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