'We Like Lists Because We Don't Want to Die'

http://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/0,1518,659577,00.html

by robg • 17 years ago

126 43 17 years ago

spiegel.de

c1sc0• 17 years ago

And once you understand that lists can be nested things become really interesting

xinsight• 17 years ago

Even with nested lists, I'm still not clear why this is such a powerful concept.

How do lists help us to think?

nazgulnarsil2• 17 years ago

before you have a solid ontological understanding of a concept, lacking powerful descriptive axioms we're forced to rely on a list of characteristics e.g. intrinsic properties, how it interacts with other objects, etc. if we restrict ourselves to things we already have a vigorous understanding of how will we consider new hypothesis?

I'm not sure if this is coming through right.

anigbrowl2• 17 years ago

by establishing the concept of scope and discriminatory criteria for inclusion or exclusion. Look up 'bongard problems' and appreciate that while some are based around topological or temporal progression, others require cataloging random arrangements and establishing membership criteria.

DannoHung• 17 years ago

Things get more interestinger once you realize that it's all just degenerative cases of bidirectional cyclic graphs.

gloob• 17 years ago

The tough part is finding a tidy syntax for representing said bidirectional cyclic graphs.

A programming language with support for arbitrary graph literals would make me happy.

RyanMcGreal2• 17 years ago

> I was there alone recently, and I felt like a character in a Dan Brown novel.

A subtle nod, given that Brown's novels serve as a kind of poor man's Foucoult's Pendulum.

flatline• 17 years ago

Da Vinci code in particular. I liked this quote better though:

> I like lists for the same reason other people like football or pedophilia. People have their preferences.

danteembermage• 17 years ago

I like that he is almost deferential to him; a huge portion of his readers are Da Vinci Code folks looking for more and I think people are often petty about these sorts of things.

mahmud• 17 years ago

The intersection between Ecco readers and the Dan Brown crowd, imo, is phi.

murr• 17 years ago

I always thought that Focault's Pendulum was a kind of highbrow Illuminatus! Trilogy

eru• 17 years ago

I did not find the Pendulum more highbrow than the Trilogy.

limist2• 17 years ago

Eco does not seem to think all that highly of Dan Brown: see this essay on his personal website:

http://www.umbertoeco.com/en/about-god-and-dan-brown.html

Alex39172• 17 years ago

A good pattern helps us find lists, and a good list helps us find patterns.

And he's right that lists are seriously undervalued right now. The best way to make a name for yourself in science is probably just by making lists. That was Chomsky's whole thing, find a pattern and make a list of all the ways it can occur. Anyone can do that, no genius necessary.

hegemonicon• 17 years ago

Yup.

A list is really a lens for viewing a particular chunk of the world. It's "here are all the things that have this particular characteristic", be it generals in an army or items you want to buy at the store. The characteristic tells you what to items to put on the list, and the items you put on it in turn tell you more about the characteristic itself. Going round and round like that is a good way to learn how the world works.

gruseom• 17 years ago

That was Chomsky's whole thing, find a pattern and make a list of all the ways it can occur

How does that describe generative grammar? There are an infinite number of ways that can occur.

sjf• 17 years ago

There is a finite number of rules, which produce an infinite number of sentences. I suppose is what the parent meant.

NathanKP• 17 years ago

This probably explains why "Top Ten" articles are so popular on the internet these days.

People like getting information fed to them in lists.

roc• 17 years ago

I think lists are simply more conversational.

If I write a thousand word essay on why CITIZEN KANE was an important, pivotal, but largely unwatchable film - very few people are going to read it to the end. And the style and the nature of my arguments will select out huge audiences. Those who remain to link or discuss what I've written will be of a pretty narrow group.

But if I just post "Top 10 Important Films I Can't Stand to Watch" and include CITIZEN KANE, it invites any number of conversations at various levels-of-depth. The potential audience is far, far larger and the territory open to discussion is vast.

celoyd• 17 years ago

At least two critics I respect, Merlin Mann and Paul Graham, have talked about this. My theory is much simpler: list posts tend to have good titles.

When you’re browsing a feed reader, you’re more likely to read an article called “10 Ways That Foo” than an article whose name is a complicated pun between its subject and the author’s favorite obscure novel.

coderdude2• 17 years ago

Did anyone else notice that Eco was bad at answering the guy's questions? When he asks him about Homer straying from poetry, Eco goes on about something else entirely.

davidw• 17 years ago

It's all just part of a day's work as a semiotician. "Well, see, this here defiency of language ain't aligned right with that there topos of the inexpressable. But I think I can fix 'er up real good with a few lists"

gwern• 17 years ago

I don't think so. The point was that the list may seem primitive and basic, but it's a sophisticated linguistic tool; much of poetry is like that. (Homer's epithets come to mind as seeming both basic - what could be more basic than just repeating from the same set of adjectives ? - but also is an important & sophisticated part of his poems.)

(And with Eco, it doesn't matter if he strays. What, is the interviewer more insightful, interesting, and knowledgeable that we would prefer to hear what she has to say instead of Eco?)

coderdude2• 17 years ago

I'm just saying that since this was an interview it would have been nice if Eco could have kept it coherent. As for the author, whether he is more insightful or not, I was interested in a direct answer to that question.

anigbrowl2• 17 years ago

I can't agree, although it's obviously not the direct answer you're expecting. In the example you gave, Eco's reply can be summarized as 'lists are as poetic as other rhetorical devices'. One might just as well argue that the interviewer is bad at understanding the answers (although in fairness, I think it more likely he deliberately adopted a Socratic approach and is playing the role of the skeptical reader).

tigerjk• 17 years ago

This quote in his article was funny: "I realized immediately that the exhibition would focus on lists. Why am I so interested in the subject? I can't really say. I like lists for the same reason other people like football or pedophilia. People have their preferences."

Raphael_Amiard2• 17 years ago

> Of course, nowadays I can find this kind of information on the Internet in no time. But, as I said, you never know with the Internet.

As much as i respect Umberto Eco, i have to say this is a very common mistake amongst people not acquainted with internet. Truth is, you never knew BEFORE the internet. What we account as the truth in books is based around the idea of truthfulness of a particular author. But in reality, and for big period of times in history, lies have been spread by books wich were thought as very respected. And as the 20th century showed us, the best way to prevent lies from spreading, is the free circulation of information.

Any clever kid on the street has the capacity to filter the information coming from the internet in a very efficient way. And when you know how to filter, interpret and analyze, i'll go as far as saying, internet is the best source for truth we ever had. Just pray for it to last ..

limist2• 17 years ago

But Eco's perspective is more nuanced than "Internet untrustworthy, books good" or the like. On the second page of the interview is where he gives a little gem on how to train a discerning mind, a modern version of classical rhetoric exercises:

Eco: Yes, in the case of Google, both things do converge. Google makes a list, but the minute I look at my Google-generated list, it has already changed. These lists can be dangerous -- not for old people like me, who have acquired their knowledge in another way, but for young people, for whom Google is a tragedy. Schools ought to teach the high art of how to be discriminating.

SPIEGEL: Are you saying that teachers should instruct students on the difference between good and bad? If so, how should they do that?

Eco: Education should return to the way it was in the workshops of the Renaissance. There, the masters may not necessarily have been able to explain to their students why a painting was good in theoretical terms, but they did so in more practical ways. Look, this is what your finger can look like, and this is what it has to look like. Look, this is a good mixing of colors. The same approach should be used in school when dealing with the Internet. The teacher should say: "Choose any old subject, whether it be German history or the life of ants. Search 25 different Web pages and, by comparing them, try to figure out which one has good information." If 10 pages describe the same thing, it can be a sign that the information printed there is correct. But it can also be a sign that some sites merely copied the others' mistakes.

Notice he seems quite familiar with Google and its limitations. As for his educational suggestion, it's excellent in teaching a multitude of high-level skills (research, referencing, comparison, synthesis, re-explanation, skepticism, etc.) but this level of education needs a teacher willing and capable of engaging in dialectic or Socratic dialog with a student.

I agree with you that the Internet has made information and knowledge far more accessible than ever before - for those who know where and how to look for it. For many/most other people, it can be even worse than previous propaganda channels of print, radio, or TV. The sheer variety of the Internet guarantees that if you don't want other perspectives and prefer company that thinks like you, you can readily limit yourself.

Raphael_Amiard2• 17 years ago

>I agree with you that the Internet has made information and knowledge far more accessible than ever before - for those who know where and how to look for it. For many/most other people, it can be even worse than previous propaganda channels of print, radio, or TV. The sheer variety of the Internet guarantees that if you don't want other perspectives and prefer company that thinks like you, you can readily limit yourself.

I definately agree with you, but we're talking about a totally different topic here, the one of self-limitation, or something like that. I know many people around me that are like that. Also , the best way to hide information on the internet, is not to try and prevent it to spread, but much more to drown it into tons of irrelevant content, wich can be a very effective technique, and as tech-oriented fellows, we see that done all the time. This certainly nuances my former post.

teeja• 17 years ago

"pray for it to last"

It could be interesting to discuss what circumstances might bring the 'source for truth' to an end ... what might be done to minimize the loss should it end ... how to route around the damage should the official internet be ended by someone afraid of the truth. It certainly is vulnerable to that ... but that doesn't mean it has to be.

Given the history of the world, the net may disappear and reappear several times. Before long, a large chunk of it will fit into a backpack ...

WRT 'not knowing before the Internet': you can have a trusted relationship with an author based on years of experience with his/her work. If everything they wrote checked out in the past - and/or they have a reputation for sweating the details - their books are inherently more valuable than a 'net source you're not friends with yet.

RevRal• 17 years ago

I'm a little sad that my best friend, the mind map, was not mentioned. Wouldn't have been too useful in that interview anyway.

But as a writer, I have thought about this a lot. I call it "describing the surrounding things." When I try to describe hard-to-describe things, I can see the thing as a fuzzy hologram that looks different from different angles. You can look at the hologram with different lenses as well. You can describe the "arms" and "lenses" that you are viewing the hologram (idea... object) from. But it is hard to find a satisfying description of the hologram itself.

That is why mind maps feel so organic to me. You have the hologram in the center, and connected to it are the arms and lenses.

Ideas are not simple. In fact, I have come to the conclusion that you cannot hold an idea in your mind as a single object. It is all a landscape. Think about how Umberto Eco describes a painter framing a piece of a landscape.

Mind maps serve the same functions as nesting (thanks c1sc0 for bringing that up), but they are easier to play with. And are, of course, translatable to nests.

This is the first time I've written out my thoughts on lists like this; this interview really made me smile. So I really hope that my description here helps some of you visualize what Umberto is talking about.

*E: Some of you may be wondering why lists are so important, and I've gone through my post a couple of times and I really don't think it does lists justice. I'm going to have to come back to this....

zby• 17 years ago

Sometimes the lists that he mention are really sets sometimes it is about linear order. I don't see how it can be so deep thought when it is not even precise.

gaius2• 17 years ago

I might go see this at the weekend...

gaius2• 17 years ago

The interview is much more interesting than the exhibit itself :-/

'We Like Lists Because We Don't Want to Die'

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