Max_Daniel

[Thoughts on what to do if there is an ontological mismatch between one's thinking and a tool]

• When I saw Jacob present a version of the OP in person, the discussion focused on cases where the correct response is to use a different tool, ideally one that matches the natural ontology of ones thinking. E.g. when using a whiteboard rather than a Google doc to express thoughts most naturally expressed as a mind map.
• But I think it's important that there are other cases where it can actually beneficial to 'learn how to think in a different ontology'. I think this is quite common in pure maths, but also shows up in more everyday

[Thoughts on the term "ontology".]

• In philosophy, ontology refers to the subfield aiming to answer the question "Which things exist?".
• Perhaps as a consequence of this, hearing "ontology" makes me think of questions like: What are the primitives or building blocks here? E.g. in a spreadsheet, there would be cells; in a graph there would be vertices and edges etc.
• But I think the important things Jacob is talking about show up as answer to the different question of which relations there are between these primitives. E.g. the important thing about a spreadsheet is that each cell is unique identified by a pair of numbers, that you can perform computations/functions on the values of cells;