- Author
- Grace Kind
- Published
- 23 November 2024
- Kind
- Personal blog post introducing a niche field, with one worked example
- Original
- gracekind.net/writing/ideonomy/intro/
- Subject
- Mind, attention and practice
- Themes
- Rules that generate, Getting good
What it is
Grace Kind writes a blog. The post tries to give a clearer entry point to Patrick Gunkel's ideonomy. It covers what the field is, how it works and what it might do.
What it says
- The post says ideonomy treats ideas as part of the natural world. Ideas should therefore follow laws and patterns.
- Kind says ideonomy treats ideas as primitives that can be listed and combined.
- The post quotes Gunkel faulting schools for teaching trees only as plants.
- Kind says the main tool is the organon, such as a list. Organons can be combined.
- The post offers "proseases", or good diseases, as an example. Gunkel reached it by applying negation to disease and predicted helpful microflora.
- Kind argues computers and language models can now do what Gunkel could not. They can scan huge idea lists and draw on many fields.
- The post lists open problems. These include judging an idea's quality and how AI could mimic human ideation.
What evidence it gives
The post offers explanation and a few quotes from Gunkel's volumes. Its one example is a prediction that Kind says matches present-day probiotic therapies. Kind concedes that Gunkel was likely not the first to think of it.
Interests and limits
Kind is an advocate who says the aim is to spread the word about ideonomy. No method was tested. The post admits that ideonomy lacks a definition of an idea. Claims about AI are hopeful, not shown.
Connections
These links are this wiki's own reading, not claims the sources make.
- Robert Hooke's "Cyberpunk" letter to Gottfried Leibniz. Leibniz wanted a language that would automate scientific reasoning. Gunkel wanted ideas listed and combined by rule. Kind argues language models can now do what Gunkel could not. Has the old dream returned, with statistics in place of logic?