So, is your brain really hierarchic? I think it is. Here's the informal demo. [Scripting News]
Dave uses another bad physical analogy for a non-physical process. Hierarchical trees apply to physical objects because a single phyisical object occupies a single physical location at any given time. An idea on the other hand not only can be in many idea-places at once, it gains value by connecting idea-places together.
Here's an example that even kinda involves physical objects. I have a book on electrical circuits for model railroading. Does this book occupy the idea-space of "electrical circuits" or the idea-space of "hobbies"? The answer is yes. It occipies both, and in doing so connects other books on electrical circuits to other books on model railroading.
My brain is a directed graph (to the best of my ability to understand a brain using a brain). Not only are there hierachal relationships, some cross over others, some split and join along the way, and some of the edges themselves carry meaning. In some places there may even be cycles, where a group may both contain and be contained by another group. That is why I won't even settle for a directed acyclic graph model, though I accept applying context to graph to generate a tree for serialization purposes (mainly because I don't know how to do it better). The brain works not by a thought moving from one node of a tree to another but by exciting the entirety of the graph at once.
As for how to classify things that may belong to any number of classifications, here's a hint: have you asked a librarian lately?
1:14:07 AM  Categories: Pushing rectangles... LiveJournal
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