Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Explicitness, published by Tsvi Benson-Tilsen on June 12, 2023 on The AI Alignment Forum.

[Metadata: crossposted from. First completed March 3, 2023.]

Explicitness is out-foldedness. An element of a mind is explicit when it is available to relate to other elements when suitable.

Thanks to Sam Eisenstat for related conversations.

Note: The ideas of explicitness and inexplicitness require more explication.

Explicitness and inexplicitness

Elements can be more or less explicit, less or more inexplicit.

(This statement wants to be unpacked.)

In general, inexplicitness is the lack of explicitness, and explicitness is when elements that have good reason to be related, are able to be related. That is, when structure is explicit, it can be brought into relation with other structure when suitable.

Structure is explicit when it's out-folded: when it already makes itself available (visible, applicable, informative, copyable, tunable, directable, modifiable, predictable, combinable, interoperable), so that nothing is hidden or blocked.

An explicit element is an element high in explicitness, i.e. it can be brought into relation with other elements when suitable.

Explicitizing

Elements can become more explicit.

By default, structure is fully inexplicit for a mind. That is, it's fully ectosystemic for the mind: it's not available for elements of the mind to relate to.

Structure can be brought into explicitness.

For example, these processes make structure more explicit: reflection, analysis, description, expression, joint-carving, separating, factoring, refactoring, modularization, indexing, interfacing, connecting, disentangling.

The early stages of explicitizing involve incomplete or deficient participation——like a blind man touching an elephant's tail, or entering the outer regions of a nexus of reference. E.g., the relationship that the Ancient Greek mathematicians had to Cartesian algebraic geometry.

A diagram:

Examples

An example of explicitizing also furnishes examples of inexplicitness (before the explicitizing) and explicitness (after the explicitizing), and likewise an example of inexplicitizing also furnishes examples of explicitness and inexplicitness.

Classes of examples of explicitizing

Internal sharing of elements. See here for examples of inexplicitness.

Making an analogy. By grasping a partial isomorphism, the partially isomorphic aspects of the analogands can be transferred back and forth between them.

Putting a word to something. When the word comes up, the element is accessed, and vice versa. That helps different contexts in which the element is relevant communicate with each other through the unfolding of the element.

Refactoring code. Separating concerns A and B renders code for dealing with just A useful for tasks that deal with A but not B, whereas the unseparated code might for example assume the existence of B (e.g. as an argument or global variable). The separation makes explicit the dependence and non-dependence of code on A or B. Or for example rewriting a function so that it accepts a standard rather than non-standard input format, so that elements expecting a function to accept standard input can easily relate to the function.

Deduction. Drawing out the implications of an element makes the element available for comparison with other elements and makes the element available to recommend action.

Writing things down.

Expressing and recording something in shared language makes it available to others.

Storing something in memory makes it available to your future self.

Abbreviating something makes synopsis and large-scale modification more feasible. For example, mathematical notation makes big thoughts viewable all together, and makes algebra more efficient.

Attaching abbreviations to an element makes that element easier to find.

Drawing a picture makes somet...