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commit 91a1c57a280859e49b981c63cbe35c1ad24db9b2457ae356268837133cf85582
Author: yihanwu1024 <yihanwu1024>
Date: Mon Jan 1 00:00:00 2024 +0000
create article arguing why unique identifiers should be assigned to almost everything
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+<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
+<article xmlns="http://docbook.org/ns/docbook" xml:id="51879e1b92b94e99adada564e0094bdaa961fd98764a4ba4998ad54e89ee2159">
+<title>UID Everything!</title>
+<para>I often joke that we should assign unique identifiers (UID) to everything.
+The important points in my articles are labeled with UIDs, not numbered 1.2.3 like theorems in a paper.
+This is not a fetish; it has an epistemic reason that is extremely related to the fact that naming things is hard.</para>
+<para>Here is a very simple example.
+Someone can be known as <emphasis>A</emphasis> and <emphasis>B</emphasis> on different occasions; for many tasks, this name is not a correct identifier.
+For some tasks, even a Social Security Number cannot be a correct identifier.
+But we can still find a coherent description of the situation, for example, “<emphasis>A</emphasis>, <emphasis>B</emphasis>, and the person holding the Social Security Number <emphasis>987-65-4321</emphasis> are the same biological person (whatever ‘biological’ means)”.
+At this point we have shifted some senses to track the same object in a more desirable way.
+But as long as the identifier goes, the best we can do is to assign a UID to that object in each small interaction session as soon as we can conceptualize and identify it, attach a label in natural language, then attach a proof or belief that these objects are identical in some sense across the sessions.
+Fortunately in many cases we can afford to weaken this standard and automate a bit.</para>
+<para>Interestingly, when I attempted to assign UIDs to my friends they appeared to not understand the motivation and actively disagreed with the practice.
+There seems to be an emotional response to this practice: I can feel once significant objects being apparently demoted to UIDs, stripped away of any metaphysical significance.
+But such an emotional response is premature.</para>
+<para>In the way of UID, the status of the information captured is different from that of natural language text.
+With natural language we tend to believe that a text tells something concrete and ready to be understood.
+Contrarily, the information corresponding to the UID is a <emphasis>sense</emphasis> evoked by its natural language labeling; it can only be truly recovered by those sufficiently engaged with the subject.
+This is a fundamental setting: no sense is by default widely recognized, but whenever it is used it must have been understood very well.
+Alternatively speaking, this permits a labeling that is detached from literal natural language when needed.</para>
+<para>Extending the idea, I am going to write as if these senses in human thinking are reflected in computer data in a rather direct way.
+One sense is represented by one unique object.
+Any senses we consider identical, <emphasis>i.e.</emphasis> cannot further distinguish as different senses, are considered the same object.
+I might call this system “pseudo-formal”.
+The objective here is not to perform computation on this pseudo-formal data, but manage, distribute, and facilitate intelligent senses in an effective way.
+Only after these senses become formal enough may a computer process them symbolically.</para>
+<para><emphasis role="strong">Thesis.</emphasis> The initial motivation of UID as an accurate tracker of sense maintained by human users.
+This thesis.</para>
+<para>Part of <link xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink" xlink:href="262c86ec3d3b40089ed2d2e0a408b44d99eeeda9cc564898a2412034840d1b75">Project</link>.
+This idea is the start of an approach to information where humans maintain structured senses “pseudo-formally”, in a format that is more structural than natural language yet represent informal senses.</para>
+</article>