Trees, Maps, and Theorems

Notes on Trees, Maps, and Theorems by Jean-Luc Doumont. My own notes are in plain text; verbatim passages from the book are blockquotes.

Quotes

Le secret d’ennuyer est de vouloir tout dire. — Voltaire

• My translations: “The secret to annoying is to want to say everything” — or, “the secret to annoying is to spare no detail.”

It usually takes me more than three weeks to prepare an impromptu speech. — Mark Twain

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The three laws of communication

Adapt to your audience

To optimize under constraints, we must first identify what is and what is not under our control, and concentrate on what is.

To a point, we cannot select our audience: we must take them as they come. Still, we can decide what to tell them and how. To optimize our communication, we must thus adapt to them.

Maximize signal-to-noise ratio

The simple model above is ideal: it suggests that information or messages sent from one side reach the other side intact. In practice, information may suffer losses, because of noise. To prevent losses, we must filter out the noise; alternatively, we can enhance the signal so it can withstand the noise better.

Use effective redundancy

The second law is limited to prevention. When noise cannot be anticipated, it cannot be filtered out, so it results in losses. To compensate for the losses, we can tell things several times, by repeating the message or by replicating it across channels, preferably in different ways, such as verbally and nonverbally.

How to go from scratch to a finished presentation

1. Plan the presentation — gather your thoughts about the occasion.
2. Design it — organize your content into a simple outline.
3. Create the slides that will help convey your messages.
4. Rehearse the presentation until you feel confident, and deliver it to your audience.
5. Answer the questions to clarify or complement the material you have just presented.

Be more selective [for a presentation] than for a document… for listeners cannot be — everyone hears everything.

My own thoughts on optimising reading & reasoning

• Reading subprocesses (Process Hierarchies)
  • Taking it in
    • Parsing the structure of the material to understand the ideas being conveyed
      • Decomposition?
    • Restructuring the material so I can better store them internally
      • Or understanding / manipulating them better
        • E.g. chunking
      • Composition
  • Creating new information / processing
    • Assessing the qualities of the ideas
      • I.e. judgement??
        • Is this true?
        • Is this a useful idea?
        • What could be more accurate?
    • Creating connections
      • What does this relate to?
      • What does this contradict?
• Question: How do you optimize reading?
  • Some of these operations are expensive, and in some cases you get more value if you swapped their order.
  • And in some cases it’s also fractal, and you need to know which level of meta is appropriate.