本文探讨了技术性细节在信息传递中的关键作用。作者认为，技术性细节能够增强信息的准确性和可靠性，尤其是在技术领域。通过详细的观察和描述，技术性细节可以帮助验证信息的真实性，并减少误解。文章强调了细节在不同信息呈现方式中的影响，以及如何通过技术性细节使论点更具说服力。作者引用Edsger W. Dijkstra的名言，强调抽象的目的在于实现精确性，而非模糊。总的来说，技术性细节是构建清晰、可信信息的重要工具。

🍁 技术性细节是准确性的信号：技术性细节能够提供直接的观察，而非印象或假设，从而增强信息的可靠性。这些细节构成了一个“昂贵的信号”，表明声明的真实性，因为它们很难被错误地描述，尤其是在技术领域。

💡 细节有助于减少误解：详细的描述可以使信息免受误解，或者细化其含义，使其更难以辨别。与模糊的描述相比，技术性细节能够更清晰地表达信息，即使在存在错误的情况下，也能保持主题的清晰度。

⚙️ 技术性论点的重要性：技术性论点（不仅仅是结论）也能受益于细节的呈现。细节使得论证能够超越结论，即使结论的实际意义或有效性有限。技术性在于形式，可以通过局部应用细节来改善整体思路，类似于局部有效性。

🎯 抽象的目的是精确：引用Edsger W. Dijkstra的名言“抽象的目的是为了精确，而不是模糊”，强调了技术性细节在构建清晰、精确信息中的重要性。这种精确性有助于减少误解，并提高信息的整体可信度。

Published on April 3, 2025 12:30 AM GMT

A blue plastic maple leaf. Detailed observations in words with clear meaning signal their truth, as it's hard to get them centrally wrong by mistake, on both sides of communication. There is no maple leaf, but only because the claim is intentionally false, not because of a mistake. Technical claims, through their form rather than context or meaning or arguments given for them, are either accurate or fabricated, not something in the middle.

A good bug report gives direct observations, not impressions or hypotheses, and it gives them in detail, even what's likely irrelevant. It shows that the bug is real and places it in a distinct spot on the map of all possible bugs. It's difficult to stumble on redundant details that corroborate an incorrect informal description of what's happening or why, even more so if the bug doesn't exist at all. Thus the details of a technical claim are a costly signal of its accuracy, an asymmetric weapon. They would entangle a true claim with the other truths.

"The purpose of abstracting is not to be vague, but to create a new semantic level in which one can be absolutely precise."
— Edsger W. Dijkstra, The Humble Programmer

Details can make a claim robust to misinterpretation, or they can split the nuance of its meaning, making it difficult to discern. A rumor-fueled investigative analysis or a philosophical essay can be both detailed and downstream of some true underlying claim or fact, but still tend to admit a wide distribution of plausible interpretations. A sloppy but detailed report on the design of a washing machine can be rife with mistakes, but the general shape of its subject matter will remain clear. The character of details compounds, either grounding a claim more and more to a single spot, or fracturing and burdening its use with the need for interpretive labor and reasoning under uncertainty.

Arguments and not just their bottom line can be technical claims (a technical argument won't even benefit from having a bottom line written down). Details make it easier for an argument to be more technical than its conclusion, when the argument doesn't fall to nuance. This shift to a technical claim that is the argument can be more significant than the argument's relevance or even validity, in making its case. Technicality is a matter of form; the distinction can be applied locally to individual details to improve the overall line of thought, which is the right scale for skills, similarly to local validity. It's a local constraint on form that's not about validity or truth – one I'm struggling to express with minimal nuance.

Discuss