Naming Functions

A bunch of cars are moving erratically, some standing still, and some barely moving. The stopping lights are lighting up and fading, as far as you can see. Clearly, it is a traffic jam. If you know the pattern, you know how to reason about it: every traffic jam has an average flow rate and total length, and if we know the properties of this emergent phenomenon, we can predict when we’ll get there. Very useful indeed!

The make, model, and exact position of every car on the road describe the recipe of a traffic jam, but do a poor job of explaining the outcome, just as the list of ingredients can’t alone explain the chiffon cake. Just like this, Know to Sense or Feel to Predict are only recipes, not flavors that emerge from these simple parts.

But we can’t just use any names for these flavors. If a name, an idea, falls strictly into one of the pre-existing four buckets, it is too primitive to capture the emergent flavor accurately. Rather, good names must follow a cause-and-effect structure, linking concepts from the earlier four buckets.

Ideally, we want the names to be memorable and distinct from each other, while avoiding confusion. Say, if an idea can be subjective or objective depending on the context, it won’t work.

My actual process for coming up with these mnemonics was much less straightforward and messy. I started with some initial ideas, used them to uncover attributes, and then iterated to find better names. I’ll list these bridge ideas where they make sense.

Know → Predict: Impression

You are in a windowless room. You know there are three apples in front of you, red, green, and yellow. Now, lit by pure blue light. Your best guess is that one deep-black apple is probably a red variety, and the lighter blueish-gray apples are either green or yellow. Blue light turns off, and a very warm light comes up; now you can see the slight green tint of one of the apples. The warm light cools to daylight, and in a matter of seconds, your vision adjusts so you can tell the green apple from yellow or red.

You are listening to a piano. You hear a note and another, and you start guessing if the melody is somber or playful. Just two notes are probably too few to predict the vibe. A few more notes, and the probability collapses to a melody you know all too well.

Photons or sounds, objective external signals, cannot paint the whole picture alone. Only after your eyes or ears can collect a few, can you make a reliable guess, a prediction, about the color or the tone.

I used “color” as a bridge idea to study how the Know to Predict function works. Still, I ultimately settled on Impression as it captures what the function does, internalizes objective signals (like light wavelengths), and externalizes subjective qualities, beyond simply capturing a singular kind of results this function produces.

Know → Sense: Identification

You are a seeker in a hide-and-seek game. You enter a living room, and after a few moments, you hear a rustling sound of a candy wrapper. Turn around, and there it is - a familiar shape behind a curtain. For adults, this is where the real game of joyful suspense begins: pretend you did not find the child, keep looking around.

But for us, let’s focus on the sound reaching your ears. From it, you sensed the direction the child was hiding. That’s what I call Identification. By comparison, if several children were hiding, Impression emerges as you are trying to guess which suspicious shadow corresponds to whom.

An ancient humanid saw a patch of yellow-orange in the forest and, recognizing it as a tiger, they were off running for help. That’s Identification. New Year’s Eve, something flashed in the windows of a building - that’s fireworks. Again, Identification.

To wrap my head around the Know to Sense function, I used “form” as a bridge, but it was too limiting to the inputs and outcomes. The other noteworthy mnemonic is “Effectiveness” - it also focuses on the outcome of recognizing the form or effect, not the essence of the function.

Feel → Predict: Opportunity

It’s almost lunch, and you are beyond hungry: that salad place you saw on your way here is very tempting. That’s certainly what you want!

You’re parched, walking through the city. There’s a vending machine, finally. That convenience store sign far ahead also glows like a beacon. You were on the same street yesterday. This vending machine was there all along, but your internal state led you to project usefulness onto everything around you.

An organism that could act only on external data would be purely reactive. But an organism that can project internal states outward as predictions about external advantage becomes proactive. It reaches for things before the environment tells it to. So, selective pressure favors organisms that sense their own metabolic deficit and extend themselves toward whatever is available, even if at random.

Just like that, speaking is essentially pointing literal sound waves outwards. Imagine you are taking your partner on a dinner date, feeling excited and anticipating, when you whisper, “You look amazing tonight.” It works for loneliness, too. You feel lonely, you call your friend, and the words you say carry the feeling outward, “I’m so glad you picked up.”

When our internal feelings project meaning into external things to make them useful, or to make use of them, that’s Opportunity.

I used “advantage” and “usefulness” as bridge ideas to understand what the Feel to Predict function produces, before settling on Opportunity.

Feel → Sense: Calibration

If you are peckish, focusing on that lecture becomes harder with every minute. It might not be just hunger; you could be coming down with something. Moments later, the fever makes the room suddenly feel too cold, even though it was fine just a moment ago.

The other day, feeling great after a long chat with an old friend, the air was so sweet and delicious at dusk. You open a new book, and it is already midnight - it feels like 30 minutes. It has probably been a full hour, or even more, since you plunged into the story.

You are at a concert, energized in anticipation. The band starts playing your favorite song, and it sounds better than ever. A sudden call from your partner, worrying words on the phone. You are anxious to get out to a quiet place. The same song sounds like nothing, worse, a nuisance.

You are at a clinic, waiting. Time moves slowly as if minutes take hours. The nurse comes out with reassuring words. You start to relax, and suddenly, an hour has passed. The improved feelings recalibrated the sense of time.

When our feelings affect our senses, that’s Calibration. I chose this word because it works both ways: with peripheral senses, such as warmth, and with experiential senses, such as time passing.

To wrap my head around the Feel to Sense function, I used “time” and “wellbeing” as bridges, but they described the operation’s common content, whereas Calibration describes what the operation does.

Sense → Feel: Impact

Your purely external sensation can trigger internal feelings, such as when a sudden touch by a stranger at a crowded party makes your heart beat faster, even before you learn they are your old friend.

That pressure on your back, membrane contact, produced the internal state shift. You did not even have to think, “I should be startled” - your senses decided what you feel. The reverse: a parent picks up a crying child and holds them against their chest. The warmth and pressure of the contact instantly shift the child’s internal state.

Half asleep, you are navigating a hotel room you just checked into a few hours before, just as your pinky toe hits the uneven leg of a coffee table. The table’s leg remains entirely outside of you, fortunately, yet the jolt of pain instantly floods your system with adrenaline and nudges you wide awake.

You are at the very same hotel after a very long day, still tense from the day’s events. Your partner reaches out and rests their hand on your shoulder. Your heart starts to slow down, and a wave of calm finally washes over.

Even a simple single-celled organism swimming into an obstacle may reverse its flagellar motor and swim off in a new direction.

When our senses affect our feelings, that’s Impact. I chose this word for its visceral, even physical nature, while also working for more abstract concepts: when sales deteriorate, the business struggles as margins compress.

I used algorithms, temporal reactions, and economic margins as bridge ideas to arrive at the mnemonic ‘Impact’ that explains them all.

Sense → Know: Insight

Run your hand along the main wall in a dark hotel room. You felt the ridges of the wallpaper until you sensed something else, a light switch. Just as senses help you understand the structure, material, and overall build of a coffee table as you move it away in the dark, out of harm’s way.

A doctor presses on your abdomen. She’s not cutting you open, not at all, just from the pressure at the surface, feeling the resistance and tenderness, looking for rigidity. From this touch, she builds the knowledge of the situation, what’s happening inside you. Now she has an idea, an insight, that she’s going to let another doctor confirm with an ultrasound.

You are in front of a door in the freezing rain, rummaging through the deep pockets of your backpack for your keys. You can’t even look down to avoid getting rain down your collar. Your fingers brush against a cold piece of metal, but as you pull it out, you understand you pulled a miniature wrench instead. Pushing it away, you reach down again to find another familiar metal shape with jagged ridges. Chances are, this time it’s the actual key, not something else.

You reach out into the wet sand, your fingers touch something hard. You know you are looking for a shell, but you don’t know if it’s another rock. You continue to feel it around, sense the rhythmic ridges, and the probabilities collapse into a definite shell.

I used “shape” and “structure” as bridge ideas, but since shapes or structures are the final result, not the process itself, I settled on “Insight” instead, since it captures the active inductive process.

In Identification, you already knew what a child behind a curtain might look like, so you could identify the shape with certainty. By contrast, in Insight, external sensations build the knowledge you did not have. Just as a blind person with a cane can build a sufficient model of the world around, inductively, one touch at a time, with each contact refining the model further.