Non-Iconographic disadvantage doesn't make sense.

[Flyndaran]

Originally Posted by whswhs

The scholarly volume The World's Writing Systems, which I have owned for some time, denies the concept of "ideogram" in writing, saying that the characters in question are more accurately called "logograms," as they stand for words, not for abstract ideas. Since this is from a major scholarly press and is the most comprehensive book on the subject I know of, I'm inclined to think there judgment may have good standing.

The idea of a true ideogram seems a bit, I think the word I'm looking for is reductionist. If I'm misusing the word, please correct me.

Every thought we have is colored by culture, experience, and our biology as well as being context dependent.
I don't always like the word, holistic, but I think with language and writing specifically, it fits.
If I'm misusing that word...

[evileeyore]

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

Every thought we have is colored by culture, experience, and our biology as well as being context dependent.
I don't always like the word, holistic, but I think with language and writing specifically, it fits.
If I'm misusing that word...

I understand you just fine, but then I'm not the language scholar Bill is (it's a hobby for me, not a profession).

[Ulzgoroth]

Originally Posted by whswhs

The scholarly volume The World's Writing Systems, which I have owned for some time, denies the concept of "ideogram" in writing, saying that the characters in question are more accurately called "logograms," as they stand for words, not for abstract ideas. Since this is from a major scholarly press and is the most comprehensive book on the subject I know of, I'm inclined to think there judgment may have good standing.

How is that wrapped around the fact that in Chinese writing (or similarly Japanese kanji) words frequently are made up of more than one character?

[johndallman]

Originally Posted by Mysterious Dark Lord v3.2

The neurological condition Prosopagnosia is the inability to recognize faces. People with this condition cannot tell people apart by their faces. they can't even recognize their own face in a photo. This is real.

So an inability to process abstract symbols is not unlikely.

Well, Non-Iconographic was invented for game purposes in the old GURPS Cyberpunk. It made you unable to use graphical user interfaces, forcing you to rely on command line interfaces. I'm pretty sure it wasn't invented as a game implementation of a real condition, like Hemophilia or Bad Sight. It's survived since then as legacy, with a certain amount of increased generality, in case it was useful for aliens.

Prosopagnosia is a real condition, all right, but it exists because there's a region of the brain that is specialised for recognising faces. If that's faulty or underdeveloped, people have to fall back on much more general recognition abilities, and find it harder than average to recognise people.

I have a mild case of this, probably due to being almost blind until age three. I can compare faces readily enough, unlike diagnosed Prosopagnosia, but they aren't my main way of recognising people. That's voice, shape, hairstyle, gait and so on. I frequently fail to recognise people I know well if they've changed hairstyle, or gained or lost a lot of weight. I also falsely recognise strangers quite often.

[smurf]

I suppose to me is the ordnancesurvey.co.uk/docs/legends/50k-raster-legend.pdf

I have not used these maps for the best part of 20 years. However, the abstraction of contour lines and peaks to represent gradients for hills needs a level of abstraction to understand that the 2D image is trying represent the 3D world. This then can be skewed by the grid lines always running true north (the axis of rotation) but if you were to use a compass this points to magnetic north (like the north on a magnet) and all maps have a legend of a degree of variation, variational drift over period of time (if the map is old), this requires to the compass user to compensate for True North.

Now if you do not know how to decipher the information it is a picture of patterns.

A contour line denotes height above sea level. The closer they are the steeper the hill. Therefore even a simple contour line with a number on it is abstract if the reader is not familiar with the idea of sea level.

[maximara]

Originally Posted by johndallman

Well, Non-Iconographic was invented for game purposes in the old GURPS Cyberpunk. It made you unable to use graphical user interfaces, forcing you to rely on command line interfaces. I'm pretty sure it wasn't invented as a game implementation of a real condition, like Hemophilia or Bad Sight. It's survived since then as legacy, with a certain amount of increased generality, in case it was useful for aliens.

The flaw with that reasoning is even early GUIs are designed around the idea of an office with the drive effectively a file cabinet with folders that contain files. The only "abstraction" was the relationship of the icon to the program.

However, the better designed program icons had some relationship to what they did. Most writing programs have a pen on a piece of paper. The MacOS made thing as easy as possible. MacPaint had a hand with a paintbrush on the icon. MacDraw had a hand drawing on a grid and so on.

Yes even back then there programs there is no connection between what it does and the icon but there were enough that did the whole reason behind Non-Iconographic was dumb.

There was even that Microsoft Bob GUI (1995) which tried to further remove the abstraction.

My point is the idea behind GURPS Cyberpunk's Non-Iconographic is nonsensical even by 1990 standards.

Icons require culture context. You see what looks like three megaphones centered around a circle you know that means "radiation". But to someone of just 75 years ago that icon would mean nothing.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by johndallman

Well, Non-Iconographic was invented for game purposes in the old GURPS Cyberpunk. It made you unable to use graphical user interfaces, forcing you to rely on command line interfaces.

How is that not just vanilla Incompetence (computer operation)?

[scc]

Originally Posted by Anthony

How is that not just vanilla Incompetence (computer operation)?

Because it's quite possible to operate a computer without using a GUI, or at least that's what a lot of *nix developers seem to think.

[Daigoro]

Originally Posted by maximara

The flaw with that reasoning is even early GUIs are designed around the idea of an office with the drive effectively a file cabinet with folders that contain files. The only "abstraction" was the relationship of the icon to the program....
My point is the idea behind GURPS Cyberpunk's Non-Iconographic is nonsensical even by 1990 standards.

How is not being able to understand a GUI then not a disadvantage?

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by scc

Because it's quite possible to operate a computer without using a GUI, or at least that's what a lot of *nix developers seem to think.

That just makes it a specialized type of incompetence. Or a random quirk.