NAME - The Foundational People. (noun). That subset of individuals, in every field of study, who find themselves most interested not in how systems are supposed to work, but in how those systems actually work, especially when the documented behavior of a system deviates dramatically from its behavior in reality. SYNOPSIS - This file is a specification of the intended use of the term "foundational," particularly when it preceeds the term "people" or its synonyms, within the scope of the current book, in any of its versions, provided those versions contain this specification. So sayeth the L||D. DESCRIPTION The term foundational is best defined by contrast with its complement. We will therefore begin by describing that complement in general terms. For any field of study, the majority of that field's members will be referred to as its Real Members. The Real Members of a field take pains to learn how things are done. In the field generally, and especially by the higher status members of it. Both as novices and as experts, they recognize that there exist many things about the field that they themselves do not yet know. They therefore concern themselves primarily with one source of truth: 1. Social Reality This is not to say that Real Members are mindless slaves to the social. They are no less able to understand scientific truth than the group that makes up their yet-to-be-described complement. Nor are Real Members less able to imagine how things might be improved. When engaged in science, they may disagree intensely with their colleagues, on the basis of objective truth, or propose improvements on the basis of ideals that guide them to a vision of how things might be done differently in the future. In asserting that their primary source of truth is Social Reality, we mean only that social truth is the dimension that normal members of any field gravitate to by default. They do so both in order to learn from the accumulated experience of all those who came before them, and in order to establish their findings among their peers through the accepted social methods. These individuals may be rebellious, when compared to their colleagues. Or they may be more conventional in comparison with the mean. Regardless, the primary question this group ask when learning is some question of the form: 1. How _is_ this done? This is not, in itself, an unreasonable thing to do. The Foundational members (lowercase), in contrast, never fully become Members (uppercase) of the fields to which they belong. Even in fields where they achieve great prestige, the Foundational are never entirely at home in a field, nor are they made to feel at home by the Real Members. This is neither groups fault (If anyone deserves the blame, it more often lies with the Foundational). Rather, the imperfect fit between the Foundational and whatever ambient field they inhabit is an inevitable consequence of their difference in focus from the bulk of the field's Members. In any field, the Foundational gravitate at once to two extremes, in the spectrum of possible concepts of truth. These two extremes are: 1. Objective reality. 2. Possible reality. The questions that represent these two extremes are, respectively: 1. What _can_ I get away with? 2. What _should_ we do (or not do)? Note the "I" in item one, and the "we" in item two. The Foundational are not necessarily unaware of Social Reality. Though many of the Foundational's most famous members have been described as blissfully unaware of the social world and its expectations, others among the Foundational are known to be acutely aware of social protocols in minute detail, and known to be equally adept at navigating them. The distinction we make here is not one of ability. The Real Members of a field are often more technically capable than the Foundational. The Real Members of a field often ask questions and break new ground on issues that appear by this definition to be foundational as well. What sets the Foundational apart is their inability to prevent themselves from winding up at the extremes. They cannot focus on "things as they conventionally are" without pain. To the extent that they focus on things as they are, they focus on that which is undocumented, or that which is true but little known, rarely discussed, or (perhaps most often) taboo. It would be a misunderstanding to confuse the Foundational and their concerns with the single minded desire for "rigor." Some of the least "rigorous" areas of each field are deeply "Foundational." In Mathematics. - GH Hardy Divergent Series after meeting Ramanujan. - -1/12 as the sum of a divergent series and the senses in which this obviously "wrong" calculation may be seem to be true. In Physics. - Paul Dirac's discovery of antimatter, not because the prediction was correct, nor because the argument was wrong, but because _the argument was wrong while the prediction was right._ - Functional integrals in Quantum Field Theory, not only because they're the most common computation in the calculations of fundamental physics, but because such calculations still have no clear rigorous basis, Wick rotation and esoteric special cases in string theory notwithstanding. We can teach functional derivatives to Calculus 1 students, by a straightforward analogy with the standard derivative and partial derivative. It's the same computation, with a slight change of notation. No analogous statement can be made for functional integrals. The Foundational mind cannot believe this is anything but a failure to find the right definitions, notations, and ways of teaching the concepts in question. In Computing: - The lowest levels of the stack, especially those cloaked in secrecy, for instance firmware, system management mode, undocumented instructions, and methods for exploring these hidden systems especially under the assumption that documentation is unavailable or does not exist. - Cases in which commonly accepted "best practices" are actively harmful. - Cases in which tools or practices that are commonly viewed as less reliable, less maintainable, less professional, or less acceptable in any way are in fact found to be the foundation of some large or well known project that is perceived to be the reverse. - Cases in which any X for which "no one was ever fired for using X" kills a product, a company, or (as is common in the history of computing) an entire industry. In all fields: - The belief that academic research is largely a waste of time, and unlikely to be the source of fundamental advances in understanding. - The contrary belief that major advances in understanding tend to come from extremely minor changes in the most elementary definitions, notations, or assumptions in a field. For example: - Einstein's resolution of the ether question by abandoning the assumption of absolute time / simultaneity. - The derivation of the Feynman path integral formalism in quantum mechanics from the double slit experiment supplemented with the thought experiment of adding screens and drilling holes. In summary: Though the "1" character in the present book could not articulate why, it is not surprising -- and 1 might argue that it borders on inevitable -- for curiosity about the lowest-levels or most technical aspects of a system to co-occur with a desire that such content is expressed in a way that is (as 1 might say) "silly." In other words, it is not odd or quirky for a love of assembly to co-occur with a feeling that the best format for said content is a leather bound bible that often says fuck. Remember, in every field, the Foundational mind asks: 1. Objectively: How much can I get away with? and 2. Aspirationally: How else could things be? --- We now return to our regularly scheduled [[sys/punchlines/1|...]]