David McCandless writes:
Recently, when throwing ideas around with people, I’ve noticed something. There seems to be a hidden language we use when evaluating ideas.
Neat idea. Brilliant idea. Dumb idea. Bad idea. Strange idea. Cool idea.
There’s something going on here. Each one of these ideas is subtly different in character. Each adjective somehow conveys the quality of the concept in a way we instantly and unconsciously understand.
Good point. There is always a “hidden language” that will be understood by members of a social group. But that also means that “hidden language” and its implications, will not be understood, at least not in the same way, by people in other groups.
That same “hidden language” shapes our choices of subjects out of a grab bag of subjects (a particular data set if not the world).
We can name some things that influence our choices, but it is always far from being all of them. Which means that no set of rules will always lead to the choices we would make. We are incapable of specifying the rules in the require degree of detail.