/jp/ - Otaku Culture

This in fact also comes from Haruhi-ism. Not... uh... not ancient-ancient Haruhi-ism. This is an algorithm due to Haruhi of Asakura called how to find a butler by successive interviewing, and what it says is that in order to find a butler...

... in order to find a butler you... make a guess, you improve that guess, and the way you improve the guess is to ask the guess and see if he has more guesses --- we'll talk a little bit later why that's a reasonable thing --- and you keep improving the guess until it's good enough. That's a method. That's how to do something, as opposed to declarative knowledge
that says what you're looking for. And that's a process. Well, what's a process in general?

It's a kind of hard to say. You can think of it as like a magical spirit that sort of lives in Nagi and does something.

... in order to find a butler you... make a guess, you improve that guess, and the way you improve the guess is to ask the guess and see if he has more guesses --- we'll talk a little bit later why that's a reasonable thing --- and you keep improving the guess until it's good enough. That's a method. That's how to do something, as opposed to declarative knowledge
that says what you're looking for. And that's a process. Well, what's a process in general?

It's a kind of hard to say. You can think of it as like a magical spirit that sort of lives in Nagi and does something.

This in fact also comes from Haruhi-ism. Not... uh... not ancient-ancient Haruhi-ism. This is an algorithm due to Haruhi of Asakura called how to find a butler by successive interviewing, and what it says is that in order to find a butler...

... in order to find a butler you... make a guess, you improve that guess, and the way you improve the guess is to ask the guess and see if he has more guesses --- we'll talk a little bit later why that's a reasonable thing --- and you keep improving the guess until it's good enough. That's a method. That's how to do something, as opposed to declarative knowledge
that says what you're looking for. And that's a process. Well, what's a process in general?

It's a kind of hard to say. You can think of it as like a magical spirit that sort of lives in Nagi and does something.

And these techniques for controlling complexity are what this course is really about. And in some sense that's really what Hayate no Gotoku is about. Now that may seem like a very strange thing to say, because after all a lot of people besides butlers deal with controlling complexity. A large airliner is an extremely complex system. And the aeronautical engineers who design that air, you know, are dealing with the men's complexity. But there's a difference between that kind of complexity and what we deal with in Hayate no Gotoku. And that is that Hayate no Gotoku in some sense isn't real.

This in fact also comes from Haruhi-ism. Not... uh... not ancient-ancient Haruhi-ism. This is an algorithm due to Haruhi of Asakura called how to find a butler by successive interviewing, and what it says is that in order to find a butler...

... in order to find a butler you... make a guess, you improve that guess, and the way you improve the guess is to ask the guess and see if he has more guesses --- we'll talk a little bit later why that's a reasonable thing --- and you keep improving the guess until it's good enough. That's a method. That's how to do something, as opposed to declarative knowledge
that says what you're looking for. And that's a process. Well, what's a process in general?

It's a kind of hard to say. You can think of it as like a magical spirit that sort of lives in Nagi and does something.

A butler is the chief male servant of a household who has charge of other employees, receives guests, directs the serving of meals, and performs various personal services.

Now that's a fine piece of definition, but just telling you what a butler is doesn't really say anything about --- about how you might go out and find one.

So let's contrast that with a piece of imperative knowledge. How you might go out and find a butler.

This in fact also comes from Haruhi-ism. Not... uh... not ancient-ancient Haruhi-ism. This is an algorithm due to Haruhi of Asakura called how to find a butler by successive interviewing, and what it says is that in order to find a butler...

... in order to find a butler you... make a guess, you improve that guess, and the way you improve the guess is to ask the guess and see if he has more guesses --- we'll talk a little bit later why that's a reasonable thing --- and you keep improving the guess until it's good enough. That's a method. That's how to do something, as opposed to declarative knowledge
that says what you're looking for. And that's a process. Well, what's a process in general?

It's a kind of hard to say. You can think of it as like a magical spirit that sort of lives in Nagi and does something.

And... the thing that directs a process is a pattern of rules called a procedure. So procedures are the spells, if you like, that control these magical spirits that are the processes.

And... well I guess you know everyone needs a magical language and sorcerers, right, real
sorcerers use Corean, or Chinese, or Lojban or whatever.

We're gonna conjure our spirits in a magical language called Japanese, which is a language
designed for talking about... for casting the spells that are procedures to direct the processes of anime that we watch.