Venkatesh Rao

If you write fiction, you have to choose names for characters and places even if they are not critical to the story. If you do engineering, you have to choose names for variables, and details like shaft diameters even if specific bindings don’t matter. Therein lies a rhyme.

There are 3 types of details required to define a work well enough to actually create it: Essential details: which determine the nature of the thing Influential details: which meaningfully shape that nature Interchangeable details: which are necessary but not uniquely so.

We’re talking selectorate theory for creative work, where instead of people/citizens/voters we’re talking about the hundreds or thousands of details that go into individual works by individual creators. Goes up to millions or billions for group works like movies.

The thing that fiction and engineering share is that they are like democracies. There is a HUGE group of interchangeables. Details that don’t really matter by default, but can occasionally matter as a function of strategy or chance. Eg: color of a wheel, drink the hero drinks.

This makes both harder work than respective “theory” cousins. Math for engineering, nonfiction for fiction. If you want to build an airplane, you HAVE to bind every detail even if you don’t care. If you’re doing airplane math, you can throw away details you don’t care about.

For eg. if you’re doing fluid dynamics, throw away everything except the shape/geometry. If you’re doing controls, throw away everything except the differential equation. But real planes have: paint colors, tire vendors, seat cover material choices.... about 10k more detail.