Cognitive strain

Floridly, but badly, written instructions and laws (and the impossibility of originalism); cognitive load theory; Steve Jobs and functional transparency; Old texts

We recently visited this amazing place - Muckross House, in Killarney National Park, Co Kerry, Ireland. My pic below doesn’t do it justice - click the link to get an amazing aerial view. It’s huge and opulent, and has been meticulously maintained and restored.

It has, of course, a games room, with the original Muckross House billiards table (which I guess is a century old). I have never played billiards - and have never had any interest in it. But the games room is interesting, and there’s quite a bit of stuff in it.

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On one wall is a framed original poster stating the rules of the game - excuse the poor quality of the picture - I’ve played with the contrast to try and facilitate readability. Have a read if you can, and see if you can figure out what the rules of the game are, how you should play, and what the goal of the game is. I guess these rules date from somewhere around 1908 to perhaps the early 1920s from this account.

The key point I want to make is not about billiards - but about the instructions for the game itself (what they quaintly refer to as the ‘Laws of Billiards’). They are, to my 2020’s eyes, just about useless. Reading them is like wading through treacle, such is the floridly overwrought and imprecise quality of the writing.

The writing imposes a substantial cognitive load: processing this information in any depth is very difficult and takes time, as would be suggested by any cognitive load theory. Our working memory has limited capacity, and when overloaded, the efficiency of learning and problem-solving is subsequently reduced - translating these words into instructions for action at the table is really tough.

Below the line: Affordances; Steve Jobs and functional transparency; Old texts and epistemological inaccessibility; the impossibility of (constitutional) originalism; The Truth is Not Out There - but the world is

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This early version of the rules certainly imposes too much of a load on working memory: you have to work very hard to understand exactly what they are trying to say. It takes time, and working out what you should be doing is difficult indeed. And worse than this - you have to figure out what your opponent will be trying to do too - you may not understand the game in common at all.

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