Hi bl0rf!

Nice model. One of my most favorite professors in college once noted as a conjecture that the most memorable models, speeches, documents and doctrines of men contained basic elements that came in 'threes'.

Question: If you were absolutely forced to add a third element to your model, what would that third element be? Just curious.

Reflection: I like the simplicity of your model, which expresses much in few words, with a minimum of jargon. This is a fundamental of elegance.

Perhaps analogous to your model?

Alternate: I have used a model that I think is very similar to yours, except it uses different terms, and has (believe it or not) three elements. I call it States, Relationships and Interpretations. The S-R-I model of human knowledge and understanding.

States: Similar to your "Tools", except it generalizes the notion of a "tool" to any concept that can be uniquely identified in any given 'world' with all of the associated assumptions. Another way to think of it, "state = tool + taken-for-granted-rules". For example, your body is a tool, but while asleep, a fundamentally different tool, while eating, different again; while in the shower; while speaking; while reading posts on perlmonks; etc etc ... each of these is a different 'state'. For example again, a letter in the English Alphabet has 26 possible 'states'. For example again, "Is it raining outside?" is a question that can be answered with 'yes' or 'no'.

It is important to add: how people segment 'states' is largely personal. It is also subject to reduction and aggregation. It is also subject to conscious awareness, and all the illusions, limitations and paradoxes attendant thereto. TMTOWTDI.

Relationships: Similar to your "Rules", except it focuses more on patterned classification instead of identifying falsifiable norms. To explain this, consider how a rule often carries the connotation of ("A therefore B"), whereas patterns simply suggest "hey, I recognize this from somewhere ..."

Interpretations: This is the real 'meat' of the model, because even if two people can agree on 'states' and 'relationships' present in a system, there is always an entirely different interpretation for every pair of eyeballs. When one takes the effort to "walk a mile in the other person's shoes" we only begin to scratch the surface of this principle.