# Constraints and assumptions are not directly observable in literature [[Understanding a thing has to do with intuiting the affordances of a thing]] and in order to understand the affordances of a thing, you need to grok its constraints and assumptions. So ideally these constraints and assumptions would be directly observable in ‘the literature.’ [[Structuring knowledge is expensive]] and people writing papers have no incentive to make constraints and assumptions directly observable. Arguably, most people don’t think directly about constraints and assumptions in their own heads. Micropublications ([[Micropublications: a Semantic Model for Claims, Evidence, Arguments and Annotations in BIomedical Communications]] ) and [[Polyplexus]] are attempting to address this through smaller more structured publications. This is one of the reasons why [[Just having the piece of literature doesn’t solve the problem]]. ### Related * [[A system that encoded papers as problems and solutions and then surfaced the papers and associated researchers based on the problem you had]] * [[Context is important and underrated for knowledge transfer]] * [[Demystification involves a lot of context]] * [[Every paradigm has constraints]] <!-- #evergreen --> [Web URL for this note](http://notes.benjaminreinhardt.com/Constraints+and+assumptions+are+not+directly+observable+in+literature) [Comment on this note](http://via.hypothes.is/http://notes.benjaminreinhardt.com/Constraints+and+assumptions+are+not+directly+observable+in+literature)