[FRIAM] excess meaning alert? (was, Re: are we how we behave?)

[lrudolph at meganet.net]

Steve writes in relevant part:

> My position is that I favor each and every one of us taking whatever
> responsibility for understanding our own "convex hull" of
> capability/knowledge/intuition as we are capable of and "managing" it to
> the best of our ability.

The quotation marks around the phrase 'convex hull' and the word
'managing' presumably signal that they are being used non-literally, and
(I guess) metaphorically.  I would particularly like Steve, if he is
willing, to delve into the intended metaphor in the first case.  On the
one hand, lots of my work uses more or less geometry; on the other, in
lots of my other work I use metaphor; and I even think and write about
metaphor.  So it's likely that I'm taking the metaphor more seriously than
intended.

With that disclaimer: in the technical contexts I'm familiar with, to pass
from something X to the convex hull of X has the effect of (1) 'filling in
holes in X', in a well-defined manner that is (2) as economical as
possible and (3) (therefore) unique. Which (if any) of those properties
are reflected, and how, in the case that X is our
"capability/knowledge/intuition"?  ... I could ramble on a lot more but
will start with that.