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Fraught Framing: The Virulent “Versus” Virus

29 Monday Dec 2025

Posted by petersironwood in America, apocalypse, creativity, driverless cars, management, psychology

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Fraught Framing: The Virulent “Versus” Virus

Like most of us, I spent a lot of time in grades K through 12 solving problems that others set for me. These problems were to be solved by applying prescribed methods. In math class, for example, we were given long division problems and we solved them by doing — you guessed it — long division. We were given history questions and asked who discovered [sic] America and we had to answer “Christopher Columbus” because that’s what the book said and that’s what the teacher had said.

Even today, as of this writing, when I google “problem solving” I get 332,000,000 results. When I google “problem formulation” I only get 1,430,000 results — less than 1%. (“Problem Framing,” which is a synonym, only returned 127,000). [2025 Update: Google no longer provides this information. Indeed, the only non-commercial link I see is one to Wikipedia. The first entry to any search is typically their AI answer.]

And yet, in real life, at least in my experience, far greater leverage, understanding, and practical benefit comes from attention to problem formulation or problem framing. You still need to do competent problem solving, but unless you have properly framed the problem, you will most often find yourself doing much extra work; finding a sub-optimal solution; being stymied and finding no solution; or solving completely the wrong problem. In the worst case scenario, which happens surprisingly often, you not only solve the “wrong problem.” You don’t even know that you’ve solved the wrong problem.

There are many ways to go wrong when you frame the problem. Here, I want to focus on one particularly common error in problem framing which is to cast a problem as a dichotomy, a contest, or a tradeoff between two seemingly incompatible values. We’ve all heard examples such as “Military Defense Spending versus Foreign Aid” or “Dollars for Police versus After School Programs” or “Privacy versus Convenience” or “A Woman’s Right to Choose versus the Rights of the Unborn Fetus” or “Heredity versus Environment” or “Addressing Climate Change versus Growing the Economy.”

One disadvantage of framing things as a dichotomy is that it tends to cause people to polarize in opinion. This, in turn, tends to close the minds on both sides of an issue. A person who defines themselves as a “staunch defender” of the Second Amendment “Gun Rights”, for instance, will tend not to process information or arguments of any kind. If they hear someone say something about training or safety requirements, rather than consider whether this is a good idea, they will instead immediately look for counter-arguments, or rare scenarios, or exceptional statistics. The divisive nature of framing things as dichotomies is not what I want to focus on here. Rather, I would like to show that these kinds of “versus” framings often lead even a single problem solver astray.

Let’s examine the hidden flaws in a few of these dichotomies. At a given point in time, we may indeed only have a fixed pool of dollars to spend. So, at first blush, it seems to make sense that if we spend more money on Foreign Aid, we may have fewer dollars to spend on Military Defense and vice versa. Over a slightly longer time frame, however, relations are more complex.

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It might be that a reasonable-sounding foreign aid program that spends dollars on food for those folks facing starvation due to drought is a good thing. However, it might turn on in a specific case, that the food never arrives at the destination but instead is intercepted by local War Lords who steal the food and use it get money to buy more weapons to enhance their power; in turn, this actually makes the starvation worse. Spending money right now on military operations to destroy the power of the warlords might be a necessary prerequisite to having an effective drought relief programs.

Conversely, spending money today on foreign aid, particularly if it goes toward women’s education, will be very likely to result in the need for less military intervention in the future. That there is a “fixed pie” to be divided is one underlying metaphor that leads to a false framing of issues. In the case of spending on military “versus” foreign aid, the metaphor ignores the very real interconnections that can exist among the various actions.

There are other problems with this particular framing as well. Another obvious problem is that how money is spent is often much more important than the category of spending. To take it to an absurd extreme, if you spend money on the “military” and the “military” money is actually to arm a bunch of thugs who subvert democracy in the region, it might not make us even slightly safer in the short run. Even worse, in the long run, we may find precisely these same weapons being used against us in the medium turn. Similarly, a “foreign aid” package that mostly goes to deforesting the Amazon rain forest and replacing it with land used to graze cows, will be ruinous in the long run for the very people it is supposedly aimed to help. In the slightly longer term, it speeds destructive (and anti-economic) climate change for everyone on the planet.

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False dichotomies are not limited to the economic and political arena. Say for example that you are designing a car or truck for delivering groceries. If you design an axle that is too thin, it may be too weak and subject to breakage. But if you make it too thick, it will be heavy and the car will not accelerate or corner as well and will also have worse gas mileage. On the surface, it seems like a real “versus” situation: thick versus thin, right? Maybe. Let’s see what Altshuller has to say.

Genrich Altshuller was a civil engineer and inventor in the Stalin era of Soviet Russia. He wrote a letter to Stalin explaining how Russian science and engineering could become more creative. A self-centered dictator, Stalin took such suggestions for improvement as personal insults so Altshuller was sent to the Gulags. Here, he met many other scientists and engineers who had, one way or another, gotten on the wrong side of Stalin. He discussed technical issues and solutions in many fields and developed a system called TRIZ (a Russian acronym) for technical invention. He uses the axle as one example to show the power of TRIZ. It turns out that the “obvious” trade-off between a thick, strong but heavy axle and a thin, weak, but light axle is only a strict trade-off under the assumption of a solid axle. A hollow axle can weigh much less than a solid axle but have almost all the strength of the solid version.

One may question the design assumptions even further. For instance, why is there an axle at all? If you use electric motors, for example, you could have four smaller, independent electric motors and not have any axle. Every wheel could be independent in suspension, direction, and speed. No-one would have designed such a car because no human being is likely capable of operating such a complex vehicle. Now that people are developing self-driving vehicles, such a design might be feasible.

The axle example illustrates another common limitation of the “versus” mentality. It typically presumes a whole set of assumptions, many of which may not even be stated. To take this example even further, why are you even designing a truck for delivering groceries? How else might groceries go from the farm to the store? What if farms were co-located with grocery stores? What if groceries themselves were unnecessary and people largely grew food on their own roofs, or back yards, or greenhouses?

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For many years, people debated the relative impact of environment versus heredity on various human characteristics such as intelligence. Let us put aside for a moment the considerable problems with the concept of intelligence itself and how it is tested, and focus on the question as to which is more important in determining intelligence: heredity or environment. In this case, the question can be likened to asking whether the length or height of a rectangle is a more important determiner of its area. A rectangle whose length is one mile and whose height is zero will have zero area. Similarly, a rectangle that is a mile high but has zero length will have zero area. Similarly, a child born of two extremely intelligent parents but who is abandoned in the jungle and brought up by wolves or apes will not learn the concepts of society that are necessary to score well on a typical IQ test. At the other extreme, no matter how much you love and cherish and try to educate your dog or cat, they will never score well on a typical IQ test. Length and breadth are both necessary for a rectangle to have area. The right heredity and environment are both necessary for a person to score well on an IQ test.

This is so obvious that one has to question why people would even raise the issue. Sadly, the historical answer often points toward racism. Some people wanted to argue that it was pointless to spend significant resources on educating people of color because they were limited in how intelligent they might become because of their heredity.

Similarly, it seems that in the case of framing dealing with climate change as something that is versus economic growth, the people who frame the issue this way are not simply falling into a poor thinking habit of dichotomous thinking. They are framing as a dichotomy intentionally in order to win political support from people who feel economically vulnerable. If you have lost your job in the steel mill or rubber factory, you may find it easy to be sympathetic to the view that working to stop climate change might be all well and good but it can’t be done because it kills jobs.

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If the planet becomes uninhabitable, how many jobs will be left? Even short of the complete destruction of the ecosphere, the best estimates are that there will be huge economic costs of not dealing with global climate change. These will soon be far larger than costs associated with reducing carbon emissions and reforesting the planet. Much of the human population of the planet lives close to the oceans. As ice melts and sea levels rise, many people will be displaced and large swaths of heavily populated areas will be made uninhabitable. Climate change is also increasing the frequency and severity of weather disasters such as tornados and hurricanes. These cause tremendous and wide-spread damage. They kill people and cause significant economic damage. In addition, there will be more floods and more droughts, both of which negatively impact the economy. Rather than dealing with climate change being something we must do despite the negative impact on the economy, the opposite is closer to the truth. Dealing with climate change is necessary to save the world economy from catastrophic collapse. Oligarchs whose power and wealth depend on non-renewable energy sources are well aware of this. They simply don’t care. They shrug it off. They won’t be alive in another twenty years so they are willing to try to obfuscate the truth by setting up a debate based on a false versus.

They don’t care.

Do you?

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Tools of Thought: Imagination

27 Saturday Dec 2025

Posted by petersironwood in America, creativity, management, psychology, Uncategorized

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AI, art, chatgpt, creativity, Design, fun, HCI, human factors, imagination, innovation, life, neurosis, sports, testing, truth, UX, writing

Imagination.

It seems odd to bother to remind people that imagination is a tool of thought. I have four kids, thirteen grandkids, five great-grandkids and they all use their imaginations. I also worked as a camp counselor, Y leader, child care worker in a psychiatric hospital, and a sixth grade science teacher. Kids use their imaginations! In many cases, they do this for “fun” but they also are constantly using their imagination to do creative problem solving.

When I did therapy with adults however, I found that many had convinced themselves that they had no imagination. This is rather sad as well as being completely inaccurate. Furthermore, in the very ways that such adults exhibited neurotic symptoms, they were using their imaginations. But instead of using their imagination to further their enjoyment or to solve problems creatively, they mainly seemed to use their imaginations for one main purpose: to make themselves miserable.

For example, few of us enjoy being stuck in stop and go traffic. As it turns out, you can actually impact the traffic flow around you by driving differently. You can read about how in this link, but you can come to much the same conclusion by using your imagination to empathize with the drivers around you. Instead, the neurotic train of thought goes something like this: “WHY oh WHY are all these people out on the road?! MOVE! Oh, crap, I am going to be late. My boss is going to scream at me. Probably fire me. CRAP! MOVE! I’m going to be late. I’m getting fired. Damn! It’s not my fault. My boss doesn’t care. He hates people who are late. I should have left earlier. Where will I get another job at my age? I’m sunk. Once I lose my job, my spouse will leave me too. Crap. He won’t write a good letter of recommendation. Should I get off the highway and take surface roads? That might make me later. Damn! I’m sunk. Life sucks!”

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That train of thought certainly uses imagination.

But in all the wrong ways. That person is not using imagination to enjoy the moment, but using imagination to quite literally make themselves miserable. And it isn’t just the commuter. Plenty of people use their imagination to “awfulize” about situations. They think of the worst possible outcome and then imagine that that worst possible outcome is bound to happen. Often, they continue the negative line of thought beyond the immediate consequences much like the teenager who is grounded for a day and screams to her parents, “Thanks! You guys just ruined my life!”

Instead, if you are in a situation that you can’t change, you could use your imagination to have some fun. So you’re stuck in traffic. There are literally a million things you could do instead of writing a tragic screenplay in your mind’s eye. I won’t list all million, but here are a few. You could design a better transportation system. You could construct a joke to put your boss in a better mood. You could turn on the radio or listen to a podcast or a book on tape. You could look at the scenery. You could make up a rather salacious spy thriller about the people around you who are also stuck in traffic. And so on.

So too, in solving problems….hold on… someone’s at the door. I’ll be right back.

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Well, that was weird! Two of the characters from my last blog series came to the door! They wanted me to hurry up and finish this series on tools of thought so they can come back to life. I had to explain to them that my translator is on vacation and that there’s nothing else to write until more of the myths can be decoded. Right now, there is growing interest in recent, though mythological, archeological digs that will give us further clues about the Veritas. My own command of the mythical Veritas language is extremely rudimentary and I’m not even absolutely sure I understood correctly what they were asking. But I am sure it was She-of-Many-Paths and Shadow-Walker. It was definitely them, more or less as I pictured them, but taller, and more ripped than I had imagined. It’s also clear that the two of them are more than friends. Anyway, they seem to be of the opinion that I need to write their myths so that we real humans can avoid making the same errors that people made in their mythical universe. I don’t quite see how that’s possible, but I will use my imagination to try to understand how it might be done. I hope they don’t bother my neighbors.

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Meanwhile, back to the catalog of thinking tools in general and to the use of imagination in particular. Under some circumstances, of course, it is a useful skill to use imagination to think of what can go wrong. I use imagination in this vein for example, when asked to evaluate something from a user perspective. I try to imagine how various icons, words, transitions and so on can be problematic for users. Even though I am pretty good at that, when users are actually observed in real life, they still manage to demonstrate problems that neither I nor anyone else on the design team had thought of!

Even in UX work, it is also important to use your imagination to think of additional opportunities. “You know, we’ve been thinking about this calendar application as a passive recipient of the user’s information. But some users might also like seeing a weekly summary of their activity in different categories.” Or, you might think, “Suppose we tie the calendar in with the message system. The system knows where the user is; we could send a reminder when it’s time for them to leave for an appointment.” Or, you might think, “In some places the time to drive somewhere depends on traffic and weather. We could tie this calendar and reminder in with the map and weather apps to give better estimates of when to send a reminder.” Such musings could result in a better product. Of course, timing is important as well. Your colleagues will tend to appreciate these thoughts a lot more if you are not currently in beta test but instead at the conceptual design phase!

Even knowing that, your imagination might be more likely to kick in later in the project because the application seems more real. You can imagine the reactions of your colleagues and frame your response this way, “Trying this app makes me realize that we can make a number of enhancements in version 2.0, 3.0 etc. I’m going to start this shared file of potential additions, changes, and enhancements that we can all contribute to. We should take a look at this when we are doing 2.0 brainstorming.”

More generally, there are many possible triggers for using your imagination and you may find that some kinds of triggers are more fun for you. For example, you might read fiction and you enjoy following along with the story being presented. This requires a lot of imagination work.

You can also start with a goal or even desire and work outward from this internal state to imagine ways you might accomplish your goal or fulfill your desire. But you can also work inward. You look at what is before you; e.g., a computer screen like the one I am looking at now and ask yourself how it might be different in the future.

Such musings can follow a thread based on the characteristics. The screen is flat, for instance. What if it were curved, or dynamically reconfigurable, or foldable or moldable? What if I could shrink the actual screen depending on circumstances? You can inject your screen (and possibly yourself) into a different and unusual situation. What if I had the screen available on the tennis court? Well, I could project things on my glasses; e.g., as I walk over to retrieve a ball, I could be reminded of how to hit a kick serve. What if I had special lenses that I could pass over any word or icon on the screen? One might give me the history of any given word. Another might give me the definition. Another might give me alternatives that are more esoteric or are easier to understand; more general or more specific; more positive or negative in tone. Another tool might enable you to select a sentence, a paragraph or an entire article and ask, “Who has written similar things before?” Even without AI, a purely statistical approach might lead you find out about people with similar interests.

Another way to practice using your imagination is to pose a question or see how two things are or could be related. On the table beside me are a number of objects: a set of keys, an iPhone, a coffee cup, a checkbook, two of the books I wrote, copies of some papers that I reviewed for a recent conference, a quarter, some business cards. How could these be combined? It doesn’t necessarily matter at this point that the combination is feasible. Let’s just try it.

Putting together a set of keys and an iPhone suggests to me having an app wherein I could photograph all my keys and then, if I lost any (or all!) of the keys, I could have one 3-D printed at a local store or my home 3-D printer. I can also imagine that for another layer of security (at a cost of inconvenience) my iPhone would not turn on unless I took a picture of a particular physical key. A coffee cup and a checkbook seem to belong to different worlds indeed, but that only makes it more of a fun challenge! I like coffee. I don’t particularly like writing bills. On the day before the bills are due, perhaps the coffee machine might not deliver coffee till I wrote the bills. This strikes me as too controlling. For me, it might work better to have an ironic message delivered on the coffee cup such as, “Have a nice day! And save the insane interest rates for paying $25 a day late by paying your bill on time! Or, make some rich banker even richer. The choice is yours!” This approach would not be everyone’s “cup of tea” but that doesn’t matter. The point is to reawaken your imagination.

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What about a quarter and two books I wrote? I could offer a 25 cent rebate. I could write about about the history of the quarter. I could mail people books with a quarter inside. I could make an advertisement about The Winning Weekend Warrior that is aimed at tennis players and suggest that every time they lose a set, they put a quarter in a piggy bank. When they get to 40 quarters they can buy my book. I can design strategy and tactics sheets for different sports that are sold separately. The reader/user places quarters on the sheet to reinforce strategy. In tennis, for instance, such a sheet might be static and the user could use four quarters for the positions of the four players on the court. They could be asked to select smart shots, given the positions. Similarly, I might have 4 or even 18 sheets for golf and on these sheets I would show the slope and terrain and ask people to put the quarter on for their target. Eventually, I imagine, there is a way to capture the data of how the player actually hits the golf ball on real courses and that could be incorporated into what the best shot is for that particular player. This data could also be used as input to computer golf games so that a player might use the game to help select better clubs and targets. We are no longer necessarily talking about my book or about quarters. That doesn’t matter! All that really matters is that I have used these arbitrary objects to trigger my imagination. And you can do the same!

I’m done. Hold on. Doorbell. II see that it’s the Veritas power couple again. I’m inviting them in for coffee. I wonder if they’ve ever had coffee before….

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Systems Thinking: Positive Feedback Loops

17 Wednesday Dec 2025

Posted by petersironwood in America, creativity, psychology, Uncategorized

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Systems Thinking: Positive Feedback Loops

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One of the most important tools of thought that anyone can learn: “Systems Thinking.” I touched on this in yesterday’s post “And Then What.” I pointed out that when you take an action that impacts a system such as a human being, a family, or a country, it often does not react in a mechanical way.

Here are some examples. For many years, the United States and the USSR were involved in a cold war arms race. Every time the USSR added more nuclear missiles to their arsenal, the people in America felt less safe. Since they felt less safe, they increased their armaments. When the USA increased nuclear weapons, this made the Soviet Union feel less safe so they increased their arms again and so on. This is what is known in Systems Thinking as a “Positive Feedback Loop.” It is also popularly known as a “Vicious Circle” or “Vicious Cycle.”

Let’s say that you are in pretty good shape physically and regularly run, play tennis, or work out. The more you exercise (up to a point), the better you feel. Feeling better makes you feel more like exercise and more exercise makes you feel better. People call this a “Virtuous Cycle” or “Virtuous Circle” because we think the outcome is good. But formally, it is the same kind of cycle.

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The most important thing to recognize about a Positive Feedback Loop is that it can be run in either direction. At some point, the US reduced their nuclear arsenal and this decreased the perceived threat to folks in the Soviet Union so the soviets felt that they could also reduce their nuclear arsenal which in turn, made people in the US feel safer and led to further reductions and so on.

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Similarly, if you stop exercising for a month, you will tend to feel pretty crappy. Feeling crappy makes you feel less like exercising and this in turn makes you exercise less which in turn makes you even more out of shape, feel worse and be even less likely to exercise. You can break such a “vicious circle” by starting to exercise – even it it’s just a little to start moving the circle in the “virtuous” direction. (Incidentally, that’s why I wrote “Fit in Bits” which describes many easy exercises to get you started).

woman in white bed holding remote control while eating popcorn

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“Vicious circles” also often cause disagreements to escalate into arguments and arguments into fights. Each person feels “obligated” not to “give in” and the nastier their opponent becomes, the nastier they become.

“Fawlty Towers” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fawlty_Towers), a British sit-com uses “Positive Feedback Loops” in the escalating action of the comedy plots. John Cleese plays the co-owner Basil (with his wife, Sybil) of a small hotel. Typically, John Cleese makes some rather trivial but somewhat embarrassing mistake which he wants to hide from his wife. In the course of trying to cover up this rather small mistake, he has to lie, avoid, or obfuscate. This causes an even more egregious mistake which makes him even more embarrassed so he must result to still more outlandish lies and trickery in order to cover up the second mistake which in turn causes an even bigger mistake, and so on.

That pattern of behavior reminds me of the current POTUS who is famously unable to admit to an error or lie and uses a second and bigger error or lie to try to cover up the first lie and so on. He seems, in fact, completely incapable of “systems thinking.”

For example, he may see (and exaggerate) a real, but containable threat such as a trade deficit. He sees the US send more money out of the country than the US takes in from trade. That’s a legitimate issue. But the approach he takes is to ZAP the other parties by slapping on tariffs without any real appreciation of the fact that our trading partners are extremely unlikely to react to tariffs on their products by simply doing nothing. One could use logic, empathy, or a look at history to determine that what is much more likely is that the other countries will put tariffs on our goods (which, of course, is precisely what happened).

Similarly, he demands absolute loyalty. He repeatedly puts himself and his own interests above the law, the Constitution, the good of the country and the good of his party. He expects everyone loyal to him to do the same. But he betrays these loyal appointees, friends, and wives whenever it suits him. He thinks he is being “smart” by doing what seems to be in his best interest at that moment. But what he fails to see is that by being disloyal to so many people who have been mainly loyal to him, he encourages his so-called “allies” to only be loyal to him while it suits their interests.

In the Pattern “Reality Check,” I point out that such behavior is an occupational hazard for dictators. Apparently, it can even be such a hazard for would-be dictators as well. By surrounding himself with those who always lie, cover for him, laud him, cater to his insane whims, etc., such a dictator (or would-be dictator) loses touch with what is really going on. He becomes more and more disconnected from sensible action yet those who remain loyal must say and do more and more outrageous things to keep the dictator from finding out just how bad things really are. Eventually, the Emperor with no clothes may die of hypothermia because no-one has the courage to tell him that he’s actually wearing no protection against the elements!

Positive feedback loops exist in purely natural systems as well as biological and social systems. For example, increased global mean temperatures mean less arctic ice which means more solar radiation will be absorbed by the earth’s dark oceans rather than reflected back into space by the white ice and snow. This, of course, makes the earth hotter still. In addition, the thawing of tracts of arctic tundra also releases more methane gas into the atmosphere which is even more effective at trapping the earth’s heat than is carbon dioxide. Global climate change also makes forest fires more prevalent which directly spews more carbon dioxide into the air and reduces the number of trees that help mitigate the emissions of carbon dioxide by turning it into oxygen through photosynthesis.

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A concept closely related to “Vicious Cycles” is that of “Cognitive Dissonance.” Basically, people like to believe that they are honest and competent. Much like John Cleese (Basil) in Falwty Towers, once they do something dishonest or incompetent, their first reaction is not to believe that they did something dishonest or incompetent. They will now try to distort reality by misperceiving, mis-remembering, or distracting.

For example, at the height of the Vietnam War, I was horrified at the beatings perpetrated by the police on peaceful protestors at the Democratic National Convention. I was also disturbed at the techniques the Democrats used at their convention to silence the voices of dissension within the convention. Candidate Nixon claimed he had a “secret plan” to end the War in Vietnam. I voted for Nixon. As it became clear that Nixon was a crook, I decided that I had made a mistake voting for the man. But I could have taken another path which would be to “double down” on the original mistake by continuing to support Nixon and dismiss all the growing evidence of his misdeeds. As his malfeasance became more and more egregious, it made the egregiousness of my original mistake of voting for him grow as well. So, it would be possible to become ever more invested in not believing the overwhelming evidence of his treachery. (Now, it turns out, it was even worse than we knew at the time. He actively thwarted the peace efforts of Johnson!). Perhaps because I’ve been trained as a scientist and science values the truth very highly, I did not fall prey to that particular instance of “Cognitive Dissonance.” I readily admitted it was a stupid mistake to vote for Nixon.

Of course, today, we see many people not just backed into a corner to support the current POTUS but backed into a corner of a corner. Instead of believing that a liar is lying, they protect their “integrity” by insisting that everything and everyone else is lying: the newspapers, the reporters, his opposition, people in other countries, his former business partners, his former customers, the CIA, the FBI, the NSA. Ironically, for some people, it would be easier to admit that voting for a slightly inferior candidate was a mistake than to admit that voting for a hugely inferior candidate was a mistake. Voting for a slightly inferior candidate is easily understood but if they voted for a candidate that bad and bad in so many ways it was a huge error. And now, as each new revelation comes to light, it is more and more and more embarrassing to admit what a huge mistake it was.

Another common example of a “Vicious Circle” is addiction. A small amount of alcohol, nicotine or heroine makes you feel better. But taking the drug increases your tolerance for it. So, next time, to feel better, you need to take a little more. Taking a little more increases your tolerance still further so now you need to take a still higher dosage in order to feel better. When you do, however, your tolerance increases still more. Whether it is drugs, gambling, addictive sex, or unbridled greed, the mechanism is the same. You need more and more and more over time due to the nature of the “Positive Feedback Loop.”

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A similar mechanism may be at work in the minds of apologists for the NRA (National Rifle Association). As more and more innocent people are killed partly because of easy access to guns, the mistake of supporting the NRA in their refusal to support mandatory vetting, training, and competency demonstrations for gun owners becomes an ever-more obviously egregious error. But, rather than making this more likely for supporters to admit to such an error and therefore change their position, every new slew of innocent children killed for no reason makes them actually less likely to change their position. According to Cognitive Dissonance, every such death makes their earlier decision worse – unless there is some counter-balancing argument. As the number of innocent deaths arises, and indeed, as more and more evidence of the perfidy of the NRA becomes clear, many who previously supported the NRA become ever more entrenched because they “buy into” the great value of unlimited access to guns ever more. Why? They continue their support because not to do so makes them complicit in more and more horrendous crimes.

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If you can see such patterns in your own behavior and in others, you can better choose the correct course of action for yourself and be more thoughtful in how you communicate with others about their errors. Hint: Trying to make people feel more guilty for their stupid decisions will likely backfire.

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Wednesday

What About the Butter Dish?

And, then what?

16 Tuesday Dec 2025

Posted by petersironwood in creativity, psychology, Uncategorized

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AI, Business, chatgpt, consciousness, consequences, Democracy, Feedback, innovation, learning, life, science, testing, thinking, USA

And then what?

When it comes to increasing the drama in TV crime shows, westerns, and spy thrillers, both the brilliant, evil villain and the smart, brave, good-looking protagonist display one common and remarkable weakness: they rush into action without much thought as to the possible consequences of their actions.

Here’s a scene that you and I have probably seen a thousand times. The hero has a gun drawn and a bead on “The Evil One” but the Evil One has a knife to the throat of the friend or lover of The Hero. The Evil One, as both we in the audience and The Hero know, cannot be trusted. Most likely, The Evil One has caused the death of many people already, is treacherous, and lies as easily as most people breathe. Nonetheless, The Evil One promises to release the hero’s friend or lover provided only that The Hero put down their gun and slide it over to The Evil One. And The Hero complies! Often, The Hero will elicit a “promise” from The Evil One: “OK, I’ll give you my gun, but you have to let them go!” The Evil One, for whom promises mean nothing, “promises” and then The Hero slides the gun over. At this point, The Evil One is obviously free to kill both The Hero and their friend or lover immediately. Instead, The Evil One will begin chatting them up. This allows time for magic, skill, accident, God, unknown allies, or brilliance to turn the tables on The Evil One.

Here’s another scene that we’ve both witnessed. The Hero suddenly finds out some crucial piece of information that lets them know the whereabouts of The Evil One. Often this is an abandoned warehouse filled to the brim with minions of The Evil One. But, it might be the cave deep beneath the island stronghold of The Evil One; a stronghold filled to the brim with his minions. The Hero rushes in with a woefully inadequate force and without informing anyone concerning his whereabouts. He or she confronts The Evil One who not only confesses to past misdeeds but outlines their future plans to The Hero as well.

abandoned architecture building concrete

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In the TV series or the movies, the sequence of events is determined by the writer(s) so even though The Hero faces impossible odds, he or she will almost certainly overcome those impossible odds. That makes for an exciting story!

But in life?

In real life, you’ll typically do a lot better if you think about the likely consequences of your actions.

Sometimes, people fail to do this because they have simply never developed the habit of thinking ahead.

Sometimes, people let their wishes completely color their decisions. For instance, an addicted gambler, despite their actual experience, believes that gambling more will result in a favorable outcome for them rather than the truth which would be that there is an extremely small chance that they will win overall.

Sometimes, people are too ignorant to realize that there are potential negative consequences. For instance, when I was a youngster, I had a “glow in the dark” watch and cross; each glowed partly because of radium. I enjoyed putting these right up to my eyes in order to observe the flashes of individual photons. I also put together model airplanes with glue. When I applied too much glue, I dissolved it with Carbon Tetra-choloride. I loved the exotic smell of Carbon Tet. Now, it is deemed too dangerous to be used in this way.

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In many cases, it seems to me that people do think about consequences but use an overly simple model of reality on which to base their predictions. In particular, people often treat individuals and social systems as mechanical systems and base their decisions on those mechanical models rather than actuality. For example, your kid does not, in your opinion, eat enough broccoli so you simply force them to eat broccoli. Your “prediction” of the consequences of this may include that the kid will eat more broccoli, be healthier, eventually like broccoli, etc. Depending on the individual child, it may be that none of these will actually occur. In some cases, it may even happen that the exact opposite of your goals will be achieved. The kid may eat less broccoli, be unhealthier, and hate broccoli more than ever. There are many other possible consequences as well. The kid may end up hating meals with the family or hating you or hating the color green.

When it comes to individuals and social systems, it is hard to know what the net effect might be. Often though, the most significant cognitive problem that people have is that they are so sure of their prediction that they base their actions on what they think should happen rather than what actually does happen or what might happen.

As recounted in some detail in the Pattern, “Reality Check,” instituting a new social reward or punishment system often does indeed change behavior, but not necessarily in the desired manner. If, for instance, programmers are now rewarded on the basis of lines of code written, they might indeed write more lines of code but many of those lines of code may be unnecessary. You might write 1000 lines of code or you could spend time thinking about the problem and then write two lines of code that accomplish the same result. Will you do so if you are only rewarded 1/500 th of the bonus?

man wearing brown suit jacket mocking on white telephone

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Similarly, you may measure the performance of service technicians by how many calls they “handle” during their shift. But if that is the main or sole measure, you may end up having those service people tend to offer trivial or even useless advice based on insufficient information. In all these cases, if management keeps seeing what really happens, any damage done by having an inaccurate predictive model of what will happen as a result of a change will be mitigated. But in a system, whether private or governmental, where people are mainly motivated to keep management happy by telling them what they want to hear, instead of correcting a poor intervention, the problems caused by inadequate models will tend to multiply, fester, or explode.

So:

Think of possible consequences and try to determine which ones are most likely. Then, observe what really does happen. This helps avoid turning an issue into a disaster and, over time, it also helps you develop more realistic models of reality. It will also tend to put you in the habit of taking a flexible and reality-based approach to your decisions rather than one that is based on a rigid and inaccurate model of how things should be. The latter approach to decisions will not only make you individually ineffective; it will also make it almost impossible to work well with others (unless everyone involved shares the same inaccurate model).

Author Page on Amazon.

The Update Problem

Essays on America: Labelism

Essays on America: The Game

There Never was a Civil War

Timeline for RIME

Guernica

The Crows and Me

After All

At Least He’s Our Monster

The Siren Song

Occam’s Chain Saw Massacre

Math Class: Who are you?

The First Ring of Empathy

Sadie and the Lighty Ball

Cancer Always Loses in the End

Life Will Find a Way

Many Paths

15 Monday Dec 2025

Posted by petersironwood in creativity, psychology, sports

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AI, Business, competition, creativity, Democracy, Design, divergent thinking, family, innovation, learning, life, mental-health, sports, truth, writing

Many Paths

This is one of a series of posts about various tools of thought that are useful in a wide variety of situations. This particular tool is often called “Alternatives Thinking” or “Divergent Thinking.” I chose the name “Many Paths” because when I first posted this about seven years ago, I was in the middle of writing a trilogy called: “The Myths of the Veritas.” The new leader of the Veritas was known as “Many Paths” because she was particularly good at finding many possible alternatives to consider. Now, let’s see what this tool is and how it may prove useful to us.

The basic idea is simple. When we are confronted with a situation, we often “Jump to Conclusions” or “Spring into Action” before we have all the facts. Even when we have all the facts (which is rare), we also have a tendency to focus on our first interpretation or our first idea about how to handle the situation. This often leads to thinking of one (and only one) course of action. And, very occasionally; for instance, in some emergencies, that is the correct thing to do.

backlit breathing apparatus danger dangerous

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Even in emergencies however, our first terrified instinct about what to do can be dead wrong. For example, people see a small fire in their homes and immediately throw water on it. But if it’s a grease fire or an electrical fire, this is not a good course of action. Soon after I first began my dozen years as Executive Director of the NYNEX AI Lab, there was a fire in a nearby Stouffer’s Hotel. The charred bodies of a dozen IBM executives were found huddled in a closet. In the smoke and panic and confusion of the fire, they had apparently grabbed at the first door and gone into a dead end closet and they all perished there.

In daily life, there are a great many situations where a little extra thinking time would improve the outcome. For example, while working at IBM Research in the 1970’s, I drove about 10 minutes each way to work. At one point, I had a loose fan belt and my battery went dead. In a hurry to attend a meeting, I jump-started my car and drove to the IBM parking lot. Already late to a meeting, I went to turn off the car and just before I did so, I realized that I had not driven far enough to recharge the battery. So, I decided I’d better leave the car engine running for awhile. But as I gathered up my things and began dashing off to the meeting, I realized that it was insane to leave my car unlocked with the engine running! After all, someone could simply open the door and drive off! So, still in a hurry, I locked the car — with the engine running and the keys safely locked inside.

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Oops!

Most of us have done similar things. In some early experiments on design problem solving done at IBM, I found that when I asked people to come up with as many solutions as possible, they would generate ideas fairly quickly until they came up with one that they thought would really solve the problem. At that point, their idea productivity fell precipitously. It is hard for us to force ourselves to think of more than one good solution.

Why is this important? For one thing, conditions change. Something may happen that makes your first solution no longer apt. For another thing, there may be side-effects of your solution that make it unacceptable. Another common issue is that someone may object to your first solution for reasons you could not foresee. (See also, “Who Speaks for Wolf” as a way to help minimize that chance). In the context of invention and product development it is extremely unlikely that the first solution you come upon (and indeed even the first few solutions you think of) are novel. They are instead extremely likely to be the intellectual property of someone else. The most obvious solutions have likely already been patented and may already be in products or services that many customers are already using.

I have long been interested in observing people’s strategies and tactics in sporting events (See “The Winning Weekend Warrior”). One tactic that is overwhelmingly popular in tennis, for instance, is that the harder your opponent hits the ball, the harder you try to hit the ball. For example, someone hits a very hard ball while you’re at the net. You take this as an affront and think “I’ll show you!” Trying to hit the volley even harder means you take the racquet back farther. About half the time, the extra time it takes to bring the racquet back means you’ll mis-hit the ball or miss it entirely. On most of the remaining occasions, you’ll hit the volley too hard and it will go long. If someone hits the ball at you hard, what you need to do is simply block it back and guide it to the right spot. Trying to add extra power is unnecessary and too time-consuming. What is remarkable is not that you and I try to hit a hard ball harder. What is remarkable is that we never seem to try a different tactic!

There are many issues with focusing all your energy on the first solution you come up with. But the worst consequence is that you are overly invested in that first “solution” (which may not even be a real solution). This is bad in trying to solve problems in every domain I can think of and having others involved amplifies the badness.

For instance, let’s say that after 3 years without a vacation, you and your spouse finally have time for a nice two-week vacation. You want to visit Cuba for two weeks and your spouse wants to visit Vietnam for two weeks. If you each only comes up with one idea, you will almost always find yourself pitching for your idea, trying to convince the other person that Cuba is better while they will spend their energy trying to shoot down your choice and explain (patiently at first and less so as time goes on) why Vietnam is a much better idea. After many frustrating arguments that go nowhere, you may decide to compromise; e.g., you could visit an empty stretch of open sea in the Pacific Ocean half-way between the locations; or, you may decide to flip a coin. All this frustration and bad feeling might be avoidable. It might be that your second choice and your spouse’s second choice are both San Diego! But you’ll never even discover this because when each of you only thinks of one idea, what should be a collaborative problem solving exercise instead becomes a debate – a contest with precisely one winner and one loser.

man and woman wearing brown leather jackets

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One reason people may be prone to latch onto the first idea that occurs to them is that this is typically what happens in fiction. A TV detective gets a call that they must come alone and not tell the police but instead meet someone in an abandoned warehouse. For the sake of the drama, it puts our hero into obvious danger. They are outgunned and it looks like certain death for them. Then, due to their superior thinking, martial arts, dumb luck, or having a side-kick who followed them, they miraculously survive! Whew! But in real life, it’s almost always better to wait for back up and think through how various alternatives might work out.

Thinking of many alternatives will save you many headaches – at work, in your love life, in your recreational endeavors. When you force yourself to think of many alternatives, you will also be more open to the ideas of others. Over time, thinking of many alternatives whenever you get a chance will also increase your own creative potential. Who knows? You might even be chosen as the next leader.

For a leader, it is particularly important to consider many possibilities. Insisting that everyone get on board with the first idea that pops into your head will cause resentment and dissension. It will also make you far less willing to change to a different idea when circumstances necessitate it.

You may start a business and decide that you must be personally involved in every decision and with every customer contact. At first, when your company is small, this might work out wonderfully well. No-one knows the customer and the product quite so well as you do. But you are not God. You cannot be everywhere and know everything. If you never learn to delegate; never grow the capacity of your people; never take expert advice — you will drive yourself and everyone around you crazy. The very success of your business will guarantee its ultimate failure. Learn to consider many paths. You will be glad you did.

Author’s Page on Amazon.

How the Nightingale Learned to Sing

Labelism

Wednesday

You Bet Your Life

Guns and Love

You Must Remember This

The Jewels of November

The Impossible

Guernica

We Won the War! We Won the War!

Peace

The First Ring of Empathy

Travels with Sadie

Dog Trainers

The Iroquois Rule of Six

The Walkabout Diaries: Bee Wise

Tools of Thought

14 Sunday Dec 2025

Posted by petersironwood in AI, creativity, design rationale, management, psychology, science, Uncategorized

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AI, chatgpt, index, life, problem formulation, problem framing, problem solving, sense-making, summary, technology, thinking, tools of thought, writing

Tools of Thought (Summary and Index)

In December, 2018, I began writing a series of essays on “tools of thought.” I realize that many readers probably read these tools at the time they were first published. However, in times of great division such as those we now face, effective thinking is more important than ever yet every day in the news and in social media, I see many examples that overlook even the most basic tools of thought. I therefore decided that it would be worthwhile to reprint the index of such tools now.

I suppose many readers will already be familiar with many of these tools. Nonetheless, I think it’s worthwhile to have a compilation of tools. After all — plumbers, carpenters, programmers, piano tuners, sales people — they all have tool kits. I see at least three advantages to having them together in some one place.

Without a toolkit you may be prone to try to use the tool that just so happens to be nearest to hand at the time you encounter the problem. You need to tighten a screw and you happen to have a penny in your pocket. You don’t feel like walking all the way down into the garage to get your toolkit. A penny will do. I get it. But for more serious work, you are going to want to consider the whole toolkit and choose the tool that’s most appropriate to the situation at hand.

First, then, the existence of a toolkit serves as a reminder of all the tools at your disposal. This will help you choose appropriately.

Second, you may only be familiar with one or two ways to use a tool. I may have thought of ways to use a tool that are different from the way you use it. In the same way, you undoubtedly know useful things about these tools of thought that I have never thought of. We can learn from each other. Readers are more than welcome to comment on uses, misuses, and variations.

Third, having all the tools together may stimulate people to invent new tools or see a way to use two or more in sequence and begin to think about the handoff between two tools.

Here’s an index to the toolkit so far.

Many Paths(December 5, 2018). The temptation is great to jump to a conclusion, snap up the first shiny object that looks like bait and charge ahead! After all, “he who hesitates is lost!” But there is also, “look before you leap.” What works best for me in many circumstances is to think of many possible paths before deciding on one. This is a cousin to the Pattern: Iroquois Rule of Six. This heuristic is a little broader and is sometimes called “Alternatives Thinking.”

Many Paths

And then what?(Dec. 6, 2018). This is sometimes called “Consequential Thinking.” The idea is simple: think not just about how you’ll feel and how a decision will affect you this moment but what will happen next. How will others react? It’s pretty easy to break laws if you set your mind to it. But what are the likely consequences?

And, then what?

Positive Feedback Loops(December 7, 2018). Also known as a virtuous or vicious circle. If you drink too much of a depressant drug (e.g., alcohol or opioids), that can cause increased nervousness and anxiety which leads you to want more of the drug. Unfortunately, it also makes your body more tolerant of the drug so you need more to feel the same relief. So, you take more but this makes you even more irritable when it wears off.

Systems Thinking: Positive Feedback Loops

Meta-Cognition.(December 8, 2018). This is basically thinking about thinking. For example, if you are especially good at math, then you tend to do well in math! Over time, if your meta-cognition is accurate, you will know that you are good in math and you can use that information about your own cognition to make decisions about the education you choose, your job, your methods of representing and solving problems and so on.

Meta-Cognition

Theory of Mind(December 9, 2018). Theory of Mind tasks require us to imagine the state of another mind. It is slightly different from empathy, but a close cousin. Good mystery writers – and good generals – may be particularly skilled at knowing what someone else knows, infers, thinks, feels and therefore, how they are likely to act.

Theory of Mind

Regression to the Mean(December 10, 2018). This refers to a statistical artifact that you sometimes need to watch out for. If you choose to work with the “best” or “worst” or “strongest” or “weakest” and then measure them again later, their extreme scores will be less extreme. The tool is to make sure that you don’t make untoward inferences from that change in the results of the measurement.

Regression to the Mean

Representation(December 11, 2018): The way we represent a problem can make a huge difference in how easy it is to solve it. Of course, we all know this, and yet, it is easy to fall into the potential trap of always using the same representations for the same types of problems. Sometimes, another representation can lead you to completely different – and better – solutions.

Representation

Metaphor I (December 12, 2018): Do we make a conscious choice about the metaphors we use? How can metaphors influence behavior?

Metaphors We Live By and Die By

Metaphor II (December 13, 2018): Two worked examples: Disease is an Enemy and Politics is War.

Metaphors We Live and Die By: Part 2

Imagination (December 14, 2018): All children show imagination. Many adults mainly see it as a tool for increasing their misery; viz., by only imagining the worst. Instead of a tool to help them explore, it becomes a “tool” to keep themselves from exploring by making everything outside the habitual path look scary.

Imagination

Fraught Framing (December 16, 2018): Often, how we frame a problem is the most crucial step in solving it. In this essay, several cases are examined in which people presume a zero-sum game when it certainly need not be.

Fraught Framing: The Virulent “Versus” Virus

Fraught Framing II(December 17, 2018). A continuation of thinking about framing. This essay focuses on how easy it sometimes is to confuse the current state of something with its unalterable essence or nature.

Fraught Framing: The Presumed Being-ness of State-ness

Negative Space(December 17, 2018). Negative space is the space between. Often we separate a situation into foreground and background, or into objects and field, or into assumptions and solution space. What if we reverse these designations?

Negative Space

Problem Finding(December 18, 2018). Most often in our education, we are handed problems and told to solve them. In real life, success is as much about being able to find problems or see problems in order to realize that there is even something to fix.

Problem Finding

More recently, I wrote a series of posts about the importance of Problem Finding, Problem Framing, and Problem Formulation. I haven’t yet put this in the form of “Tools of Thought” — these posts are specific experiences from my own life where I initially mis-formulated a problem or watched my friends do that.

The Doorbell’s Ringing! Can you get it?

Reframing the Problem: Paperwork & Working Paper

Problem Framing: Good Point!

I Say: Hello! You Say: “What City Please?”

I Went in Seeking Clarity

Problem Formulation: Who Knows What?

Wordless Perfection

How to Frame Your Own Hamster Wheel

Measure for Measure

The Slow-Seeming Snapping Turtle

A Long Day’s Journey into Hangover

Training Your Professor for Fun & Profit

Astronomy Lesson: Invisible Circles

Tag! You’re it!

Ohayōgozaimasu

Career Advice from Polonius

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Author Page on Amazon

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Non-Linearity. (December 20, 2018). We often think that things are linear when they may not be. In some cases, they can be severely non-linear. Increasing the force on a joint may actually make it stronger. But if increased force is added too quickly, rather than strengthening the joint even further, it can destroy it. The same is true of a system like American democracy.

Non-Linearity

Resonance. (December 20, 2018). If you add your effort to something at the right time, you are able to multiply the impact of your effort. This is true in sports, in music, and in social change.

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Resonance

Symmetry(December 23, 2018). There are many kinds of symmetry and symmetry is found in many places; it is rampant in nature, but humans in all different cultures also use symmetry. It exists at macro scales and micro scales. It exists in physical reality and in social relationships.

Symmetry

Other posts that are related to various mental errors you might want to avoid.

Labelism

Wednesday

The Stopping Rule

Finding the Mustard

What about the Butter Dish?

Where does your Loyalty Lie?

Roar, Ocean, Roar

The Update Problem

We won the war! We won the war!

The Impossible

Your Cage is Unlocked

The self-made man

Wordless Perfection

11 Thursday Dec 2025

Posted by petersironwood in AI, creativity, HCI, psychology, sports, Uncategorized, user experience

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AI, art, creativity, drawing, education, intuition, life, problem formulation, Representation, Right-brain, sports, thinking, writing

————————————

I like to write. In fact, I like to write so much that I wrote before I could even read. When my early crayon “writings” in my grandfather’s books were discovered, instead of praise, I was spanked. I’m not even sure they really tried hard to read my learned annotations. Their missing the point didn’t deter me though. I like words! I like writing poetry, essays, stories, plays, and even novels. Words help human beings communicate and collaborate. However…

In this essay, I’d like to mention some instances of wordless success.

In the neighborhood where I grew up, we spent most of the summer playing baseball, basketball, and football. I had never played golf nor paid much attention to it as a kid and when it came on TV I walked by with hardly a glance. At that point in my life, I deigned to consider something a sport only if there were a good chance to smash into one of the other players. I had never touched a golf club or a golf ball until one summer day when I was about ten, one of the kids brought one of his uncle’s golf clubs to our baseball field along with a tee and a golf ball. He demonstrated how to hit the ball and showed us how to put our hands on the club. Kids took turns hitting the ball and retrieving it for another go.

When it came to my turn, I mainly remember just loving the shiny wood of the club. I loved wooden baseball bats back then, but the driver!! Wow! That was in a whole different category of cool. You didn’t need to be an adult or a golfer to know that! It shone opalesquely. I teed up the golf ball, and swung the unfamiliar and impossibly long club.

The resulting sound – exquisite. An explosion. A rifle shot. A cousin of the crack of a home run shot into the upper deck. But more penetrating. More elegant. More poignant.

We all looked up in amazement. My golf shot started low and straight. Then it rose and rose and disappeared far beyond the dirt road that marked the outer limit of our makeshift baseball field. It rose over the hill beyond the road and disappeared into the field beyond. There was no hope of retrieving the golfball. None of us even suggested trying. My shot was wordless perfection.

Fast forward to graduate school. In the summer afternoons, I got into the habit of playing frisbee with the neighbors. One day, I parked my car and ran into the back yard. One of my neighbors spied me and threw me the frisbee, I noticed that they had placed an empty beer can atop a utility box about a hundred feet away. I caught the frisbee on the run and threw it with the next step. The frisbee sailed with a nice arc and smacked the beer can right off. My neighbors said that they had been trying to knock that beer can off for about a half hour. My throw was wordless perfection.

Meanwhile, at the University of Michigan, several of my friends and classmates liked puzzles as much as I did. One such puzzle consisted of a triangular “board” with a regular pattern of holes. There were pegs in every hole save one. The goal was to “jump” pegs much as one does in checkers and then remove that peg from the board. Eventually, one was supposed to end up with one and only one peg. I worked on it for awhile and thought about various strategies and moves. I couldn’t seem to solve it. My phone rang. I picked it up and conversed with my friend. Meanwhile, I toyed with the puzzle while my “mind” was on the conversation. I toyed with the puzzle and solved it. Wordless perfection.

A few months or weeks later, my officemates and I worked on another puzzle. This one consisted of four cubes (aka “instant insanity”). Each cube had a different arrangement of colors. The goal was to arrange the cubes so that every “row” of faces had four different colors. I fiddled with the puzzle trying out various strategies and noting various symmetries and asymmetries. Once again, someone called and interrupted my musings. Again, I idly fiddled around with the cubes while talking on the phone. And solved it. Wordless perfection strikes again!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instant_Insanity

Fast forward four decades. For best results, borrow Hermione’s time-turner. Otherwise, you’ll have to rely on your imagination.

Betty Edwards (“Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain”) gave a plenary address at one of the Association of Computing Machinery’s premier conferences: CHI. Among other things, she showed example after example of how much people improved in their drawing skills based on her methods. A few months later, it so happened that my wife and I had an opportunity to go to one of her five day classes.

I would have to honestly say, that course was one of the best educational experiences of my life. It was an immensely pleasurable experience in and of itself. Beyond that, the results in terms of improved drawing skills were dramatic. And, as if that were not enough, I looked at the world differently. I noticed visual things about the environment that I had never seen before.

The essence of the method Betty Edwards uses is to get you to observe and draw — while “shutting up” or “turning off” the part of your brain (or mind) that talks and plans and categorizes. In one exercise, for instance, we took a line drawing and turned it upside down. Then, we copied that image onto our pad of paper by carefully observing and drawing what we saw. She also instructed us not to try to “guess” what they were drawing, but just to copy the lines. When every line had been copied, we turned the drawings right side up again. The result jolted me! I had created an excellent likeness of the original. So had everyone else in class. The quality stunned me. Wordless Perfection.

There’s a larger lesson here, too.

I had within me, the capacity to make a very decent copy of a drawing, but had never achieved that result for 60 years. All it took was five minutes of instruction to enable me to achieve that.

What else is like that? Imagine that we have, not just one, but a dozen or even a dozen dozen “hidden talents.” Some of them, like drawing, may depend more on Not-Doing than on Doing; on Being rather than Achieving.

There was a longer lasting side-effect of the drawing course. My day to day life, as is typical of most achievement-driven people had been very much “goal-driven” and there was always an ongoing plan and dialogue. After having learned to turn that off in order to draw, I can also turn it off in order to see, whether or not I draw. Seeing (or otherwise sensing or feeling) in the moment also makes me much less judgmental. If you decide to think about the physical appearance of people in terms of how interesting they would be to draw, you end up with an entirely different way of thinking about people’s appearance.

What are your hidden talents?

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The Great Race to the Finish!

Big Zig-Zag Canyon

You Fool!

Horizons University

How the Nightingale Learned to Sing

Comes the Dawn

Dog Trainers

Where Does Your Loyalty Lie?