The Doors of Mystery

03 Wednesday Jul 2019

Posted by petersironwood in America, apocalypse, management, politics, Veritas

Tags

art, creativity, innovation, legends, myths, politics, stories

“What an amazing sunset,” Fleet-of-Foot said to no-one in particular. His companions, Hudah Salah, Easy Tears, and Day Nah sat close by.

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Easy Tears noticed that Hudah Salah, who had previously said very little had become much more talkative since their escape from the fire — and her separation from Lion Slayer. Here she was again: “Perhaps the fire in some way joins up with the fire of the sunset. Then, he shines more brilliantly than ever.”

Easy Tears listened carefully to Hudah Salah, just as she did to everyone in her own tribe. “That’s an interesting possibility, Hudah. Let us think on that.”

{Translator’s Note}: And, unlike our more “civilized” society, where everyone is judged on being able to respond immediately with arguments carefully crafted to push people into one of two predefined camps, this is what Easy Tears actually did: She allowed herself to think. She did not try to dissect the idea, nor prove it, nor disprove it. She let the idea loose in the archives of her mind. Easy Tears, in particular, did not like to put up walls either between herself and others or within her own memory archives. There was no “Restricted” area. The idea could play around in there as long as it liked. What was the hurry? Their bodies all needed restitution and traveling by night is not always a good way to make things quicker. And, now they were all enjoying the sunset.

Of course, unlike the Veritas, your translator was brought up in a world where speed is all and if you can’t get your next version of software out the door yesterday, you can go out the exit door for good. So, when I describe things, I tend to phrase things in a much more simplistic fashion than what actually went on in the minds of the Veritas, as best we can tell from the burgeoning field of statistically inferential macro-psycholinguistics. It would be helpful then for you, the reader, to remember that my translations will tend to reflect my own modernistic blinders – and yours. But let’s get back to finding out whether these folks are going to get back to the center place of the Veritas alive and tell Many Paths, their leader, what they have learned about The People Who Steal Children.

As Easy Tears allowed the idea to roam freely, she did not have to “watch” the idea or “be careful” where it might lead. So, she could just sit back and watch the sunset. The idea conjured a trumpet that sang a song about fire. Most of the various artifacts, people, ideas, places, in the mind of Easy Tears paid little attention to this particular tune. A few however, had their say. Easy Tears recalled how hard it had been to see when they were running through fire. Even when the flames were not an issue, the smoke made it hard to see. So smoke interacted with sight.

Another memory heard the tune and danced to it. Easy Eyes had been a small child, but one who had already revealed her eye for beauty and design. Everyone who wished to, was encouraged by the Veritas to share designs for patterns on both the autumnal and vernal equinoxes. She had created several ideas in her head and one in particular had caught her eye. That would be the one! She worked in secret on her full scale project and as it neared completion, she became more and more disconcerted. The design no longer seemed a thing of real beauty. She recreated the small scale version and it still held exquisite beauty and balance. What, she wondered, was going on? She had gone back to her larger design and it appeared empty and bland. So, the size of something could even change its nature. She had added additional elements to the large scale design and had, in fact, received much praise for her design. This was sincere praise, not just pat-the-sweet-little-girl-on-the-top-of-the-head praise. And, she knew it. So, smoke rises and spreads and becomes more sparse.

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Easy Tears related these wakened memories to the group and Hudah Salah translated for Day-Nah.

Fleet-of-Foot, though not quite so open as Easy Tears, also allowed these words and memories free access to his own experience. “For some reason that I cannot explain, it reminds me of skipping stones on a creek or a pond. You want stones that are as round and flat as possible. But, the size of the stones proves crucial too. If a stone is too small, even if it’s flat, it will curve in the air and slice right into the water too steeply. If the stone is too large, even if well made, you cannot throw it fast enough and it will only skip a few times. So, here too, the behavior depends on the shape, or design, but also on the size.

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“Yes,” added Hudah Salah, “in my experience size matters. And also speed. In our lands, much sand there is and one grain or two — this is nothing. But we have — you and Eagle Eyes — you saw such a storm, during your visit. Much sand coming fast – it can kill you. The nature of much is different from the nature of one or a few.”

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After a long pause, and when the sunset had faded from crimson all the way to gray ash, Easy Tears said, “We think it may be the case that something about the nature of much smoke together on the ground to be different than much smoke not together high in the air. But sunsets vary so much. We must ask to join with the wisdom of others to decide. Let us sleep. I will keep first watch.”

The dawn also proved visually stupendous. The foursome broke camp and continued their journey even before the color reached its peak. They saw no sign of their friends nor, thankfully, of the People Who Steal Children. They did see horse hoof marks and that kept them on the alert.

Occasionally, they returned to the topic of the beautiful sunsets and sunrises and whether it was related to the fire.

Hudah Salah remarked, “In the heat of the summer, it seems as though the sun actually pushes you down, as though the light is heavy.”

Fleet-of-Foot turned back to look at Hudah. He smiled at her. An image of them together flickered through his mind. Then, the same idea stole into his mind in words. After all, he thought, life must go on. If Eagle Eyes and Lion Slayer are both dead…. Or, perhaps, they just decided to go off together? How could they have just disappeared? We were all running together. Maybe they’re sick of all this fighting. That’s ridiculous. I know she’s okay and I know we will be together. Feed the good wolf; feed the good wolf he reminded himself.

Easy Tears spoke. “I have a feeling it has something to do with light that reflects or the light that isn’t there.”

Now, Fleet-of-Foot was amazed at Easy Tears. “Light that isn’t there?”

Easy Tears, motioned to Fleet-of-Foot to come closer. “Look at the bare ground over there. What do you see?”

“Many things. You mean, your shadow?”

“Yes, Fleet-of-Foot, my shadow. It is lack of light. What color does it appear?”

Fleet-of-Foot frowned. “Color? No color. Well, I suppose it looks a little bit blue compared with what is around it.”

Hudah Salah broke in, “Oh, yes, it is blue. It can be quite obvious in the desert. The sun is yellow but the not-sun is blue.”

Fleet-of-Foot considered. “I see what you mean. But, I’m not sure…”

Easy Tears pointed to the other side of her, “Now, look over there. What do you see?”

Fleet-of-Foot shrugged his shoulders. “Not shadow?”

Easy Tears laughed. “Don’t guess! Look! And keep moving. My shadows will come with me!”

Fleet-of-Foot shook his head, frowned, and took another look as he strode alongside. At last he said, “Well, to tell you the truth, you have another shadow on that side but it’s vague and a bit greenish.”

Easy Tears continued. “Yes. You see those bright red sunrise clouds high in the sky? There is shadow from the light of them as well.

They strode on silently for a time.

Fleet-of-Foot said, “You are truly amazing to have ever noticed that!”

Easy Tears laughed. “Oh, I didn’t see it. I lived for years and never noticed it. Eagle Eyes pointed it out to me. She truly is amazing! Haven’t you noticed?”

Fleet-of-Foot blushed and hoped the others attributed it to the high red clouds. He cleared his throat and mumbled, “Yes, of course.”

They continued all day with few breaks. At last they found themselves on the path they had taken on the way out. A few hours later, they were at the same odd door that stymied them for a time on the way in. They had intentionally left it closed in the hope of thwarting what they assumed would be a large group of the People Who Steal Children riding on horseback. Now, their way was blocked by a large heavy door that six of them had had difficulty with. How could they open it with only three adults and a small child. The alternative was to try to find another route but nothing obvious had presented itself.

The three of them pushed and pulled to no avail. After some minutes, they managed to move it perhaps half an inch. Then it stopped and further effort proved fruitless. The three sat down heavily and looked at each other, trying to catch their breath. They looked around and realized that none of them knew where Day-Nah had gone.

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Fleet-of-Foot called out, “Day-Nah!”

“Day-Nah. Here. Help me.”

Fleet-of-Foot cautiously approached the voice and soon saw Day-Nah pulling at something. Fleet-of-Foot soon saw that it was a thick rod of the same stuff that the door itself was made of.

Fleet-of-Foot was amazed and wanted to learn more. “Where? Where did this come from? What place?”

Day-Nah stared at him uncomprehendingly. Fleet-of-Foot thought back to his time among the Nomads of the South. Suddenly, the word sprang to mind.

As soon as he said it, Day-Nah’s face brightened and he ran over to a nearby hollow log. Fleet-of-Foot thought it an odd place to hide a club, but it seemed to be a good club despite its odd shape and long length. It was made of this hard, heavy material and he was happy to have it. But he could not use it to break down the door. It was made of the same stuff and way too thick to be destroyed with a club.

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Fleet-of-Foot returned to Easy Tears and Hudah Salam and showed them the club. Waving it slightly, he said, “This may prove useful should we encounter the People Who Steal Children.”

Hudah Salam looked at him and smiled. She walked directly toward him and for a moment, he thought she might kiss him!

But it was not to be. She merely, took the “club” from him and walked over to the door. She put one end into the small slit and put both hands on the other end. Then, she braced her feet and pulled backwards. The door moved!

Fleet-of-Foot laughed and shook his head. “Oh! How not fleet-of-thought I am!”

His friends laughed too. Easy Tears glanced at him and smiled. “I didn’t see it either. But I suspect Eagle Eyes would have. She’s good at that kind of thing.”

Fleet-of-Foot smiled. He knew exactly what Easy Tears had meant by ‘that kind of thing’ though there was really no word for it. But there should be, he thought and they pitched in and quickly moved the door.

On toward the Center Place of the Veritas they strode. After a few moments, Fleet-of-Foot waved the lever and said, “Well, it also makes a good club.” All of them laughed for it seemed to them at the time that the worst was over.

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Author’s Page on Amazon

The Pros and Cons of AI

Introduction to a Pattern Language for Collaboration and Teamwork

The Creation Myth of the Veritas

The Orange Man

The Beginning of the Tales of the Veritas

The Beginning of Book Two

Resonance

20 Thursday Dec 2018

Posted by petersironwood in America, management, psychology, Uncategorized

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

creativity, Design, Feedback, golf, harmonics, learning, politics, programming, resonance, sports, testing, thinking, timing

Resonance

If you have ever pushed your kids on a swing, you know that timing is important. If you add the power of your next push just as the child reaches the apex and begins to fall back, you will swing your child higher and higher with little effort. On the other hand, if you add the power of your next swing at the bottom of the arc just as the swing is moving toward you at maximum speed, you will nearly stop the swing and likely injure yourself and/or your kid. Please don’t try it.

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In sports as well, the timing of when you add your effort is critical. In golf, for instance, many beginners think a lot about their hands, probably because we use our hands for many daily tasks such as texting, flipping burgers, playing video games, etc. While the hands are certainly important in the golf swing, they are the last thing to bring to bear on the golf swing, not the first. If you add your hands and wrists at the last moments right before you hit the ball, you will be accelerating the club face as you hit the golf ball. You will have greater velocity and also more stability and hence more accuracy for the shot.

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The golf swing is a complex athletic move that I cannot describe in detail. Here’s what is important in this context. Some parts of the golf swing (notice the word: swing) are much like a pendulum. The longer parts of the body (e.g., the arms) take longer to swing on their own. The shorter parts of the body take a shorter time to swing on their own (e.g., the hands). In addition, the shortest pendulum (the hands) is at the end of the longer arm swing. This means that for the arm swing and the hand/wrist moves to multiply effectively, you must engage the hands and wrists toward the bottom of the arm swing when the arms are already moving at top speed.

What is True in Mechanics and Sports is also True in Social Engineering.

If you work in a highly competitive, even cut-throat sales environment, in which there is a long tradition of stealing commissions, grabbing each other’s customers, etc., having the sales manager say something like, “You know what? Let’s cooperate! Put the customer’s interests first, not your own commission” is pretty much useless. A manager’s exhortation to cooperate is a short term high frequency “push” but it will be just as ineffective as trying to start your golf swing with your hands, or trying to push a swing with all your might when your kid is swinging toward you at top speed. If the cultural milieu is cut-throat, the manager’s statement will not be sufficient to change that culture. What the sales people will do is make sure that they have a semi-plausible story ready about how stealing someone else’s commission was really best for the customer.

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On the other hand, imagine instead that sales people have shared commissions for years and that the company takes many steps to build social capital and cooperation among everyone on the sales force. Now, the manager may do something publicly to praise an actual instance of cooperation. It doesn’t have to be heavy-handed or over the top. It is a gentle push that adds energy to what people are already doing. This is akin to adding the hands to a good golf swing or adding your swing push just as your kid begins to descend.

Don’t get me wrong. If your house is on fire, you should leave. Grab your kids and pets but don’t bother with last weeks losing lottery tickets.

But — you also need to understand why your house caught fire – perhaps faulty wiring – and why the fire was not immediately doused – e.g., your fire extinguishers are out of date. If you don’t fix underlying problems, your next house is likely to catch fire as well.

If your culture is so materialistic and superficial that a blow-hard sleaze bag who seems to have great material wealth is celebrated no matter how he or she came by that wealth and fame, you may have to deal with the short term problem first, but unless you also deal with the underlying cultural, social, and economic problems, you’ll likely find yourself in precisely the same situation again. The same or other foreign enemies will attempt to exploit those same weaknesses again by finding a different celebrity with deep underlying character defects. Those enemies will push particularly hard during a crisis or an election and they will push particularly hard in the errant directions that society is already trending toward.

The String’s the Thing Wherein We’ll Capture the Conscience of a King

Next time you have access to a piano, try the following experiment. Gently push down the C, E, and G keys above middle C. Keep them pressed down with your right hand and then strike middle C sharply with your left hand and let it go. What you will hear is that the strings of C major (C, E, G) will vibrate for quite a time after you release the middle C key. If instead, you gently push and hold down the D, F, and A keys above middle C, you will hear very little sound coming from them. Why? Because the harmonic resonance of middle C is greater with the C, E, and G than it is the D, F and A keys. Similarly, some people will tend to “resonate” with certain messages more than others will.

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This is why, for example, Russian fake news that was meant to suppress the black vote carried false stories to indicate Democratic candidates didn’t care about the “Black Lives Matter” movement, while false stories about how Democratic candidates don’t care about gay rights were targeted toward the LGBTQ community. Of course, even putting Russian election interference aside, candidates typically target their messages to those that will “resonate” with particular voters. For instance, a candidate who believes in an isolationist foreign policy, forgiving student loans, low estate taxes, and better benefits for veterans might focus a speech to a group of veterans on their desire to see better benefits for veterans. The same politician, when speaking to college students, will tend to focus on forgiving student loans. That has been “business as usual” for my entire adult life. What was really new to me in 2108 was this: an entire raft of Republican candidates promoted the idea that they were concerned about making sure that insurance companies covered pre-existing conditions. In fact, they had always voted against it and were suing to make this provision of Obamacare illegal.

Prior to the existence of lying news networks and fake web sites who would echo such lies, politicians of either party would be reluctant to employ blatant lying about their positions because, even putting ethics aside, they would be easily discovered. However, if some of their constituents only believe fake news networks, then such politicians feel that they can lie with impunity The news presented on such networks resonates with what the lying politicians say and resonates with what those viewers want to hear and believe about the people toward whom they are already favorably disposed.

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Resonance and the Overly Long Time Lag.

While managing a research project on the psychology of aging at Harvard Med School, I lived in a suburb called Woburn. This rented house had a hot water heating system, and at some point, during a particularly bitter cold New England winter, the furnace stopped working. I could have called in a professional, but instead, I tried to fix it myself. As a part of this system, there was a small gauge that looked a lot like the gauges in a level, but this one was upright and generally half filled with water. I noticed that now, instead of being half filled with water, it was only about 1/10 filled with water. I didn’t exactly understand why this could be problematic but the instructions said it should be half filled with water and there was a valve to let more water in. So, slowly and cautiously, I opened the valve. Nothing happened. I opened it a bit more. Nothing happened. I opened it a bit more. Nothing. I was about to give up and call a repair person. All at once, the little vial began to fill. Yay, me! I turned the valve off because the instructions also said the gauge should not be overfilled. But it kept filling. And filling. Damn! I made sure the valve was closed tightly. It kept filling anyway! Double damn! The gauge exploded! I had been the victim of — well hubris, of course, because I thought I could figure it out — but also a victim of delayed feedback. When feedback is delayed, all sorts of havoc can ensue.

photography of green and red fire works display

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You may have experienced a similar time lag issue with hotel showers. You turn up the hot water and the shower water stays cold. You turn it up more. It stays cold. You turn it up more and it still stays cold. And then…all at once you’re being boiled to death in your own shower and you begin wondering who will find the naked body.

Back in the early days of using LOTUS NOTES, there was a button on my screen that said, “REPLICATE.” And if I clicked on that button, a replication process would start. (Basically, it was downloading my email from the server to my ThinkPad). But sometimes, the mouse click did not register. This might not be a giant issue. In other cases, I would simply click again and this worked for most applications. But in this case, NOTES put up another button, in the same exact spot as the REPLICATE button, that said, “STOP REPLICATION.” The State of the Replication Process, however, was not accurately reflected by the State of the Button on the screen! This was endlessly annoying and could easily have been avoided. There was plenty of screen real estate to put a “REPLICATE” button along side the “STOP REPLICATION” button. Once connection speeds were faster and the computational facilities themselves were faster, this UX issue ceased to be an issue because there was no noticeable time lag between the state of the process and the state of the button.

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However, I still run into similar issues with Cable TV remotes. Do you? The time lags associated with clicking something on the remote and something happening on the screen is so long, that you begin to wonder whether the battery has gone dead or whether it is aimed wrong or whether the button was not fully depressed. Indeed, I sometimes wonder whether the entire system is truly electronic. I have begun to believe that the button press actually sends an ultrasonic dog whistle to a pack of hungry weasels who hear the whistle. To them, it’s a signal that they are about to be fed. They begin scampering in unseen cages toward their food dishes. The scampering of their feet is picked up by sensors under the floors of the cages. These sensors cause dials to change in a control room staffed by retired school janitors who push a series of buttons that change the channel or the input designation or turn on captioning, but only after they finish the New York Times crossword puzzle they are working on. Then, and only then, does the desired action take place. But if and only if you’ve been patient enough not to hit the button a second time.

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Of course, if you are the user in this scenario, there is a fix. Push the button once and only once. Now, go outside and run around the neighborhood for fifteen minutes before interacting a second time with the remote. Sure, it takes a long time to get to your program but you’ll be in much better shape after just a few months of this regimen.

On the other hand, if you are the designer of such systems, you might consider that it would be less expensive in the long run to replace the ultrasonic dog whistles, the weasels and the retired janitors with an actual system of electronics which, after all, is supposed to run at nearly the speed of light.

landscape photography of field with wind mill with rainbow

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The Takeaway

In comedy, timing, as in life, and UX design, and pushing your kid on the swing, and your golf swing, and social interventions, and election interference, and human short term memory limitations, is everything.

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Author Page on Amazon.

Imagination

14 Friday Dec 2018

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

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

creativity, Design, fun, HCI, human factors, imagination, innovation, neurosis, sports, testing, truth, UX

Imagination.

It seems odd to bother to remind people that imagination is a tool of thought. I have four kids and twelve 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.

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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Many Paths

05 Wednesday Dec 2018

Posted by petersironwood in creativity, psychology, sports

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Tags

Business, competition, creativity, Design, divergent thinking, family, innovation, learning, life, sports, truth

Many Paths

{Translator’s Note}: Exciting news: more (mythological) archaeological evidence is being unearthed as I write this about the mythical Veritas tribes. My next series of translations will be put on hold however, until we have a chance to arrange and understand this new evidence so that I may use it to help guide the translations. In the meantime, I’ve asked one of my psychologist friends (Dr. John C. Thomas) to take over the blog for awhile and write short posts on such topics as thinking, problem solving, and creativity. Dr. Thomas has been studying these topics for fifty years. He was also trained as a Fellow in Rational Emotive Therapy. He has over 300 publications and presentations on psychology, AI, human-computer interaction, and user experience.

Hi, folks. I imagine many of you, like me, can hardly wait to see what these new findings will be regarding the Veritas tribe. Meanwhile, I’ve been asked to fill in by helping us think about thinking. One of the main characters we’ve been following in the myths of the Veritas is “She-of-Many-Paths.” She personifies the first thinking skill I’d like to discuss.

This skill goes by many names including “Alternatives Thinking,” and “Divergent Thinking.” It is also discussed in the Pattern: “The Iroquois Rule of Six.” 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. 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 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.

Photo by neil kelly on Pexels.com

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 class of problems 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 they want to visit Vietnam for two weeks. If you each only come 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 could turn out 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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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.

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Collaboration Patterns: A Pattern Language for Creative Collaborations.

14 Thursday Jun 2018

Posted by petersironwood in management, psychology, Uncategorized

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Business, collaboration, cooperation, creativity, Design, innovation, pattern language, teamwork

Collaboration Patterns: A Pattern Language for Creative Collaborations.

(Takashi Iba with Iba Laboratory).

In response to a look at my on-going efforts to build a Pattern Language of ‘best practices’ in collaboration and teamwork, one of my readers suggested I take a look at the work of Takashi Iba at Keio University in Japan. I fondly recall visiting Keio University back in 1977 and giving a lecture on our work at IBM Research with John Carroll and Ashok Malhotra on the “Psychology of Design.” (See references below). In any case, I bought the book and read it and here I am recommending it to you.

The approach taken in Collaboration Patterns: A Pattern Language for Creative Collaborations is somewhat different from the one I’ve been taking so far. The Patterns here are fairly elaborate and “wordier” while the ones in Collaboration Patterns are much shorter and more at a strategic level. They deal more with what one should do rather than how how to achieve the results. Another way to think about it is that some of the Patterns in this blog are more about mechanisms or processes to achieve many of the goals expressed in Collaboration Patterns.

The Patterns in Collaboration Patterns are each only two pages (one of which are quotes and cartoons). You can read the book quickly and an entire group could come up to speed on using this book fairly rapidly. By contrast, understanding all the Patterns in this blog will take a longer time. Anyway, if you are in the middle of a project right now or about to start one and would like to improve your creative collaboration, I would suggest starting with Collaboration Patterns. It gives excellent suggestions for how to use the book in multiple ways. Hopefully by now, everyone sees that collaboration has always been vital for humanity to have many of the things that now exist to make life more beautiful, comfortable, and safe. I think that there is a place for these longer Patterns as well.

https://www.amazon.com/Collaboration-Patterns-Language-Collaborations-Catalogue/dp/1312447168

Carroll, J. and Thomas, J.C. (1982). Metaphor and the cognitive representation of computer systems. IEEE Transactions on Man, Systems, and Cybernetics., SMC-12 (2), pp. 107-116.

Thomas, J.C. and Carroll, J. (1981). Human factors in communication. IBM Systems Journal, 20 (2), pp. 237-263.

Malhotra, A., Thomas, J.C., Carroll, J. & Miller, L. (1980). Cognitive processes in design. International Journal of Man-Machine Studies, 20 , 119-140.

Carroll, J. Thomas, J. Miller, L. & Friedman, H. (1980). Aspects of solution structure in design problem solving. American Journal of Psychology, 93 (2), 269-284.

Malhotra, A., Thomas, J.C. and Miller, L. (1980). Cognitive processes in design. International Journal of Man-Machine Studies, 12, pp. 119-140.

Carroll, J., Thomas, J.C. and Malhotra, A. (1980). Presentation and representation in design problem solving. British Journal of Psychology/,71 (1), pp. 143-155.

Carroll, J., Thomas, J.C. and Malhotra, A. (1979). A clinical-experimental analysis of design problem solving. Design Studies, 1 (2), pp. 84-92.

Thomas, J.C. (1978). A design-interpretation analysis of natural English. International Journal of Man-Machine Studies, 10, pp. 651-668.

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“Reality Check”

16 Tuesday Jan 2018

Posted by petersironwood in America, apocalypse, management, Uncategorized

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advertising, Business, creativity, Design, epistomology, innovation, learning, life, pattern language, politics

This is the second in a series of blogs that present Patterns in a Socio-technical Pattern Language of best practices for collaboration and coordination in complex societies. I intend to organize these in multiple ways (e.g., type of goal; where in a typical development process the pattern is most applicable; how large a collection of people the pattern is most applicable to, etc.). I am entering them in this blog in an order that reflects current events. For example, there seems to be a movement to deny reality outright and insist everyone simply believe what the leaders promulgate. This, to me, is outright evil. But even when people are acting with the best of intentions, it is natural to take short cuts. Those short cuts can make life seem more efficient in the short run, but it can also lead to serious issues in the longer term.

Reality Check

Author, reviewer and revision dates:

Created by John C. Thomas on 4 September, 2001

Revised, JCT, 17 December, 2001

Revised, JCT, 15 January, 2018

Synonyms:

Abstract:

In developing complex systems, it is often expedient to develop feedback loops based on ersatz measures of what we are really interested in assessing and controlling. While this seems expedient in the short term, it often leads to serious problems and distortions, particularly in times of crisis or transition when the correlation between ersatz measures and actuality substantially drifts or even suddenly disconnects. Actions can be based on these measures or models of reality rather than on reality(or more complete measures) and result in negative consequences. The solution is to perform regular “reality checks” to insure that measures or indicators of reality continue to reflect that reality.

Problem:

In developing complex systems, it is often expedient to develop feedback loops based on ersatz measures of what we are really interested in assessing and controlling. While this may seem expedient in the short term, it often leads to serious problems and distortions, particularly in times of crisis or transition when the correlation between ersatz measures and actuality substantially drifts or even suddenly disconnects. Actions can be based on these measures or models of reality rather than on reality. This can result in negative, even deadly, consequences.

Context:

Many problems were partly responsible for the disaster at the Three Mile Island. One crucial problem, in particular, arose from the design of a feedback loop. A switch was supposed to close a valve. Beside the switch was a light that was supposed to show that the valve was closed. In fact, rather than having the light go on as the result of actual feedback from the valve closure itself, the signal light was merely a collateral circuit to the switch. All it actually showed was that the switch had moved position (Wickens, 1984). Under normal operation; that is, when the valve was operating properly, these two events were perfectly correlated. At a critical point in the meltdown, however, the valve was not operating properly. Yet, the human operator believed that the valve was closed even though it had failed to close in reality. His resulting actions, taken on the basis of the assumption that the valve was closed, exacerbated the subsequent problems. My colleague, Scott Robertson, has recently posted an analysis of the recent error that resulted in the nuclear missile scare in Hawaii. (See link).

View at Medium.com

In running an application program several years ago, I was given a feedback message that a file was posted. In fact, it wasn’t. The programming team of the application, rather than checking to see whether the file was actually posted, merely relied on the completion of an internal loop.

In advertising campaigns, it is difficult to measure the impact on sales. Instead, companies typically measure the “recall” and “recognition” rates of ads. This may often be correlated with sales changes, but in some cases, the ad may be very memorable but give the customer a very negative impression of the company and decrease the chances of actually selling a product.

Historically, monarchs and dictators (and even would-be dictators) often surrounded themselves only with people who gave them good reports and support no matter how their decisions impacted the reality of their realm. Eventually, the performance of such people tends to deteriorate severely because their behavior is shaped by this ersatz feedback rather than by reality.

During the “oil crisis” in the seventies, oil companies relied on mathematical models of continually increasing demand. Year after year, for seven years, they relied on these models to predict demand despite the fact that, for all seven years, demand actually went down. The results are purported to have cost them tens of billions of dollars (Van der Heijden, 1996).

In some cases, the known existence of ersatz measures directly contributes to the destruction of the utility of these very measures. For example, if management decides the “easy way” to measure programmer productivity is “Lines Of Code,” once programmers discover this, the code base may grow quickly in terms of that measure, but not in terms of actual functionality.

In America @2018, many people view money as the only legitimate value of interest for countries, companies, or individuals. Measures such as the GDP and the stock market index are taken as adequate and complete measures of the economic well-being of the society. There is a sense that, since we spend the most on weapons and health care, we must perforce be the “safest” and “healthiest” nation on the planet. This is clearly not the case. Similarly, ads talk about a person’s “net worth” when what they are really talking about is merely a person’s net financial worth. “Worth” is not the same as “financial worth.”

A large research organization that I am familiar with used to have a large number of administrative assistants who helped arrange meetings, send in expense reports, and answer telephones. At some point, most of these administrative assistants were laid off and the tasks were now done by the researchers themselves who were typically not nearly so efficient at them. The researchers took at least as long to do them as had the administrative assistants. Accountants looked favorably at all the “money they had saved” because they could easily see that the line item for administrative assistants was far less costly than it had been. Not visible, of course, was the fact that the much more highly paid researchers were now doing the same work that had been done before by the administrative assistants, but they were doing it less efficiently and at a far higher cost.

Forces:

* Organizations are often hierarchically decomposed and bureaucratic. Therefore, it is often simplest to communicate with those close to us in the hierarchy and to build systems that rely for their model of reality only on things within the immediate control span of our small part of the organization.

* While more comfortable to limit system design and development to those things within one’s own team or department, it is often precisely the work necessary to capture more reality-based measures that will reveal additional challenges and opportunities in business process coherence.

*A more direct measure of reality is often more time-consuming, more costly, or more difficult than the measure of something more proximal that is often highly correlated with those aspects of reality of real interest.

*It is likely to be exactly at times of crisis and transition that the correlation be-tween proximal ersatz measures and their referent in reality will be destroyed.

*It is likely to be exactly under times of crisis and transition that people will tend to simplify their cognitive models of the world and, among other things, forget that the proximal measure is only ersatz.

Solution:

Therefore:

Whenever feasible, feedback should ideally be based on reality checks, not solely on ersatz measures. When this is too costly (as opposed to merely inconvenient or uncomfortable), then at least design systems so that the correlation between proximal measures and their referent in reality is double-checked periodically.

Examples:

Rather than rely solely on a circle of politically minded advisors, Peter the Great disguised himself and checked out various situations in Russia in person.

As reported by Paula Underwood (who was the designated storyteller for her branch of the Iroquois), her ancestors at one point felled giant trees for long houses in the Pacific Northwest. Later, when the tribe lived in the “Great Plains”, there were no trees of that size. The tribe began to doubt the existence of trees as large as what their oral history portrayed. In order to check on this, one brave spent many years walking back to that area and seeing with his own eyes that there were indeed trees as tall as had been portrayed in the oral history and then returning to the tribe to report back.

Resulting Context:

Ideally, over time, people who actually double-check reality will come to better understand when and how these reality checks will be necessary. They may also invent methods of making a check-in closer to what is really of interest more convenient or cheaper.

Related Patterns:

System as a Whole

Convergent Measures

Drawing the Line

Who Speaks for Wolf

Known Uses:

Richard Feynman, during the Manhattan project, noticed that the bureaucracy was worried about the possibility of accidentally stockpiling a critical mass of uranium. To prevent this, each section chief was required to insure that their section did not have a critical mass. To insure this, each section chief instructed each sub-section chief to insure that their subsection didn’t have a critical mass and so on, down to the smallest level of the bureaucracy. Upon hearing this plan, Feynman observed that neutrons probably didn’t much care whose subsection they reported to!

In another incident reported by Feynman, various bureaucrats were each trying to prove that they had better security than their peers. In order to prove this, they escalated the buying of bigger and thicker safes. The bigger and thicker the safe, the more bureaucrats felt that they had made their secrets secure. Feynman discovered that more than half of the super-safe safes had been left with the factory installed combinations of 50-50-50 and were therefore trivially easy to break into!

References:

Wickens, C. (1983). Engineering psychology and human performance. Columbus: Merrill, (p.1).

Van der Heijden, K. (1996). Scenarios: The art of strategic conversation. Chichester: Wiley.

Hutchings, E., Leighton, R., Feynman, R., and Hibbs, A. (1997). Surely, you’re joking Mr. Feynman. New York: Norton.

Underwood, P. (1993). The Walking People: A Native American oral history. San Anselmo, CA: Tribe of Two Press.

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https://petersironwood.wordpress.com/2017/02/25/the-invisibility-cloak-of-habit/

https://www.amazon.com/author/truthtable

Love All.

20 Wednesday Dec 2017

Posted by petersironwood in America, psychology, Uncategorized

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competition, creativity, innovation, learning, life, military, politics, science

Love All. Hmm.

I don’t feel very loving toward people who are SHRUGS and pretending to be SHILLS, especially when they are using the trust we gave them as being public officials not to betray their country’s interest. Is there really a way to love all?

I think it is quite possible to love the totality of something without loving each and every part. A person might, for example, love their body but hate that big mole. They might really like their car but hate its squeaky rattle. They might love all of humanity yet hate so much of what one person does it is impossible to feel love for that part of it. At least I feel that way. I love the forest but hate deer flies, though it is a qualified hate. Once I’m back indoors, I don’t dwell on the fact that they’re still out there sucking blood from deer or hikers. There is a bit of humor and even admiration for the damned things. You would think it would be pretty easy for humans to outsmart them and yet…they are very hard to catch. The one trick I did develop was to wait till they landed on the back of my neck and then smack them quickly with my hand, stunning them. When they awoke, I would explain to them that if they didn’t immediately cease and desist, I would crush them. But they never responded so I crushed them anyway.

There are several aspects of love and one is understanding. They are not equivalent of course, but understanding seems good in any case. I can reach the point of trying to understand deer flies or SHRUGS. Beyond that, I cannot go.

Teddy Roosevelt is famously purported to have said, “Speak softly and carry a big stick.” Let’s examine this a little further in the context of contemporary international relations. The United States is, or at least was until recently, the “world’s only remaining superpower.” That’s what we told ourselves. We certainly spend the most of any country on the military. Our military strength is also built on having a well-educated populace, superior technology, excellent training, and, considering that the military has a “military culture,” it is fact-based. After operations, initiatives, mistakes, successes, the military conducts “after action reviews.” In other words, there are mechanisms in place, to realize that human beings make errors and the important things are to try to avoid them and then to learn from them. The military, like much of American culture, strives to be a meritocracy.

How on earth does it make sense to “shout loudly and carry a teeny stick.”? But at least some of the SHRUGS seem hell-bent on just such a course. There is certainly a lot of “shout loudly” but isn’t there a promise to spend more on the military? Yes, but — superior military depends on many things besides money. It depends on having superior technology. Having superior technology depends on, among other things, attracting the best minds from around the world to a country they find attractive and accepting. Executive orders already made many people feel less welcome. This was followed by a Congressional-sponsored Theft Bill which made it virtually impossible for anyone but the richest to attend graduate school.

Strike One. Notice, I did not say the most able, or creative, or hardest working. No, the richest. Well, apart from the mind-numbing unfairness and transparent self-interest, it is a death sentence to the USA having a long term lead in biotechnology, computer science including cryptography and cybersecurity, nanotechnology, and artificial intelligence. Breakthroughs in any one of these fields could render our nuclear arms useless or worse (e.g., our systems “think” they are launching to other targets when in fact they are all aimed at other cities in the US). That’s Strike One.

Strike Two. And in every other branchlet of the executive, the message has gone out loud and clear that promotions and possibly even firings will depend more on loyalty and less on merit. These government agencies will necessarily be less effective and as the general quality of the career public servants plummets, the few remaining effective people will become more and more frustrated and also leave making the race to the bottom of quality all the faster. These other branches of the executive include many that have a direct impact on the quality of the military.

Strike Three Believe it or not, it matters what people feel they are fighting for. If all of what America “stands for” is unbridled greed so that more and more of the world’s resources can be funneled without objection into the pockets of the world’s richest, the soldiers don’t really care to go the extra mile. Why should they?

So the combination of these three factors: damaging science, making government inefficient, and destroying morale will weaken the military in its effectiveness but increase the chances of a world-destroying mistake.

So, yeah, I can’t quite get there yet with the “Love All.”

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Resolution: Create!

26 Sunday Nov 2017

Posted by petersironwood in America, psychology, Uncategorized

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advertising, competition, creativity, innovation, issue resolution, negotiation, politics

When most of us think of the word “Create” we tend to associate it with particular pursuits and professions; e.g., artist, writer, actor, scientist, engineer, photographer, choreographer or chef. However, every single human being — indeed, every living thing must be “creative.” To live is to create. It is not something relegated to particular human professions or past-times. In particular, when you and someone else disagree, instead of hunkering down into a straight-laced no-holds barred negotiation about who gets the biggest slice of a given pie, there is an alternative. That alternative is to dig into that natural creative streak that you have — and that the person you are disagreeing with has — and to create!

Let’s take a simple example. A good metaphor for life, as we know from Forrest Gump, is a box of chocolates. Let’s say there is only one box of chocolates. I want the chocolates. You want the chocolates. What to do? As you already know (but have not yet forgotten) if you are a kid, there are some simple standard ways to deal with such a situation.

You could use a game of luck or a game of skill to determine who gets the box of chocolates. We could split the box in two. If there are 64 chocolates, you get 32 and I get 32. Of course, since I am not a kid, but an adult who is “skilled” in zero-sum game negotiations, I might not settle for just 32. I’ll feel as though I’ve lost by only getting half. I’ll likely hire a lawyer. Which will tend to induce you to hire a lawyer as well. We may go to court and the judge will award 40 chocolates to me and only 24 to you. Victory for me! Of course, I will now have to pay my lawyer 20 chocolates so I only end up with 20 instead of 32, but I’m still better off that you! You have to pay your lawyer 20 chocolates and you end up with only 4! Loser! You won’t be very happy with this outcome so you may appeal to a higher court. In the end, I will be lucky to end up with ONE chocolate, but hey, if you have zero chocolates, I can still call myself a “winner.” Yeah. That’s the “adult” way. Remember those days when you were just a silly little kid and you would have ended up with a mere 32?

Instead of using our adult knowledge and intelligence to end up with less than a naive kid, we could use our adult knowledge and intelligence to end up with more. Here’s one simple way. Typically, all chocolates are not the same. I actually only like solid chocolates with nuts. I prefer dark chocolate, but milk chocolate with nuts is okay too. I don’t even really like the ones with caramel or creamy fillings. I would rather have all ten with nuts than five with nuts and 27 with fillings. If it turns out that you like the ones with fillings better than or equally to the nutty ones, we will both be better off by taking these preferences into account. Of course, it might turn out that both of us hate the creamy ones and love only the nut-filled chocolates. In this case, we have to find a way to split the nut ones and forget about the rest. Right?

Wrong! Of course not. Although it is really greed that makes you blind, in reality, the world does not begin and end with you, me, and a box of chocolates. We could find a third party who loves creamy chocolates; get them to pay us for those and go buy some chocolates with the money — the yummy crunchy chocolates with nuts that we both love. If we play our cards right, we could each end up with 32 nut-filled chocolates. We could each end up with even more if we find someone who really really loves the creamy ones.

Once you relinquish your greed-filtered view of the world, you will see that there is much more to the world than you, me, and chocolate. While it’s true that I really do love chocolate covered nuts, I am in the process of losing weight so even the chocolate covered ones that I love are a kind of double-edged sword. I might find some way to trade my share of the chocolates for something that I value even more. For instance, I might trade my presumptive half of the chocolates for ten apples since you have a surfeit of apples and don’t really like them. Or, since my tangerine tree is still going strong, I might take your half of the chocolates and give you ten seedless tangerines. These are actually, now that I think about it, even better than chocolates. Each seedless tangerine offers the pleasure of how it feels, how it smells, the activity of peeling it, the knowledge comes to mind that the white slightly bitter material between the fleshy segments is filled with rutin which is an important nutrient though the word is apparently not in the spell-checker. When you eat a tangerine, you get to break it into segments. This in itself is a satisfying process. If a friend happens by, you can have the pleasure of offering them a tangerine as well. If you happen to leave one of those tangerines in a sunny car for a few minutes, it will not be ruined. Nor will your car upholstery.

But wait. There’s more! The world as it is, plus the world of my imagination, plus the world of your imagination, plus the emergent world of our collective imagination extends beyond even a world of you, me, chocolates, apples, and tangerines. You might actually not like tangerines, but you could learn from me how to like them, provided you are open to it. It might turn out that the only reason you currently dislike tangerines is that you tried some very small seedy ones when you were a kid. You found them bothersome to peel and deseed with your clumsy five-year old fingers. Then, when you got your hands all sticky, you sticky-fied your mom’s fine tablecloth at the Holiday dinner. She yelled at you in front of the whole family and now you hate tangerines. It’s not your fault. It’s not your fault. It’s not your fault! Nor is it the fault of tangerines in general. Really. These tangerines in the here and now are not those tangerines at all. My tangerines are large, juicy, seedless, and easy to peel. Your fingers are likely far less clumsy than they were at five. Your mom is not here to yell at you for getting your fingers sticky. So, what you could learn from me about the joys of tangerines and the more general fact that you yourself are limiting your current pleasure in life based on a gross over-generalization of specific childhood experiences — that, my friend, is a lot more valuable than a box of chocolates.

I might similarly be currently disinclined to see the value in ten of your apples because I had a bad experience with apples once. Perhaps it was one of those apples that looks all fresh and shiny in the store but once home, one bite tells you this apple is yucky, granular and brown inside. Quite possibly it got frozen in transport or terribly bruised. If you like apples, you can teach me to like apples (again). You and I might even decide to chuck the whole box of chocolates, trading it for money to buy more fruit, or even sending it jointly as a gift to a family for whom a box of chocolates would be far more meaningful than it would be to either of us. The gift of good feelings that we would get by being generous to others could totally outweigh the pleasure of 32 chocolates.

We could take that box of 64 chocolates into the kitchen and so some joint experimenting in terms of a culinary challenge. It might work like this. We take turns choosing one chocolate either by the index (which any chocolatier who is not devil’s spawn will provide) or by appearance alone. Let’s say we flip and let me go first. I choose a chocolate and my challenge is to find something in the kitchen that will enhance the flavor or at least give it an interesting and different context. So, I pick a solid dark chocolate piece. I toast a piece of Dave’s Killer Bread and split it in two. I spread Laura Scudder’s crunchy peanut butter on each half. I melt the chocolate and spread that on top. Now, we taste the result. How does the chocolate add (or detract) from the overall concoction? Would more chocolate make it better? More peanut butter? Should I have added cinnamon? The fun of this and the knowledge we gained and the resulting bonds of friendship could easily be far more valuable than the chocolates themselves. Who knows? Maybe we could go into business with a line of chocolates not meant to be eaten alone but to be used as accoutrements to numerous side-dishes. Our explorations could lead to guidelines about which kind of chocolate goes best with which kind of other ingredients.

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Alternatively, we could each take 32 random chocolates and make an advent calendar. Perhaps, each chocolate comes with a picture and story about one of the ingredients or an interesting story about it. When did people first make chocolate? Who? When did people first begin “refining” sugar? Who first boxed chocolate? Do you know the story of “Mother’s Day” by the way? What is the current thinking on the dietary impact of chocolate? Is it good for you? Bad for you? Both? We could turn a simple box of chocolate into a thoughtful and interesting gift of value far beyond the box of chocolates itself. Yeah, it would definitely be a lot of work to make this into a multi-dimensional gift. But it would also be a lot of fun. Who knows? We might even make a multi-million dollar business out of it.

There’s nothing particularly “special” about tangerines, apples, or chocolate in this regard. Anything of value can be made more valuable by the addition of other ingredients, contexts, knowledge, love, caring, gaming, and by changing your stance or attitude toward it. You can continue to negotiate like a little kid. That’s not horrible. At least you’ll get half a box of chocolate out of the deal (or a fair chance for the whole box). Or, you could negotiate like a “real winner” type A go-get-um up-and-coming ladder-climbing dynamo of flash and dazzle. You can then brag to your friends (if you have any) that you ended up with one chocolate while I ended up owing three chocolates. Yes, you could brag that you “won.” Congrats.

Your third alternative: approach every negotiation as an exercise in creativity and creation. Every party to a negotiation brings something to the table tangibly (or why are they there?). But beyond that, each party also brings their unique perspective, values, and life experiences. Working together, we could almost certainly create something of more value than what we are negotiating about. Despite my best efforts, you might just not like tangerines. But maybe you do like oranges. Why? I mean, why do you like oranges but not tangerines? We might discover something of great interest to tangerine growers or the advertisers for oranges. You might like creamy chocolates but you don’t like chocolates with nuts although you like both chocolates and nuts. Why? We might discover something of great interest to chocolatiers. Or, in the process of trying to discover why you don’t like chocolate covered nuts though you like both ingredients, we might discover something about what makes some people allergic to nuts or something about you. Every disagreement need not devolve into a zero-sum game unless you decide or believe that’s all there is. Instead, you could treat every disagreement as an opportunity to work together jointly and create value beyond what comes to the table.

As explained in “The Winning Weekend Warrior” sports are not zero sum games. If you take me on in tennis, one of us will “win” the match and one of us will “lose” the match. But the winning is but a small part of the overall value. I improve, hone, or broaden your skills and you do the same for mine (provided we are somewhat evenly matched). We are both exercising which means we are improving the body, mind, and spirit of each of us. True zero sum games are largely a fiction. More accurately, they are zero-sum only in terms of a very limited view of the context of your experience. Be creative! When there is an issue of disagreement, create!

snowfall

Comments welcome! My computer is deathly ill and this was created on a borrowed computer so it may take a while to respond, but I will respond to comments when I can.

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Horizons University

25 Monday Sep 2017

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

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

creativity, education, problem finding, problem formulation, problem solving

Different people’s brains seem to me to be predisposed to pay attention to different kinds of stimulation. My musically inclined wife, for instance, is much more attuned to sounds of all types than I am. This makes it easier for her to identify music from just a few bars, but also makes her much more annoyed by stray sounds that I typically ignore. For example, when commercials come on the TV, she is very keen to “mute” the TV whereas I simply mute them in my mind (or at least I think I do). So, when she told me that I “had to” fix our doorbell right away, at first I had no idea what she was talking about.

“That beep!” she insisted. “Can’t you hear it? That doorbell is driving me crazy!”

After calling my attention to it, I also heard the beep. The doorbell was not something that we had installed. It came with our condo and up till now had been working just fine. Now, it appeared to be hell-bent on incessantly going “Beep! Beep!” Admittedly, it was annoying. Not so annoying as a failing smoke alarm. At least this was going off in the middle of the day whereas failing smoke alarms are not only much louder but scientifically designed to go off at around 3-4 am in the morning. I suppose on rare occasions, they do go off at other times, but I’ve never experienced that personally. Best of all, smoke alarms have directions printed right on the alarm in tiny white on white font. Seriously? You couldn’t afford to pay for .0001 cents of paint to make it legible? But enough of badly designed smoke alarms.

Let’s return to my wife’s request to fix our doorbell. I got out the toolbox and easily removed the screws over the housing. Inside were minor electronics connected with three wires to the house electricity. There did not seem to be a dying battery at fault. I had no idea, and could not decipher which wire would turn off the alarm. So, careful to touch only the insulated rubber guards on the wire snippers, I cut one of the wires. In response, I heard, “BEEP! BEEP!” Well, that didn’t do the trick. I cut another wire. “BEEP! BEEP!” Damn. Okay. I will have to cut the third wire. No battery. No electrical current from the house. Goodbye annoying beep. I cut the third wire. “BEEP! BEEP!”

What? Unlike my Dad, I was never trained as an electrical engineer, but I do know that a completely open circuit without power can’t keep “working.” At least not for long. A capacitor can hold a charge. In old time TV’s you had to be very careful. You couldn’t simply unplug the TV and start working on it right away. The large TV “picture tube” for instance, held a considerable charge until you grounded it against the chassis with a screwdriver. But there’s no way the doorbell could still be making noise.

Eventually, we discovered that there was nothing at all wrong with our doorbell. Well, to be more accurate, there had been nothing wrong until I cut every single wire. The noise source was something else entirely. Years earlier, we had attended a Dave Pelz golf academy focused on “the short game” and had been given a very cheap electronic metronome to help us learn a smooth rhythm on the putting stroke. We hadn’t ever used it for that purpose and had forgotten we even owned it.

But that’s what our lovely, lively cats are for! The cats had managed to turn on the metronome and then carefully and meticulously slide it down into the small slice of space between our piano sounding board and the wall that separated the kitchen from the dining room. Voila! A nice loud “BEEP! BEEP!” sound.

Looking back on the incident, I can’t quite reconstruct why we thought this was a doorbell. It didn’t actually sound like our doorbell. Well, nothing actually sounded like our doorbell because now it didn’t make any sound at all. I had cut all the wires that would enable it to work. But it didn’t even sound like our doorbell used to sound. Somehow, we had gotten sucked into a particular framing and formation of the problem. That specific way of approaching the problem led us down a “garden path” that not only had no possible chance of solving the real problem; it also had negative (and unnecessary) side-effects such as ruining our doorbell. Sadly, even two supposedly “well-educated” people found it all too easy to go down that “garden path.” This brings me to “Horizon University.”

Articles that claim to calculate the “best” University for you to attend have grown up like ragweed in the last few years. What irks me about such articles is not that they rank order university programs according to the average “Return on Investment” of graduates, but that they don’t even seem to acknowledge that this is only one of many criteria by which such programs could be ranked. They too, have gone down a very particular garden path when it comes to defining the “goodness” of education.

Instead of an undergraduate program that is essentially a high level trade school aimed exclusively at getting you the highest paying job, let’s imagine a University with a different focus.

Consider a University where students focus on seeing things in different time perspectives.

Maybe it doesn’t need to be an entire university; perhaps a department or a course. But somewhere along the line, it seems absolutely critical to me that people receive more training in taking a flexible view, a broad view, a long or short view, a loving view, a defensive view. In my experience, people often have one particular way of approaching a particular type of problem. In extreme cases, people approach every problem the same way. Sometimes that one way works extremely well. More often, it works pretty well. Sometimes, it is more of a hindrance than a help. And then, every once in awhile, it results in an unmitigated disaster. And, that’s true for everyone on the planet so long as you stick to one approach for every single problem.

At “Horizon University” you would not take a calculus class or a psychology class or a creative writing class. Why? Because it is all too tempting — indeed probably necessary in order to pass any such course — to use your knowledge of that particular course, using the methods of that particular course. You do not answer a calculus question with an insightful essay on the probable family dynamics of Pascal’s family; not if you want to pass.

In real life, a particular problem might require only calculus, or only creative writing or only psychology. More likely it will require some combination of these and many other skills. It will most likely be solved, not by you alone, but by you in combination with a team diverse in almost every dimension imaginable.

At Horizon University, people would be guided in every aspect of problem solving which includes the extremely important and seldom taught skills of problem finding and problem formulation. These are the hardest parts; they are the least taught parts; indeed, they are the least understood parts of the overall problem solving process.

Let’s take an example puzzle: “There are 435 people in the US House of Representatives. What is the probability that at least two Representatives share a birthday?” I have given this problem to a number of people. After a few moments thought, most smart 10 year olds can solve it. Adults have more trouble. Adults who have taken a college course in statistics however, typically have the most trouble of all. When such an adult hears this problem, they are immediately reminded of the so-called “Birthday Problem.” Counter-intuitively, it turns out that even a small group of 30 people is more likely to have at least one shared birthday than not. A ten year old is unlikely to have heard of this problem, so they think about the 435 people in the House of Representatives for awhile and come up with the correct answer. A statistics-trained adult however, is likely to say something along the following lines, repeated more or less verbatim from someone attending at a party organized by my office mate at the University of Michigan.

“Ahem! Well, this is the famous ‘Birthday Problem’ and, having just received my Ph.D. in statistics, it would be fairly trivial for me to answer this if only I had access to some logarithm tables. (This was long before hand-held internet access). I had happened to notice that my office mate had log tables so I escorted this guy to them and said, “There you go! Knock yourself out!” I went off to enjoy the party while he spent the next few hours muttering in a corner trying to make good on his boast. I checked up on him later, but he still insisted he had almost solved it.

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His insistence that he knew enough to solve the problem and his persistence in tackling it with the same method over and over is one of the things that scares me about the coming ubiquity in “Artificial Intelligence” especially as it intersects with the “Internet of Things”, “Driverless Cars”, and “Intelligent Agents.” It isn’t so much that people won’t make perfect AI systems for a long time. It’s that people will make imperfect AI systems and insist that they are perfect. In other words, hubris is one of the human failings that can be greatly amplified by Artificial Intelligence.

We see this kind of hubris is all sorts of software systems; indeed, it isn’t even limited to software systems although the absurdly short development cycles of software tend to make it more evident there. For example, Microsoft’s Windows 7 had over 2000 bugs.

http://www.dailytech.com/Microsoft+Says+It+Has+Fixes+for+2000+Windows+7+Bugs+Thanks+to+Testers/article14426.htm

Bugs, of course, are not limited to Microsoft products. Here’s a list of recent bugs in the MAC OS.

https://eclecticlight.co/2017/07/21/known-bugs-in-macos-sierra-10-12-6-an-incomplete-summary/

“Bug” is a general term, of course, and there are many varieties. One of the “minor” kinds of bugs are usability bugs. For instance, I recently signed up for an alumni site. They asked users like me to enter the name of the University of my advanced degree. Instead of allowing me to type in the University, however, I had to use a pull-down list. This alphabetical list had over 2000 entries. But where is “The University of Michigan” to be found in an alphabetical list? Looking at the names of other universities showed no consistency whatever. It might be under “T” for “The University of Michigan.” It might be under “U” for “University of Michigan” which might be abbreviated as “U” or “Univ.” and it might be listed under “M” for “Michigan.” It wasn’t under any of these. So far as I could tell, The University of Michigan, one of the top-ranked universities in America with a current enrollment over 44 thousand wasn’t listed at all. You could call the omission of this particular university a “bug” but the more fundamental bug is why they are using a pull-down list to have users select among thousands of items. No-one thought through the fact that new universities arise; they merge; they fold. In addition, there is no obvious single way for them to be listed. But all of these errors in design thinking pale in comparison to the one that prevents the user from simply typing in the name of their university. Not only have the designers and coders of this software omitted an important option; not only have they chosen an inefficient way to enter the data; beyond that, they are so cock-sure of themselves that they have not even provided an alternative input method.

You might argue that subsequent data analysis will be easier if everyone chooses from among a fixed and finite list than it would be if people could type in whatever they wanted. True, but if that’s really the argument, then you are saying that your time and convenience are more important than those of your users. That’s too gigantic an error to be labeled a “bug.” It’s much more fundamental.

If you think I’m exaggerating the scope of software bugs, you might want to check on the Wikipedia entry of known and severe bugs in a number of different fields of human endeavor.

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

If Horizon University does a good job, its graduates will likely produce fewer bugs, but more importantly, they will be willing to admit the possibility that their code is buggy. Of course, bad design is not limited to software. Shelves of every store abound with poorly packaged items encased in nearly impenetrable plastic. Many roads are equipped with road signs that cannot be read at night. Processes are designed without feedback on whether they work. The crucial point here is not that humans make mistakes; obviously, they do. The problem is thinking that because you’ve learned a particular method or way of thinking that method is also capable of solving all problems; that your way of thinking is the only way there is.

Let’s return to the poor guy who spent the entire party at the University of Michigan pouring over my office mate’s log tables. He was not so much unable to apply the methods he had learned; it is just that the methods he was attempting to apply were not applicable in this case. There are only 365 days in a year (or 366 if you count leap years). But there are 435 people in the House of Representatives. So, even if the first 366 people you looked at happened to have different birthdays, the 367th would have to match someone.

At Horizon University, students would be taught a variety of methods for each part of the problem solving process. These methods would not be taught in a series of lectures. Rather, from the beginning, students would begin working on individual and group projects of their own defining. They would have access to a variety of experts including many generalists on site as well as remote experts available at varying time scales. They would hear from and see in action a wide variety of ways of attacking each problem. They would learn to respect other ways of looking at problems, not just the one or few that they themselves chose to focus on.

Everything in life is not about solving problems however. It is also important to discover and learn about the things that give you the most joy. For some people all of those things will be closely related to problem solving. But for others, many or even all of those joy-inducing activities will not really be about problem solving. They may want to hone their skills in writing, painting, music, choreography, and so on. Perhaps they will earn enough money to get by without another job and maybe they won’t. A few will find a way to use those skills as part of a collaborative problem solving endeavor. Others may find teaching their skills to others is a good way to keep their own skills sharp for their creative work.

At Horizon University, various activities and architectural features would encourage people to communicate and interact with people across the entire variety of interests. In the short term, this would be beneficial to the individual because all their project work would require a broad range of talents. Of course, in the longer term, the benefit would be understanding the value of all kinds of knowledge and skill rather than just the one that they happened to choose to study.

The idea of project-based learning is not a new one. Indeed, it is far older and more ubiquitous than the invention of subject matter based courses or classes. In the USA, we often have historically tried to balance a public education that makes for “well-rounded citizens” with an education that helps ready people to “earn a living.” More recently, we seem to be focused only on the latter goal. In addition, we now seem to believe it is okay for people to go into great debt in order to secure an education. Putting resources into educating the next generation however, is not something meant to benefit only that next generation, but all generations to come.

Rest assured, it is not only Ph.D.’s in statistics that have challenges addressing problems in multiple ways. As Norton Juster in The Phantom Tollbooth suggests, many of us are prone to “jumping to conclusions.”

Precisely because we humans have such an exciting and completely new set of opportunities, challenges and dangers facing us now, it is more vital than ever to be flexible in our approach to problems. Under pressure, people are prone to fixate on the first approach even more than they usually are. How can we possibly believe this is a good time to cut back on public education? We need a citizenry who are not only knowledgeable but versed in a variety of ways to problem solve. It certainly won’t be enough to know what answers others have given to problems in the past. Why? Because they will be facing literally unheard of conditions. We need to let them at least jump to a different set of conclusions than the previous generation. Hopefully, they’ll do even better than that and not jump to conclusions at all. Rather they will work in cooperative groups to solve complex novel problems using the skills and confidence that were built at Horizons U.

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Only You…

08 Tuesday Aug 2017

Posted by petersironwood in America, apocalypse, psychology, story, Uncategorized

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

creativity, family, feelings, life, school, stories

Only You….

Perhaps, like me, you recall “Smokey the Bear” from your childhood along with his famous slogan, “Only you can prevent forest fires.” In English, we seem to have stuck with the completely unmarked and ambiguous second person pronoun. “You” could refer to one single individual or to two people or to everyone on the planet! And, at least in English, the verb form doesn’t help you much either. Of course, verb forms don’t typically help much in English in any case, but you would think, since the pronoun is ambiguous, there would be some other clue in the syntax, but there isn’t. “I can, you can, he/she/it can; we can, you can, they can.” Brilliant. Although many verbs do mark for singular third person with an “s” for the verb which, come to think of it, also makes little sense. If anything, “s” on an English verb should mark for plural. Whatever. I am not bringing this up to criticize English syntax to start a revolution in order to make it more consistent and logical. I learned my lesson from George Bernard Shaw who left his fortune to at least make English spelling phonetic. He sponsored a contest resulting in a beautiful “Shavian alphabet” but his will was contested. He died in 1950 and now, 67 years later, English is just as difficult to spell as ever. Sigh.

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

So, no, I am not going to try to convince you to start saying, “you can” for singular you and “you cans” for the plural. In the South, some feel that “y’all” or “you-all” marks for plural but that is not a universally held belief. In any case, when I first heard, “Only you can prevent forest fires” I thought Smokey the Bear was talking about me personally. This was no doubt reinforced by the posters which clearly showed Smokey pointing his “fingers” at me. He wasn’t gesturing to a crowd. He was pointing at me. I had already seen the Disney movie Bambi which graphically portrays the flaming horror of a forest fire so I really did want to prevent them. But how? Smokey went on to offer some helpful rules such as not dropping my cigarettes carelessly on the ground and putting out my campfires completely. I was only about five so I didn’t have much of a nicotine habit. And, several more years would pass before I went to YMCA camp or Boy Scout camp. At five, I didn’t really have much chance to make sure my campfires were out because I didn’t have any campfires. My parents didn’t let me play with matches. Yet, forest fires persisted. Smokey must have been leaving out some crucial steps as to how I was supposed to prevent forest fires.

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

I generally tried to work out such puzzles for myself, but eventually I gave up and asked my grandpa how I could prevent forest fires. He patiently explained that Smokey was talking about people in general, not just me in particular. I don’t think I totally “bought” this explanation, but it did assuage my guilt somewhat. “People in general” is an odd concept anyway. It was weird for a five year old, but it remains weird to this day. People are very diverse in their abilities, motives, goals, backgrounds — so how can you possibly make sure “people in general” do anything at all? It wasn’t till many years later that I learned that some people set fires intentionally while a larger number are criminally careless.

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Of course, it isn’t just forest fires that need to be prevented. Parents caution kids in a thousand ways and perhaps 900 of those are actually valid concerns. “Don’t run with scissors!” “Look both ways before crossing!” “Don’t stick anything in your nose!” “Don’t stick anything in your ears!” You may have heard the expression, “It takes all kinds.” It basically means that our world needs different kinds of people in it. I agree! But I must confess, I had no understanding of why my parents would say to me, “Don’t stick anything up your nose!” “Don’t stick anything in your ear!” What!? By this time in my life, I had experienced things stuck in my nose and ears (to name two places doctors like to jam things into you). Every doctor’s visit required that Dr. Miller jam some ice cold metal thing up my nose and when that was done, into my ears! I hated it! But apparently, some kids loved that so much that they wanted to recreate the experience. A few times, playing, hiking or just hanging out a bug flew into my eyes, nose, or ears. I hated that. True, they weren’t ice cold but they moved and buzzed making it even more terrifying. So, now my parents caution me not to stick something up my nose? Of course, once the idea is planted….No, I did not partake. Once they cautioned me, of course, I did consider it for the first time. But I couldn’t get over the horror. I actually seriously considered two possibilities as to why they would give such advice. 1. They were insane. 2. They knew something I didn’t. Hidden just beyond my view loomed an alternate universe in which things behaved quite differently. And, apparently, a person — even a five year old person like me — could accidentally slip into this alternative universe. In this alternative “up is down” “left is right” universe, it actually would be totally cool to stuff a crayon up your nose and not be able to breathe out of one side of your nose like you had the worst most disgusting bugger ever invented stuck and you could not sneeze it out. And, then, you would have a horde of grown ups hovering around you in a panic like you were going to die, and very soon, unless extreme measures were taken. So, off you went to the “Emergency Room” and some sleep-deprived intern whose mind swam with images of the cute nurse in pediatrics, stuck some cold instrument up your nose and spread your nose tissue like it was going to explode. Whether she needed to do that or enjoyed the movie about the nurse in pediatrics so much, she wasn’t paying attention, I don’t know. But either way, horrible is horrible. So, yeah, I considered it. And I considered it stupid to stick a crayon up my nose.

However, a few years later, I learned that there really were kids who stuck crayons up their nose. What!? This meant that my parents weren’t insane after all. Instead, there really hovered some alternative universe in which it made perfect sense to stick a crayon up your nose. Yeah, sure. Good times. But it isn’t a universe I particularly want to slip into. At least not ahead of schedule. I figure, if I’m lucky enough to live long enough, I may end up with quite a few tubes stuck in me various places. I might not, but I might. In that case, I guess I will have to change my attitude. I wonder whether kids who did stick crayons up their noses have an easier time with this? In any case, please remember: “Don’t stick crayons up your nose.”

Well, okay, I can think of a scenario where it would make sense to stick crayons up your nose. Let’s say that you’re James Bond and have been issued a very special crayon; when snuffed up your nose, it provides an instant antidote to the poison you are about to release by clicking your heels together three times. BANG. Fog. Your assailants all crumble to the ground. You remove their weapons, tie them together, and waltz back to the hotel to order a double martini, two olives, shaken not stirred. Under those circumstances, I probably would do the nasty.

Sadly, a much more common set of circumstances also exist. In my real life, I had the luck to be born into a loving family. From birth on, like most kids, I was surrounded by love. And, although I wasn’t always the center of attention, as I secretly knew I should be, I had plenty of attention. My parents had their times they didn’t want me to butt in but I also had plenty of time that I wanted to be alone or with my own friends. Live and let live. But what if, instead, I had been unlucky enough to be born into a family that provided very little if any love or attention? Under those circumstances, I might have been desperate enough to try putting a crayon up my nose or even playing with fire.

Just as I never felt compelled to stick crayons up my nose, I never understood kids who enjoyed “playing with fire.” I personally don’t like getting burned, not even a little bit. I recall accidentally touching my thumb to a hot soldering iron my dad was using. Oh, my god that hurt! I didn’t want to admit to anyone that I had burned myself. How I discovered this, I have no idea, but I discovered that if I lay down on the living room rug and vigorously rubbed the burned part back and forth on the rug, the pain went away. But when I stopped, the pain returned even worse than before. So, naturally, I did the only sensible thing a six year old would do. I resumed rubbing the burn on the rug. Ah. Relief. Of course, from today’s perspective, rubbing the burned part screams of stupidity. At the time though, I eventually confessed when my parents asked me why I kept making persistent thumb love to the rug. Whatever they did to treat the pain, I can tell you it wasn’t as effective in the short term as rubbing it on the rug. But they were adults. They were interested in what is best in the long run. And, I just bring that up because it seems somewhere along the line, we seem to have forgotten that.

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In the universe where I grew up, the adults had responsibilities. Top most among all those responsibilities was to provide for future generations. At least most parents are overjoyed when their kids are born. It doesn’t seem too much of a stretch of the imagination to realize that your kids will also be overjoyed when they have kids and so on down the line. If adults are collectively unable to put off their own pleasures for the good of future generations, this particular branch of the tree of life is about to be pruned.

The idea that we adults should squeeze every ounce of earth’s resources and leave future generations far worse off in terms of the beauty of the earth, the healthfulness of the air, water, and food supply — no way! That’s what little kids might do. And, lying about it to avoid any consequences? That’s what you expect a little kid to do. Not an adult. Only a child would play with fire. It might burn far far beyond any original intention. You know, Smokey was right:

“Only you can prevent forest fires!”

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petersironwood

~ Finding, formulating and solving life's frustrations.

Tag Archives: creativity

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