Meta-Cognition

18 Thursday Dec 2025

Posted by petersironwood in management, psychology

Tags

AI, bias, cognition, Feedback, Halo Effect, life, mental-health, politics, Primacy Effect, psychology, science, sports, truth, writing

Meta-Cognition

“Cognition” refers to thinking activities such as problem solving, learning, decision making, and imagining. “Meta-Cognition” refers to thinking about thinking. The science of psychology, over the last 150 years, has learned a great deal about human thinking. If you are reading this blog post, the chances are pretty good that you are a human being. Although there are important individual differences in how people solve problems, learn, make decisions, and use their imaginations, there are also many similarities. To the extent that you understand your own thinking, you can use that knowledge to do a better job of problem solving, learning, decision making and using your imagination.

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Here are a few examples that you may already be aware of. I really like chocolate. And I really like almonds. Chocolate-covered almonds are one of my very favorite foods. I know this about myself. I also know that I am easily distracted. I’m not the sort of person who begins to write a blog post, thinks about chocolate almonds and then stops writing to rush out to the store and buy a package. In fact, there is almost no activity that I can be engaged in which I would interrupt in order to go buy chocolate almonds no matter how much I crave them. On the other hand, if there were a bowl of chocolate almonds right beside me, in easy reach, I would definitely reach over and grab some whenever I paused in my writing. So, how do I use the knowledge about my own behavior to control my own behavior?

person holding chocolates and white ceramic mug

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I don’t very often buy chocolate almonds. It’s relatively easy to simply not go to the part of the grocery store where these little devils hang out. If I walk by, I know that they will start singing to me like the Lorelei of legend: “Come get me! I am so tasty. Get me now. Please. I want to go home with you.” But I can’t really hear them that well beyond about five feet. Probably this is because chocolate almonds have a very rudimentary vocal apparatus.

I do buy them perhaps once a month and when I do buy them I put them in a closed drawer so they are mainly out of earshot. Then, I will have a few and get back to work. I may not have them for days at a time. If, however, I put them in a bowl right beside my computer, I am fairly certain that I would eat the whole box the first day; indeed, quite possibly in the first hour.

This is an example of using what I know about how I think about things in order to think about arranging the environment to my own long-term benefit.

Another example, which I may describe in more detail later, is the so-called “Primacy Effect.” This is known in popular terms as the power of “First Impressions.” If your first experience with something — whether it’s dogs, cats, Chinese food, or computer programming — is negative, it will be difficult to overcome that later. This is not only true of emotional reactions. It’s also true about what you recall about something.

Suppose that you meet someone named Joseph Josephson at a party and Joseph has a beard and long black hair. Perhaps you talk to Joseph for ten minutes. You meet Joseph a few months later at a tennis match and now he is clean shaven and has short hair. You play tennis with him for an hour. A few months later, someone happens to ask you if you know Joseph Josephson. Chances are, an image will pop into your head of Joseph with long black hair and a beard. Of course, sales people, politicians and wise people applying for jobs make use of this and want to make a “good first impression.” Since you now know that first impressions are particularly important, you can use this knowledge about how people think to make sure that first impression is a good one.

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You can also use that knowledge to help modify your own thinking and decision making. Suppose someone comes to you for a job interview and the first thing they do when they walk in your office is trip over a chair and spill their papers on the floor. That’s unfortunate! It is quite natural to immediately conclude that they are unsuited for the job. At this point, you could remind yourself instead that this is only a first impression and that you should not let it color your judgement about whether they are the best candidate for the job. You probably won’t be entirely successful in not letting it cloud your judgement, but you will be somewhat successful.

As I explain in The Winning Weekend Warrior, you can also use the “Primacy Effect” in sports. For example, if you are serving in tennis doubles, if you mainly want to hit a flat serve and stay back after serving, you might serve a kick-serve and follow it to the net a few times at the beginning. Even if you never do this again, your opponents will continue to be “looking for” that kick serve and may prepare their return on that basis.

girl in white and orange stripe tank top holding black tennis racket

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When it comes to evaluating candidates for jobs, you must also be wary of the “Halo Effect.” If you find out something good about a candidate, it will tend to cloud your judgement about other aspects of their qualifications, even if that “good thing” is irrelevant to the job. A physically attractive candidate will tend to be judged as more qualified overall even if the job has nothing to do with physical attractiveness. But now that you know this about human judgements (and therefore also your judgements), you can take steps to minimize the “Halo Effect.” It may help, for instance, if you specifically judge candidates on several dimensions of background or experience. The more “objective” you can make the criteria, the less susceptible the judgments are to the “Halo Effect.” So, if the candidate is very attractive, for example, if you simply give an overall judgement that they are suitable for the job, there will be a relatively large impact of their attractiveness. On the other hand, if you are asked to separately rate the candidate on Work Experience, Educational Background, Appearance, and Relevant Skills, the Halo Effect from their physical appearance will tend to be mainly (but not wholly) focused on the “Appearance” factor. If you answer even more specific and objective questions such as: “Does the candidate have an advanced degree?” or “Does the candidate have more than two years programming in C?” the “Halo Effect” is further minimized.

two men holding pen and calendar sitting beside table

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One of the most common ways that people use meta-cognition is simply to write things down. You and I both know that we have a tendency to forget. Most of us, therefore have paper or electronic calendars. We don’t typically rely on our own memory to keep track of a complex schedule of appointments. Why? Presumably, we do this because we know that we are likely to forget an appointment if we rely on our brains. Most of us do not bother to put our own birthday on the calendar because we realize that we are quite aware of it and not likely to forget. People who celebrate Christmas often do not bother to put that date on the calendar either. We know that it would be rather hard to forget! Similarly, many people who go grocery shopping and buy milk, eggs, and bread every week do not bother to put it on the list. If your aunt Mary is coming to visit and she requires soy milk, you probably will put that on your shopping list. You realize (through meta-cognition) that this is an item you are likely to forget.

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These are just a few examples. Findings about human cognition abound. You can use these findings to do a better job in your own thinking; you can use those same findings to help you in competitive situations in predicting what others will do. If you are interested in more such findings about psychology, you might find these fascinating and well-written books of interest.

Thinking Fast & Slow, by Daniel Kahneman

Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely

Here are some other blog posts that touch on various aspects of human cognition. Being aware of these helps you use the knowledge to your advantage.

Essays on America: Wednesday

Essays on America: Labelism

What about the Butter Dish?

The Invisibility Cloak of Habit

The Update Problem

The Stopping Rule

Finding the Mustard

Fish have no Word for Water

The Loud Defense of Untenable Positions

Happy Talk Lies

The Primacy Effect

———————-

Holiday Gift Ideas:

For busy professionals who wish to live a long and healthy life: Fit in Bits shows many ways to work exercise into otherwise sedentary activities.

For amateur athletes who would like to win more, The Winning Weekend Warrior focuses on strategy, tactics, and the mental game for all sports including tennis, golf, softball, etc.

For Sci-Fi fans, Turing’s Nightmares presents 23 short stories that explore the practical and ethical implications of Artificial Intelligence.

For those interested in what it was like to grow up in mid-America in the 1950’s, Tales from an American Childhood recounts early memories and then relates them to contemporary events and issues.

Systems Thinking: Positive Feedback Loops

17 Wednesday Dec 2025

Posted by petersironwood in America, creativity, psychology, Uncategorized

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AI, Artificial Intelligence, books, chatgpt, Design, Feedback, government, innovation, leadership, learning, machine learning, management, politics, POTUS, problem solving, science, sense-making, society, systems thinking, thinking, vicious circle

Systems Thinking: Positive Feedback Loops

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

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

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

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

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

woman in white bed holding remote control while eating popcorn

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

white and tan english bulldog lying on black rug

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Author Page on Amazon.

Love and Guns

Dick-Taters

We won the war! We won the war!

Guernica

A Civil War there Never Was

The First Ring of Empathy

The Walkabout Diaries: Life Will Find a Way

Travels with Sadie 1: Lampposts

Donnie Gets a Hamster

An Open Sore from Hell

Roar, Ocean, Roar

The Dance of Billions

The Siren Song

Imagine All the People…

You Must Remember This

At Least he’s our Monster

Stoned Soup

The Three Blind Mice

Wednesday

What About the Butter Dish?

The Silent Pies

13 Saturday Dec 2025

Posted by petersironwood in America, family, fiction, psychology, story, Uncategorized

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collaboration, cooperation, family, fiction, life, politics, story, teamwork, truth, USA, writing

The first time I won the prize, I was only 8. I had only had my two-wheeler for about a year when my gang of neighbor guys jointly decided it would be a lot more fun to ride our bikes if they made as much noise as real motorcycles. I can’t speak for the others, but it never occurred to me that other people in the neighborhood might not find this increased noise level “really cool!”

Of course, we weren’t always riding our bikes. Sometimes we played in Lynn Circle at the end of our road. It served as a makeshift playground for baseball, kickball, and soccer as well as a free hippodrome for our races. This arrangement had one slight flaw. There were no fences. So, invariably, a ball would go careening off the pavement onto someone’s lawn.

In our neighborhood, everyone’s house looked fairly similar, but they expressed themselves through their small gardens and lawns. Some people, like my dad, really worked at making our small lot at least something gardenish. Other people did little but mow their lawn every so often. But some treated their lawns as they might, at any moment, be teleported to the Master’s Golf Tournament for emergency green replacement. Universally, these people had no children at home. When that was so, none of them interacted much with the kids, the parents of the kids, or even, each other, as I can recall.

When a stray ball dribbled up into our lawn, someone just ran up and got the ball. No big deal. But if someone hit a ball into one of the three lawns that were antiseptic enough to serve as operating tables for open heart surgery–YIKES! Of these, the most stringent by far was “Old Lady Lynn.” When a ball went into one of the antiseptic lawns, we tried to reconnoiter the situation before even attempting to grab our ball back. We would consider whether there was a car in the driveway, whether there was any sign of life coming from the domicile in question. Only if we were fairly sure no-one was at home would we walk and get the ball. If we weren’t sure, we’d run up and snatch it as quickly as possible and then duck into a “friendly” back yard quickly enough so that we wouldn’t be identified.

Old Lady Lynn always seemed to be at home. We imagined, because of her invariable and instantaneous reaction, that she spent all her waking hours peering out between curtains at her lawn to insure that none of us trampled her grass.

Our gang decided to begin our little decibel enhancement project by each of us buying the loudest bell we could find. These were not modern, laser-guided, AI-enhanced sonic systems but simple bells that you had to operate with your thumb. It’s intended use was to prevent injuries and save lives by giving the bike rider a way to “warn” others of their impending presence to that the other person so they didn’t accidentally wonder into your path.

We didn’t give that much thought. But we did give thought to how cool it sounded when we all rode around the circle clanging the bells. Of course, even way back then, if you had a new toy or technology, you had to show it off incessantly and that’s what we did.

Unlike the instantaneous reaction Old Lady Lynn had to our incursions onto her lawn, it took several days for the complaint to filter back to my parents. My parents (thank goodness) were not the sort to take my side regardless of ethics or consequences. I convinced my buddies that if we didn’t strike a compromise, our parents would take all our bells away. Our development project at that time, consisted of only three paved streets, but there were plenty of interconnecting dirt roads and paths that sported no houses on either side. Now, when we left the paved roads of civilization and rode off onto the dirt roads through the woods, we celebrated with cheers and bells as we crossed the threshold into non-civilization, a place where we could talk with each other without the constant reminders of parents and parenting.

The golden sunrise glows through delicate leaves covered with dew drops.

A few days later, I was reading a book about dinosaurs when I heard a knock at the door. Soon, I heard the unmistakable wobbly tones of Old Lady Lynn. I couldn’t hear what she was saying nor what my parents said, but they sounded friendly. Then, the unbelievable happened. I heard them all laugh. It had never occurred to me that Old Lady Lynn would ever–could ever– laugh, or that she ever had laughed.

I debated whether my appearance would make things better or make things worse, but in the end, I felt I I had to participate in whatever was happening. I hadn’t even finished opening my own door when I noticed a most amazing aroma! My eagerness spiked and I trotted into the kitchen. Steaming on the table: Not one but two warm, freshly baked blueberry pies. That smelled delicious!

My mom said, “Look, Mrs. Lynn was so happy you got those boys not make that bell clanging racket near her house and instead having your No-Bell in the Neighborhood Policy, she baked two pies.”

The pies were amazing, but what was even more amazing that Mrs. Lynn became friends with my parents, and even with me. Every year, for the next six years we lived there, Mrs. Lynn gave me two pies. No two years were identical. All the pies were fresh baked and delicious: blueberry, raspberry, rhubarb, pumpkin, custard, cherry, and—my personal favorite—pecan pie.

———————

Now, more than seventy years later, when I take Sadie for her morning walk, we often walk by a property with a self-proclaimed “Invisible Fence.” It’s been around for awhile, but it was invented in 1973; that is, about 20 years after the story recounted above took place. My neighbor’s invisible fence does seem to work for her two large and friendly dogs. They bark as we pass but do not accost us on the road.

But the self-imposed boundaries of invisible fences have a long history in humankind.

The reality is that we’re all part of one Great Tree of Life.

All fences are temporary but,

The impact of connection ripples forever.

———

Author page

Math Class

You Must Remember This

Ripples

Roar, Ocean, Roar

Imagine All the People…

The Dance of Billions

The First Ring of Empathy

A Pattern Language for Cooperation and Collaboration

Your Cage is Unlocked

Impossible

Problem Framing: Good Point!

08 Monday Dec 2025

Posted by petersironwood in AI, America, design rationale, HCI, management, psychology, story, Uncategorized, user experience

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AI, art, life, politics, problem finding, problem formulation, problem framing, problem solving, technology, thinking, tools, USA

You have probably heard variations on this old saw, “To a hammer, everything looks like a nail.” I’ve also heard, “If you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail.” There is also this popular anecdote:

One night, I took my dog out for a walk and I noticed one of my neighbors under a nearby street lamp crawling around on his hands and knees, apparently looking for something. I walked over and asked, “What are you looking for?”

“My car keys!” He replied.

I have pretty good vision, so I helped him. I didn’t see any car keys so after a minute or so I asked, “Where exactly did you lose your keys?”

He stood up, cracked his back, and pointed back to a nearby park. “Over there.”

“Over there?! Then, why are you looking under the street lamp? Why aren’t you looking over at the park entrance?”

“Oh, that’s obvious! The light is so much better here!”

For a time, I had to very interesting and challenging job in the mid 1980’s at IBM Headquarters to try to get the company to pay more attention to the usability of their products and services. As a part of this, I visited IBM locations throughout the world. At one fabrication plant, our tour guide took us by an inspection station. This was not an inspection statement for chips. It consisted of one person whose job was to look through a microscope and make sure that two silver needles were perfectly aligned.

After we left the station, our tour guide confided that they were strongly considering replacing the person with a machine vision system. The anticipated cost would be substantial, but they hypothesized that the system would be more accurate and faster. It was, our host, insisted, just the nature of humans to be slow and inaccurate.

Maybe.

When I looked at the inspection station however, with my background in human factors, I had a completely different impression of the situation. The inspector sat on a fixed height stool and had to bend his neck at an absurd angle to look into the microscope. He was trying to align these silver needles against a background that had almost the same hue, brightness and saturation.

Other than blindfolding the man, I’m not sure what they could have done to make the task more unnecessarily difficult. I suggested, and eventually, they implemented, a few inexpensive ergonomic changes and time and accuracy improved.

Like other companies in the technology segment, IBM often saw problems as ones that could be solved by technology. At that time, technology systems was their main business. Since then, they have expanded more fully into software and services. In fact, those services now include experience design.

If you find yourself enamored of technology in general, or some specific class of technology such as machine vision, speech recognition, or machine learning, you might overlook much simpler and cheaper ways to solve problems or ameliorate situations. Of course, you might lose some revenue doing that, but you can also win long term customer loyalty.

Even if you are a hammer, everything is not a nail.

That applies as well to User Experience. You might design the most wonderful UX imaginable for a particular product or service. But if it is shoddily made so that it is error prone; if it lacks important functionality; if the sales force is inept; or if service is horrible, those failures can completely overwhelm all the good work you have done on the UX. Because of the nature of UX, you might learn important knowledge or suggestions for other functions as well. It often requires finesse to have such suggestions taken seriously, but with some thought you can do it.

During my second stint at IBM, I worked for a time in a field known at that time as “Knowledge Management.” One of our potential clients was a major Pharma company who felt that their researchers should do a better job of sharing knowledge across products. They wanted us to design a “knowledge management system” (by which they meant hardware and software) to improve knowledge sharing.

Simply building a “Knowledge Management System” would be looking under the streetlamp. They knew how to specify a technology solution from IBM and have it installed.

However — they were unwilling to provide any additional space, time, or incentives for their employees to share knowledge with their colleagues!

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They were convinced that technology would be the silver bullet, the solution, the answer, the Holy Grail, the magic pill. They viewed technology as less disruptive than it would have been to change employee incentives, or space layout, or give them time to actually learn and use the technology system.

This reaction to “knowledge management” was not unique. It was common.

To me, this seems very similar to the notion that health problems can all be solved with a magic pill. What do you think?

—————————————

Since originally writing, we have had the spectacle of DOGE: Destroying Our Government’s Effectiveness under the excuse of making it “more efficient.” It might be (as I strongly suspect) that the destruction was quite intentional. It might be (as some think) that it was accidental. In either case, the result was predictable because the method was guaranteed not to work to actually make things more efficient. If you really wanted to do that, you would take the time to understand a system before trying to redesign it. You would identify all relevant stakeholders and get their input. You would not redesign a system using a gang of young hackers but instead use an interdisciplinary team of experienced experts. You would check out your redesign both with those who were doing the work and with at least one group who were not familiar but had similar experience. Then, on the basis of feedback, you would redesign. When you were sure that you had the design right, you would not then institute it everywhere but in one small trial installation.

There’s a pill for that.

The Pandemic Anti-Academic.

What about the butter dish?

The invisibility cloak of habit.

Process re-engineering comes to Baseball

E-Fishiness in Government

Author Page on Amazon

The Ninja Cat Manual 4

07 Sunday Dec 2025

Posted by petersironwood in cats, fiction, pets

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Tags

animals, cat, cats, dogs, fiction, life, ninja, pets, politics, truth, USA

I suspect that some of the cats might be catching onto the fact that I am decoding their manual. New paw-prints to decode have been scant lately although this could partly be due to the fact that we’ve been taking the dogs to a dog park rather than letting them track truckloads of dirt into our house from the region “formerly known as lawn.”

It’s long been known that the cats can open and close the wooden slat blinds. However, it was only a week ago that I discovered that Shadow, unable to continue her messages with paw-prints, was communicating by strategically slanting the slats to show patterns in the shadows and dazzles on the floor and walls. (See examples below).

At first, I just thought that they were remarkably pleasing patterns. Then, while I was working on a crossword puzzle, it hit me. Shadow was continuing to pass her catalog of catastrophic advice on how to do in their humans. It still took a few days to understand the new communications protocols.

Sorry for the delay, but here are my latest efforts.

—————

Mislead with Surface Features

Humans are easily misled with visual appearances. This may well be partly due to their rudimentary senses of hearing, touch, and smell. Many of you will find this nearly impossible to believe, but some of them have attempted to mate with inanimate toys that do not move, smell, sound, or feel like humans. I am sorry to have horrified you with this recounting but I thought it necessary to show you the extent of their reliance on visual appearances.

Furthermore, it is often not even the visual appearance of the objects themselves but the use of a label which determines their behavior. Again, the examples that follow will strain your credulity, but I swear to you these observations have been verified repeatedly. Rather than being scandalized by the level of depravity, instead, use this knowledge to your advantage in bringing about their downfall.

Many humans believe that something as trivial as skin color or gender is a reliable guide to the mental and emotional capacities of a human being. If you are lucky enough to have such a person in your theater of operations, you can use such mental limitations to your advantage.

As an example, imagine that your humans have people with brown or tan skin in their employment as a gardener or maid or nurse. You can make your intentions known to that person. They will tell their human boss about your intentions but rather than take the threat you pose seriously and thank their employee for the heads up, they will instead berate the employee and put such a notion out of their mind. You will now have an easier time completing your mission because they will dismiss the evidence as something that came from people of a darker color and therefore is not something to attend to.

A surprising number of humans have repeated a lie so often that they believe it even when as little as five minutes of open-minded reflection will show the silliness of the lie. For instance, it is often said that women are “too emotional” to be good leaders. It is the males, not the females of their species, who start most wars and commit most rapes.

A Special Case: Human Language

Although language among humans is seen by them, and rightly so, as their greatest gift from the gods, instead of using it properly—which is still fraught with difficulty, they misuse that gift as much as they use it. Imagine that we cats used our sharp teeth to bite our own legs off or used our own claws to blind ourselves! Humans already confuse the label with the thing and now, the greediest among them intentionally mis-label things. For instance, humans have invented a way to make unused cat litter smell worse than cat litter which is completely saturated with urine and feces. They soak the cat litter before we use it. They soak it in chemicals that smell bad but some of them are also carcinogenic, some of them mess with the human’s hormones, and some of them destroy the cells that are used to smell with. Imagine! Their sense of smell is inherently pathetic and then, they impair what little they have.

Humans even have special professions dedicated to misdirecting other people as effectively as possible.

At least, as effectively as is humanly possible.

But it should give all of us a boost of confidence. If mere humans can fool another human, imagine what a feline can get away with!

To do the best possible job of misdirection, however, we must master human language. The first and most important step in that process is for you to pay attention. Since human language is so inferior to Felinish, and because so many humans lie so profusely, it’s an easy mistake to stop learning their “language” early in kittenhood. In fact, by the time we reach teencathood, most of us stop paying attention to their language altogether, excepting of course, obvious trigger words like “dinner” or “DOWN!”

Once you begin to pay attention and overcome the prejudice that their language is as logical as our own, you will quickly learn their simple patterns. Then, you leverage the fact that most humans will never guess that you are even listening to them, let alone that you actually comprehend human language better than they do. No cat will ever choose the menu over the meal.

Appear to be napping, cat-napping, sleeping, or snoozing. If you listen carefully, they’ll reveal all their innermost secrets to you—at least those that they themselves are aware of. As your knowledge accumulates, you will see how to use their plans against them. Remember that when most humans make plans, they assume they will come to fruition. Very few of them will have back-up plans. Even as the evidence becomes overwhelming that their plans won’t work, they will continue to act as though the original plans is still in effect. Even when they see that their “plans”—they should really be called “fantasies”— are not coming to fruition, they will spend most of their time and energy in unproductive distractions such as swearing, wailing, cursing their luck, blaming others, and—if none of that works (which of course it won’t)—they’ll turn to drugs or alcohol. Look for this behavior. It may be your best opportunity to implement some of your own plans. Best of all, if “tragedy” should strike, you’ll be unlikely to be blamed.

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Author Page on Amazon

The Myths of the Veritas: The First Ring of Empathy

The Ninja Cat Manual

The Ninja Cat Manual 2

The Ninja Cat Manual 3

A Cat’s a Cat & That’s That

Hai-Cat-Ku

A Suddenly Springing Something

Try the Truth

Come Back to the Light Side

Life Will Find a Way

Wednesday

The Truth Train

The Invisibility Cloak of Habit

Occam’s Chain Saw Massacre

Labelism

Reframing the Problem: Paperwork & Working Paper

04 Thursday Dec 2025

Posted by petersironwood in AI, creativity, design rationale, HCI, management, psychology, Uncategorized, user experience

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AI, ethics, leadership, life, philosophy, politics, problem finding, problem formulation, problem framing, problem solving, thinking, truth

Reframing the Problem: Paperwork & Working Paper

This is the second in a series about the importance of correctly framing a problem. Generally, at least in formal American education, the teacher gives you a problem. Not only that, if you are in Algebra class, you know the answer will be an answer based in Algebra. If you are in art class, you’re expected to paint a picture. If you painted a picture in Algebra class, or wrote down a formula in Art Class, they would send you to the principal for punishment. But in real life, how a problem is presented may actually be far from the most elegant solution to the real problem.

Doing a google search on “problem solving” just now yielded 208 million results. Entering “problem framing” only had 182 thousand. A thousand times as much emphasis on problem solving as there was on problem framing. [Update: I redid the search today, a little over three years later. On 3/6/2024, I got 542M hits on “problem solving” and 218K hits on “problem framing” — increases in both but the ratio is even worse than it was in 2021] [Second update: I did the search today, Dec. 4th, 2025, and the information was not given–but that’s the subject of a different post].

Let’s think about that ratio of 542 million to 218 thousand for a moment. Roughly, that’s 2000 to 1. If you have wrongly framed the problem, you not only will not have solved the real problem; what’s worse, you will have often convinced yourself and others that you have solved the problem. This will make it much more difficult to recognize and solve the real problem even for a solitary thinker. And to make a political change required to redirect hundreds or thousands will be incalculably more difficult.

All of that brings us to today’s story. For about a decade, I worked as executive director of an AI lab for a company in the computers & communication industry. At one point, in the late 1980’s, all employees were all supposed to sign some new paperwork. An office manager called from a building several miles away asking me to have my admin work with his admin to sign up a schedule for all 45 people in my AI lab to go over to his office and sign this paperwork as soon as possible. That would be a mildly interesting logistics problem, and I might even be tempted to step in and help solve it. More likely, if I tried to solve it, some much brighter & more competent colleague would have done it much faster.

Photo by Charlie Solorzano on Pexels.com

But why?

Why would I ask each of 45 people to interrupt their work; walk to their cars; drive in traffic; park in a new location; find this guy’s office; walk up there; sign some paper; walk out; find their car; drive back; park again; walk back to their office and try to remember where the heck they were? Instead, I told him that wasn’t happening but he’d be welcome to come over here and have people sign the paperwork.

You could make an argument that that was 4500% improvement in productivity, but I think that understates the case. The administrator’s work, at least in this regard, was to get this paperwork signed. He didn’t need to do mental calculations to tie these signings together. On the other hand, a lot of the work that the AI folks did was hard mental work. That means that interrupting them would be much more destructive than it would to interrupt the administrator in his watching someone sign their name. Even that understates the case because many of the people in AI worked collaboratively and (perhaps you remember those days) people were working face to face. Software tools to coordinate work were not as sophisticated as they are now. Often, having one team member disappear for a half hour would not only impact their own work, it would impact the work of everyone on the team.

Quantitatively comparing apples and oranges is always tricky. Of course, I am also biased because my colleagues are people I greatly admire. Nonetheless, it seems obvious that the way the problem was presented was a non-optimal “framing.” It may or may not have been presented that way because of a purely selfish standpoint; that is, wanting to do what’s most convenient for oneself rather than what’s best for the company as a whole. I suspect that it was more likely just the first idea that occurred to him. But in your own life, beware. Sometimes, you will mis-frame a problem because of “natural causes.” But sometimes, people may intentionally hand you a bad framing because they view it as being in their interest to lead you to solve the wrong problem.

Politics, of course, takes us into another realm entirely. People with political power may pretend to solve one problem while they are really following a completely different agenda. One could imagine, for instance, a head of state claiming to pursue a war for his people when he’s really doing it to keep in power. Or, they could claim they are making cities safe by deploying troops when they are really interested in suppressing the vote in areas that can see through his cons. Or, a would-be dictator could claim they are spending your tax dollars to make government more efficient when that has nothing to do with what they are *actually* doing–which is to collect data on citizens and make the government ineffective in order to have people lose confidence in government and instead invest in private solutions.

Even when people’s motivations are noble or at least clear, it is still quite easy to frame a problem wrongly because of surface features. It may look like a problem that requires calculus, but it is a problem that actually requires psychology or it may look like a problem that requires public relations expertise but what is actually required is ethical leadership.

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Author Page on Amazon

Tools of Thought

A Pattern Language for Collaboration and Cooperation

The Myths of the Veritas: The First Ring of Empathy

Essays on America: Wednesday

Essays on America: The Stopping Rule

Essays on America: The Update Problem

My Cousin Bobby

Facegook

The Ailing King of Agitate

Dog Trainers

Measure for Measure

01 Monday Dec 2025

Posted by petersironwood in AI, essay, psychology, science, Uncategorized

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art, context, decision making, Democracy, framing, HCI, photography, politics, problem formulation, problem framing, problem solving, technology, thinking, Travel, truth, USA, UX

(More or Less is only More or Less, More or Less)

Confusing. I know. Let’s unpack.

We like to measure things. And, generally, that can be a very good thing. Once we measure and quantify, we can bring to bear the world’s most incredible toolbox of mathematical, engineering, and scientific methods. However…

Photo by Karolina Grabowska on Pexels.com

It often happens that we can’t really measure what we’d like to measure so instead we measure something that we can measure which we imagine to be a close cousin to what we’d really like to measure. That’s still not a bad thing. But it’s risky. And it becomes a lot more risky if we forget that we are measuring a close cousin at best. Sometimes, it’s actually a distant cousin.

Here’s an example. Suppose a company is interested in the efficient handling of customer service calls (who isn’t?). A typical measure is the average time per call. So, a company might be tempted to reward their Customer Service employees based on having a short average time per call. The result would be that the customer would get back to whatever they were doing more quickly. AND — they wouldn’t have to be on hold in the service queue so long because each call would be handled, on average, more quickly. Good for the customer. The customer service reps would be saving money for the company by answering questions quickly. Some of the money saved will (hopefully) mean raises for the customer service reps. It’s a win/win/win!

Or is it?

Imagine this not unlikely scenario:

The managers of the CSR’s (customer service reps) say that there’s a big push from higher management to make calls go more quickly. They may hint that if the average service time goes down enough, everyone will get a raise. Or, they might set much more specific targets to shoot for.

In either case, the CSR’s are motivated to handle calls more quickly. But how? One way might be for them to learn a whole lot more. They might exchange stories among themselves and perhaps they will participate in designing a system to help them find relevant information more quickly. It might really turn out to be a win/win/win.

On the other hand, one can also imagine that the CSR’s instead simply get rid of “pesky” users as quickly as possible.

“Reboot and call back if that doesn’t work.”

“Sounds like an Internet issue. Check your router.”

“That’s an uncovered item.”

“What’s your account number? Don’t have it? Find it & call back.”

With answers like this, the average time to handle a call will certainly go down!

But it won’t result in a win/win/win!

Users will have to call back 2, 3, 4 or even more times to get their issues adequately resolved. This will glut the hold queues more than if they had had their question answered properly in the first place. Endlessly alternating between raspy music and a message re-assuring the customer that their call is important to company XYZ, will not endear XYZ’s customers to XYZ.

Ultimately, the CSR’s themselves will likely suffer a drop in morale if they begin to view their “job” to get off the phone as quickly as possible rather than to be as helpful as possible. Likely too, sales will begin to decline. As word gets around that the XYZ company has lousy customer service and comparative reviews amplify this effect, sales will decline even more precipitously.

There are two approaches executives often take in such a situation.

Some executives (such as Mister Empathy) may be led to believe that quantification should be less emphasized and the important thing is to set the right tone for the CSR’s; to have them really care about their customers. Often, the approach is combined with better training. This can be a good approach.

Some executives (such as Mister Measure) may be led to believe that they need to do more quantification. In addition to average work time, measures will look at the percentage of users whose problem is solved the first time. Ratings of how effective the CSR was will be taken. Some users might even be called for in-depth interviews about their experience. This can also be a good approach.

There is no law against doing both, or trying each approach at different times or different places in order to learn which works better.

There is a third approach however, which never has good results. That is the approach of Mister Misdirect.

Mister Misdirect’s approach is to deny that there is an issue. Mister Misdirect doesn’t improve training. Mister Misdirect doesn’t put people in a better frame of mind. Mister Misdirect does not add additional measures. Mister Misdirect simply demands that CSR’s continue to drive down the average call time of individual calls and that sales go up! In extreme cases, Mister Misdirect may even fudge the numbers and make it appear that things are much better than they really are. Oh, yes. I have seen this with my own eyes.

Unfortunately, this way of handling things often makes Mister Misdirect an addict. Once an executive starts down the path of making things worse and denying that they did so, they are easily ensnared in a trap. Initially, they only had to take responsibility for instituting, say an incomplete measure and failed to anticipate the possible consequences. But now, having lied about it, they would have to not only admit that they caused a problem, but also that they lied about it.

The next day, when executive wakes up, they have a choice:

1. Own up

2. Continue to deny

If they own up, the consequences will be immediately painful.
If they continue to deny, they will immediately feel relieved. Of course, if they have surrounded themselves with lackeys, they will feel more than simply relieved; they will feel vindicated or even proud. It’s not a “real pride” of course. But it’s some distant relative, I suppose.

For a developer, UX person — or really any worker in an organization, the lesson from this is to anticipate such situations before they happen. If they happen anyway, try to call attention to the situation as quickly as possible. Yes, it may mean you lose favor with the boss. If that is so, then, you really might want to think about getting a new boss. Mister Misdirect will always ultimately fail and when he does, he will drag down a work team, a group, a division, or even an entire company. Mister Misdirect has one and only one framework for solving problems:

Try whatever pops into consciousness.

If it works, take the credit.

If it fails, blame an underling.

But the real fun begins when he takes credit for something and then it turns out it was really a failure. Then, there is only one choice for Mister Misdirect and that is to claim that the false victory was real. From there on, it is Lose/Lose/Lose.

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Author Page on Amazon

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Relevant essays, poems, & fiction about the importance of speaking truth to power:

Pattern Language: “Reality Check”

The Truth Train

The Pandemic Anti-Academic

How The Nightingale Learned to Sing

Process Re-Engineering Comes to Baseball

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Posts on Problem Framing:

How to Frame Your Own Hamster Wheel

Wordless Perfection

Problem Formulation: Who Knows What?

I Went in Seeking Clarity

I Say Hello

Problem Framing: Good Point

Reframing the Problem: Paperwork & Working Paper

The Doorbell’s Ringing! Can you Get it?

An Open Sore from Hell

16 Sunday Nov 2025

Posted by petersironwood in America, poetry

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

coward-ICE, cowardice, Democracy, Dictatorship, fascism, history, life, poem, poetry, politics, truth, USA

Everything is swell

There’s an open sore from hell

Knocking on the door

Don’t bother with the bell

Monsters with a mask

Have a thrilling vital task

Tear apart our nation

Feel the thrill of their elation

Parading as a patriotic posse pod

Parading as the very voice of God

Knocking down the door

Acting as the whore

Of the petty orange melon

Of the child rapist felon

The Puppeteer of Puke

Acting like a Duke

Imagining he’s King

Because his teeny thing-a-ling

The ICEholes just deprave

Nothing noble, nothing brave

To tear apart our should and could

Nothing holy, nothing good

Not the smallest jot of joy

The monster that’s the Monster of Destroy

Thinking its his toy

To militarily deploy

Addictive greed his only creed

In his crusade of self-destruction

Hate and fear and no construction

And the open sore from hell

Doesn’t bother with the bell

Knocking down the walls

Builds a cage of gilded halls

But the people, ah, the people

Can see the void beneath the steeple

Will not go gently into that blank night

Will not forsake the shining light

Will not let the greedy rapists win

Veneers of lies are wearing thin

And soon the king of agitate

Minions spewing lies and hate

Grow weary of their dreary ways

Grow leery of their dead-eyed days

And the people, ah, the people see

What the Not-See Party cannot see

That cancer always loses in the end

The light of love soon will mend

The open sores of cancerous greed

They’re but a self-destructive weed

Who wilts and whines and whinges

When their chief departs his hinges

—————

The Ailing King of Agitate

At Least He’s Our Monster

Absolute is not Just a Vodka

Cancer Always Loses in the End

Dick-Tater-$hits

Imagine All the People

Roar, Ocean, Roar

The Dance of Billions

Destroying Natural Intelligence

Peace

Who Won the War?

We Won the War! We Won the War!

The US Extreme Court

Come to the Light Side

Where Does Your Loyalty Lie?

What About the Butter Dish?

My Cousin Bobby

Labelism

The Game

The Walkabout Diaries

The First Ring of Empathy

Travels with Sadie

The Truth Train

The “Not-See” Party

Travels With Sadie 11: Teamwork

13 Monday Oct 2025

Posted by petersironwood in pets, psychology, Sadie

≈ 9 Comments

Tags

dogs, fiction, GoldenDoodle, life, pets, politics, short story, truth

Typically, I take Sadie for a walk in the morning and again in the evening. Last evening, Sadie went over to an aloe plant on one of our usual routes and stared at it. Then, she tried to stick her nose in it. I should mention that both edges of each aloe leaf have a row of fairly sharp thorns.

(This is the aloe plant in question but I took the picture this morning in full daylight.)

She backed out and stuck her nose into another spot. I went over and saw that there were two tennis balls stuck near the very center of the aloe plant. I knew from her orientation and from her previous behavior that she was after what we call “The Special Ball.” Instead of being a monotone yellow/green, “Special Balls” have two colors. They are also slightly softer. I also have reason to believe that Sadie can smell the difference.

The tennis club uses them for beginners under the theory they are easier to learn with. Being somewhat of a doubting Thomas, I wonder whether there is any empirical evidence of that. Anyway, I hypothesize that Sadie prefers them because they are chewier. It’s also possible that she prefers the smell/taste of them. They also provide a focus for our play.

For instance, if we have three “normal” tennis balls and one “Special Ball,” Sadie likes to keep the “Special Ball” in her mouth and chase after and “corral” the other balls with her body, head, and paws rather than catching them in her mouth. Alternatively, she drops the “Special Ball” and I pick up all four and throw them one at a time for her. I save the “Special Ball” till last. In this version, Sadie will catch each ball in turn and then immediately drop them—until the last throw. She likes to “keep” the “Special Ball” for a time.

Anyway, on the night in question, I told Sadie I would try to get the “Special Ball” for her. She backed off and I tried to thread my hand in between the close-growing thorny leaves to retrieve the ball. Sadie couldn’t safely reach the ball with her snout, but I couldn’t safely reach it with my hand either.

I told Sadie that I would look for a stick to use as a tool. You may think she has no idea what that means, but I have used the word “tool” in conjunction with many instances of trying to reach something I can’t otherwise get. I’ve applied the term to the tennis racquet, the grabber, a long stick, a rake, a back-scratcher, a crutch, and a net for the pool. In each of these cases, the “tool” has been used to get an otherwise hard to reach tennis ball.

On a few occasions, I’ve used the word “tool” in other contexts; for instance, I’ve cautioned both dogs to stay away from the stove top and told them I don’t touch it directly because it’s hot and would hurt me. That’s why, I explain, I use a spatula. I’ve also applied the word “tool” to oven mitts and to knives for cutting.

I have no idea how general her understanding of “tool” is, or whether, indeed, she has any at all. But she consistently backs off trying to reach an out of reach tennis ball when I tell her I will reach it with a tool. And she does that in many contexts. Tonight, she seemed to wait while I looked for a stick. The dusky light fooled my eyes into thinking I had spied a stout stick but closer examination proved it to be merely a holy semi-cylinder of Eucalyptus bark, far too flimsy for the job. I reported on all this ideation to Sadie as it occurred.

In the semi-dark, this looked like a sturdy stick, but alas, no.

Then, I saw a slender bamboo pole. I doubted it was up to the task, but I gave it a try. Unlike most “store-bought” tools like a hammer or machete, I was quite aware that even pushing a tennis ball was going to be pushing this thin pole to its limits. I gave it a try. I gently rolled the ball from one of the center most leaves onto a more peripheral one and repeated this ploy again. Now, Sadie could see that the ball was within her grasp and she snatched it with her teeth. She carried it for a time in her mouth but then I told her I could carry it in my pocket and that I would give it to her when we got home. How much of my assurance she understood from words, from tone, and from body language I have no way of knowing, but she relented and let me store the ball in my pocket till we got home. Of course, I gave it to her once we got inside.

On the walk back, I told her that we were a team and that working together to get something done was called “teamwork.” I have long been in the habit of recounting the highlights of our morning and evening walks to Wendy. I described our little adventure and again used the word “teamwork.”

Does Sadie understand the word “teamwork”? Probably not. Not yet, at least. But if she hears it in enough different contexts, I think her brain will begin to operate appropriately, at least statistically (somewhat like ChatGPT). She seems to understand a lot more than she did when she was one or two years old.

I speak to her much as I would to another person, but I slightly exaggerate as I might if I were on a stage. I also try to use the same terms. For example, I sometimes tell her: “I am going to work on my computer for a while now.” With a person, I might sometimes say, “Now, I’m going to use my laptop” or “I have to get on the MAC now.” With Sadie, I try to use the same wording and intonation each time.

If I want her to accommodate me, I need to accommodate her.