petersironwood

A Day at the HR Department

Essays on America: The Game

One of the most enjoyable aspects of Science Fiction as a genre is that it often shows us problems that might occur in the future. In some cases, it suggests ways to prevent those problems and in some cases, it suggests how these future problems might be dealt with.

Turing’s Nightmares, for instance, comprises 23 short stories that explore the ethics and implications of AI. http://tinyurl.com/hz6dg2d

Dream Planet examines, among other things, the extrapolation of global warming and a radical attempt to stem it. https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/dream-planet-david-thomas/1148566558

FaceGook

The Ides of February

Putin’s Favorite DOG-E

Silent Screams of Dead Men’s Dreams

Namble Mamble Jamble

May You Live in Interesting Times

Plastics!

The Last Gleam of Twilight

The “Not-See” Party

An Open Sore from Hell

Happy Talk Lies

Fraught Framing: The Virulent “Versus” Virus

29 Monday Dec 2025

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

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Climate change, creativity, Democracy, Design, environment, framing, history, innovation, IQ, life, peace, politics, problem formulation, problem solving, school, technology, testing, thinking, TRIZ, truth, USA, war

Fraught Framing: The Virulent “Versus” Virus

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

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

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

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

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

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

woman standing on sand dune throwing hat

Photo by The Lazy Artist Gallery on Pexels.com

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

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

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

Photo by Pok Rie on Pexels.com

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

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

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

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

Photo by Lisa Fotios on Pexels.com

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

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

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

Photo by Zun Zun on Pexels.com

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

They don’t care.

Do you?

—————————-

We Won the War! We Won the War!

Fish have no word for Water

You Must Remember This

Essays on America: The Game

Cancer Always Loses in the End

FREEDOM!

The Loud Defense of Untenable Positions

Where Does your Loyalty Lie?

The Crows and Me

Somewhere a Bird Cries

Imagine All the People

Collide-o-scope

Metaphors We Live and Die By: Part 2

26 Friday Dec 2025

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

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

analogy, cancer, disease, HCI, health, human factors, innovation, metaphor, peace, politics, problem solving, testing, thinking, UX, war

Metaphors We Live and Die By: Part 2

men holding rifle while walking through smoke grenade

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

Today, I want to delve further into the topic of metaphors that we often unconsciously adopt. In particular, I want to look at a common metaphor in four areas: disease, business, politics, and and the role of UX in the entire cycle of product development.

Although I am fascinated by other cultures, my experience is overwhelmingly USA-centric. I am aware that all of the four areas I touch on may be quite different in other countries and cultures. If readers have examples of how different metaphors are used in their culture, I would love to hear about it.

Disease is an Enemy to be Destroyed

In most cases, American doctors view disease as an enemy to be destroyed. In fact, this metaphor is so pervasive that American readers are likely puzzled that I used the verb “view” rather than “is” in the previous sentence. In American culture, there is also a strong thread of another metaphor about disease: “Disease is a punishment.” This latter metaphor is behind such statements as, “Oh, they had a heart attack! Oh, my! Were they overweight? Did they smoke?” Perhaps I will consider this more fully another time, but for now, I want to examine the view that disease is an enemy to be destroyed.

It seems as though it is an apt metaphor. After all, aren’t many diseases caused by other organisms invading our bodies and doing harm? There are many examples: bacteria (Lyme Disease, pneumonia, ulcers, TB, syphilis), viruses (herpes, Chicken Pox, flu, common cold), protozoa (malaria, toxoplasmosis) or even larger organisms (trichinosis, tapeworms, hookworm).

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

When it comes to considering causality, our thoughts usually travel along linear chains of causes. So, we may admit that while Lyme disease is “caused by” Borrelia bacteria, the “deer tick” that spreads the disease is also partly at fault. Similarly, although malaria is caused by a protozoa, the most effective prevention is to reduce the mosquito population or to use netting to keep the mosquitos from biting people. Similarly, you might try to prevent Lyme disease by wearing light clothing, using spray to keep the ticks off, checking for ticks after being in tick infested areas, etc. So, even in common practice, we realize that saying that the little organism causes the disease is an over-simplification.

Once one “gets” a disease, however, the most commonly invoked metaphor is war. We know what the enemy is and we must destroy it! I grant you that is one approach that can be very effective, but consider this. The “human” body contains approximately as many bacterial cells as human cells. What you think of as your “human” body is only half human. It is half bacteria. Furthermore, since we all have trillions of bacteria in us when we are well, the picture of treating bacteria as an enemy to be destroyed is at best an over-simplification. In fact, more recently, medical science seems to indicate that under-exposure to bacteria in childhood can make you more not less susceptible to disease. If you use anti-antibiotics to “destroy” the “enemy” bacteria in your body, many of the “good” bacteria necessary for digestion are also destroyed. This sometimes, though rarely, requires exotic treatment to return to health.

In cancer, both doctors and the general public mainly think of the cancer cells as “enemies” who must be destroyed. And yet, it seems that people may often have mutations that could lead to cancer but don’t. There are even very rare cases of spontaneous cures of cancer. What are some alternatives to thinking of cancer as an “enemy” that must be destroyed?

Clearly, I don’t know of a definite answer or you would have already heard about it on the news. But let’s consider a couple alternatives. First, instead of thinking you have to “destroy” this enemy, imagine you thought of cancer cells as confused. People get confused all the time. Sometimes, we put them in jail. Sometimes we put them in mental hospitals. Sometimes, we simply teach them what they need to know. Sometimes, we do end up killing them. But it is not our approach to kill someone just because they make a mistake. So, we might seek a way to “re-educate” cancer cells so that they “realize” that they are part of something even larger and more wonderful – the human body. How would one go about this? Using the metaphor of a confused person, we would have to understand just why they were acting confused. Then we would have to provide situations so that they could learn (or re-learn) what they needed to know in order to become a productive member of “society.” We could “remind” a liver cell that, after all, they were born to be a liver cell and they’re potentially quite good at that. We could think of cancer as cells that are misinformed or have amnesia about their true nature.

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

We might also think along a different line. We could try to discover the best possible environment for these cancer cells to thrive – and then offer it to them somewhere else. For example, perhaps they really prefer an extremely acidic environment. Say you have a skin cancer on the back of your hand that thrives in a really acidic environment. We could provide a gradient of acidity next to the tumor and encourage all those acid-seeking cancer cells to migrate into a really acid tube that is next to the tumor. The farther away it gets from you, the more acidic the environment.

You might also think of cancer cells as being rebellious. For whatever reason, they “feel” as though they are not experiencing enough of the “good life” being part of your body so they “take matters into their own hands” and begin leading a rebellion of cells out to steal the food supply and multiply in an unrestrained fashion. A solution might be to “convince” them that they are better off retaining their initial function rather than becoming a lawless gang of cells. I am not sure what the best metaphor for thinking about infection or cancer is, but surely it is worth imagining others rather than sticking to just one based on war as a metaphor.

Business is a Sport

I treat this at greater length in The Winning Weekend Warrior, but the basic idea is simple. Yes, there are many strategies and tactics from sports that apply to business. But there is at least one crucial difference. Sports are designed to be difficult. They typically require skill and training if you are to do well. The parameters of the sport are fixed at any given time though they will vary somewhat over time. In golf, for instance, the hole is small and the distances are great. Though the rules of golf are complex, there is one over-arching principle. If it would help you to do something, doing that thing is penalized.

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

If golf were a business, many CEO’s would nonetheless approach it as a sport. They would try to hire the “best people” – that is, people with a proven track record of good golfing. They would then proceed to offer incentives for people to do even better. If people shot a high score repeatedly, they would be fired. Eventually, such a CEO might get good results by having skilled people who are well motivated and well trained. But why? If putting a golf ball in the hole is what gained you profit, simply shorten the fairways, widen the hole, and eliminate the hazards. Of course, as a sport this would make golf no challenge and no fun. Everyone could win. But having everyone win is exactly what you should do to maximize profit. Yet many in management are so taken with the “business is a sport” metaphor that they do not change the situation. Some do “change he game” and with spectacular results. Google and Amazon come to mind.

Politics is War

If you belong to a political party and believe the “other” party or parties are enemies to be destroyed, you are failing to understand the dialectic value that parties with different views can bring to complex situations. Life is a balanced dance between strict replication and structure on the one hand, and variation, exploration, and diversity on the other hand. A species who had no replication of structure from one generation to the next would die off. But so too would a species that had no variation because the slightest change in environment would also cause the species to die off. So it is with human cultures. If every generation had to start from scratch in determining what was edible, how to get along, how to avoid predators and so on, humans would have died out long ago. On the other hand, if a culture were completely unable to evolve and change, they would also die out. Typically, “conservative” parties want to keep things the same for longer and “liberal” parties want to change things more quickly. There is no obvious answer here. But what is vital is that members of each party see that there is value in the debate; in the dialogue; in the dialectic.

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

The other party is not an enemy; it is the balance so that you can do what you do best. If you are predisposed toward exploration, science, new experiences, and so on, great! On the other hand, if you are more predisposed toward tradition and loyalty and repetition, great! If you did not have the people of the opposite predisposition, you would have to incorporate all that within yourself. Conservatives are what allows liberals to be liberal. And liberals are what allows conservatives to be conservatives. A huge problem arises, as it has recently in American politics, when one party decides they are just “right” all on their own and “victory” is worth lying, cheating, and stealing to get it. This is not unique to contemporary America of course. History is littered with administrations who were so convinced that they were “right” that they wanted to destroy all opposition. It has always ended badly. Politics is not war. (Though the failure of politics often leads to war.)

Of course, if a party really does treat all opposition as enemies to be jailed or executed, that’s no longer a “party” at all–that’s a gang of thugs. Throughout history, such gangs of thugs have also attempted to discredit and destroy any honest reporting about what the gang is doing and how it affects others.

UX is All that Matters vs. UX Does Not Matter. Development is war!

As you might guess, neither of these extreme positions is useful. Price matters. Time to market matters. Marketing matters. Having good sales people matters. Having excellent service matters. Having a good user experience matters. It all matters. Depending on the situation, various factors matter relatively more or less.

(Original artwork by Pierce Morgan)

As in the case of political ideologies, it is just fine for UX folks to push for the resources to understand users more deeply; to test interaction paradigms more thoroughly; to collect and observe from more and more users under a wider variety of circumstances. Similarly, while you are pushing for all that and doing your best to argue your case, remember that the other people who are pushing for tighter deadlines, and more superficial testing are not evil; they simply have different perspectives, payoffs, and responsibilities. Naturally, I hope the developers and financial people do not view UX folks as simply “roadblocks” to getting the product out quickly and cheaply either.

The first half of 2018, I tried to catalog many of the “best practices” in collaboration and teamwork. You might find some of these useful if you are embroiled in “UX wars.” You and your colleagues from other disciplines might also find it useful to consider that it is worth taking the time to affirm your common purpose and common ground. You are meant to work together. Development is not war.

Cancer Always Loses in the End

Where does your Loyalty Lie?

At Least he’s Our Monster

The Loud Defense of Untenable Positions

Essay on America: The Game

A Day From Hell

An Open Sore

All we Stand to Lose

Somewhere a Bird Cries

How the Nightingale Learned to Sing

The Ailing King of Agitate

After All

Tools of Thought: Metaphors We Live By & Die By

24 Wednesday Dec 2025

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

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

analogy, Democracy, elections, Feedback, government, life, love, mental-health, metaphor, politics, problem solving, programming, sense-making, thinking, thought, writing

Metaphors We Live By and Die By

PicturesfromiPhone2 087

I love metaphors. I always have. I admit it. I think every youngster does, at least until they are exposed to poetry in English class. I was lucky to have an awesome English teacher who deepened rather than destroyed my natural love of metaphors. There are plenty in my own poems. but in this post, I am not focusing on metaphors for poetry so much as metaphors that we use in our thinking. Metaphors impact the way we approach situations at work and at home. I was influenced to see this by two main sources. First, Lakoff & Johnson’s book, Metaphors we Live By was first published in 1980. This book greatly influenced, among other things, our IBM Research team’s study of human-computer interaction. At this point in the history of human-computer interaction and user experience, researchers and practitioners began to explore how various metaphors (e.g.,desktop, trash can, windows, drag and drop) could be used to help users understand the capabilities of computers and how to invoke them. (See, e.g., 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).

Consider the error messages “Illegal Syntax” and “User Error.” They both put the responsibility for an undesirable state of affairs squarely on the shoulders of the user. “Hey you! User! You did something dastardly! You used illegal syntax.”

man wearing jacket and peaked cap grayscale photo

Photo by Brett Sayles on Pexels.com

Generally, the term “illegal” implies that you did something that was against the law. It usually implies you did something unethical too. Gerry Weinberg, one of the pioneers of UX/HCI (a keynote speaker at the Gaithersburg Conference), pointed out that the “legal” syntax of languages often has arbitrary restrictions. It might be more accurate to have an error message that says, “Our programmers were unable to take the time to allow dates to be entered in European or Chinese format. Please enter dates as MM/DD/YYYY as in 08/04/1961 for August 4th, 1961.” This longer message tells the user what was “wrong” with their input and how to correct it as well as conveying the very real truth that the limitation is with the software, not with the user. Similarly, what is called “User Error” actually comes up as a message when the user does something that seemed reasonable to the user and would most likely be interpretable by another human being but was not anticipated or could not be dealt with by the programming team. Suppose it said instead, “Software error. We did not anticipate this kind of input so we can’t deal with it.” Or, in many cases, a more honest message might be: “Software error. We knew people would want to do this, but we didn’t have budget to program properly.”

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

At the same time I was thinking about metaphors and Human Factors in Computing Systems, I was also conducting therapy as a Fellow at the Institute for Rational Living. I was learning and supervising cognitive behavioral therapy under the direction of Albert Ellis. Here I observed how people used metaphors to help make sense of their lives and make decisions about their lives. For example, as pointed out by Lakoff & Johnson, people often viewed romantic love as a sickness! It is also common to view romantic love as a journey over which you have little or no control. It is understandable why it sometimes feels that way, but such a metaphor is not empowering. It does little to lead you to make reasonable decisions about love or about those whom you love. Think instead of love as a collaborative work of art.

man standing beside his wife teaching their child how to ride bicycle

Photo by Agung Pandit Wiguna on Pexels.com

The “Love is a collaborative work of art” metaphor encourages you to realize that you must collaborate with your partner to make a relationship work over time. You can’t really collaborate very well unless you communicate. It also encourages you to realize that work is involved. It encourages you to realize that it is a creative endeavor. While you can certainly learn from the successes and mistakes of others, in the end, your relationship is unique. It will take creativity to make your relationship work. It puts the responsibility for the relationship on you and your partner, not on forces beyond your control.

It isn’t only love about which people often use inappropriate metaphors. For example, when it comes to overcoming addiction, overeating, under-exercising, people often use sin as their over-arching metaphor. “I was bad last night. I had two pieces of pumpkin pie.” “I was horrible all week. I had those evil donuts every morning.” The metaphor that “eating is evil” is inaccurate. After all, you have to eat to live. Furthermore, that metaphor doesn’t lead to any solutions except to try harder to be “good.” Worse than that, if often subverts a person’s efforts. “I didn’t want to have any ice cream but I did. Oh, well, the night is blown. I may as well eat the whole quart.” (Now that I’ve sinned, I may as well enjoy it). Weight is best thought of in purely physical terms. If you ingest more calories than you burn you will gain weight. If you burn more calories than you consume, you will lose weight. That’s it! (That accounts for almost everything. Intaking more fiber and fluid can have an impact as well as doing *some* light exercise after eating, but it’s mainly just a physics issue). Making it about good and evil does not help and, in my experience, is completely counter-productive.

Photo by Igor Ovsyannykov on Pexels.com

Speaking of counter-productive metaphors, I have been annoyed and concerned for decades that the media have largely (though not wholly) reported on political matters as they report on sporting events. During election season, you will hear relatively little about the candidates, their positions, their backgrounds or their ethics. You will hear a lot about strategy and where they stand in the polls. Often you will literally hear nothing more than a sound bite per day about major candidates. Then, pundits will unendingly discuss and debate how this or that sound bite will work or not work with various voter groups. No matter how outrageous, unethical, or disgusting a candidate’s behavior is, the media will spend most of their coverage on how it will affect the “score.”

Metaphors have consequences.

We now find ourselves in an extremely weird position, at least in America. One candidate has “won” the “World Series” of elections (American Presidency). Many of the people who voted for him think of themselves as his “fans” and “supporters.” They believe their guy “won” so they want to continue to support “their team.” After all, imagine that you are a Yankees fan and the Yankees won the World Series. You get to have bragging rights until the next World Series. If one of the Yankees turns out to be a tax evader, you’re still going to be a Yankees fan. If one of the Yankee pitchers turns out to have cheated during the games, say, by putting illegal substances on the baseball, you’ll still be a Yankees fan. Another Yankee might be a wife beater. But, hey, they won the World Series! So you’re still a loyal Yankees fan.

Photo by Oleksandr Pidvalnyi on Pexels.com

Here’s the thing. It doesn’t make a whole lot of real difference in your life who won the World Series. It doesn’t matter materially to your kids. It doesn’t matter materially to your grandkids. Don’t get me wrong. It will make some difference in how you feel. You and your whole family might be happy they won. But it won’t make the air you breathe cleaner or dirtier. It won’t make the water you and your family drink pure or contaminated with carcinogenic toxins. It won’t make or break the economy. Having the Yankees or Boston Red Sox win the World Series will have zero impact on global climate change. Even if Chicago wins the World Series, it won’t start an atomic war. If the Phillies win, it won’t mean you will lose your health care. Stay loyal to those Yankees! Or to the Green Bay Packers. Or to Manchester United. Or to the India National Cricket Team. Or whoever your favorite team is. Why not?

Politics though, regardless of how it is reported by the news media, is vastly and vitally different from a sporting event! Who is in office can have a huge influence on what happens in the lives of people. In the case of an American President, who is in office can have a huge influence on the lives of people around the globe, not only today and tomorrow, but also for decades to come.

Photo by Element5 Digital on Pexels.com

Collectively, those Americans who voted (about 137.5 million) in the last Presidential election hired someone for a job. (Actually, nearly 63 million voted to hire him while nearly 66 million voted to hire Hilary Clinton). POTUS is an important job and how that person does that job impacts your life in a very real way. It impacts the lives of your friends and your family. It impacts the lives of people around the world. Every action that person takes, every speech they give, every statement they tweet has an impact. You or I might send out a nasty tweet about people. But our nasty tweets are very unlikely to cause someone to construct and send pipe bombs to the people we tweeted about. We have hired someone to do a very important job. It isn’t a sporting event.

Imagine instead of rooting for your favorite sports team that you hired a guy to take care of your kids. To you, that is certainly an important job. After you hire him, you discover that the person you hired lied to get the job. He lies to you every single day. He steals from you! Not only that. Every day, he trashes your house a little more. He has parties at your house and the people he invites include known criminals. Worst of all, this guy you hired is a child molester! That’s obviously a nightmare scenario. What makes it worse is that many people knew that the person you hired was a crook and a child molester.

What do you do when there is a mountain of evidence that he is lying to you; stealing from you; trashing your house; consorting with known criminals; and is a child molester?

Do you keep him on to watch your kids anyway out of a sense of loyalty?

Do you feel so guilty about hiring him that you insist to all your friends and relatives that this guy is doing a great job? (Because, after all, that’s what he keeps saying).

Do you keep him on until he is convicted in a court of law?

Of course you don’t! You fire him immediately.

You have the power to choose the metaphors you use. You don’t have to stick with a metaphor just because it was the first one to occur to you.

Metaphors have consequences. Whether in your personal life, work life, or political life, choose your metaphors with care. Don’t latch on to one simply because it’s the one the mainstream media discovered rakes in the most ad revenue.

Since I first wrote this post about metaphors, there has been a COVID epidemic. According to the respected British medical journal, Lancet, the mishandling of the COVID epidemic in America cost at least 200,000 unnecessary deaths. Treating a pandemic as though it’s just a cosmetic problem that will “magically disappear” like a prom pimple turns out not to be very effective after all.

Elections are not sporting events. You are not simply a “fan.” If democracy and the rule of law in America are to survive, you must be an active participant. Cheering and jeering are not enough.

We Won the War! We Won the War!

Siren Song

The Ailing King of Agitate

After All

An Open Sore

All We Stand to Lose

At Least he’s Our Monster

Stoned Soup

The Tale of the Three Blind Mice

Travels with Sadie: Teamwork

The Walkabout Diaries: Variety

Representation

22 Monday Dec 2025

Posted by petersironwood in America, management, psychology

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

AI, Business, Design, Dictatorship, Feedback, leadership, life, measurement, politics, problem solving, programming, Representation, science, symbol, testing, thinking, truth, writing

Representation

“Choose your words carefully.” We have all heard that advice. It’s good advice and choosing a good representation is key to solving problems, but the general point extends beyond choosing words. Take a few moments now to divide DCXXXV by IX without translating to Arabic numerals. Go ahead. I’ll wait.

A photo I took of a plant in our garden known as “black roses.”

Choosing the “best” representation for a problem depends on the nature of the problem but it also depends on your own skills and experience with a representation. If you have memorized the multiplication tables up to 99 x 99 (rather than only up to 9 x 9), you can use different techniques for multiplication than if you haven’t. If you already know how to program in FORTRAN and LISP, some algorithms will be easier to program in FORTRAN and some will be easier in LISP. But if the only language you know is R, then under most circumstances, it will be far faster and less error prone to use R than to learn another language and then use that one.

Every representation of a real-world situation will necessarily make some features of the situation obvious and other features will be hidden or less obvious. An elevator, for instance, might say, “Capacity: 12 people.” If all of the people are wildly obese, then 12 may not fit into the elevator. The capacity sign is assuming that the people will be somewhat average. If there are 12 adults in the elevator, and one of them is holding a newborn, it won’t make much difference. If there are only 10 people in the elevator and each one has a large suitcase full of gold bullion, there may be room for all 10 to stand, but the total weight of the cargo may exceed the capacity of the elevators, snap the cable, and plummet you to your death. Remember that the next time you get on an elevator filled with folks who have suitcases of gold bullion.

bullion gold gold bars golden — Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

Every representation has its limitations. If you’re familiar with a field, you will hopefully learn to recognize what those limitations are. In a famous book, The Mythical Man-Month, (still worth reading, though it should be called “Person-Month”), Fred Brooks shows that such a metric as “man-month” or “person-month” has serious limitations in planning and executing software projects. Some have paraphrased his message this way: “You can’t use nine women to make one baby in one month.” According to Brooks, who had plenty of experience as a high level manager of large software projects, when management finds that a software project is behind schedule (which is quite often), there are two major reactions of management: 1) require more measurements, reports, and presentations to management and 2) hire more people.

batch books document education — Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

The issue with reaction 1 is partly that it takes time away from the managers and workers in order to make those measurements, prepare those reports and presentations, and to attend the meetings. Beyond that, it puts the focus of attention on those measurements (representations) which will only be at best, modestly correlated with what the real problems are. If, for instance, requirements keep changing, or there are incompatibilities in the requirements, measuring lines of code produced is not only useless in itself; it keeps people from tackling the hard problem. A solution to a hard problem might be telling the client that there can be no more changes in requirements. A solution to a hard problem might be resolving the incompatibility in requirements. One can count lines of code pretty easily. One can count other things like “function points” with a little more work but it doesn’t require getting into the “hard” and people-oriented problems that really need to be solved.

Reaction 2 – adding more people – will put more “resources” on the project. You can easily count the people. You can easily count the hours they work. The problem is that a person-hour is, like the elevator capacity, an over-simplified metric. In fact, it is a much worse representation of the resources on the project than the elevator metric. First of all, studies show that even among programmers with equal training, there are often ten-fold differences in productivity. The second, and even bigger issue is that even really productive programmers who are added late to a project will have to learn about the project: the people, the requirements, and the code base. If these new people are stolen from an existing project, that will also put that project in jeopardy as well. If they are instead new hires, then in addition to all the technical knowledge that they need to come up to speed on, they will also have to learn all sorts of administrivia that will take time and brain space away from the project: how to commute to work, where the cafeteria is, how to fill out time cards. Most likely, they’ll have to attend ethics training, and diversity training, and safety training. Even worse, a lot of the knowledge that they will need to become a productive member of the team mainly exists in the heads of the very people who are doing the programming now! This means that the busiest, most productive people on the project will have to take time away from programming to spend it instead on answering questions that the new people will have.

Even this understated the real impact however. Let’s look at that phrase I just used, “…will have to take time away from programming to spend it instead…” What hidden assumption about representation is buried in this phrase? It gets the reader to think along the lines that time is additive. If I am deeply involved in programming and I get an IM or phone call from a newbie asking me a question about the project, it might take an hour to answer. Does that mean I have subtracted an hour from my own productive programming? No. It’s probably much worse than that. Why? Because I am not a machine, but a human being. It will cost me much more than the hour to get back to the same state of flow that I was in when I was interrupted.

I was involved for a time in looking at programmer productivity for high performance computing using various tools and the X programming language. One of the people I interviewed put it this way: “My manager calls for an hour meeting for 10 am when I am in the middle of a complex [parallel programming] problem. He thinks he’s taken an hour of my time. For him it’s an hour long meeting. But for me, he’s really destroyed the whole morning.”

These representational issues apply far beyond software development. For example, in the USA and in many other countries, we look at GDP as a measure of the economic productivity of the country. But how does this metric shape — or distort — our view of productivity? If a parent stays home with small children and they both love the time together, and the parent uses that time to help grow a loving, educated, productive citizen, it adds to the well-being of the country as well as that child and that parent and that family. But GDP? Nada. If instead, the parent paid money to put the child in mediocre day care, that would add to the GDP.

man and woman holding wine glasses — Photo by rawpixel.com on Pexels.com

Similarly, if I go to the grocery and buy a hard, tasteless tomato for myself, I will pay for the growing of that tomato, advertising it, shipping it, warehousing it, displaying it, and for the genetic alterations so that the tomato, while tasteless, is easy to transport without spoiling. Yay me! I have added to the GDP. But if I go to a friend’s house and taste a wonderful tomato, ask for some seeds or a cutting and grow my own heirloom tomato, watering it lovingly with rainwater, weeding around it, and fertilizing it with compost, I have added zero to the GDP. Yet, the tomato will give me more pleasure, not less, than the croquet balls they have in the store.

Representation is a good thing! Humans use symbolic thinking to do many things that would be difficult or impossible without these kinds of representations. But we must remember the limitations and not confuse reality with our representations of reality.

This is not a new phenomenon. In the American Revolutionary War, high ranking British military officers could not understand why the British navy “refused” to navigate their warships up the Bronx River to attack revolutionary positions upriver. If you’ve ever seen the Bronx River, you’ll realize why immediately. But the maps that the British brass looked at showed a navigable river!

river inside forest near brown leaf trees — Photo by Nashwan guherzi on Pexels.com

Yes, we need to use representation in our thinking. But we also need to think about our representations. You cannot assume that the one that is customarily used is “right” in all circumstances. People of different backgrounds and cultures will often use somewhat different representations of a problem or situation. (This is one of the advantages of diversity). However you do it, it’s worth questioning whether the way you are representing a situation or problem is optimal, or even adequate, for the problem at hand.

Suppose you are measuring “the number of user errors” that users make while using a prototype text editor. You move from prototype A which averaged 10 user errors per half hour test to prototype B which only averages 5 user errors per half hour. Yay! You’ve cut user errors in half! But what if the errors you eliminated were all fairly trivial; e.g., people with version A couldn’t figure out how to number their footnotes with Roman numerals instead of Arabic. In version B, that error, along with other trivial errors, was eliminated. But one of the new errors causes the system to crash and all the user’s work to be lost. Have you really made progress?

All errors are not alike. All dollars are not alike. All people are not alike. Not even all tomatoes are equivalent. We constantly over-simplify and yet in some cases it’s necessary in order to deal with complexity. I don’t see how all such errors can be avoided. But it’s crucial for everyone, but especially for managers and executives, to be open to the cases where the representation that is being used has become counter-productive rather than “doubling down” on such errors. Finding and fixing errors of representation are generally harder to diagnose and fix than errors made with a representation. That is all the more reason why everyone, but especially leaders, must be open to changing the way issues are represented.

It is no accident that dictatorships generally result in nations wherein people have both less material wealth and less enjoyment and freedom. A dictator typically refuses to admit mistakes and fix them even if it means murdering someone to make the problem appear to go away. Ultimately, this process ruins any organization. Such a person need not be a national leader. They can be a company manager, a coach, a corporate executive, or a parent. Everyone makes errors, including errors of representation. But a reasonable person is open to fixing it when new information becomes available. You can be like that too.

sunset beach people sunrise — Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

———————————-

Essays on America: Labelism

Reality Check

Wednesday

Fish have no Word for Water

After All

All We Stand to Lose

A Lot is not a Little

Happy Talk Lies

The Loud Defense of Untenable Positions

At Least he’s Our Monster

Plans for US; some GRUesome

Siren Song

We Won the War! We Won the War!

————————————

Systems Thinking: Positive Feedback Loops

17 Wednesday Dec 2025

Posted by petersironwood in America, creativity, psychology, Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

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

Photo by Jimmy Chan on Pexels.com

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.

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

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.

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

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

Photo by JESHOOTS.com on Pexels.com

“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.

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

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.”

fullsizeoutput_11fc

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.

Photo by Specna Arms on Pexels.com

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

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

————————

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 Walkabout Diaries: Life Will Find a Way

Travels with Sadie 1: Lampposts

Donnie Gets a Hamster

An Open Sore from Hell

At Least he’s our Monster

The Siren Song

Imagine All the People…

You Must Remember This

Stoned Soup

The Three Blind Mice

Wednesday

What About the Butter Dish?

Tools of Thought

14 Sunday Dec 2025

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

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

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

Tools of Thought (Summary and Index)

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

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

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

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

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

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

Here’s an index to the toolkit so far.

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

Many Paths

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

And, then what?

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

Systems Thinking: Positive Feedback Loops

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

Meta-Cognition

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

Theory of Mind

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

Regression to the Mean

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

Representation

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

Metaphors We Live By and Die By

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

Metaphors We Live and Die By: Part 2

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

Imagination

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

Fraught Framing: The Virulent “Versus” Virus

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

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

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

Negative Space

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

Problem Finding

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

The Doorbell’s Ringing! Can you get it?

Reframing the Problem: Paperwork & Working Paper

Problem Framing: Good Point!

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

I Went in Seeking Clarity

Problem Formulation: Who Knows What?

Wordless Perfection

How to Frame Your Own Hamster Wheel

Measure for Measure

The Slow-Seeming Snapping Turtle

A Long Day’s Journey into Hangover

Training Your Professor for Fun & Profit

Astronomy Lesson: Invisible Circles

Tag! You’re it!

Ohayōgozaimasu

Career Advice from Polonius

——————————-

Author Page on Amazon

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

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

Non-Linearity

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

Photo by Kaboompics .com on Pexels.com

Resonance

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

Symmetry

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

Labelism

Wednesday

The Stopping Rule

Finding the Mustard

What about the Butter Dish?

Where does your Loyalty Lie?

Roar, Ocean, Roar

The Update Problem

We won the war! We won the war!

The Impossible

Your Cage is Unlocked

The self-made man

I Went in Seeking Clarity

10 Wednesday Dec 2025

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

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

AI, Artificial Intelligence, coding, parallel programming, problem formulation, problem framing, problem solving, programming, technology, thinking, tools, X10

“I stopped by the bar at 3 A.M.
To seek solace in a bottle or possibly a friend
And I woke up with a headache like my head against a board
Twice as cloudy as I’d been the night before
And I went in seeking clarity” — Lyrics from The Indigo Girls: Closer to Fine

If you think programming is cognitively difficult, try parallel programming. It is generally harder to design, to code, and to debug than its sequential cousin. One of the fun projects I worked on at IBM Research was on the X10 language which was designed to enable parallel programmers to be more productive. Among other things, I fostered community among X10 programmers and used analytic techniques to show that X10 “should be” more productive. Although these analytic techniques are very useful, we also wanted to get some empirical data that the language was, in actuality, more productive.

Photo by Dominika Greguu0161ovu00e1 on Pexels.com

One part of those empirical studies involved comparing people doing a few parallel programming tasks in X10 to those using a popular competitor. But, like many other “chicken and egg” problems, there were no X10 programmers (other than the inventors and their colleagues). I was part of a team who travelled to Rice University in Houston. The design called for one group to spend a chunk of time learning X10 (perhaps half a day) and another chunk of time coding some problems.

Besides the three behavioral scientists like me who were there to make observations, there were also three high-powered Ph.D. computer scientists present who would teach the language. Programmers tend to be very smart. Parallel programmers tend to be very very smart. People who can invent better languages to do parallel programming? You do the math.

Anyway, after the volunteers students had arrived, one of the main designers of the language began to “teach them” X10.

But — there was a problem.

The powerpoint presentation designed to teach the students X10 was far too blurry to read!

Immediately, the three computer scientists tried to issue commands to the projector to put the images in focus. Nothing worked. The three of them began a fascinating problem solving conversation. The conversation concerned what communication protocol(s) among the PC, the projector, and the controller was the likely source of the problem. I suppose it might not have been fascinating to everyone, but it was to me. First, it fascinated me because I was learning something about computer science and communication protocols. Second, it fascinated me because I loved to watch these people think. I suppose many of the advanced computer science students who were in this classroom to learn X10 also found it interesting. Third, I found it fascinating because my dissertation was about human problem solving and I’ve been interested in it ever since.

But the study itself had completely stalled.

After a few minutes of fascinating conversation that did nothing to focus the images, something possessed me to walk over to the projector and turn the lens by hand. The images were immediately clear and the rest of the experiment continued.

The three computer scientists had “framed” the problem as a computer science problem and I found the discussion that sprang from that framing to be fascinating. But one of the part-time jobs I had had as an undergraduate was as a “projectionist” at Case-Western, and it was that experience that allowed me to try framing the problem differently. All of us have huge reservoirs of experience outside of our professional “training” and those experiences can sometimes be important sources of alternative ways to frame a problem, issue, or situation.

———————————-

Essays on America: Wednesday

Essays on America: The Update Problem

Essays on America: The Stopping Rule

Where Does Your Loyalty Lie?

Labelism

Tools of Thought

Stoned Soup

Travels with Sadie: Teamwork

The Primacy Effect and The Destroyer’s Advantage

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

09 Tuesday Dec 2025

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

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

art, communication, conversation, Design, efficiency, HCI, human factors, photography, primacy, problem framing, problem solving, sensemaking, technology, thinking, UX

In the not so distant past, people would often call directory assistance operators. These operators would find a number for you. For an additional charge, they would dial it for you. In fact, this was a very commonly used system. Phone companies would have large rooms filled with such operators who worked very hard and very politely, communicating with what was often a hostile and irrational public.

Customer: “I have to get the number of that bowling alley right near where the A&P used to be before they moved into that new shopping center.”

Operator: “Sir, you haven’t told me what town you’re in. Anyway…”

Customer: “What town?! Why I’m right here in Woburn where I’ve always been!”

There were so many operators that the phone companies wanted their processes to be efficient. Operators were trained to be friendly and genial but not chatty. The phone companies searched for better keyboards and better screen layouts to shave a second here or there off the average time it took to handle a call.

There are some interesting stories in that attempt but that we will save for another article, but here I want to tell you what made the largest single impact on the average time per call. Not a keyboard. Not a display. Not an AI system.

It was simply changing the greeting.

Photo by eberhard grossgasteiger on Pexels.com

Operators were saying something like: “New England Telephone. How can I help you?”

After our intervention, operators instead said, “What city please?” It’s shorter and it’s takes less time to say. But the big change was not in how long the operator took to ask the question. The biggest savings was how this change in greeting impacted the customer’s behavior.

When the operator begins with “How can I help you?” the customer, or at least some fraction of them, are put into a frame of mind of a conversation. They might respond thusly:

“Oh, well, you know my niece is getting married! Yeah! In just a month, and she still hasn’t shopped for a dress! Can you believe it? So, I need the number for that — if it were up to me, I would go traditional, but my niece? She’s — she’s going avant-garde so I need the number of that dress shop on Main Street here in Arlington.”

Photo by Tuu1ea5n Kiu1ec7t Jr. on Pexels.com

With the “What City Please?” greeting, the customer was apparently put into a more businesslike frame of mind and answers more succinctly. They now understand their role as proving information in a joint problem solving task with the operator. A typical answer would now be:

“Arlington.”

“In Arlington, what listing?”

“Dress shop on Main Street.”

The way in which a conversation begins signals what type of conversation it is to be. We know this intuitively. Suppose you walked up to an old friend and they begin with: “Name?” You would be taken aback. On the other hand, suppose you walk up to the line at the DMV and the clerk says, “Hey, have you seen that latest blog post by J. Charles Thomas on problem framing?” You would be equally perplexed!

Conversation can be thought of partly as a kind of mutual problem solving exercise. And, before that problem solving even begins, one party or the other will tend to “frame” the conversation. That framing can be incredibly important.

Even the very first words can cause someone to frame what kind of a conversation this is meant to be.

Words matter.

https://petersironwood.com/2018/02/13/context-setting-entrance/

Essays on America: Wednesday

After the Fall

The Crows and Me

Cancer Always Loses in the End

Come Back to the Light

Imagine All the People…

How the Nightingale Learned to Sing

Travels with Sadie

The Walkabout Diaries: Bee Wise

Donnie Visits Granny!

You Must Remember This