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~ Finding, formulating and solving life's frustrations.

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Take Me For A Ride in the Car Car!

26 Saturday Feb 2022

Posted by petersironwood in Uncategorized

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collaboration, cooperation, Democracy, Dictatorship, essay, problem solving, Ukraine, USA

Do you remember the song, “Take me for a ride in the car car”? Here’s a link to one popular version. Peter, Paul, & Mary also sang it. Nice song. But you may have experienced it being repeated too often. At a certain age, some kids seem to discover that they can be really annoying simply by singing a song over and over and over and over. 

When I was in my early teens, I took a car trip with my Uncle Paul and his wife and three kids out to see his brother Bob who headed up a psychiatric hospital in Pennsylvania. It was a long drive. At some point, to pass the time, we sang some songs. When the last song was over, Paul’s youngest son began to make up new verses for one of the songs. At first, it was rather cute to watch him try to build a story, rhyme, and keep in tune, none of which he actually succeeded in. But after about a quarter hour, he began to annoy people with his off-key, non-rhyming, senseless continuations of the song. After about a half hour he was annoying everyone. After an hour, we began to discuss leaving him by the side of the road and returning in another ten years to see whether he was still there. 

On car trips, we used to play a number of games to pass the time; e.g., seeing how many different states license plates we found find. Later, I learned to play “The Alphabet Game.” There are several versions, but basically, you must find, in order, the letters of the alphabet from passing cars, signs, etc. Stuff inside your own car cannot be used. (You could easily find all the letters in a book or magazine). I’ve learned to know where to look for J, Q, and Z. I’ve been in cars where we played twenty questions, Botticelli, Buzz, and Ghost. When I was a kid, I also simply looked out the window to entertain myself. Sometimes, I would imagine that the dotted lines that divide the lanes were like tracer bullets shot from our car. Then, I would watch to see whether another car got “blown up” because they crossed our fire. I would also imagine myself “flying” alongside the car, having to bob and weave to avoid telephone poles, trees, signposts, etc. 

Traveling in a car with a family or with a group of friends or your car pool is potentially a social opportunity as well as an opportunity to save money. Since you’re in the same car, you need to agree on destination. To some extent, you need to agree on temperature & what to do about the windows. As a kid, everyone also lived in the same “sonic space.” We would have to “agree” on a game or on a radio station. This is no longer the case. Now, often times, everyone in the family may have their own individual entertainment. Is that a good thing or a bad thing? 

Even in the modern day, driving in a car with others is different from driving in a car on your own. If you’re by yourself, you can decide on the temperature and entertainment without having to take into account anyone else’s wishes. If others are in the car, some kind of negotiations have to take place. 

At least, that’s what most people do. You could decide: “Hey! It’s my car so I’m going to drive and I get to determine everything about our common space — temperature, entertainment, windows, whether we stop, etc.” This is what is known in academic circles as the “A$$hole theory of cooperation”: Get everything you possibly can for yourself and to hell with everyone else. And after all, they’re doing the same exact thing. 

Notice too that to some degree, the amount of accommodation you have to do depends on how much humanity is in the car besides yourself. It also depends on how “luxurious” your vehicle is. If you have a tour bus or a camper, six people might be relatively comfortable. If it’s a VW bug, you won’t be. You’ll not only be crowded; you’ll have to be careful every time you move not to accidentally elbow someone in the eye. Have you ever been in that crowded of a situation for hours at a time or even days at a time? 

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It isn’t just cars. In general, the more people occupy a given space, the more they are going to have to cooperate in order to survive and thrive. You can provide individuality support with technology, up to a point. In a way, clothing is like that. We can peacefully co-exist in a car without either of us compromising out comfort because I can wear a sweater and you can wear a thin shirt. You can provide everyone an iPhone and everyone can play their own game without having to agree on a common game. Of course, there’s a downside to that. First, we don’t have practice getting along with others. Second, we don’t share a common experience. 

Even if the “typical” family of four interrupts their car trip and stops for lunch and agrees to talk, they are likely coming from very different places. Dad has been listening to Mozart and was in good mood until he suddenly remembered he was supposed to have sent out a memo to everyone in the department about last month’s sales figures. Damn. Maybe he can do it from the Motel but it will take longer than it would have at work. His son Sam, meanwhile, was trying to use sexting to convince his girlfriend to “take their relationship to the next level.” As a result, they just broke up. Dad doesn’t know a thing about that; nor does Sam know anything about why Dad suddenly seems put out. Mom meanwhile, was listening to Fox “News” where she “learned” that it’s Biden’s fault Putin “had to” attack the Ukraine because Biden was too tough on Russia and also too easy. Her daughter Sally, on the other hand, has spent the last 45 minutes on twitter learning about the Putin invasion. She is wondering whether atomic war might start. 

Now, they stop for lunch. That’s nice. And, maybe they’ll talk about something common; perhaps the weather, or the scenery or the food. But they might just revert to what they were doing before they got together at the restaurant. Even if they all have the willpower to put away their personal devices, they are still coming from very different places emotionally and experientially. Dad might make a comment about how he forgot to write an important e-mail and he’ll have to do it from the Motel. Sam just shakes his head and says, “Important e-mail? My life is ruined! What do you care?” 

Dad might say, “What do you mean by saying that your life is ruined?”

Sam might even share, “Jackie broke up with me!” 

Dad, meaning well, and wanting to offer a solution before he starts reminiscing about his own high school days, blurts out: “Oh, Sam, don’t worry about it! You’ll have another girlfriend in a week.” 

That may well be empirically true. But to Sam? He feels he has just lost the love of his life. His father’s comment seems to him to be dismissive of his feelings to the point of cruelty.  

Sally pipes up, “How can you be worried about such trivial things as e-mail and dates when we might be blown to smithereens at any moment? Do you ever pay any attention to the world outside yourself? Putin is a monster killing innocent civilians so he can slake the thirst of his pathetic ego!” 

Mom is taken aback. The only news she doesn’t dismiss as “lies that are out to get Trump” has been Fox “News” for the last few years. She says, “Don’t be saying bad things about Putin! He’s a nice man who just wants his Ukraine back.” 

Sally’s jaw drops. “Are you serious! He kills journalists who write the truth about him. He’s a corrupt crime lord. He played Trump like a fiddle … no … not that complicated … played him like a drum … no … still too complicated … played him like the triangle. You know. Bang it every once in awhile and it reverberates. Anyway, it isn’t “his” Ukraine. It belongs to the Ukrainian people!”

Some families are better at getting through all this than others. These four have not shared a common experience and are coming from very different places. If they have no practice playing a game according to a common set of rules, what chance to they have to settle deeper differences? 

Maybe avoiding little conflicts by giving everyone their own personal entertainment device means that when much bigger and more difficult conflicts arise, no-one remembers how to resolve things. Why shouldn’t everything by how I want it? Let others do the same! Let the best man win!

Except, of course, it isn’t the best man or woman who actually wins in a land where no-one plays by the rules. It’s the most corrupt. And the net result of everyone spending so much time competing and so little, if any, time cooperating is that nothing much is actually accomplished. It doesn’t even work very well in a small group. In a large nation, a dictatorship is almost invariably associated with less for everyone except the dictator and the immediate surround. Dictatorships do sometimes manage to steal from neighbors who are productive because they are cooperative. If all countries were dictatorships, they would all perish, probably in atomic war, but possibly in ecological collapse or just mass suicide. 

In 2018, I worked on a “Pattern Language” for collaboration and cooperation. Here’s a link to an index of the Patterns. One of them is called “Small Successes Early.” Should I be worried that we seem to be moving into a world where there are fewer and fewer opportunities for peacefully resolving small conflicts? Avoiding unnecessary conflict seems like a good thing. But … is the downside that people have no practice resolving conflicts? And, is the further downside, that people eventually end up with huge differences in their notions of reality when it really matters? It seems to be the very thing that Faux News has been counting on; that people would not only listen to them but not listen or dismiss any other views. As a result, people end up with very different models and explanations of the world. That is always a bad thing, but in a world where people are unpracticed at resolving conflicts, it’s even more problematic.

There is always a tradeoff between cooperating as a whole and letting each individual do as they wish. One thing seems crystal clear. As the number of people in your car increases, their individual freedom to do just as they please decreases. So, too, with the world. In my own lifetime, the population of the world has quadrupled. Of course, it’s not equally distributed. People are more concentrated in cities than ever before. Many of these cities are located on ocean coasts. What does the continuation of global warming mean to population migration and crowding?

I’m not sure how many people realize this, but we’re still in a pandemic. If people were very sparsely populated, we probably wouldn’t be. But as we continue to get more crowded, humanity will become more susceptible to pandemics. That in turn, means people will have to accommodate to each other’s needs. As a background rule, a person can choose to wear what they want. There are, of course, many exceptions to that. In many situations, you have to wear a shirt and shoes. In some situations, you have to wear a suit and tie or a uniform. If you might be spraying germs at other people, it seems totally reasonable to change your behavior or clothing to minimize that spread. But some people apparently think that they should be able to do exactly as they want regardless of the consequences to others.

Toddlerhood Nation

As the earth becomes more crowded, we need to be more cooperative, not less. The presence of a large number of deadly weapons also makes it more important to cooperate. The race to ensure survival by having ever larger numbers of ever more deadly weapons is not a path toward that greater cooperation. Dictators, for instance, tilt toward war to consolidate their power.



Create Peace

Author Page on Amazon

Absolute is not just a vodka

Where does your loyalty lie? 

My Cousin Bobby

The Stopping Rule

The Update Problem

Essays on America: Wednesday

Myths of the Veritas: The Orange Man

Myths of the Veritas: The Three Blind Mice

Myths of the Veritas: Stoned Soup

Tools of Thought

20 Wednesday Oct 2021

Posted by petersironwood in Uncategorized

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index, problem solving, summary, thinking, tools of thought

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, 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. 

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.”

https://petersironwood.com/2018/12/05/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?

https://petersironwood.com/2018/12/06/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.

https://petersironwood.com/2018/12/07/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.

https://petersironwood.com/2018/12/08/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.

https://petersironwood.com/2018/12/09/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.

https://petersironwood.com/2018/12/10/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.

https://petersironwood.com/2018/12/11/representation/

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

https://petersironwood.com/2018/12/12/metaphors-we-live-by-and-die-by/

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

https://petersironwood.com/2018/12/13/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.

https://petersironwood.com/2018/12/14/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.

https://petersironwood.com/2018/12/16/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. 

https://petersironwood.com/2018/12/17/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?

https://petersironwood.com/2018/12/17/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.

https://petersironwood.com/2018/12/18/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. 

https://petersironwood.com/2021/01/12/the-doorbells-ringing-can-you-get-it/
https://petersironwood.com/2021/01/13/reframing-the-problem-paperwork-working-paper/
https://petersironwood.com/2021/01/14/problem-framing-good-point/
https://petersironwood.com/2021/01/16/i-say-hello-you-say-what-city-please/
https://petersironwood.com/2021/01/16/i-went-in-seeking-clarity/
https://petersironwood.com/2021/01/18/problem-formulation-who-knows-what/
https://petersironwood.com/2021/01/20/wordless-perfection/
https://petersironwood.com/2021/01/22/how-to-frame-your-own-hamster-wheel/
https://petersironwood.com/2021/01/28/measure-for-measure/
https://petersironwood.com/2021/02/01/the-slow-seeming-snapping-turtle/
https://petersironwood.com/2021/02/03/a-long-days-journey-into-hangover/
https://petersironwood.com/2021/02/04/training-your-professor-for-fun-profit/
https://petersironwood.com/2021/02/05/astronomy-lesson-invisible-circles/
https://petersironwood.com/2021/02/08/tag-youre-it/
https://petersironwood.com/2021/02/18/ohayogozaimasu/
https://petersironwood.com/2021/03/20/career-advice-from-polonius/

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Author Page on Amazon

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

https://petersironwood.com/2018/12/20/non-linearity/

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

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https://petersironwood.com/2018/12/20/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.

https://petersironwood.com/2018/12/23/symmetry/

All Around the Mulberry Bush

29 Thursday Apr 2021

Posted by petersironwood in Uncategorized

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problem solving, systems thinking, tree, vicious circle

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“How are the burgers coming, Babe?” The aroma was literally making her mouth water. She strolled out onto the deck, a cold martini in each hand. “Here you go, Babe.”

“Thanks sweetheart! They — are — ready! Bring your buns right over here!” Ted laughed at his own wit. Darla didn’t particularly find it funny, but what the hell. A beautiful, warm, late afternoon. Don’t spoil things over nothing, Darla she told herself.

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Soon Darla and Ted downed — yes, that’s the right word — not, “sipped” — “downed” their icy cold martinis and began to chomp right in on their burgers. Darla smiled as a bit of blood dribbled down her chin. Ted motioned at his own chin and looked at her in just that way that each pair in a couple learns to read as: “Honey, you’ve got food on your face…right…here!” 

She patted at the dribbled meat blood and tried to put her napkin on the wooden table, but her fingers stuck to the oil sticky napkin and it fell to the wooden deck. Darla bent to pick up her napkin and that’s when she noticed it.

Darla had one of those minds that is often impervious to things around her. She might not notice, for instance, that a particular picture is off-kilter for weeks, months, or years — not even if she walks by it every single day. But once she realizes that it is off-kilter, she will stop at nothing to straighten the painting immediately. Then she would feel pride as she said to herself, There you go, Darla, old girl. Fixable problem. Fixable problem. You did it. It was a useful phrase and a useful habit that she had picked up from her mother. Find and solve fixable problems. 

So it was with the deck. It was July. They had been eating outside on this same deck five out of seven nights for many weeks. Yet, she had never before noticed how faded the staining was nor how splintery some of the boards had become. 

Mid-burger, Darla pulled out her cellphone and called her aunt Helena who knew her own business like the back of her hand and everyone else’s even better. She smiled at Ted. “I just found a fixable problem,” she said. She got the name of a reliable contractor and the next morning scheduled work to start. 

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It was expensive — and they couldn’t use their deck for a few months. But Ted agreed that it had been worth it. The deck looked 1000% better. Totally worth it. 

The only slight problem was that the lumber had been heavy which required a heavy truck to come down their driveway. Which had pretty well demolished the too-thin concrete. When, at last, the work was done and deck was redone, Darla noticed the serious unevenness and cracks. “Well, that’s a fixable problem,” Darla muttered to herself. Sure enough, with a few weeks, Darla had found a contractors to pour a new and stronger concrete driveway. The new driveway was unbroken, stronger, smoother, and — coincidentally — made a much effective barrier to the nearby tree roots. The new, unbroken concrete helped prevent water and air from reaching the roots of the tree. 

At first, the tree, in her tree-like way, was terrified. She thought she might die of thirst. But her ancestors had been searching for water for tens of millions of years. She found a new source. Her roots found the teeniest of cracks in the sewer pipe and entered, grew strong with the nearby nutrients. The tree was relieved. 

The tree had no idea, we imagine, that 22 days later, the toilets in the house would begin to back up. But they did. At first, Darla thought that their dog, Lauren, must have hidden a dead animal in the house. But no. The smell was much worse. 

When they found no pet, Darla thought perhaps Ted was simply eating more red meat than usual and that it was his sweat that stunk up the house. But he denied it. At last, the source of the smell was visible as well as odiferous. 

Luckily, it proved to be just another fixable problem. The plumbers fixed the sewer pipes. At least from the human perspective.  

From the tree’s perspective, her roots were still denied access to water, air, and nutrients trapped near the surface. She kept searching, but eventually, it became clear to her that she would have to cut her losses so she concentrated on growing what she could. Half the tree weakened, sickened, and died. 

The August storm was not unusually strong. But it was strong enough. 

Strong enough to split the tree. Hundreds of pounds of pine tree dove onto the new deck, smashing it to smithereens. 

When Ted and Darla later went to survey the damage, Darla picked up a toothpick sized smithereen. She turned it in her fingers and began, “Well, at least, it’s … “ But at that point she looked into Ted’s eyes and thought it wiser — much wiser —  not to finish that particular sentence. 

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Naughty knots

The Forest 

The Teeth of the Shark

Life Will Find a Way

What About the Butter Dish

https://petersironwood.com/2020/03/02/dont-they-realize-how-much-better-off-they-are-now/amp/

Comes the Reign

The Tree of Life

Ohayōgozaimasu

18 Thursday Feb 2021

Posted by petersironwood in Uncategorized

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culture, decision making, problem finding, problem formulation, problem framing, problem solving

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One way to mis-frame a problem is to use your own cultural framing when you are in another cultural context. Of course, most of us recognize that different languages are spoken in different places. Communication is much more time-consuming and error-prone when you are speaking different languages. But the frameworks that we use can also be different and those can be more subtle. 

The first time I visited Japan, around 1977, I had spent some time learning something of the Japanese language before arriving. I had had some experience learning French and a bit more learning German. As a native speaker of English, when you learn a German word or a French word, you can generally find cognates in your own native language for most German or French words. I find that helps me recall the German or French word. 

For instance, my first word as a child was supposedly “Moon.” In German, “the moon” is “der Mund.” The vowel sound is very close to that in the English “moon” so it’s fairly easy to remember. In French, “the moon” is “la lune” which sounds very similar to “the moon” but is also related to the English words “lunar”, “lunacy” (people used to believe too much time in the moonlight could drive you crazy” “lunette” (an architectural space shaped like a half moon), etc. 

These similarities are not surprising because English grew out of the Germanic Anglo-Saxon but was heavily influenced after the Norman Conquest of 1066 by French. Typically, English has words related to both the French word for something and the German word. For example, in English we have the word “hand” which is similar to the German “die Hand” and we have the words “manual,” “maintain,” and “manicure” which are similar to the French for “le main.”

In fact, this duality is so common, that if you happen to know that the German word for “the forest”is “der Wald” (which is like “the woods”) then you can be fairly certain that the French word will be similar to “forest” and indeed we have “la forêt” in French. Or, if you happen to know that the French word for the English “the foot” is “le pied” (which is similar to “pedicure” and “podiatrist”) you can guess that the German word will be close to “the foot” and, indeed, it is “der Fuß.” 

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When it comes to Japanese, however, these kinds of mind games are not possible. In a few cases, foreign words have been adopted by Japanese. “Coffee” for example is “kōhī” but apart from a few such cases, you won’t be able to use your knowledge of Indo-European languages to much advantage in learning Japanese. 

If you enter a “Restaurant” in Berlin or a “Restaurant” in Paris, you will not only see many English words, you will be almost certainly following the same “script” for how things happen at a restaurant in England, American, Australia, or Canada. You go in. You are typically greeted near the door by a host or hostess. You are shown to your table. You are given a menu. You order off the menu. Your meal is brought to you; you eat; you get a bill; you pay your bill. You leave.

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When I went to have my first breakfast in Japan, I went with dictionary in hand. I knew I had not come anywhere close to learning enough of the language to manage on my own. But what I had not counted on was that the “script” for eating in that particular restaurant was quite different from what I was used to in America. 

I went in, and sure enough, I was greeted by my host. “Ohayōgozaimasu” which basically means “Good morning.” She didn’t seem to be in any hurry to show me to my table, however, so I began to walk past her and find a table on my own. She again said, “Ohayōgozaimasu!” But, this time, she said it, a little more insistently; indeed, she moved as though to block my entry. I checked my little Japanese guidebook and again said, “Ohayōgozaimasu!” I said it a bit more enthusiastically and distinctly this time, sure that I had mispronounced it slightly and that was causing some confusion. I moved to walk past her and this time she once again said “Ohayōgozaimasu!!’ She bracketed this with some other things that were not in the guidebook and that I did not understand. And, this time, there was no mistaking it. She was actually blocking me from entering the restaurant! 

Two things occurred to me. First, I must not have said “good morning” correctly. Second, I must have said “good morning” without being sufficiently polite. I tried again, this time, being sure to bow to her and she had bowed to me. 

No. Something else was going on. 

Eventually, she explained to me with Japanese and gestures that there was a completely different script in play. Here, you were supposed to go in where the hostess greeted you and then you were meant to immediately pay the price of breakfast. In return, you receive a wooden token. You walk in, choose your own place to sit, and display your wooden token on the table conspicuously. Then, at some point, your breakfast arrives. You eat your breakfast and then you leave. When do you order? You do not order at all, because everyone has the same breakfast! 

Next time you find yourself confused by what is happening, you might consider that you are playing a part in a very different script. 

By the way, a traditional Japanese breakfast is probably my very favorite breakfast. Yes, I love pancakes. Yes, I love bacon and eggs. But, I not only love eating a Japanese breakfast. I love how I feel afterwards: satisfied, clean, healthy, and not sluggish from being overfed. What is shown in the photo below is close to what I had. The main difference is that I was given a raw egg, not tamago. As recently as 1977, raw eggs did not presumptively have salmonella. 

You may or may not ever have the pleasure of visiting Japan. If you do, I can pretty much guarantee that you make some sort of cultural faux pas. If you do, you may or may not realize it, because, generally speaking, Japanese are polite and will cut you more slack than if someone brought up in Japan did as you did.

And, speaking of guaranties, I would be surprised if you did not at some point find yourself not understanding the “language” of those you were working with who came from a different background or discipline. Sure, some words will be similar. Others won’t. And the worst will be words that are spelled and sound the same but in fact refer to different concepts. For example, in my field, psychology, the word “reinforcement” has a very specific meaning that is similar but distinct from its daily usage. The word “force” in physics means something quite different and more objectively measurable that the “force” of an argument or my using “force” to get my way. 

Photo by Andrea Piacquadio on Pexels.com

Even more subtle traps, some inadvertent, arise because people you collaborate with may have different cultures. In my research roles, for example, it came to pass that I had occasion to interact with people with a business background. In some cases, I was asked to present a “business case” to show how a product or research program would have a good ROI. They wanted me to mathematically “prove” an idea financially worthwhile. 

Only they did not really want a “mathematical proof” in the sense that a mathematician (or a research psychologist) means “mathematical proof.” Of course not! How could they. They want reasonable assumptions with some back up and a plausible story, laced with math, that can be used to support their decision to their management. If I had a “mathematical proof” that they could not understand, they would be unable to use it with their management. Partly, this is a case of a word meaning different things, but more, it is a story about two different cultures.

Photo by Polina Tankilevitch on Pexels.com


Business propositions can never be proven to be wise ahead of time. Unlike the frictionless plane of the physicist or the “controlled lab experiment” of the psychologist, or the well-defined axiomatic system of the mathematician, actual business outcomes can be impacted by a huge number of unpredictable factors; e.g., weather, legal actions, public relations disasters, etc. In addition, a scientist usually has a longer time-frame in mind. While the business decision maker only needs to explain or persuade a layer or two of management who will typically spend less time and have less expertise than the presenter, the scientist must be prepared to present her or his work to the most brilliant and experienced people in the field.

These and other natural differences between “business thinking” and “science thinking” lead to different cultures. In 1977, when I visited my colleagues in Japan who worked in Human-Computer Interaction, I felt more akin to them while talking about computing than I did to my next door neighbors back home who worked in sales or construction. 

Every field develops its own culture. 

Be aware. Be respectful. 

Photo by Bagus Pangestu on Pexels.com

—————————————————-

The Invisibility Cloak of Habit

Introduction to a Pattern Language for Collaboration and Cooperation

Index to a Pattern Language for Collaboration and Cooperation 

The Myths of the Veritas: The Forgotten Field 

https://petersironwood.com/2020/03/20/the-mysterious-american-continental-breakfast/

https://petersironwood.com/2020/04/05/imagine-all-the-people/

https://petersironwood.com/2020/04/21/choosing-the-script/

https://petersironwood.com/2020/11/28/take-a-glance-join-the-dance/

https://petersironwood.com/2020/07/25/the-only-them-that-counts-is-all-of-us/

https://petersironwood.com/2020/11/03/opponent-does-not-mean-enemy/

https://petersironwood.com/2020/04/25/process-re-engineering-moves-to-baseball/

Author Page on Amazon

Tag! You’re it!

08 Monday Feb 2021

Posted by petersironwood in Uncategorized

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BLM, Design, empathy, HCI, problem formulation, problem solving, UX

As I mentioned before, one of my part-time jobs during my Senior year in college was as a teaching assistant at the Supplementary Educational Center (SEC) in Cleveland. In addition to actual teaching, I did a variety of other chores as well including erecting and painting walls, setting up lighting, putting up NASA exhibits, etc. One of the worst tasks I was assigned was putting a straight pin into each one of a billion variously colored squares of construction paper. 

No, there weren’t really a billion. It just seemed that way. I sat at a desk with a very large pile of these 3” x 4” pieces of paper on my left and a large supply of straight pins straight ahead. I picked up a rectangle of paper, picked up a pin and poked it through in two places so that friction held the pin in place. Then I placed it in a pile on my right. I picked up another piece of paper and did the same thing. Again. And again. After awhile, I looked down and noticed that there was a large pile of these pinned pieces of paper on my right — and none left undone on the right. But I only “noticed” doing the first several. After that, my brain took a vacation. 

It’s not the only time my brain has taken a vacation when faced with a boring task. If I had a heavy industry job on an assembly line, I have no doubt that I’d be mangled or dead within a week. I just “tune out” of the task at hand. Perhaps you have experienced something similar while driving a well-known route. You get in your car to drive home from work — and then — you find yourself at home — and you have no conscious recollection of driving home! It’s an interesting phenomenon but not the one I’m going to explore in this post. 

Hopefully, you are also curious about why I had been assigned the task of putting these pins in all the various pieces of colored paper. 

Here’s the deal. The school system of Cleveland, like many others at the time, was very racially divided. There were many neighborhoods in the Cleveland area that were nearly 100% black and others which were nearly 100% white. One of the goals of the SEC was to bring kids from various neighborhood schools together so that they could have at least some experience interacting with kids of different races and ethnic backgrounds. Sadly, the situation is pretty much the same today as the map below from 2018 shows. (Red are majority black areas; orange are Hispanic; Green is Asian; Blue codes for white).

https://www.clevescene.com/scene-and-heard/archives/2018/05/10/new-data-map-reminds-us-cleveland-is-hyper-segregated
 
  So, cast your mind back to your time in the sixth grade (about 10-11 years old, typically). One day, you get in a bus and ride to downtown Cleveland and go into the Supplementary Educational Center and there are kids there from two other neighborhoods — kids you’ve never seen before and will likely never see again. Are you going to hang out with your friends? Or, are you going to walk up to some total stranger — of a different race — and introduce yourself and hang out with them for the day while you learn about American history or space science? I don’t have any conscious recollection of ever being a racist, but I have no doubt whatever that I would spend time with my own classmates; in fact, I would hang out with a subset of my classmates who were my friends. 

Guess what?



That’s exactly what the kids did as well. They hung out with their friends. The administrators of the SEC eventually noticed this and constructed a social engineering “solution.” They gave every kid who entered a tag of green, blue, yellow, or red. For the day, at least, the “greens” would be with each other. The “blues” would hang out together with other “blues.” And so on. 

Thus my assigned task of putting pins so that the kids would have a tag that they could pin on their clothes. This way, so the thinking went, people from diverse neighborhoods would end up in the “green” group. Sounds reasonable in theory.

If you’ve never actually been a kid. 

Or, if you’ve been a kid but have nonetheless convinced yourself that you weren’t. 

Or, if you’ve been a kid but you never think back on your actual experience in order to inform your design decisions when you’re designing for kids. 

Cast your mind back to when you were ten or eleven years old. You get on a bus and ride to downtown Cleveland and as you walk in the door of the Supplemental Educational Center, you’re handed a red tag and the two friends you typically hang out with are handed a green tag and a yellow tag. You discover that these tags will determine who you get to hang out with for the day. 

What would you do? 

I can tell you what the kids at the SEC did.  They immediately traded tags with other kids so they could still hang out with their own friends! Mostly, they could do this with kids in their own school. On rare occasions, they also went to kids from other schools in order to get the “right” tags so they could hang out with their friends. At least for a few moments, some of them did actually interact transactionally with kids of other races long enough to trade tags. 

Please understand. The administrators and teachers at the school weren’t dummies. But … ? Did they really think this ploy would work? 

I’m not saying that empathy is an infallible guide in design. Things change. It’s possible that your experience as a child would be quite different from what children today would do. Technology changes; culture changes; nutrition changes. 

Nonetheless, thinking back to your own experience as a child should at least be consulted when you’re designing for kids. Your experiences are vast. You can not only think back about your experience as a kid. You can think back about your own experiences of being thirsty or hungry or afraid or angry. If you’re designing for users who might be experiencing these states, that can be useful information. 

I’ll say it again. Your own experience is not an infallible guide. User testing is still necessary. Just because you might have liked something doesn’t mean others will. On the other hand, when it comes to any real world problem, the design space is huge. You can use your own experience as an inspiration to design and you can also use it as a first level check on design ideas. 

————————————————

Myths of the Veritas: The First Ring of Empathy

Author Page on Amazon

https://petersironwood.com/2020/02/26/race-place-space-face/

https://petersironwood.com/2020/03/02/dont-they-realize-how-much-better-off-they-are-now/

https://petersironwood.com/2020/03/27/the-most-serious-work/

https://petersironwood.com/2020/05/24/blood-red-blood/

https://petersironwood.com/2020/06/15/answers-to-your-many-questions/

https://petersironwood.com/2020/07/13/who-are-the-speakers-for-the-dead/

https://petersironwood.com/2020/12/14/how-the-nightingale-learned-to-sing/

https://petersironwood.com/2020/02/24/the-pie-of-life/

https://petersironwood.com/2020/07/25/the-only-them-that-counts-is-all-of-us/

https://petersironwood.com/2020/02/21/the-touch-of-one-hand-clasping/

https://petersironwood.com/2020/03/20/cars-that-lock-too-much/

https://petersironwood.com/2020/02/29/the-lost-sapphire/

https://petersironwood.com/2020/03/22/jennifers-invitation/

https://petersironwood.com/2020/07/13/how-did-i-get-here/

https://petersironwood.com/2020/11/01/that-cold-walk-home/

https://petersironwood.com/2020/12/01/that-first-time-is-so-special/

https://petersironwood.com/2020/12/08/the-itsy-bitsy-spider-the-waterspout/

Astronomy Lesson: Invisible Circles

05 Friday Feb 2021

Posted by petersironwood in Uncategorized

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decision making, experiment, problem finding, problem formulation, problem framing, problem solving, psychology, Skinner, thinking

My senior year at Case-Western Reserve, I went to college full-time but I was also head of a small family. I was married and we had small baby to take care of. I worked three jobs. One of those jobs was as a teaching assistant in downtown Cleveland at a place called “The Supplementary Educational Center.” The job involved a wide range of activities including putting new walls in, painting them, putting up NASA exhibits, running a planetarium and teaching about space and how airplanes worked. The Supplementary Educational Center bussed in sixth grade students (around 11 years old) from diverse parts of the city to learn about American History and about Space Science. 

Another job grew out of my class on Learning. The Professor in the previous story about operant conditioning without awareness recommended me as a research assistant for another professor who was also a Skinnerian. He was doing studies on operant conditioning. I “programmed” the experiments by literally plugging together components such as timers and relays. I also ran the experiments. By sheer coincidence, the “subjects” for the Professor’s experiments on operant conditioning were also sixth graders. 

The kids would go sit in a chair in front of a screen. On the screen, an image of a red circle would appear from time to time. In front of the kids was a lever. If they pulled that lever when the red circle appeared, a nickel would fall down as a reward. They were completely enclosed in what can be fairly described as a large Skinner Box. After a kid pulled the lever and received their nickel a few times, we began to “thin” the schedule. Now, they had to pull the lever 2 or 3 times before getting a nickel. Then, only every 5-7 times. Then, only once every 10-12 times. (Remember, it only “worked” if they pulled the lever while the red circle was there.) Finally, they were put into a phase where they would never get any more nickels no matter how many times they pulled the lever. 

Photo by Dmitry Demidov on Pexels.com

At that point, we (or more accurately, the relays we had programmed) stopped showing the red circle and showed other things such as a smaller red circle or a larger red circle or a green circle or a purple circle or a red ellipse. None of these ever paid off. But the instruments recorded their level pulling and we would soon satisfy our curiosity whether they would “generalize more” (i.e., pull the lever more) to a stimulus that varied in color, shape, or size from what they were originally trained on. I cannot recall how that actually turned out. As I look back on it, the notion that we would have a “general ordering” about the relative importance of these dimensions based on this experiment seems rather…naive.

Although the kids were run as subjects one at a time, it often happened that they came with a friend or two. The kids who were not being a subject just then, sat in a nearby waiting room and stared at the floor. I felt sorry for them. There were no magazines, games, books, etc. The room did have a blackboard though, so I picked up the chalk and began “teaching them” about the planets in the solar system. They seemed to enjoy my mini-lecture so I felt pretty good at having spread some enlightenment among the masses. 

Photo by fauxels on Pexels.com

Despite the fact that the Professor was a devout Skinnerian, he still suggested that I debrief every subject — ask them what they thought they had been doing. So I did. What I discovered to my amazement was that some of them thought that my astronomy lecture was an advance organizer for the task in the Skinner box! “Well, first you showed me a picture of Mars many times and then Jupiter came up….”

In my mind, the little mini-lecture and the Skinner box experiment were two entirely different things that were not at all connected to each other, but each of which was connected with a specific job and conducted miles apart. The people I saw in these two roles were different; the hours were different. In this specific instance, I had used a bit of what I knew — and more importantly, what kids that age were interested in — to help them pass the time while waiting their turn. It never occurred to me how the situation appeared from their perspective. 

From their perspective, they go to this strange place on a college campus and meet this college kid (me) who greets them and takes their permission slips and has them take turns at some weird way to earn nickels involving looking at circles and ellipses. And, this same college kid (still me) teaches them about the solar system with circles and ellipses. Of course, they would think they were related.

For me, there were two distinct circles. For the kids, there was one circle. 

Photo by eberhard grossgasteiger on Pexels.com

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“O wad some Pow’r the giftie gie us
To see oursels as ithers see us!”

—- Robert Burns, To a Louse

————————————————————————

First in a series of stories about the mythical Veritas tribe who value truth, love, and cooperation and their struggles against the Cupiditas who value power, greed, and cruelty. Our tale begins as the shaman/leader of the Veritas seeks an eventual successor so she devises a series of trials that mainly test empathy.

https://petersironwood.com/2018/08/07/myth-of-the-veritas-the-first-ring-of-empathy/

Author page on Amazon

Training Your Professor for Fun & Profit

04 Thursday Feb 2021

Posted by petersironwood in Uncategorized

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problem finding, problem formulation, problem framing, problem solving

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The name of B. F. Skinner is not often invoked in discussions of User Experience. There are limitations to his basic theory, but perhaps it is time to revisit the baby that was, by many, thrown out with that bathwater. Skinner’s approach has two major limitations that come to mind. First, human behavior is moderated by internal structures such as beliefs, framings, assumptions, labels, and so on. If one ignores these cognitive structures and tries to predict human behavior solely on the basis what behavior is “reinforced” those prediction efforts will often fail. 

Second, humans (and other animals) are not born as “blank slates.” We have a number of inborn predispositions. For example, if you “punish” a rat by shocking the rat after performing a particular action, it will quickly learn to avoid that action. Similarly, if you feed the rat a food with a distinctive taste and that food will make it nauseous, it will quickly learn to avoid that taste. Some readers may have also experienced this. If your first experience with oysters, say, made you vomit, you may never try them for the rest of your life. 

Photo by Rachel Claire on Pexels.com

On the other hand, if you shock the rat after it tastes something, that is a much harder association to master. Or, if you make the rat nauseous after pressing a level, that is also a difficult association to learn. 

Despite these and other limitations of the strictly Skinnerian approach, reinforcement still works in many situations. It is even possible for people to “learn” a behavior because of reinforcement and to learn without any conscious awareness of the fact that they are being trained in this way. 

As an undergraduate at Case-Western Reserve, one of my psychology courses (on learning) was taught by a “Skinnerian.” He was an excellent instructor and I enjoyed the course immensely. Since we had a syllabus, I knew exactly when he would be lecturing on the topic of “unconscious conditioning.” As usual, almost the entire class was seated before the Professor arrived. This gave me time to explain to my classmates my idea for what the class would do: condition him to stand in a corner and comb his hair with his hand. 

I think you will appreciate the fun here. He was giving a lecture about how people could be conditioned without awareness and while he was doing that, we were going to condition him without his awareness. 

Photo by Andrea Piacquadio on Pexels.com

I will return momentarily to explain just how we managed, but first, I must explain the concept of “shaping.” Shaping is an extremely important concept for training your pets or your kids to behave in convenient or useful ways. Basically, the idea is to begin by reinforcing any behavior that is in the direction that you want the behavior to go in. If you want to potty train your child, for instance, you don’t initially wait for complete success. You praise the child even if he or she sits on the potty. You praise the child if they try to make it to the bathroom but have an “accident” on the way. Gradually, your criteria become stricter and you only reinforce behavior closer and closer to the goal. Similarly, if you want to train your dog to “shake hands” you initially praise them for anything even close. For instance, if you put your hand out and they lift their paw even slightly off the ground, you praise them. As they become more adept, you change your criteria for reward. Eventually, you only reinforce them then when they are “shaking hands” as well as you think possible. 

Now, let’s return to the Skinnerian Professor and his lecture on unconscious conditioning. If the class had waited until he stood in the corner and combed his hair with his hand, we never would have succeeded. At first, we only reinforced him (by looking up and looking very eager and interested) when he stood to the right of his lectern (from our perspective). Then, we only began to reinforce him when he was near the corner. Then, we only began to reinforce him when he raised his hand slightly. Then, we only acted eager and interested when his hand went up toward his head or face. Finally, we only acted eager and interested when he stood in the corner and combed his hair with his hand. It took almost the entire hour for this to work. I kept a written record of his behavior and noted the times and the changes in our criteria for success. When the lecture was over, I walked up and explained what we had done. I showed him my records. 

He was astounded! It was awesome. I suppose theoretically, he could have been putting it on, but if he was, it was the best acting performance I saw in all my years attending Eldred Theater or the Cleveland Playhouse. Once he recovered from his initial shock though, to his credit, he didn’t get angry with me or deny the reality of what had actually happened. He just nodded and said (essentially). “Yeah. This stuff really works.” 

Yeah. It really does. And, although B. F. Skinner’s approach to human behavior is overly simplistic, it still does work in many circumstances, including a human’s behavior interacting with a computer system. 

Another important contribution of B. F. Skinner is his work on “schedules of reinforcement.” It’s worth understanding this in some detail, but for now, I just want to focus on one aspect. The “schedule of reinforcement” that leads to the highest rates of behavior is to reinforce, not every time a desired behavior is observed, but very seldom and randomly. 

Photo by David Vives on Pexels.com

Las Vegas comes to mind. I only visited once. For a time, I watched people at the slot machines. Unlike the people who win on TV commercial casinos, in the “real world” (to the extent Las Vegas is part of the “real world”), I saw four people win and not a single one of them showed even a glimmer of pleasure. They simply started feeding their winnings back into the machine. This is how the Casinos make their money. Basically, they are using “a thin Variable Ratio Schedule” to get people hooked on behavior that is statistically guaranteed not to be in their financial interest. (Of course, it’s understood, people also gamble for fun. That’s okay.) But if you are gambling against the Casinos in order to make money. Well….good luck. Remember: they have chauffeurs, yachts, and mansions. You do the math. They say, “What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas.” But they might instead say, “Money that comes to Vegas, stays in Vegas.”

In most User Experience contexts, we want the relationship between what the user does and the consequences to be consistent. I say “most” because, when it comes to games or learning experiences or computer art, this is not always true. In most work-related applications however, we want the user to be reinforced every time he or she takes appropriate action. I think that’s what designers mainly strive for. 

I believe, however, that the users themselves sometimes fall into doing something that only occasionally pays off. For example, let’s say a college student has ground floor dorm room and connects to the internet via satellite. The connection is flakey. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn’t. But it works much better on the top floor. So, when he or she tries to access the Internet and fails, they walk the three flights of stairs and they successfully connect every single time. But walking three flights of stairs is a pain so the student in question decides it might help if they close all their windows before trying to connect. Now, say that didn’t work so they decided to close all the windows and then reboot. Well! What do you know!? It worked. So, the next time they have trouble connecting, instead of walking up three flights of stairs, the student closes all the windows and reboots the machine. Maybe, by sheer chance, it worked again! 

Photo by Guduru Ajay bhargav on Pexels.com

The next time, perhaps it doesn’t work. But three flights of stairs? That’s a long ways. So, they try again! It works! 

Photo by Harrison Haines on Pexels.com

But winter is coming. 

And with winter comes rain. And with rain comes worse connectivity to the satellite. So, as the rain goes from San Diego rain frequency to San Francisco rain to Portland rain to Seattle rain frequency, our student becomes less and less successful in actually connecting. But every so often, the procedure works. They may have rebooted their machine ten times before it finally connected, but that just makes it more likely they will be willing to try twenty times before giving up. Furthermore, the student may have “given up” on even considering walking up 3 flights of stairs. Having the persistent habit of rebooting the machine multiple times actually prevents the student from either doing the thing that has always worked or working toward a more permanent solution (e.g., changing rooms, getting an antennae, finding a wired hookup, etc.). 

It is possible in this way to train a rat or a pigeon or a college student — or even a professor — to do something they would not have consciously chosen to do — or to do something at a much greater frequency than they would have chosen to do it. 

Photo by Daria Sannikova on Pexels.com

Next (Perhaps): “The Skinner Box and the Box Next Door.”

——————————————————————————-

Author page on Amazon

https://petersironwood.com/2018/07/12/chain-saws-make-the-best-hair-trimmers/

https://petersironwood.com/2020/02/28/essays-on-america-addictions/

https://petersironwood.com/2020/05/08/what-about-the-butter-dish/

https://petersironwood.com/2020/06/02/essays-on-america-my-cousin-bobby/

https://petersironwood.com/2020/07/31/essays-on-america-the-update-problem/

https://petersironwood.com/2020/08/21/the-primacy-effect-the-destroyers-advantage/

https://petersironwood.com/2020/12/17/bounce/

https://petersironwood.com/2020/04/25/process-re-engineering-moves-to-baseball/

https://petersironwood.com/2020/12/03/living-on-the-edge/

https://petersironwood.com/2017/01/09/trumpism-is-a-new-religion/

https://petersironwood.com/2019/07/18/essays-on-america-wednesday/

A Long Day’s Journey into Hangover

03 Wednesday Feb 2021

Posted by petersironwood in Uncategorized

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alcohol, drama, problem finding, problem formulation, problem framing, problem solving, thinking

Photo by Prem Pal Singh on Pexels.com

Closely aligned with the notion of “Problem Framing” is the notion of “Attribution.” 

My dad was an electrical engineer. My mother was an English and Drama teacher. I’ve always enjoyed acting though I never pursued it as a career. My mother’s mother founded the “Akron Dramatic Club” and held meetings for many years at the house where my mom grew up. Typically, the group would read plays. I happened to have a very good memory at a young age and often I would “fill in” for anyone who was missing, even before I could read. 

In high school, I had the lead in our Senior Class Play, One Foot in Heaven. In college, I continued to take acting classes as well as technical subjects. In one “Studio Production,” we presented a scene from Eugene O’Neil’s drama, Long Day’s Journey into Night. I played the part of Jamie, based on Eugene O’Neil’s older brother. In the particular scene in question, the father and his two sons sit around a table drinking Irish Whiskey and, as they get drunker, blaming themselves and each other for various things including their mother’s drug addiction. 


In preparation, we rehearsed on a dozen occasions. At the time, my friends and I typically went out to bars several times a week and drank “3.2 beer.” In Ohio, at that time, the only alcoholic beverage one could legally drink from age 18 to 21 was beer with no more than 3.2% alcohol. I had gotten a “buzz” a few times, but had never been drunk.

I had, however, seen people drunk in real life a few times and seen them many times on TV and in movies. I pretty much knew how to “act drunk.” So, each time we rehearsed the scene, as I drank more and more tea, I pretended to get drunker and drunker. Some say, “in vino veritas.” I don’t totally agree, but it is true that people will say nastier things to each other sometimes under the influence. Jamie, O’Neil’s play blamed his mother’s addiction on Jamie having been born and, given enough Irish Whiskey, he told him so in no uncertain terms. 

In our last dress rehearsal, for some reason, our director thought it would be a great idea if we ran through the scene three times using actual Irish Whiskey instead of weak tea. So, we did. As best I can recall, I had about a third of a bottle of wine before we began the rehearsal and each time through, I had a beer mug half filled with water and half with Irish Whiskey. It tasted pretty horrible, but I could down it. I simulated drunkenness pretty well, if I do say so myself. Each time I went through the scene, I would begin by acting “sober” and then gradually become drunker and drunker. Then, we would do the scene again. I still had a good memory, so I didn’t flub my lines. I don’t think the rest of the cast messed up either. Everything was fine. 

Until the rehearsal was over. 

During the rehearsal, I was repeating words and gestures that I had done many times. And in every rehearsal before this one, I had acted as though I was drunk even though I had been perfectly sober. Now that rehearsal was over and I found myself faced with the task of getting off the stage, remembering where my dorm was, and navigating myself home, I realized that I was not acting drunk. I was drunk. Very drunk. Walking was a problem.

While I had been rehearsing, I had attributed my behavior and the way I felt and my slurred speech to my superb acting. 

Attribution can be tricky. 

If feedback is delayed, trying to do the “right thing” can be completely counterproductive. You may attribute good outcomes to actions that are actually making things worse!! 

(Here’s a post on how that might apply to controlling a pandemic).  https://petersironwood.com/2020/04/29/essays-on-america-oops/

Dave Pelz has a Ph.D. in physics from MIT and is a former astronaut. More recently, he has become an expert in the “short game” part of golf. He applies his analytic and scientific skills to the game and has inventions to help the golfer make correct attributions; a foundation for improving your skill.

Photo by Jopwell on Pexels.com



Here’s how it works. Let’s say you line up to hit a putt (a short golf stroke) about ten feet from the hole. You strike the ball and it veers to a position about six inches left of the hole. It’s easy for you to see that you’ve ended up six inches left, but you probably have no idea why. Dave Pelz could tell you that you might have misread the slope; you might have misread the grain; you might have pulled the club a little left; you might have hit the ball slightly off center of the putter head causing it to twist ever so slightly and take energy away from the putt; you might, indeed, have done absolutely nothing wrong at all. Your ball might have hit a teeny unseen pebble or been blown off course by a puff of wind. Your golf ball might even possibly be a little off balance. 

Dave Pelz has invented various devices to help you disambiguate these (and other) potential sources of error. For example, if your ball ended up 6 inches left because you hit the golf ball slightly off the center of your putter, this would be extremely hard to notice. Dave Pelz has a device however, that you can put on your putter blade. It has “prongs” on both sides of the center line. If you hit the middle of the back of a golf ball with the exact center of your putter blade, the golf ball will go straight ahead as it normally would. However, if you’re off center ever so slightly, the ball will careen off at a strange angle. You’ll know immediately that you haven’t hit the center of the putter blade. 

Photo by Andrew Neel on Pexels.com

I’ve played many rounds of golf. I’ve never observed someone miss a putt and then say, “Oh, shoot! I hit the back of the ball, not with the exact center of my putter blade, but with a spot an eighth of an inch away from the center point. Damn!” 

In complex situations, it can be very tricky to discover attributions. And if you make the wrong attributions, you will almost certainly mis-frame the problem to be solved.

Framings exist at different levels. You might seek to improve your putting by discovering mistakes you make while putting and then correcting them. It helps if you have good feedback, whether from a coach or from mechanical devices or from your own nervous system. 

At a higher level, you might also need to reframe your expectations. You see, missing a ten foot putt by six inches is actually a pretty good result! Pro Tour Golfers make less than half of their ten foot putts. What you see on TV coverage of Pro Tour putts is mostly of pros making 10, 20, or 30 foot putts. But that is not, on average, what happens. 

Similarly, society is inundated with stories and images of people seeming to overcome impossible odds to become insanely successful. And quickly. At least, in the movies, it happens quickly, because otherwise, we would lose patience and not keep watching. Only, in real life, it doesn’t happen quickly. If you frame your “life problem” as: “How do I become a millionaire by age 25?” you may be setting yourself up for failure. 

A different framing might be: “What can I do that I love that also contributes to society so much that society will provide me the things I need.” 

Of course, some people may be born rich. In such cases, it is very easy to fall into the misapprehension that all your success is due to your hard work, judgement, intelligence, etc. when, basically, it’s mainly luck of the draw. 

Consider. However brilliant you might be, or physically gifted, how do you think your life would look right now if you had been born 100,000 years ago? You wouldn’t be reading these words on a computer, clearly. You wouldn’t be reading at all. Your surroundings, your clothing, your diet, your tools — these are much more determined by the circumstances you were born into than you likely imagine. 

It’s not crazy to focus on your own decisions. After all, no-one can determine the circumstances of their birth. You can change your decisions though. Usually, therefore, it makes sense to focus on your decisions, not on the circumstances of your birth. 

Usually. 

But not if you use the sheer luck of your birth circumstances to argue that you should have more than your fair share. Making your success out to be the results only of your personal perspiration and perspicacity is petty. 

Consider the gratitude you owe for what was granted. Your generosity grows correspondingly. 

It’s a good antidote for a hangover. You might even call it an antedote. 

Attributions are often made without your awareness. They can easily lead you astray. They can even lead you to becoming drunk without knowing it. You might be drunk on whiskey, as I was on that Long Day’s Journey, but people may also become drunk on power, money, or status.

—————————————-

An essay on mindfulness and gratitude: Corn on the Cob

https://petersironwood.com/2020/04/05/imagine-all-the-people/

https://petersironwood.com/2020/07/13/who-are-the-speakers-for-the-dead/

https://petersironwood.com/2020/08/17/roar-ocean-roar/

https://petersironwood.com/2020/12/14/how-the-nightingale-learned-to-sing/

https://petersironwood.com/2020/02/29/the-lost-sapphire/

Author Page on Amazon

The Slow-Seeming Snapping Turtle

01 Monday Feb 2021

Posted by petersironwood in Uncategorized

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

affordance, deception, Primacy Effect, problem formulation, problem framing, problem solving, psychology, thinking

Photo by Radovan Zierik on Pexels.com

The Slow-Seeming Snapping Turtle

(Don’t Judge a Book by its Cover Story)

One find summer day, driving down the long curved driveway of IBM Research in Yorktown, I noticed a manhole-sized snapping turtle in the middle of the driveway. I pulled the car over. I didn’t want someone running into the reptile, looking as he did, such a splendid living fossil. 

Naturally, I knew snapping turtles could be dangerous, though as I watched him plod ever so slowly down the road, I felt no threat. Surely, my mammalian reflexes were far superior to this reptilian beast. But, in a seeming excess of caution, I made no attempt to touch him with my bare hands. Instead, I found a thigh-sized dead tree branch that seemed suitable for pushing him off the road and thus to safety. 

Photo by JACK REDGATE on Pexels.com

I pushed hard on one side of his carapace. At first, he just kept plodding ahead, but my superior strength overcame his squat stubborn frame and he gradually angled toward the berm. Then, an unbelievable thing happened. In a split second, the viscous snapped to vicious. His head shot out a good foot from his shell and whipped around to the side, still managing his neck-lengthening trick. He chomped down and completely through the tree limb before I even had a chance to be startled. 

Our first impression of a situation can often lead us to dangerously erroneous actions. 

Here’s another example. 

As most Americans now know, there are 435 people in the House of Representatives. What is the probability that at least two in the House of Representatives share a birthday?

This is actually an exceedingly easy problem to solve. 

Unless…

Unless, you are familiar with a similar-looking problem called “The Birthday Problem” which may be stated something like this:

You are starting a new class of thirty people. What are chances that at least two of them share a birthday? 

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

It turns out that at least two people will share a birthday in a room with 30 random people over 70% of the time. The “break-even” point where the chances that at least will share a birthday is 23 people. It’s a bit counter-intuitive. But the math is sound. 

So, if you have heard of “The Birthday Problem” before, and heard the question about The House of Representatives, you’d be likely to say something like: “Oh, that’s the birthday problem and it turns out you don’t need many people for their to be a likely double birthday. So, with 435, it must be very hight. Perhaps 99% or even 99.9%”

With 435 people in The House of Representatives, you don’t need to “calculate” any probabilities at all. You cannot arrange any way for more than 365 people to “fit into” 365 days without starting to overlap. 

Beware of approaching problems (or snapping turtles) based on their eternal appearance. It might or might not be a good clue to its actual behavior. 

In the Pattern Language for Collaboration, one is based on this called “Context-Setting Entrance.” Because we are prone to pay attention to the entrance, then if we design one, we should let that entrance set appropriate expectations. 

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

————————————

Author Page on Amazon 

The Winning Weekend Warrior focuses on the mental game for all sports.
http://tinyurl.com/ng2heq3

Turing’s Nightmares explores the possible futures of how people communicate with computers and each others. http://tinyurl.com/hz6dg2d

Fit in Bits describes many ways to work more exercise into daily activities. http://tinyurl.com/h6c7fce

Tales from an American Childhood recounts early experiences and relates them to contemporary issues and events. https://tinyurl.com/y9ajvz9j

Beware of Sheep in Wolves’ Clothing

Measure for Measure

28 Thursday Jan 2021

Posted by petersironwood in Uncategorized

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

context, decision making, framing, HCI, problem formulation, problem framing, problem solving, thinking, 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 being 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. 

Photo by Denniz Futalan on Pexels.com

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.

Original drawing by Pierce Morgan



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 


OR

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.

—————————————————-

  
Author Page on Amazon

————————————

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

——————————————————-

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?

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