Risk. How best to understand & take on appropriate amounts?
The first thing to do is to discriminate between risk tolerance and risk capacity. Many people who take on risk do so because they can tolerate risk, e.g. they either enjoy it or at least can stomach it, and as they do not realize that they do not have the capacity to sustain losses. Compulsive gamblers are like this - if you are a billionaire you can have a large poker allowance and not endanger or risk anything really. You have capacity. If you are holding down a normal 9-5 job, and are barely making your bills, and you have a family to support, well, you do not have the capacity. You may have a high tolerance for risk, but you cannot afford this. Do not delude yourself that you will win and buy your family a good life. Do not mistake a need to win with an ability to win.
What you want to do is overcome fear and increase your tolerance for risk if you cannot confront it, or if you have a high tolerance you will actually want to reduce this and realize that feeding the feeling of risk may not be worth the entry cost. Either way, you must calibrate in a way that accounts for your (perhaps small) capacity. The key to managing risk is capacity.
One thing we should realize is we often have more capacity than we assume - we live in the richest time in history, so "risking" things to take on a career path you love but may not pay much is not much of a real risk - as long as you are prudent and can accept the relative "poverty". You may be relatively poor to others, but on an absolute level you will most likely be fine in terms of finances.
Another thing we must learn is that there are two ways we can risk, let us say that we feel we can stomach a 80% chance that things will turn out well. We can either do this:
(A) Bet everything on something that we judge to have 80% odds.
Or we can do this:
(B) Bet 80% of our stuff (money, time, etc) on something we judge to have 100% odds, and 20% of our stuff on super long shots.
There are a couple of advantages to (B). First of all, it is more secure. No matter what we have 80% of our wealth protected. Betting everything on a 80% chance is foolish, as you have bet away your capacity so you are screwed if you lose; option B takes capacity into account and makes sure we keep the capacity. Secondly, the long odds pay much more if they work out - and can really engage us either way, win or lose, by having us really live risk and put ourselves to the line or try things that are difficult yet rewarding. It is doubtful you will become a great author and write a book that will change lives. But you can spend a chunk of your day working on your book, and without risking your livelihood you will become a better writer and have a shot at making the tome that changes the world. Perhaps 20% of your time is worth this to you.
By accurately judging your capacity for risk you can proportion how much you want to risk on long shots - if I'm a billionaire I can risk millions and millions of my finances, and all of my time, on super long shots. If I'm working myself out of debt or struggling to feed my kids I can risk little finances, and need to keep my job, but can spend some of my time on long shots. Maybe all you have is 10 or 5% of your time you can do this in, after all you want to play with your kids, put food on the table, etc. But I can likely demarcate 5% of my time to writing that script - at the very least you are engaging life, growing, and showing your kid a great lesson (hard work, growth, risk, the idea of capacity, engaging life, struggle, blah blah blah). Yes, it will be hard to scrape up the time, to sit down and do the work. Or to scrape up the courage of doing your all and (most likely) not measuring up the first few (many, every?) times and failing. But it is likely worth it - you will gain in proportion to the difficulty. And maybe you will sell your script and make a difference in the world and get some coin also, or at least have a story worth telling about how your script was turned down in {insert cruel manner here}, or have the ability to tell more compelling and interesting stories to your friends.
Finally, there is risk and there is uncertainty. I used the term risk, but risk is boring and using the term here is somewhat misleading. Risk is known - if I flip a regular coin I have about 50% chance of getting heads. Uncertainty is what is really rewarding. If I have two doors, "write a book" and "do a normal job" I don't know what is behind them - but I can guess that I am most likely going to do OK doing a normal job and will have food on the table, at the cost of an exciting life perhaps. For many of us, e.g. those without rich parents, we do not really have the capacity to have any other realistic choice. It is dangerous and stupid to operate otherwise - especially if others rely on you. Uncertainty is the super long odds - we can't accurately measure the risk, we simply know the odds are against us - way against us. But taking the uncertain path is when we engage life, grow as people, and can really find and create wealth. Many people like the feeling of risk - they gamble a lot, even though the odds are slightly against them (and therefor they will eventually get fleeced of their money); or perhaps they just want to live an engaged and fulfilling life. For some they go in knowing they are paying for the feeling, for others they think they actually will win. But the important thing to know is this - you can usually go through both doors, you can hold down a normal & secure (and perhaps somewhat unengaged) job, and you can spend some time going through the second door of "write that damn book". It is not either/or like in option A - oh, my parents are rich so I can risk a life that has 50% odds, or oh my family is poor so I must take a 90% career. You can pick a very stable job and take super long shots that allow you to grow, find adventure, and live a real life.
Uncertainty is where life is at. Many of us do not have the capacity to afford exploring uncertainty with all of our time, but almost everyone has the capacity to spend some time exploring life. Figure out how much capacity you have, and start spending what you can on living and exploring.
Finally, whatever you do, do not resent your family for "tying you down". You chose your family with your actions, and you choose your life every day. Blaming them for what you do is a feeble excuse, and one that will limit both your and your families joy. Many people seem to fall into this trap, and waste their lives in an unhappy state with an unfulfilling job. You do not have the binary choice of "fun and fulfilling life" versus "terrible and grueling life", if you are anything like most people you have a small capacity so you must toil but you can also live and explore uncertainty with what capacity you do have. Putting blame on your wife or kids will just undercut your joy and undercut your life, you are simply using your family as an excuse for not confronting life - an easy, yet awful, out. As far as excuses go it is pretty poor - you gain nothing but negative feelings and wasted life from it - and yet it seems surprisingly common. Your family is a gift, don't sabotage yourself and resent one of the most important things you can obtain in life.
Friday, July 31, 2009
Wednesday, July 29, 2009
The Black Knight (Suicide)
Cause of death: suicide.
Who: 1-2% of modern nations
Why: factors are related to "something is wrong with your head" - depression, manic-depressive, drug/alcohol, schizo, agitation, etc. Walk into an emergency room: most people are there because something is wrong with their heads (low IQ, alcohol induced stupidity, mental illness, etc.), you will see the high risk. Now look at the doctors - they are also at high risk: under stress, lack of sleep, mood swings. Their knowledge does not protect them.
Put the whom into perspective: 1-2 % of everyone is huge. Everyone will die of "old age", baring accident or intent. Live long enough and you will die of cancer, heart failure, or other degenerate proximate cause. The ultimate cause is the same: you are old and worn out. If you treat your body poorly you will wear out faster - smoke, drink, eat garbage, don't exercise. We all know this. The fact that 1/100 to 1/50 will die by their own intent is therefore a huge number - and a number that is likely an underestimate (taking large risks, joining the army in time of war, and generally placing oneself in harms way can be an effective means of killing oneself). Look at it another way - suicide is the second leading cause of death for college students.
Suicide is a systematic and sizable problem with our society. Doctors have a fairly high level of knowledge about suicide, know the factors involved, and know how to access further information. This does not help them very much - as a group they commit suicide fairly frequently. Knowledge alone does not prevent suicide.
How can we address suicide? We must start from knowledge and move to action. Suicide is not "rare". It is prevalent, it will impact your life at some point. We all should know a little bit about suicide, as it is one of the primary causes of death - and one of the largest ones (intent: suicide or murder, accident, and decay are the possible causes). The key factors relate to mental health, a truism if there was ever was one.
We know that medication can help - lithium, anti-depressants, and cognitive therapy are known to reduce the incident of suicide, and thus early treatment is important [note: the availability and efficiency of these drugs has changed the population in universities - at one point in time those most likely to kill themselves would not be in university, as the factors contributing to suicide risk would overwhelm their lives and they would not "make the grade". This population can now better manage their problems, and can now make it into university, yet their risk remains high. Universities have not yet dealt with this "new" issue (for them).] Medication gives crutches, allowing people to hobble forward. This is not a "cure", or sufficient. But can keep people hobbling until things improve.
But in general the issue seems to be environmental - social and emotional environments are important. Stress, depression, sadness, bitterness, pain, exclusion, negativity. These are simply labels for, and symptoms of, sparse, poisoned, and broken social and emotional environments. Once you find yourself in a sparse and ugly environment you are in trouble - your "network" is diminutive, and so is your life. Joy is dead, you do not see beauty, you do not see how to solve things. You are literally unconnected. Choices, possibilities, beauty - not there. You cannot imagine a better life, you cannot image how to change things. The black knight is on the table.
It is a simple truth that the networks that define our lives are nonlinear - having 3 close friends is not 3X better than having 1, but much much more than that. Our lives become rich in more than proportion to what we have, and our lives become painful in extreme ways when we do without social connections and positive emotional experiences. One simply cannot imagine life with no meaningful connections and meaning (e.g. good social and emotional lives). We cannot understand what it will be like (and thus cannot prepare well to get through rough times) and we cannot bare it for long if we find ourselves in such a state.
Due to the requirement for social and emotional life, and the highly nonlinear nature of networks, we are at risk. We cannot plan well for loss and we cannot easily build capacity to sustain ourselves through hard time. What can we do?
The black knight is always in play, and if you lose capacity you will be cornered. We know empirically that the black knight is part of the board of our society, the black knight is ready to engage every and any of us. We have only a handful of tools open to us in pushing the black knight to the perfillary of the board - (1) recognize that suicide is common and a systematic problem in our lives, (2) take care to build up our emotional and social networks and lives, and (3) reach out to our friends and others who find themselves in sparse environments. A series of negative emotional situations can quickly make one perceive things as negative in a systematic manner, a social vacuum quickly leaves one without perspectives and help, a belief that suicide is rare leaves one feeling inadequate and ashamed of such thoughts - I'm so fucking weak and pathetic. No you are human, a human that has found yourself in an ugly situation, one that is overwhelming as we do not teach each other that emotional and social reality make up 2 out of the 3 key aspects of being human and instead we all focus on the more easily (yet not easy) measurable and taught third factor - objective truth. It is somewhat ironic that the depressed are often more capable in the objective plane, with more realistic assessment of their skill level, etc., but this is not helpful to them as they lack the fruits of the other two aspects of human reality (emotional & social). They are 2/3rds dead already, and "logically" they see suicide as the only realistic solution.
If you see your friends or children cut off, you must try to reach them. It will be hard, for they will likely not admit to having suicidal thoughts (shame), and they will not be able to see a way beyond and through the pain. The gap between their emotional and social reality and the emotional and social reality required for a bearable, let along thriving, life is too large for them to transition without help. "You don't understand", and it is true - talk to someone who made it through, and they cannot even put themselves back into the past to fully describe the lack that defined life. Before you kill yourself you are not human, you cannot imagine becoming human, you considering killing yourself as you are already dead in the ways that matter. How to we bring people back to life? We can only try to help them do it themselves, we can only hope that we catch the downward spiral before it is too late. If you do get yourself or another on medication this is just the beginning.
Primitive societies had serious issues with decay, accidents, and violence as causes of death, problems that our society has vastly reduced. If you chose to lead a physically healthy life medicine can help you immensely by getting you though emergencies, allowing you to live much longer. Basic hygiene and vaccinations has dramatically increased life span. The state has monopolized violence, reducing intragroup conflict, and the consequences of state-state warfare among competent states has become so large as to reduce intergroup conflict to an astonishing extent. So to a large extent, we have pushed off decay and accident in order to lead longer and healthier lives, and we have diminished the likelihood of someone intending to kill us. But that leaves self-intent as a large factor contributing to death, one that we have not addressed anywhere near sufficiently. It is somewhat surprising that we have largely ignored suicide - fundamentally there are not that many ways to die, so just on conceptual grounds alone one would think we would confront this more. Empirically suicide is a huge issue, an issue that points to a vastly impoverished emotional and social life.
Suicide suggests that we continue to be poor in our society - by focusing on suicide we can learn more about what it means to be human and we can improve our own and others lives. We can create wealth and beauty.
Lowdown:
Suicide is one of the key characteristics of our society, one that is not discussed and thus one that will remain prevalent. Empirically we know that 1-2% of people will kill themselves, a huge number - suicide will effect your life. A society that largely ignores 2/3rds of what it means to be a human is bound to have problems with allowing people to create fulfilling and beautiful lives. Positive social and emotional state is key in preventing suicide. "Emergency treatment" with drugs enables one to hobble onward, allowing social and emotional networks to be created, but the drugs alone are insufficient and "treatment" begins there. The good news is that the process is actually enjoyable and enriching once underway.
Reference:
Night Falls Fast: Understanding Suicide
: Suicide enlightens the human condition, every educated person should be versed in basics of suicide. This book is the best I have seen on suicide - essentially everything in this posting is directly from the author (e.g. "black knight" metaphor), was an earlier observation of mine that the author also notes (e.g. the emergency room example - which is filtered in terms of suicide here, but in general is a good example of how "brain problems" causes much pain and expense to society, ironically I was in the emergency room with someone who suffered an intense migraine attack when I first became aware of this), or was written in reaction to author (e.g. emotional + social aspects being largely ignored in our society, with the objective element of the human condition being focused on to the exclusion of these other factors). You should read this book, you should have your friends read this book, if you are a teacher you should discuss this book with your students (one tidbit you will learn: in the time it takes for one class, which you could devote to the book, 3 Americans will kill themselves - why are we not talking about this more?), if you are a parent you must read this book. If you are in a book club, read this book.
Who: 1-2% of modern nations
Why: factors are related to "something is wrong with your head" - depression, manic-depressive, drug/alcohol, schizo, agitation, etc. Walk into an emergency room: most people are there because something is wrong with their heads (low IQ, alcohol induced stupidity, mental illness, etc.), you will see the high risk. Now look at the doctors - they are also at high risk: under stress, lack of sleep, mood swings. Their knowledge does not protect them.
Put the whom into perspective: 1-2 % of everyone is huge. Everyone will die of "old age", baring accident or intent. Live long enough and you will die of cancer, heart failure, or other degenerate proximate cause. The ultimate cause is the same: you are old and worn out. If you treat your body poorly you will wear out faster - smoke, drink, eat garbage, don't exercise. We all know this. The fact that 1/100 to 1/50 will die by their own intent is therefore a huge number - and a number that is likely an underestimate (taking large risks, joining the army in time of war, and generally placing oneself in harms way can be an effective means of killing oneself). Look at it another way - suicide is the second leading cause of death for college students.
Suicide is a systematic and sizable problem with our society. Doctors have a fairly high level of knowledge about suicide, know the factors involved, and know how to access further information. This does not help them very much - as a group they commit suicide fairly frequently. Knowledge alone does not prevent suicide.
How can we address suicide? We must start from knowledge and move to action. Suicide is not "rare". It is prevalent, it will impact your life at some point. We all should know a little bit about suicide, as it is one of the primary causes of death - and one of the largest ones (intent: suicide or murder, accident, and decay are the possible causes). The key factors relate to mental health, a truism if there was ever was one.
We know that medication can help - lithium, anti-depressants, and cognitive therapy are known to reduce the incident of suicide, and thus early treatment is important [note: the availability and efficiency of these drugs has changed the population in universities - at one point in time those most likely to kill themselves would not be in university, as the factors contributing to suicide risk would overwhelm their lives and they would not "make the grade". This population can now better manage their problems, and can now make it into university, yet their risk remains high. Universities have not yet dealt with this "new" issue (for them).] Medication gives crutches, allowing people to hobble forward. This is not a "cure", or sufficient. But can keep people hobbling until things improve.
But in general the issue seems to be environmental - social and emotional environments are important. Stress, depression, sadness, bitterness, pain, exclusion, negativity. These are simply labels for, and symptoms of, sparse, poisoned, and broken social and emotional environments. Once you find yourself in a sparse and ugly environment you are in trouble - your "network" is diminutive, and so is your life. Joy is dead, you do not see beauty, you do not see how to solve things. You are literally unconnected. Choices, possibilities, beauty - not there. You cannot imagine a better life, you cannot image how to change things. The black knight is on the table.
It is a simple truth that the networks that define our lives are nonlinear - having 3 close friends is not 3X better than having 1, but much much more than that. Our lives become rich in more than proportion to what we have, and our lives become painful in extreme ways when we do without social connections and positive emotional experiences. One simply cannot imagine life with no meaningful connections and meaning (e.g. good social and emotional lives). We cannot understand what it will be like (and thus cannot prepare well to get through rough times) and we cannot bare it for long if we find ourselves in such a state.
Due to the requirement for social and emotional life, and the highly nonlinear nature of networks, we are at risk. We cannot plan well for loss and we cannot easily build capacity to sustain ourselves through hard time. What can we do?
The black knight is always in play, and if you lose capacity you will be cornered. We know empirically that the black knight is part of the board of our society, the black knight is ready to engage every and any of us. We have only a handful of tools open to us in pushing the black knight to the perfillary of the board - (1) recognize that suicide is common and a systematic problem in our lives, (2) take care to build up our emotional and social networks and lives, and (3) reach out to our friends and others who find themselves in sparse environments. A series of negative emotional situations can quickly make one perceive things as negative in a systematic manner, a social vacuum quickly leaves one without perspectives and help, a belief that suicide is rare leaves one feeling inadequate and ashamed of such thoughts - I'm so fucking weak and pathetic. No you are human, a human that has found yourself in an ugly situation, one that is overwhelming as we do not teach each other that emotional and social reality make up 2 out of the 3 key aspects of being human and instead we all focus on the more easily (yet not easy) measurable and taught third factor - objective truth. It is somewhat ironic that the depressed are often more capable in the objective plane, with more realistic assessment of their skill level, etc., but this is not helpful to them as they lack the fruits of the other two aspects of human reality (emotional & social). They are 2/3rds dead already, and "logically" they see suicide as the only realistic solution.
If you see your friends or children cut off, you must try to reach them. It will be hard, for they will likely not admit to having suicidal thoughts (shame), and they will not be able to see a way beyond and through the pain. The gap between their emotional and social reality and the emotional and social reality required for a bearable, let along thriving, life is too large for them to transition without help. "You don't understand", and it is true - talk to someone who made it through, and they cannot even put themselves back into the past to fully describe the lack that defined life. Before you kill yourself you are not human, you cannot imagine becoming human, you considering killing yourself as you are already dead in the ways that matter. How to we bring people back to life? We can only try to help them do it themselves, we can only hope that we catch the downward spiral before it is too late. If you do get yourself or another on medication this is just the beginning.
Primitive societies had serious issues with decay, accidents, and violence as causes of death, problems that our society has vastly reduced. If you chose to lead a physically healthy life medicine can help you immensely by getting you though emergencies, allowing you to live much longer. Basic hygiene and vaccinations has dramatically increased life span. The state has monopolized violence, reducing intragroup conflict, and the consequences of state-state warfare among competent states has become so large as to reduce intergroup conflict to an astonishing extent. So to a large extent, we have pushed off decay and accident in order to lead longer and healthier lives, and we have diminished the likelihood of someone intending to kill us. But that leaves self-intent as a large factor contributing to death, one that we have not addressed anywhere near sufficiently. It is somewhat surprising that we have largely ignored suicide - fundamentally there are not that many ways to die, so just on conceptual grounds alone one would think we would confront this more. Empirically suicide is a huge issue, an issue that points to a vastly impoverished emotional and social life.
Suicide suggests that we continue to be poor in our society - by focusing on suicide we can learn more about what it means to be human and we can improve our own and others lives. We can create wealth and beauty.
Lowdown:
Suicide is one of the key characteristics of our society, one that is not discussed and thus one that will remain prevalent. Empirically we know that 1-2% of people will kill themselves, a huge number - suicide will effect your life. A society that largely ignores 2/3rds of what it means to be a human is bound to have problems with allowing people to create fulfilling and beautiful lives. Positive social and emotional state is key in preventing suicide. "Emergency treatment" with drugs enables one to hobble onward, allowing social and emotional networks to be created, but the drugs alone are insufficient and "treatment" begins there. The good news is that the process is actually enjoyable and enriching once underway.
Reference:
Night Falls Fast: Understanding Suicide
: Suicide enlightens the human condition, every educated person should be versed in basics of suicide. This book is the best I have seen on suicide - essentially everything in this posting is directly from the author (e.g. "black knight" metaphor), was an earlier observation of mine that the author also notes (e.g. the emergency room example - which is filtered in terms of suicide here, but in general is a good example of how "brain problems" causes much pain and expense to society, ironically I was in the emergency room with someone who suffered an intense migraine attack when I first became aware of this), or was written in reaction to author (e.g. emotional + social aspects being largely ignored in our society, with the objective element of the human condition being focused on to the exclusion of these other factors). You should read this book, you should have your friends read this book, if you are a teacher you should discuss this book with your students (one tidbit you will learn: in the time it takes for one class, which you could devote to the book, 3 Americans will kill themselves - why are we not talking about this more?), if you are a parent you must read this book. If you are in a book club, read this book.
Tuesday, July 28, 2009
The scientific method: seeing the forest, not the trees
Philosophers of science and social critics will sometimes talk about the scientific method, and argue about whether there actually is a scientific method or not. The definitions and arguments often lose sight of the big picture and instead focus on details: is the scientific method positive or negative, is it this or that, blah or gha? Often the debate boils down to whether specific tactics used by scientists is a strategy or not - the debate is stylistically like this: "Is a forest a pine tree?" with the yes side pointing out pine trees in a forest - "yes!", and the no side pointing out you can have a forest without a pine tree - "no!". Others chime in with, "No, a forest is - in fact - an oak tree". The debate confuses the basics. Of course a pine tree is not a forest. You can have a forest full of pine trees, or with no pine trees, and even if you have a pine forest you have a lot of other things in it that make up the forest. A forest is a forest. A tree is a tree. Specific trees are often a significant part of a forest. A forest is not a tree. "Proving" that this is so does not prove there is no forest, but simply that you have wasted your time and are confused.
The scientific method is simple: ask questions of reality, and honestly listen to the answer. We often couch this in overly clinical and un-illuminating terms - e.g. "hypothesis" (question) - which makes it sound like the method is limited to scientists, instead of being the fundamental approach to life one should take. How can you argue against asking questions coupled with honestly listening? This is simple, but not easy - it is hard to craft good questions (you have to come in with a lot of background information often and keep a fresh perspective), to realize when you accidentally ask the wrong question (good scientists pick up on this, and thus find new aspects of reality, poor scientists will minimize how the answer does not fit within their current understanding behind what they thought they asked - if you have ever programmed a computer you know that one often mean one thing but say another, if you ever had a real discussion with someone you find the same), and to honestly take in what you learn: it is hard to admit you were wrong, you wasted your time, your precious idea is not interesting or significant, etc.
The scientific method is a strategy, much of the bickering about the scientific method is merely linguistic confusion and confuses the tactical level with strategy. The tactics are important, but are not "the" scientific method, and should not - and are not - used in every situation. But the overriding strategy is both simple and consistent: ask questions. listen. honestly.
The scientific method is a general approach to life, one that is difficult yet is simple. You can learn it, and it will help you. In your particular field of work or hobbies or interests you can learn more specific tactics that are optimized for that aspect of reality, and gain a lot from your efforts in learning the tactics. Like many things that are simple the scientific method is subtle and allows you to hone your skills while confronting life. The scientific method is a lifestyle, a code of life to force you to grow and engage reality. The samurai had their code, scientists have theirs. Our master is reality, Truth - with a capital T. In the short term this code brings a lot of difficulty and pain - in the long run it brings great joy and beauty and improves you vastly.
The particular tactics are often related to objective reality, but the strategy is equally powerful when applied to subjective and social reality, and in fact if you do not apply it there you are short changing yourself and not living the scientific way.
A true scientist is simply someone in awe of the beauty of reality, and is so taken by the beauty that they ask questions and listen to learn more and more subtle, amazing, and mind blowing truths. Anyone can do this, and everyone who does will gain, enormously. You can either simply believe what you believe now, e.g. assume your limited experiences and biases are accurate reflections of the world and stay stuck in your limited current situation, or you can go out and explore and engage the crazy amazing thing we call life and get blown away every single day out just how insanely beautiful things are. Which approach do you think will work out better?
The scientific method is simple: ask questions of reality, and honestly listen to the answer. We often couch this in overly clinical and un-illuminating terms - e.g. "hypothesis" (question) - which makes it sound like the method is limited to scientists, instead of being the fundamental approach to life one should take. How can you argue against asking questions coupled with honestly listening? This is simple, but not easy - it is hard to craft good questions (you have to come in with a lot of background information often and keep a fresh perspective), to realize when you accidentally ask the wrong question (good scientists pick up on this, and thus find new aspects of reality, poor scientists will minimize how the answer does not fit within their current understanding behind what they thought they asked - if you have ever programmed a computer you know that one often mean one thing but say another, if you ever had a real discussion with someone you find the same), and to honestly take in what you learn: it is hard to admit you were wrong, you wasted your time, your precious idea is not interesting or significant, etc.
The scientific method is a strategy, much of the bickering about the scientific method is merely linguistic confusion and confuses the tactical level with strategy. The tactics are important, but are not "the" scientific method, and should not - and are not - used in every situation. But the overriding strategy is both simple and consistent: ask questions. listen. honestly.
The scientific method is a general approach to life, one that is difficult yet is simple. You can learn it, and it will help you. In your particular field of work or hobbies or interests you can learn more specific tactics that are optimized for that aspect of reality, and gain a lot from your efforts in learning the tactics. Like many things that are simple the scientific method is subtle and allows you to hone your skills while confronting life. The scientific method is a lifestyle, a code of life to force you to grow and engage reality. The samurai had their code, scientists have theirs. Our master is reality, Truth - with a capital T. In the short term this code brings a lot of difficulty and pain - in the long run it brings great joy and beauty and improves you vastly.
The particular tactics are often related to objective reality, but the strategy is equally powerful when applied to subjective and social reality, and in fact if you do not apply it there you are short changing yourself and not living the scientific way.
A true scientist is simply someone in awe of the beauty of reality, and is so taken by the beauty that they ask questions and listen to learn more and more subtle, amazing, and mind blowing truths. Anyone can do this, and everyone who does will gain, enormously. You can either simply believe what you believe now, e.g. assume your limited experiences and biases are accurate reflections of the world and stay stuck in your limited current situation, or you can go out and explore and engage the crazy amazing thing we call life and get blown away every single day out just how insanely beautiful things are. Which approach do you think will work out better?
Monday, July 27, 2009
Critical Thought
"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweet and blood; who strives valiantly ... who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worth cause; who at best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worse, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who have ... known neither victory or defeat." - Theodore Roosevelt
To a high degree our educational system is one founded on criticism and critical thought. There are many positive aspects to this - learning to be a critical thinker prevents one from being a fool and wasting ones precious time (read: life) pursuing ideas that are flawed, being critical allows one to quickly break down a situation to get the feel of it, and criticism is easy and fun. But criticism is also dangerous - the ease, fun, and ego boost that occurs can be a trap preventing one from going further. Critical thought should be used to get you in the game and to improve your game, it is not the game itself. Do you want to be the fat guy on the couch who plays no sports that screams at the TV, yelling that the coach is a moron, that player X is weak, etc. or do you want to be a player? Criticism can be a trap - and one that can capture many intelligent people (many academics are the equivalent of the fat man yelling at the TV - creation of value is the game, not the criticism of others. Criticism without action and creation is simply whining.).
Criticism as an end in itself is pseudo-intellectualism - it is only one tool in your journey and is easy. It is not "stupid action man versus smart thinking man" - it is creating versus consuming. Either you are actively living life, creating wealth and value (friends, memories, joy, artifacts, etc.), or not. The more you engage and create, the better off you are.
Learn how to be critical and critical thought - but learn this to guide your actions, not as an excuse for taking no action. When in doubt you should look to see if something is simple or if it is easy - you want to do simple things, not easy things. Criticism is easy, relative to action (which requires risk, courage, sustained efforts, etc.), which suggests that it is not a sufficient mode to confront life with.
To a high degree our educational system is one founded on criticism and critical thought. There are many positive aspects to this - learning to be a critical thinker prevents one from being a fool and wasting ones precious time (read: life) pursuing ideas that are flawed, being critical allows one to quickly break down a situation to get the feel of it, and criticism is easy and fun. But criticism is also dangerous - the ease, fun, and ego boost that occurs can be a trap preventing one from going further. Critical thought should be used to get you in the game and to improve your game, it is not the game itself. Do you want to be the fat guy on the couch who plays no sports that screams at the TV, yelling that the coach is a moron, that player X is weak, etc. or do you want to be a player? Criticism can be a trap - and one that can capture many intelligent people (many academics are the equivalent of the fat man yelling at the TV - creation of value is the game, not the criticism of others. Criticism without action and creation is simply whining.).
Criticism as an end in itself is pseudo-intellectualism - it is only one tool in your journey and is easy. It is not "stupid action man versus smart thinking man" - it is creating versus consuming. Either you are actively living life, creating wealth and value (friends, memories, joy, artifacts, etc.), or not. The more you engage and create, the better off you are.
Learn how to be critical and critical thought - but learn this to guide your actions, not as an excuse for taking no action. When in doubt you should look to see if something is simple or if it is easy - you want to do simple things, not easy things. Criticism is easy, relative to action (which requires risk, courage, sustained efforts, etc.), which suggests that it is not a sufficient mode to confront life with.
Sunday, July 26, 2009
Tip Jar
Donate to Small Steps
Why? If you find the material here valuable making a donation is one way to of demonstrating your appreciation. You tip a server if they provide a pleasant experience as this makes everyone feel a boost, and as it provides good feedback to the server - do more of that. People do what they perceive as adding value, and donations/tipping are one means of demonstrating that value has been provided. Luckily the web is not like a restaurant - there is no social, or other, pressure to donate if you do not have the money, inclination, or feel it is justified. Thus: donate, or not, as you judge fit.
It is interesting to note that the internet now allows distributed benefactors - for the first time in history anyone can steer the long term direction of society by making small contributions along with others which aggregate into a significant impact. If you do not feel like tipping me, please consider tipping someone else out there in the ether - the role of benefactors in improving society is large, and now this isn't limited to Bill Gates and other ultrarich folk. You too can be a benefactor.
Why? If you find the material here valuable making a donation is one way to of demonstrating your appreciation. You tip a server if they provide a pleasant experience as this makes everyone feel a boost, and as it provides good feedback to the server - do more of that. People do what they perceive as adding value, and donations/tipping are one means of demonstrating that value has been provided. Luckily the web is not like a restaurant - there is no social, or other, pressure to donate if you do not have the money, inclination, or feel it is justified. Thus: donate, or not, as you judge fit.
It is interesting to note that the internet now allows distributed benefactors - for the first time in history anyone can steer the long term direction of society by making small contributions along with others which aggregate into a significant impact. If you do not feel like tipping me, please consider tipping someone else out there in the ether - the role of benefactors in improving society is large, and now this isn't limited to Bill Gates and other ultrarich folk. You too can be a benefactor.
Saturday, July 25, 2009
Deconstructing the Enneagram
The enneagram is a diagram which embodies a personality theory. The diagram is a 9-pointed figure, and the origins are wrapped in vague and mysterious beginnings - discussion of Eastern European mystics, the Sufis, number theories, etc., is common.
The basic idea is that there are 9 types of people, who are related to each other by the position on the diagram. The two types beside your type, your "wings", are similar and you can tend towards one of them. There are also two other types which you relate to when under stress, or in security, which are across the figure from you. In other words, your main type + the two wings + plus the two "stress/security" points describe you - or 5/9th of the diagram potentially describes you, and the types that "describe you" cover all aspects of the personality space. As you can see the enneagram is not a sharp tool.
The 9 types can be chunked into 3 groups of three - and your wings and stress/security points ensure that your personality spans then entire space of personality as you are related to each of these groups, e.g. the enneagram does not actually seem to discriminate you into a type that is distinct and informative. These three goups describe how information/emotions are processed by your type - head/fear, heart/grief, body/anger. A generous reading is that the enneagram captures your stance towards objective, social, and objective reality - but reading books/webpages about the enneagram does not have this insight leaping out. In terms of labeling and understanding people, the enneagram seems too complex for what it does - 9 types? But you can be close to the wing? Or under stress and thus across the diagram, or perhaps you are secure and thus across in a different direction? Oh yeah - in some of the literature they point out that stress doesn't mean what we normally mean by stress, so maybe you are at your stress point when you are not stressed. Huh? Where are the clear and sharp distinctions that one would look for in order to justify the number of labels?
At best it seems that the 3 groups of three - head/fear, heart/grief, body/anger - offers some insight, and a reduced version of the enneagram (e.g. 3 main types of personality) could be useful. But at this point why even attempt to salvage the enneagram? The big 5 is an emprical description of personality that is on solid, if limited, footing. Why not simply find your big 5 properties, and then think about subjective, social, and objective reality as the environment that you are embedded in and which you must learn to live in in order to thrive? For that matter, if the 9 types actually were clear distinct types they should correspond to clusters of big 5 properties - if we looked at the 5-d space with points for each person who took the test we should see clusters of the points: to be precise, we should see 9 distinct clusters, one for each type. To my knowlege this has not been observed, pretty strong evidence that the "enneagram theory" is false.
You can take an enneagram test for fun - after first hearing of this theory I googled and took 3 different ones, from 3 different web pages which sold enneagram related products, and had three different results - not surprising since the theory does not seem to make sharply distinct categories. Even worse, some of the test show the "points" you have on each personality type and my score was fairly evenly spread over a huge subset (~3/4) of the personally types. Basically I could pick any personality type that sounded nice to me and claim it as "capturing me". To me it seems clear: the enneagram is pseudo-science that offers no insight or constructive means to understand yourself and others. Disturbing, as apparently this model is used by some counsellors and therapists, as a google and amazon search reveals, and since it appears to have no sharp and incisive properties that would justify such use it would be better to say the model is misused by some counsellors and therapists.
Pseudo-science is not inert, and can cause a lot of pain and damage. Any placebo value of the enneagram should exist with any other treatment plan, so I cannot see any value brought to the table. Folk psychology and traditions have the potential have capture interesting truths, but as far as I can tell the enneagram contains no such interesting aspects. In fact, it does not even seem to be a legitamate folk theory - with the "mysterious roots", with vague references to Sufis or other groups, likely being made up in order to give the false sense that the method is an ancient tradition (no evidence is given, and inconsistent stories exist, both of which suggest the "ancient system" claim is false). The story seems to be thus: the enneagram theory was made up in the 20th century, with false historical pedigree, and its claims to sort people into meaningful categories which help you understand yourself and others and grow falls apart under even the weakest examination.
Lowdown
- The enneagram lives up to its name (pronounced "any-a-gram": yes, you too can pick any of the grams/personality types you want to pick to describe yourself), but does not appear to live up to any of its claims.
The basic idea is that there are 9 types of people, who are related to each other by the position on the diagram. The two types beside your type, your "wings", are similar and you can tend towards one of them. There are also two other types which you relate to when under stress, or in security, which are across the figure from you. In other words, your main type + the two wings + plus the two "stress/security" points describe you - or 5/9th of the diagram potentially describes you, and the types that "describe you" cover all aspects of the personality space. As you can see the enneagram is not a sharp tool.
The 9 types can be chunked into 3 groups of three - and your wings and stress/security points ensure that your personality spans then entire space of personality as you are related to each of these groups, e.g. the enneagram does not actually seem to discriminate you into a type that is distinct and informative. These three goups describe how information/emotions are processed by your type - head/fear, heart/grief, body/anger. A generous reading is that the enneagram captures your stance towards objective, social, and objective reality - but reading books/webpages about the enneagram does not have this insight leaping out. In terms of labeling and understanding people, the enneagram seems too complex for what it does - 9 types? But you can be close to the wing? Or under stress and thus across the diagram, or perhaps you are secure and thus across in a different direction? Oh yeah - in some of the literature they point out that stress doesn't mean what we normally mean by stress, so maybe you are at your stress point when you are not stressed. Huh? Where are the clear and sharp distinctions that one would look for in order to justify the number of labels?
At best it seems that the 3 groups of three - head/fear, heart/grief, body/anger - offers some insight, and a reduced version of the enneagram (e.g. 3 main types of personality) could be useful. But at this point why even attempt to salvage the enneagram? The big 5 is an emprical description of personality that is on solid, if limited, footing. Why not simply find your big 5 properties, and then think about subjective, social, and objective reality as the environment that you are embedded in and which you must learn to live in in order to thrive? For that matter, if the 9 types actually were clear distinct types they should correspond to clusters of big 5 properties - if we looked at the 5-d space with points for each person who took the test we should see clusters of the points: to be precise, we should see 9 distinct clusters, one for each type. To my knowlege this has not been observed, pretty strong evidence that the "enneagram theory" is false.
You can take an enneagram test for fun - after first hearing of this theory I googled and took 3 different ones, from 3 different web pages which sold enneagram related products, and had three different results - not surprising since the theory does not seem to make sharply distinct categories. Even worse, some of the test show the "points" you have on each personality type and my score was fairly evenly spread over a huge subset (~3/4) of the personally types. Basically I could pick any personality type that sounded nice to me and claim it as "capturing me". To me it seems clear: the enneagram is pseudo-science that offers no insight or constructive means to understand yourself and others. Disturbing, as apparently this model is used by some counsellors and therapists, as a google and amazon search reveals, and since it appears to have no sharp and incisive properties that would justify such use it would be better to say the model is misused by some counsellors and therapists.
Pseudo-science is not inert, and can cause a lot of pain and damage. Any placebo value of the enneagram should exist with any other treatment plan, so I cannot see any value brought to the table. Folk psychology and traditions have the potential have capture interesting truths, but as far as I can tell the enneagram contains no such interesting aspects. In fact, it does not even seem to be a legitamate folk theory - with the "mysterious roots", with vague references to Sufis or other groups, likely being made up in order to give the false sense that the method is an ancient tradition (no evidence is given, and inconsistent stories exist, both of which suggest the "ancient system" claim is false). The story seems to be thus: the enneagram theory was made up in the 20th century, with false historical pedigree, and its claims to sort people into meaningful categories which help you understand yourself and others and grow falls apart under even the weakest examination.
Lowdown
- The enneagram lives up to its name (pronounced "any-a-gram": yes, you too can pick any of the grams/personality types you want to pick to describe yourself), but does not appear to live up to any of its claims.
3 key planes - objective, subjective, social
There are 3 key planes that humans exist on - the objective, the subjective, and the social. Each is a "type of reality", and to have full, rich, and successful lives we must learn how to live in each of these planes.
Objective Reality. External reality appears to exist, seems to be persistent, and seems to be consistent. Few people dispute this - some philosophers, or the immature, may bicker at the edges and claim not to believe this, but their actions suggest otherwise [1]. Learning how to gain information, experiment, judge truth, use logic, and manipulate objective reality is an important set of skills. The scientific method is thus: ask questions of reality, and honestly listen to the answer. This is simple, yet not easy. Asking the right questions, actually paying attention to an answer, realizing when you meant to ask one thing but in fact asked another, and honestly listening (you often do not like the answer) are all not easy. What we typically learn as "the scientific method" in school is more often actually just some tactics used by scientists, and thus does not always make sense or even get used consistently, but the overall stragety is simple and the same - ask questions, honestly listen to the answer. Learning the basic scientific approach is powerful, has created vast material wealth in our society, and will improve your life to the extent you live the scientific method. It is mind boggling what we can do and create when we ask good quesitons, and take the time to listen to the answer. Learning the scientific method and creating the social conditions that allowed for the honest listening is no easy task. We have succeeded in doing so - anyone with the dedication and willingness can learn the scientific method, and learn how to live in alignment with objective reality. Many do not, including many scientists, but you can.
Subjective Reality. You are conscious. Amazing. It would be mind blowing, if it were not mind defining. This is one of the few things you actually truely know. Subjective truth is everything that feels important - emotions, love, meaning, consciousness, the moment. Many limiting beliefs exist, many unskilled ways of experiencing ones subjective reality exist. Learning how to handle your emotions, to build your character, is one of the most powerful and immediate ways of improving your life. Some scientists seem so taken by the power of objective truth that they seem to discount this factor of life [2], but you can "prove" the sheer insanity of doing so by just experiencing right now. Listen. Look. Feel. Amazing. We often forget just how awesome the universe is, right now, if we simple open our minds to the sheer crazy beautiful fact of consciousness and emotions. Learning to meditate and taking an experiential approach to life are good ways to hone your "subjective skills". Much that limits us are self imposed beliefs, not truth, or neglect of what is important on the subjective level - it doesn't matter if you do well on empty efforts, you are still wasting your time and life.
Social Reality. We are social animals, we need others, are limited by our group, and find meaning with others. Power is essentially our ability to conduct ourselves as we wish in a social environment. The misuse of power can seriously limit others, and preventing such misuse remains a key factor in maintaining a good society. It was a long and hard struggle to get to the point were power of the few was restrained to the point where a "commoner" could speak honestly and communicate what they have found about objective reality to others. If we create healthy and strong connections with others we create a vibrant social network that gives meaning, creates wealth, and gives capacity to our lives. Improving your social network brings value to others and to you, and allows you to both create and store value. Reaching out to others, picking and perking them up, open and honest communication - e.g. sharing yourself - are how you start to build these muscles.
As far as I can tell, these 3 aspects of human reality are "all there is". If we learn to handle ourselves in these 3 domains we will have happy and successful lives, if we don't we most likely will not.
Our society has focused mainly on objective reality and the creation of material wealth. The value and beauty the comes out of this focus is astounding. We live longer and better, to such an extent that even our trash is amazing - a powerful measure of just how wealthy we are (go back in time and you could sell much that we throw out for a pretty penny). We have choice and resources. But why do we focus on this aspect? The positive reason is that it makes for a comfortable and long life, one that is largely easy and pleasant, and it allows people to focus on what is important to and for them. The negative reason is that this is easier to do - we can "train" people to be a cog in a big machine, without much effort or consideration, and have reasonably amazing outcomes, we can do the easy (versus simple) and walk through life without engaging it and others. We don't have to think about how we are doing things, since we are guarenteed a "decent" result without effort.
The important implication is this: we both have vast resources - material wealth - and plenty of room for improvement. On an individual level, our society allows us to do almost anything we want to improve ourselves - and even if we are "poor" we are richer than most of the people currently in the world, and most of people who exisited in history. We are materially secure, even if we don't feel this way, it is true. We can take life choice "risks" without risking much - the worse case is that you are materially richer than "99%" of the people who have ever lived. On a collective level we can vastly improve others lives, both in simple (smile at a stranger) and profound (build up meaning in peoples lives) ways. The simple fact is this: we are materially rich, and yet we live in a society that is poor in social and emotional ways due to largely ignoring these factors (and due to the ease of our wealth we are not so hot at objective reality either - we are rich enough to be able to afford to be wrong and hold incorrect ideas without significant, or at least obvious, pain). Our focus on the material has given us security, and the means to engage either of the other two factors with almost no risk. We simply have to confront our fears, wake up, and engage reality. It is not easy, but it is simple, and it is rewarding.
Notes:
[1] If they truely believed otherwise, then offer them a bet: 1 to 1000 odds for money that objective reality does/does not exist. Put up $100 bucks, so they must put up $100, 000, and have the test as this: cut off your hand. If they truely believe there is no objective truth, then it does not matter if they cut their own hand off or not, if they loose the bet or not, etc. In fact, why are they wearing clothes and holding down a job and submitting to gravity and social norms? If one truely believed in no objective reality, would you live a normal and tedious life? One would have to be completely boring, unimaginative, and unintelligence to live a normal life - the only reason most people live normal lives is due to neccessity, they have strong objective constraints. If you are not constrained by objective reality, why are you limiting yourself? There is only one reason - you actually know, or believe, you are in fact so constrained. This footnote is painfully obvious, and should go without saying, but to a large extent our society has elevated criticism as an ideal - children are rewarded for pointing out faults, even if they are not significant, realistic, or important. Yes, sure, maybe objective reality does not exist - or is not as highly constraining as we think - but this is (1) obvious, and (2) not so productive or important. We train children to have a largly empty and impotent frame - stylistic criticism - and get adults who are diminuate, bitter, and immature. Criticism as a system is corrosive, limiting, and sad - and to a large extent is the focus of our educational system.
[2] This amazes me, but it is true. This may simply be a matter of strength - we tend to focus on what we are strong at, and discount other things. The sheer amazing wealth we have generated from focusing on the objective may also convince some, who are somewhat noncritical thinkers, that it is the only important factor - yes, it is amazing, but so are the other factors.
Objective Reality. External reality appears to exist, seems to be persistent, and seems to be consistent. Few people dispute this - some philosophers, or the immature, may bicker at the edges and claim not to believe this, but their actions suggest otherwise [1]. Learning how to gain information, experiment, judge truth, use logic, and manipulate objective reality is an important set of skills. The scientific method is thus: ask questions of reality, and honestly listen to the answer. This is simple, yet not easy. Asking the right questions, actually paying attention to an answer, realizing when you meant to ask one thing but in fact asked another, and honestly listening (you often do not like the answer) are all not easy. What we typically learn as "the scientific method" in school is more often actually just some tactics used by scientists, and thus does not always make sense or even get used consistently, but the overall stragety is simple and the same - ask questions, honestly listen to the answer. Learning the basic scientific approach is powerful, has created vast material wealth in our society, and will improve your life to the extent you live the scientific method. It is mind boggling what we can do and create when we ask good quesitons, and take the time to listen to the answer. Learning the scientific method and creating the social conditions that allowed for the honest listening is no easy task. We have succeeded in doing so - anyone with the dedication and willingness can learn the scientific method, and learn how to live in alignment with objective reality. Many do not, including many scientists, but you can.
Subjective Reality. You are conscious. Amazing. It would be mind blowing, if it were not mind defining. This is one of the few things you actually truely know. Subjective truth is everything that feels important - emotions, love, meaning, consciousness, the moment. Many limiting beliefs exist, many unskilled ways of experiencing ones subjective reality exist. Learning how to handle your emotions, to build your character, is one of the most powerful and immediate ways of improving your life. Some scientists seem so taken by the power of objective truth that they seem to discount this factor of life [2], but you can "prove" the sheer insanity of doing so by just experiencing right now. Listen. Look. Feel. Amazing. We often forget just how awesome the universe is, right now, if we simple open our minds to the sheer crazy beautiful fact of consciousness and emotions. Learning to meditate and taking an experiential approach to life are good ways to hone your "subjective skills". Much that limits us are self imposed beliefs, not truth, or neglect of what is important on the subjective level - it doesn't matter if you do well on empty efforts, you are still wasting your time and life.
Social Reality. We are social animals, we need others, are limited by our group, and find meaning with others. Power is essentially our ability to conduct ourselves as we wish in a social environment. The misuse of power can seriously limit others, and preventing such misuse remains a key factor in maintaining a good society. It was a long and hard struggle to get to the point were power of the few was restrained to the point where a "commoner" could speak honestly and communicate what they have found about objective reality to others. If we create healthy and strong connections with others we create a vibrant social network that gives meaning, creates wealth, and gives capacity to our lives. Improving your social network brings value to others and to you, and allows you to both create and store value. Reaching out to others, picking and perking them up, open and honest communication - e.g. sharing yourself - are how you start to build these muscles.
As far as I can tell, these 3 aspects of human reality are "all there is". If we learn to handle ourselves in these 3 domains we will have happy and successful lives, if we don't we most likely will not.
Our society has focused mainly on objective reality and the creation of material wealth. The value and beauty the comes out of this focus is astounding. We live longer and better, to such an extent that even our trash is amazing - a powerful measure of just how wealthy we are (go back in time and you could sell much that we throw out for a pretty penny). We have choice and resources. But why do we focus on this aspect? The positive reason is that it makes for a comfortable and long life, one that is largely easy and pleasant, and it allows people to focus on what is important to and for them. The negative reason is that this is easier to do - we can "train" people to be a cog in a big machine, without much effort or consideration, and have reasonably amazing outcomes, we can do the easy (versus simple) and walk through life without engaging it and others. We don't have to think about how we are doing things, since we are guarenteed a "decent" result without effort.
The important implication is this: we both have vast resources - material wealth - and plenty of room for improvement. On an individual level, our society allows us to do almost anything we want to improve ourselves - and even if we are "poor" we are richer than most of the people currently in the world, and most of people who exisited in history. We are materially secure, even if we don't feel this way, it is true. We can take life choice "risks" without risking much - the worse case is that you are materially richer than "99%" of the people who have ever lived. On a collective level we can vastly improve others lives, both in simple (smile at a stranger) and profound (build up meaning in peoples lives) ways. The simple fact is this: we are materially rich, and yet we live in a society that is poor in social and emotional ways due to largely ignoring these factors (and due to the ease of our wealth we are not so hot at objective reality either - we are rich enough to be able to afford to be wrong and hold incorrect ideas without significant, or at least obvious, pain). Our focus on the material has given us security, and the means to engage either of the other two factors with almost no risk. We simply have to confront our fears, wake up, and engage reality. It is not easy, but it is simple, and it is rewarding.
Notes:
[1] If they truely believed otherwise, then offer them a bet: 1 to 1000 odds for money that objective reality does/does not exist. Put up $100 bucks, so they must put up $100, 000, and have the test as this: cut off your hand. If they truely believe there is no objective truth, then it does not matter if they cut their own hand off or not, if they loose the bet or not, etc. In fact, why are they wearing clothes and holding down a job and submitting to gravity and social norms? If one truely believed in no objective reality, would you live a normal and tedious life? One would have to be completely boring, unimaginative, and unintelligence to live a normal life - the only reason most people live normal lives is due to neccessity, they have strong objective constraints. If you are not constrained by objective reality, why are you limiting yourself? There is only one reason - you actually know, or believe, you are in fact so constrained. This footnote is painfully obvious, and should go without saying, but to a large extent our society has elevated criticism as an ideal - children are rewarded for pointing out faults, even if they are not significant, realistic, or important. Yes, sure, maybe objective reality does not exist - or is not as highly constraining as we think - but this is (1) obvious, and (2) not so productive or important. We train children to have a largly empty and impotent frame - stylistic criticism - and get adults who are diminuate, bitter, and immature. Criticism as a system is corrosive, limiting, and sad - and to a large extent is the focus of our educational system.
[2] This amazes me, but it is true. This may simply be a matter of strength - we tend to focus on what we are strong at, and discount other things. The sheer amazing wealth we have generated from focusing on the objective may also convince some, who are somewhat noncritical thinkers, that it is the only important factor - yes, it is amazing, but so are the other factors.
Poverty - a social view
What is poverty? In western societies we often define poverty as lack of financial resources - if you make < $X a year you are, defacto, poor.
Is this an accurate definition? On the face of things, yes, but dig deeper and things look a bit differently. Consider some poor person who wins the lotto. We all expect them to go back to being poor fairly soon. Or look at many NFL players, they go broke shortly after retiring, despite having an almost sick amount of money. Poverty obviously relates to skills, an ability to manage ones life.
Consider this definition: poverty is a lack of healthy social networks. "The Rich" help each other, give each other advice, train their children. Some ethnic groups help each other, give each other advice, train their children. The groups we see as rich, the ones that persist, that consistently create wealth and value, that are happy and have plenty are ones that are rich in connections, bonds, duty. They have healthy social networks.
Now look to the poor - they do not help each other, they espouse victimhood, they are critical of "The Rich" (including, say, Jews who are one of the ethnic groups with meaningful social networks), they do not give meaningful advice to each other, they do not work hard to create value but instead consume value. If one is from this "group" (defined mainly as a lack of group cohesion) and hones ones skills and creates value and wealth, well, one is in trouble: without finding a cohesive group to join the value and wealth created may soon disappear.
The poor are those who are poor in relationships. A given poor person has parents, friends, siblings, and spouses who have overall negative and unconnected personalities. Whining, victimology, passivity, complaint, justification, selfishness: we reconize this in "the poor". The social environment the poor live in is sparse, unhealthy, negative. How could anyone thrive in such a corrosive environment?
Under this view we can see how better to become rich - not only must we hone particular skills that allow us to create wealth, but we must hone social networks that are positive and productive. We must become gardeners of our social environment - watering, fertilializing, finding "plants" that work together, creating beauty. We must also do something that is difficult: pulling weeds. This can be painful, but if we wish a bountiful garden we must till, pull weeds, and protect against invasion. If you are starting to change your life, you may find that you have to cut ties with your parents and some former friends. Invite them with you, but do not tie yourself to them. Our relationships are a choice, and a most important one.
Learning how to make money at some task is not sufficient (though it is necessary) to become wealthy; learning how to be a valuable friend, someone people want to know and be with, and finding others to join with in the struggle of life is needed. And here lies true wealth - the financial aspect is but one part.
University students may eat noodles, live in run down and sparsly furnished apartments, make very little money (and actually usually have significant negative money (debt)), and have a lack of financial resources - but they are not poor. They are forming deep connections with others, they are learning skills to create wealth, they are engaging ideas and life and people, and they most often come from caring families. Our great grandparents were not poor either (at least not all of them), despite lacking almost everything we take as granted in terms of material wealth.
Poverty is not measured by how much money you make per year. Poverty is measured by a lack of meaningful social networks . A social pauper necessarily finds he is a financial pauper, if not now, then soon. If you want to be "rich" forget the money, and consider people: how to connect, how to bring value to others? Even if you do not find the finances you want, you will find what we wish to buy with the finances - a happier and more meaningful life.
First things first - people. Find others who care about life, themselves, and others. Create value with them. Actually live. That is wealth.
Is this an accurate definition? On the face of things, yes, but dig deeper and things look a bit differently. Consider some poor person who wins the lotto. We all expect them to go back to being poor fairly soon. Or look at many NFL players, they go broke shortly after retiring, despite having an almost sick amount of money. Poverty obviously relates to skills, an ability to manage ones life.
Consider this definition: poverty is a lack of healthy social networks. "The Rich" help each other, give each other advice, train their children. Some ethnic groups help each other, give each other advice, train their children. The groups we see as rich, the ones that persist, that consistently create wealth and value, that are happy and have plenty are ones that are rich in connections, bonds, duty. They have healthy social networks.
Now look to the poor - they do not help each other, they espouse victimhood, they are critical of "The Rich" (including, say, Jews who are one of the ethnic groups with meaningful social networks), they do not give meaningful advice to each other, they do not work hard to create value but instead consume value. If one is from this "group" (defined mainly as a lack of group cohesion) and hones ones skills and creates value and wealth, well, one is in trouble: without finding a cohesive group to join the value and wealth created may soon disappear.
The poor are those who are poor in relationships. A given poor person has parents, friends, siblings, and spouses who have overall negative and unconnected personalities. Whining, victimology, passivity, complaint, justification, selfishness: we reconize this in "the poor". The social environment the poor live in is sparse, unhealthy, negative. How could anyone thrive in such a corrosive environment?
Under this view we can see how better to become rich - not only must we hone particular skills that allow us to create wealth, but we must hone social networks that are positive and productive. We must become gardeners of our social environment - watering, fertilializing, finding "plants" that work together, creating beauty. We must also do something that is difficult: pulling weeds. This can be painful, but if we wish a bountiful garden we must till, pull weeds, and protect against invasion. If you are starting to change your life, you may find that you have to cut ties with your parents and some former friends. Invite them with you, but do not tie yourself to them. Our relationships are a choice, and a most important one.
Learning how to make money at some task is not sufficient (though it is necessary) to become wealthy; learning how to be a valuable friend, someone people want to know and be with, and finding others to join with in the struggle of life is needed. And here lies true wealth - the financial aspect is but one part.
University students may eat noodles, live in run down and sparsly furnished apartments, make very little money (and actually usually have significant negative money (debt)), and have a lack of financial resources - but they are not poor. They are forming deep connections with others, they are learning skills to create wealth, they are engaging ideas and life and people, and they most often come from caring families. Our great grandparents were not poor either (at least not all of them), despite lacking almost everything we take as granted in terms of material wealth.
Poverty is not measured by how much money you make per year. Poverty is measured by a lack of meaningful social networks . A social pauper necessarily finds he is a financial pauper, if not now, then soon. If you want to be "rich" forget the money, and consider people: how to connect, how to bring value to others? Even if you do not find the finances you want, you will find what we wish to buy with the finances - a happier and more meaningful life.
First things first - people. Find others who care about life, themselves, and others. Create value with them. Actually live. That is wealth.
Friday, July 24, 2009
Stack verus Queue: Your Brain & Things
In planning tasks take note of two different ways of placing items on a waiting list: stacking or queuing them.
We are all familiar with both. We go to the grocery store, and wait in a line (queue) to pay for our items. We have a pile of paper work on our desk, when we get something new we place it on top.
The order of clearing stacks and queues are opposite: in a queue it is first in, first out. In a stack it is first in, last out. In queues things flow through, in stacks they pile up and we have to dig down to the bottom.
So here is the important thing - our brains tend to act as stacks: the latest idea we have goes on top of prior things. This can be quite bad, since our memories are faulty it is similar to having a bunch of "to do" notes in a messy pile with disappearing ink on them. If we stack too much on there, by the time we dig back down the note is useless to us. Opportunity lost. Our brains stack projects and ideas that are written in disappearing ink leading to loss opportunities - we must find tools to help prevent loss of good ideas, losing focus and dropping what should be high priority tasks, and act on what is important now while saving good projects to think about for the future.
The classic approach to confronting this reality is to make a schedule in a calendar, ensuring we queue the important things and get them done. This is helpful. But how about all those "neat" ideas, stuff we want to do, projects to stew on? We need to store those, get them out of our mind so we don't forget them, and so we don't waste resources thinking about them without progressing them forward. You can have an "idea box", a note book, etc. to collect them - but this is far from ideal, now you have two separate processes to help manage your ideas.
I have found a nice tool that seems to take our brains "stack and lose" problem into account in a clean and easy to use manner: "things". The idea is simple: sticky notes, that can be tagged (for searching and ordering), placed in project folders, and have "to do on/by" stamps on them. Basically you take what your brain normally does - a bunch of ideas & thoughts - and you digitally capture them, allowing the computer to sort, slice, dice, put into a time sequence, store once done for documentation, rank by priority, etc. etc. Things is your brain, without the loss of persistence.
I'm currently using the free trial, and I am loving it. I have always had issues with retaining ideas and scheduling actions. Things seems to help, and is much more natural for me than just using a calendar. I get ideas and future projects put down, I get things done that need to be done. I'm still getting into the swing of things, and learning to use things better as I go, but I am highly impressed. My desk is a mess, my mind is worse - Things helps.
There are two problems with things: (1) it is only for the Mac, and (2) it costs $$$. The value for the money is very high though: I will most likely be shelling out the cash, things is a valuable tool for me - I'm going to be spending my coffee/beer money on this. If you are on PC you are currently out of luck; but now that this tool is out I'm sure there will be knock offs, so look around.
Lowdown:
- View your brain's storage of ideas as a stack of notes written in disappearing ink: this is a simple analogy and will help you figure out how to best deal with this.
- Things is a tool that addresses this by digitizing ideas in notes, allowing tagging, sorting, scheduling, binning, etc. Things is natural as it follows our natural brain process, and addressed the problems we have by using the strengths of digital storage. Consider Things, or something similar, for yourself. It just might be just the thing you were looking for...
We are all familiar with both. We go to the grocery store, and wait in a line (queue) to pay for our items. We have a pile of paper work on our desk, when we get something new we place it on top.
The order of clearing stacks and queues are opposite: in a queue it is first in, first out. In a stack it is first in, last out. In queues things flow through, in stacks they pile up and we have to dig down to the bottom.
So here is the important thing - our brains tend to act as stacks: the latest idea we have goes on top of prior things. This can be quite bad, since our memories are faulty it is similar to having a bunch of "to do" notes in a messy pile with disappearing ink on them. If we stack too much on there, by the time we dig back down the note is useless to us. Opportunity lost. Our brains stack projects and ideas that are written in disappearing ink leading to loss opportunities - we must find tools to help prevent loss of good ideas, losing focus and dropping what should be high priority tasks, and act on what is important now while saving good projects to think about for the future.
The classic approach to confronting this reality is to make a schedule in a calendar, ensuring we queue the important things and get them done. This is helpful. But how about all those "neat" ideas, stuff we want to do, projects to stew on? We need to store those, get them out of our mind so we don't forget them, and so we don't waste resources thinking about them without progressing them forward. You can have an "idea box", a note book, etc. to collect them - but this is far from ideal, now you have two separate processes to help manage your ideas.
I have found a nice tool that seems to take our brains "stack and lose" problem into account in a clean and easy to use manner: "things". The idea is simple: sticky notes, that can be tagged (for searching and ordering), placed in project folders, and have "to do on/by" stamps on them. Basically you take what your brain normally does - a bunch of ideas & thoughts - and you digitally capture them, allowing the computer to sort, slice, dice, put into a time sequence, store once done for documentation, rank by priority, etc. etc. Things is your brain, without the loss of persistence.
I'm currently using the free trial, and I am loving it. I have always had issues with retaining ideas and scheduling actions. Things seems to help, and is much more natural for me than just using a calendar. I get ideas and future projects put down, I get things done that need to be done. I'm still getting into the swing of things, and learning to use things better as I go, but I am highly impressed. My desk is a mess, my mind is worse - Things helps.
There are two problems with things: (1) it is only for the Mac, and (2) it costs $$$. The value for the money is very high though: I will most likely be shelling out the cash, things is a valuable tool for me - I'm going to be spending my coffee/beer money on this. If you are on PC you are currently out of luck; but now that this tool is out I'm sure there will be knock offs, so look around.
Lowdown:
- View your brain's storage of ideas as a stack of notes written in disappearing ink: this is a simple analogy and will help you figure out how to best deal with this.
- Things is a tool that addresses this by digitizing ideas in notes, allowing tagging, sorting, scheduling, binning, etc. Things is natural as it follows our natural brain process, and addressed the problems we have by using the strengths of digital storage. Consider Things, or something similar, for yourself. It just might be just the thing you were looking for...
Thursday, July 23, 2009
The big 5
The benchmark in personality is "the big 5". Nerds everywhere will be happy to know that this framework is from lexical analysis - e.g. data mining. The essential features are thus: empirical ("from the field") and reflective of our current society (allowing a comparative study of you versus others). The weaknesses follow from these essential features: no conceptual underpinnings, based on "averages" (persistent and consistent patterns in self reporting and writing), based on self view (if you ever spoke to a jerk, you know they would rate themselves rosy while everyone else would not - so this weakness can be huge) - so if you have higher or more realistic standards and self view than others, you will rate lower in various measures.
The lowdown of the big 5 is this: data analysis reveals clusters of traits that indicate 5 "basis vectors" which build up personality space. e.g. take all the adjectives we can use to describe ourselves, and we can project them into 5 different dimensions that capture how people tend to describe themselves. Simply by taking a test you can see how your personality is described in this 5-d space, which is bound in size in practice by the simple fact that we are finite creatures sharply bounded by time, capacity, and our social environment.
We float on an OCEAN [openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism] with others, and can quickly see how we "measure up" against others. As a simple rule, it seems like we would do well to "max out" on these measures in order to be a successful and happy person (for neuroticism, you want to max out on the low end...).
In short, the big 5 is a fairly flawed system - but one that is quick to determine for oneself, and will give you an impression of both our society and how you are positioned in the personality space of our times. Using your score you can see how others will tend percieve you, how you stand in relations with other, and thus what you may want to focus on in improvement (as we are social creatures our success often depends on the help, or at least not hinderance, of others). As far as personality tests go, this is a decent one and one that is the benchmark. Each dimension gives you a particular area of focus for self improvement, and an actual way of measuring - yes, far from perfect, but a somewhat objective measuring stick to see your progress, weak points, strengths, etc.
The lowdown of the big 5 is this: data analysis reveals clusters of traits that indicate 5 "basis vectors" which build up personality space. e.g. take all the adjectives we can use to describe ourselves, and we can project them into 5 different dimensions that capture how people tend to describe themselves. Simply by taking a test you can see how your personality is described in this 5-d space, which is bound in size in practice by the simple fact that we are finite creatures sharply bounded by time, capacity, and our social environment.
We float on an OCEAN [openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism] with others, and can quickly see how we "measure up" against others. As a simple rule, it seems like we would do well to "max out" on these measures in order to be a successful and happy person (for neuroticism, you want to max out on the low end...).
In short, the big 5 is a fairly flawed system - but one that is quick to determine for oneself, and will give you an impression of both our society and how you are positioned in the personality space of our times. Using your score you can see how others will tend percieve you, how you stand in relations with other, and thus what you may want to focus on in improvement (as we are social creatures our success often depends on the help, or at least not hinderance, of others). As far as personality tests go, this is a decent one and one that is the benchmark. Each dimension gives you a particular area of focus for self improvement, and an actual way of measuring - yes, far from perfect, but a somewhat objective measuring stick to see your progress, weak points, strengths, etc.
Wednesday, July 22, 2009
Focus: One hour chunk?
You may have heard that the optimal time chunk for learning is roughly one hour, after which your attention "exponentially" drops, and you may have heard even more precise figures such as 55 minutes. The lowdown is that you waste your time if you try to do one task, that requires sharp attention, for > 1 hr.
But wait. Doesn't this sound like an urban legend? What are the odds that the human attention span exactly equals the time unit we chunk the day into? One hour? Really? Sounds fake.
The origin of the hour as the unit of the day is in the deep past, but one can speculate it it comes out of the duodecimal (base 12) number system that many ancient cultures used. Why base 12? Who knows, but hold your hand palm up and then fold and touch your fingers to your palm. You now have a counting machine - use your thumb to count on your joints and finger tips. Base 12 baby. Could be useful for commerce, counting your flock, etc. Base 12 also makes division easy - dividing by 2,3,4, and 6, all easy. Look at your counting machine again - easy to "chunk" things together in 2's, 3's, 4's, 8's, etc. But I digress.
So the hour is an unit of time defined by ancient number systems; it should have little correlation to human attention span. As it is a "reasonable" unit of time we teach classes for 1 hour. Some education researchers then find that 1 hr is an optimal attention span time. This "finding" conflicts with every single person who went to public school or attended a lecture - close attention for a full hour? Huh?
Apparently the FAA limits lectures to ~ 20 minutes in U.S. flight schools, as they have found that this is the time students can highly absorb information (HT: Philip Greenspun). This is inline with my personal experience - the first 1/3 of a lecture I can really absorb, then things get harder. This 20 minute claim also makes the 1 hr "attention window" make some more sense - if you take engineering you will learn that ~ 3 time constants are sufficient to have some fast ("exponential") decaying process go down to almost nothing (~ 5%). We can have lectures that last for 1 hr, and still get something out of it (not much, but something) - if this was not true we would have dumped the 1 hr lecture long ago. Essentially we are horribly wasting time and being inefficent, not to mention making people uncomfortable and the environment unpleasant, but not to the point that it becomes so blatantly bad that schools actually have to change.
Take away message:
- It seems that 20 minute chunks are ideal for high attention absorption tasks, and by the time you get to an hour you are at the point where it makes no sense to keep going (if high attention is required).
- Schools are both being ineffective in transferring information, and making children uncomfortable, by using 1 hr chunks - if they do not use additional tactics to take "natural" attention span into account. Essentially schools are training many students that learning is a negative experience. Make sure you don't accidentally do this to yourself by using standard "clock time" units instead of "head time" units in planning learning sessions in your schedule.
- The mismatch between "head time" and "clock time" is large enough to cause us problems, but not large enough to force changes in society. Keep this in mind in planning your schedule.
Questions to think about:
- What about "flow", when does this 20 minute rule no longer apply? (hint: think about the "direction" of flow...). In flow situations, what is a good time chunk? Is this completely idiosyncratic?
- How can you use this 20 minute rule to help you learn/engage in your work and life? Can you see any areas where you are trying to push longer, and thereby both waste time (due to inefficient absorption) and implicitly "train yourself" to dislike the task? There may be low hanging fruit here for increasing your efficiency and effectiveness, as well as increase your pleasure in a task (which goes a long way to being good at it).
- 20 minutes may be "optimal" in terms of being highly receptive, but this rule will be both an average and indicates the most receptive time frame. For yourself, and your given task, you may be able to go a bit longer, or must go a bit less. But 1 hr is likely the cutoff beyond which you are completely wasting time. Experiment - 4o minutes might be good for you/your task, etc. - with times between 20 minutes and 1 hr to see what works.
- Why 20 minutes? What are the mechanisms that make 20 minutes a natural unit of time for paying attention?
But wait. Doesn't this sound like an urban legend? What are the odds that the human attention span exactly equals the time unit we chunk the day into? One hour? Really? Sounds fake.
The origin of the hour as the unit of the day is in the deep past, but one can speculate it it comes out of the duodecimal (base 12) number system that many ancient cultures used. Why base 12? Who knows, but hold your hand palm up and then fold and touch your fingers to your palm. You now have a counting machine - use your thumb to count on your joints and finger tips. Base 12 baby. Could be useful for commerce, counting your flock, etc. Base 12 also makes division easy - dividing by 2,3,4, and 6, all easy. Look at your counting machine again - easy to "chunk" things together in 2's, 3's, 4's, 8's, etc. But I digress.
So the hour is an unit of time defined by ancient number systems; it should have little correlation to human attention span. As it is a "reasonable" unit of time we teach classes for 1 hour. Some education researchers then find that 1 hr is an optimal attention span time. This "finding" conflicts with every single person who went to public school or attended a lecture - close attention for a full hour? Huh?
Apparently the FAA limits lectures to ~ 20 minutes in U.S. flight schools, as they have found that this is the time students can highly absorb information (HT: Philip Greenspun). This is inline with my personal experience - the first 1/3 of a lecture I can really absorb, then things get harder. This 20 minute claim also makes the 1 hr "attention window" make some more sense - if you take engineering you will learn that ~ 3 time constants are sufficient to have some fast ("exponential") decaying process go down to almost nothing (~ 5%). We can have lectures that last for 1 hr, and still get something out of it (not much, but something) - if this was not true we would have dumped the 1 hr lecture long ago. Essentially we are horribly wasting time and being inefficent, not to mention making people uncomfortable and the environment unpleasant, but not to the point that it becomes so blatantly bad that schools actually have to change.
Take away message:
- It seems that 20 minute chunks are ideal for high attention absorption tasks, and by the time you get to an hour you are at the point where it makes no sense to keep going (if high attention is required).
- Schools are both being ineffective in transferring information, and making children uncomfortable, by using 1 hr chunks - if they do not use additional tactics to take "natural" attention span into account. Essentially schools are training many students that learning is a negative experience. Make sure you don't accidentally do this to yourself by using standard "clock time" units instead of "head time" units in planning learning sessions in your schedule.
- The mismatch between "head time" and "clock time" is large enough to cause us problems, but not large enough to force changes in society. Keep this in mind in planning your schedule.
Questions to think about:
- What about "flow", when does this 20 minute rule no longer apply? (hint: think about the "direction" of flow...). In flow situations, what is a good time chunk? Is this completely idiosyncratic?
- How can you use this 20 minute rule to help you learn/engage in your work and life? Can you see any areas where you are trying to push longer, and thereby both waste time (due to inefficient absorption) and implicitly "train yourself" to dislike the task? There may be low hanging fruit here for increasing your efficiency and effectiveness, as well as increase your pleasure in a task (which goes a long way to being good at it).
- 20 minutes may be "optimal" in terms of being highly receptive, but this rule will be both an average and indicates the most receptive time frame. For yourself, and your given task, you may be able to go a bit longer, or must go a bit less. But 1 hr is likely the cutoff beyond which you are completely wasting time. Experiment - 4o minutes might be good for you/your task, etc. - with times between 20 minutes and 1 hr to see what works.
- Why 20 minutes? What are the mechanisms that make 20 minutes a natural unit of time for paying attention?
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