To understand another person try understanding how he understands other people. Who are other people to him?
We are not only who others think we are; perhaps even more we are who we think others are.
All posts by anomalogue
Group capacity to think
To the degree an individual participates in the life of a group, the behavior tends to be formatted according to conventions of speech, concept and procedure. One uses the vocabulary, ideas and behaviors easily understood and accepted by the majority of group members, in order to gain influence within the pace and formatting of group work. To stray outside of the commonalities of the group is to risk frustrating or alienating some members of the group and consequently losing their support, or to slow the pace of the activity and interfere with meeting goals, or to fragment the group into conflicting factions, or to require too much effort or time to understand and risk being interrupted, ignored or otherwise silenced.
With some individuals things can be different — if the individuals do not insist on enforcement of group conventions.
Once again, this connects with Buber’s distinction between “the social” and “the interhuman”.
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Deep innovation and novel syntheses require new procedures for conceiving and evaluating thoughts, new language to express new thoughts (and to distinguish the new thoughts from older, more familiar ones), a willingness to wrestle with frustrations, unclarity and dead-ends — in other words, it runs counter to everything that makes groups function effectively. This is why innovations tend to be hatched by individuals and why “group-think” has such bad connotations. However, groups outfitted with new conventions — perhaps in workshop settings or in semi-permanent collectives governed by new codes, processes or cultural values — might produce results impossible in other conditions. (A way to see it is that a workshop or a department or team can be socially programmed to produce different results.) But the novel results achieved are still different in kind from the more flexible conditions of individual or small group work.
Why-logic
“Why” is not logical; every “why” is a logic.
Until a person’s why-logic is understood that person’s beliefs, behaviors and feelings will seem illogical.
The grasping of a why-logic and the consequent grokking of a world via that why-logic is insight, in the most precise sense of the word.
It is an unfortunate habit of speech that has us say “insight into” another person. We should say we have “insight out from” a person.
Plans
I saw a quote last week that said something like “Nothing happens according to plan — but nothing happens without a plan.” I can’t remember the source.
Lost in the concrete, lost in the abstract
Watching an occurrence is one kind of observation. Seeing a pattern is another. However, it is rare to find either observation in anything approaching pure form. When we observe an occurrence, often what we are most witnessing is the repetition of a pattern — and little else. And when we see a pattern, we imagine an event or two that lends sense to what repeats — but more vaguely than we suspect.
To watch an occurrence without the guidance of a pattern is disorienting. We don’t know what to make of it. But, conversely, to hear description of patterns of occurrences of which we lack real-life experience and cannot imagine is also disorienting, and we don’t know what to make of that either.
In the former case we are lost in the concrete and in the latter case we are lost in the abstract.
But something peculiarly meta happens when we get lost in the abstract: Being lost in the abstract it is also being lost in the concrete. An occurrence of explanation (of some unfamiliar thing) is happening before us in a conversation or on the pages of a book, and we do not know what is going on, and so we do not know what to make of it. (If you are having trouble recollecting a situation where this has happened to you, and it is preventing you from understanding what the hell I am talking about here, right now — well, now you have your example.) In these situations it is possible to master the mode of explanation (as a language game) without gaining familiarity with the reality to which the explanation refers…
- A historian can get good at discussing battles and generals without ever knowing what it looks like to give an order or to receive a briefing and lead troops into battle or to be led into battle and to engage in combat.
- A manager can become fluent with the terms used in his organization without actually knowing how how teams collaborate and activities are executed.
- An armchair politician talks knowingly about Congressional developments without having the slightest insight into how legislation is drafted, debated, negotiated, passed and executed.
- Statistics demonstrate that women on average make a quarter less than men, but leaves explanations of how this happens to other studies — or to the casual speculations of individuals.
Perhaps the vast share of our knowledge is of this second-degree concrete/abstract variety.
Lost quote
I saw a quote recently that said something like “Nothing goes according to plan, but nothing happens without a plan.” I can’t find it, now.
Curious and curiouser
No marginal status of any kind automatically bestows deeper knowledge. Only an urgent need to understand, followed by active pursuit of understanding yields such knowledge.
What is different about my opinions? Why the difference? How does the difference arise and manifest? How do I bridge the difference with others? How do others suppress my difference, and how do I resist or overcome this? How do I know when I am suppressing the difference of another? How does this dynamic work in general? What are the ethical implications? Why would any person who does not have to ever want to embrace an ethic of respect of the marginal? Can I count on my own loyalty to this ethic if I it carries me to a position of dominance? Should I remain loyal to it…?
Any person who stops trying to understand others and otherness through reflective practice, not as a solitary meditation is going to dwindle in insight, and as the blessed anxiety subsides comforting clarity floods the knowing subject with the blessings of faith: confidence, determination and uncanny charisma.
I lack capacity to how I am not right, therefore I am right.
I have good reason to disregard what my enemies say to me.
Everyone agrees with me on this — everyone who matters.
The crucial skillset
Know how to form grounded innovative hypotheses.
Know how to craft the cheapest, fastest and most informative experiments.
Know how to find and use perplexities.
Know how to think through and design out new logics from new perspectives.
Know how to observe, learn and respond across a range of developmental stages: from the broadest and fuzziest to the minutest and most precise.
Engineering and design
Engineering develops systems of interacting objects.
Design develops systems of interacting subjects and objects.
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When we engineer systems that ought to be designed, the systems we create demand subjective beings to function as objects. Algorithmic rule-following replaces free choice.
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Social engineering has always been a horror. Social design might be our salvation.
Cat-agoraphobic political statement
I acknowledge only voluntary political identities, and I condemn all involuntary identifications.
Every individual American has the right to make political alliances according to his or her own ideals, and it is on this alone the individual should be judged.
If the political body you’ve chosen to join and identify with imposes political identities on other groups defined by race, sex, class, orientation, or any other non-voluntary classification, for any reason no matter what the justification (including imputed capacities or incapacities, genes, essences, spirits, lineages, legacies, texts, behavioral probabilities, etc.) politically you are not my friend. I don’t care which direction your racism or sexism or chauvinism or xenophobia points, or why you point it in that direction. The problem is not the target — it is the targeting.
I’m prepared to be politically isolated and to suffer the consequences for refusing to treat enemies who resemble me in irrelevant ways as natural allies. I have only artificial allies: people who collaborate with their own natures to overcome mere nature to become super-natural, and who affirm other’s attempts to do the same.
Scientific Method vs Lean Startup
In his instant-classic The Lean Startup, Eric Ries restores some crucial components of the Scientific Method to innovation processes, long-neglected by “scientific” management. Among his most important restorations is the the experimental practices that are the heart of scientific discovery. This is enormously important: without experiment, the creative dimension of science is lost and “scientific rigor” of quantification becomes an expensive, time-consuming and intrinsically conservative hindrance to doing anything unprecedented.
However, I do not believe that Ries has restored the entirety of the Scientific Method, and for the sake of setting up an unimpeded engineering-dominated process, has omitted or de-emphasized key non-engineering components that improve outcomes and shorten timelines. Here is a partial list of omissions:
- Hypothesis formation. Hypotheses are not just guesses which can be tested experimentally. Hypotheses are informed guesses, and it is on-the-ground-discovery that informs mere guesses and transforms them into hypotheses. Starting with a hypothesis rather than some dude’s random notion can reduce development cycles. Also, some ideas are so weak that no amount of pivoting will tweak it to awesomeness.
- Theory. Theory in science is what directs experimentation and lends knowledge a progressive thrust. Without an appropriate theory, experiment devolves into aimless and fragmentary trial-and-error. This kind of aimlessness and fragmentation in a business context translates to confusing and disjointed products. It is not that Lean Startup does not accumulate knowledge, but that its “validated learning” is too product-centric and not nearly user-centric enough. Lean Startups know everything there is to know about their own product and the possible permutations of their product and the customer behaviors and reported opinions about the product, but insights into the user’s inner life and outer context — the things that inspire the best design ideas — will not readily surface using Lean Startup methods.
- Crisis. Without the rigor of theory and the discipline of reflection, the kinds of problems that produce revolutionary solutions cannot come into view. Teams will hack their ways right past the crises that and miss the chance to find simple radical product insights. This is the precise point where philosophy can become a competitive secret weapon. According to Wittgenstein “A philosophical problem has the form: ‘I don’t know my way about’. Isn’t innovation all about finding, posing and solving such problems?
I’m going to read as much as I can about Scientific Method and develop this thought further and support it with some research. But I’ve been sitting on this idea too long, and I wanted to at least sketch it out.
I and I
When spoken, I is the most constant of constants.
When heard, I is the most variable of variables.
I is the extreme of particulars. (I, the subject of a sentence.)
I is the extreme of universals. (I, the one who utters this sentence.)
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At the heart of ambinity, where the dance of opposites is a frenetic blur, I says I to one who is not oneself.
Abstract
Abstraction benefits from proximity to concreteness.
Freshly-abstracted abstractions are better than frozen concentrates, powders and artificially-flavored concoctions.
What is
What is true, what is actual, what is real, what ought to be – these are all different ways to be, and they are perpetually confused.
Otherwisdom code
To be know and live on terms with what could be otherwise means:
- To be alert to the permanent possibility of surprise.
- To embrace the anxiety of listening to stark otherness.
- To show hospitality to truths that await invitation to enter.
- To be faithful to mute realities that speak only in experiment.
- To respect every thing as the heart of an everything.
- To remember that every single time “this time is different.”
This practical knowledge of actualizing what might be otherwise can be called otherwisdom.
Videre
Several years ago, I did an etymology post on specere words. Here is Part Two, another species of seeing/envisioning words, a branch derived from videre.
Vision – ORIGIN Middle English (denoting a supernatural apparition): via Old French from Latin visio(n-), from videre ‘to see.’
Visual – ORIGIN late Middle English (originally describing a beam imagined to proceed from the eye and make vision possible): from late Latin visualis, from Latin visus ‘sight,’ from videre ‘to see.’
Advise – ORIGIN Middle English: from Old French aviser, based on Latin ad– ‘to’ + visere, frequentative of videre ‘to see.’ The original senses included ‘look at’ and ‘consider,’ hence ‘consider jointly, consult with others.’
Wisdom – ORIGIN Old English wis, of Germanic origin; related to Dutch wijs and German weise, also to wit…
Wit – ORIGIN Old English witan, of Germanic origin; related to Dutch weten and German wissen, from an Indo-European root shared by Sanskrit veda ‘knowledge’ and Latin videre ‘see.’
Evert
Announcing an exciting new vocabulary acquisition: evert. I have needed this word many times, but had to resort to flipping, reversing, inverting, turning… inside-out.
Evert – verb [ with obj. ]
Turn (a structure or organ) outward or inside out: (as adj. everted) : the characteristic facial appearance of full, often everted lips.
DERIVATIVES
eversible – adjective.
eversion – noun
ORIGIN mid 16th cent. (in the sense ‘upset, overthrow’): from Latin evertere, from e- (variant of ex-) ‘out’ + vertere ‘to turn.’
Now I can say things like:
- Everything in the world is the world everted.
- A comedy is an everted tragedy. A tragedy is an everted comedy.
- A pearl is an everted oyster shell. An oyster coats the ocean with mother-of-pearl. Outside the shell is ocean, inside the pearl is ocean. Between inner-shell and outer-pearl is slimy oyster-flesh, which ceaselessly coats everything it isn’t with mother-of-pearl. It is as if the flesh cannot stand anything that does not have a smooth, continuous and lustrous surface. We could call the flesh’s Other — that which requires coating — “father-of-pearl”.
- Imagine Pandora’s box as a pearl everting to an all-ensconcing shell as Pandora opened it, and Eden as an all-ensconcing shell everted to a pearl upon Adam’s eviction.
- An object is an everted subject.
Faith
Faith is the strategic deployment of ignorance.
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Faith is less about the positive assertions that appear to constitute it than the will-diluting concerns it excludes.
Faith defines a way of life: a what-matters / what-does-not-matter, a what-one-does-do / what-one-does-not-do, a what-is / what-is-not. A separating of finite concerns from infinite non-concerns. A de-finition, a rendering of finitude.
Faith is easiest for those blessed with incuriosity, inexperience or absence of intellectual conscience.
Does it sound to you like I am disparaging faith, oh you of little faith, you who are anxious and troubled by innumerable hassles? The faithless are scattered, centerless, skinless, bleeding indiscriminately.
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So many things I want to not know.
Qual, quant, repeat
Qualitative methods help you:
- Decide what to measure.
- Interpret the meaning of measurements.
- Respond to measurements effectively.
Quantitative methods help you:
- Identify problems to investigate.
- Observe phenomena precisely.
- Evaluate the effectiveness of strategies.
These methods thread together:
- Identify problems to investigate. Where are things not measuring up? (quant)
- Decide what to measure. What elements in the situation warrant scrutiny? (qual)
- Observe phenomena precisely. What is really going on? (quant)
- Interpret the meaning of measurements. What motivates what is going on? (qual)
- Respond to measurements effectively. How can we act into the situation to change it? (qual)
- Evaluate the effectiveness of strategies. How does the situation change when we act into it? (quant)
- Repeat…
It would be lovely if I could get these methods to interleave more elegantly. This is how they seem to me to line up, though.
It’s mine
It’s mine: I saw the opportunity.
It’s mine: It was my idea.
It’s mine: I articulated the idea.
It’s mine: I championed the idea.
It’s mine: I translated the idea.
It’s mine: I laid the plans.
It’s mine: I made the case.
It’s mine: I formed the team.
It’s mine: I motivated the team.
It’s mine: I aligned the team.
It’s mine: I coordinated the team.
It’s mine: I fleshed out the idea.
It’s mine: I built it and made it real.
It’s mine: I made it profitable.
It’s mine: I funded it.
It’s mine: I told the world about it.
It’s mine: I made people care about it.
It’s mine: I keep it going everyday.
It’s mine: I improve it.
It’s mine: I find ways to grow it.
It’s mine: I discovered it first.
It’s mine: I use it.
It’s mine: I pay for it.
It’s mine: I rely on it.
It’s mine: It was made for people like me.
It’s mine: It was made by people like me.
It’s mine: It’s part of my life.
It’s mine: It’s part of who I am.