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.
All posts by anomalogue
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.
Sources of innovation
Ideas for innovation come from many sources.
- New technological possibilities can be used to create and evolve new products.
- New industry developments can create new strategic pressures and opportunities that make new products competitive.
- New insights into people and the details of their lives can show how new products might fit into and transform their worlds.
- New combinations of skills in inter-disciplinary teams provided the right conditions and supports can co-invent new ideas impossible for isolated individuals.
- New innovation tools, techniques and approaches can produce and evolve new products.
- New forms of analysis can lead to new understandings of situations that reveal new opportunities to innovate.
- And — at the risk of sounding old-fashioned — inspiration can strike a person at any time, in any place, for any reason or no reason at all.
This is not even close to a complete list. Most people prefer one or another source and sometimes would have their organization cultivate only one or a few sources instead of as many as possible. But why? Perhaps because most organizations already have many ideas and are looking for ways to narrow the list.
But really, what is needed is a way to evaluate ideas and select the best ones. And the majority of organizations rely on one method, which could be called “table-thinking” — people sitting behind desks and tables, presenting, debating and deciding things about distant situations they at best partially understand and largely misunderstand.
Foot, eye, hand, heart and head
I’m working on a simple framework for aguiding the instauration of individual and collective common sense.
Foot: Where have you (and others) stood within the situation, and where are you standing now?
Eye: What are you (and others) trying to observe?
Hand: How are you (and others) acting on the situation?
Heart: Why do you (and others) feel the situation ought to be changed (or not changed)?
Head: How are you (and others) conceptualizing the situation?
The interaction and interrelation of all these elements is indispensable to understanding. Every element of common sense must participate — foot, eye, hand, heart and head — or we end up with an ungodly soup: dissociated chunks of non-common private sense floating in a broth of common nonsense.
Chord: social versus interhuman
Below is a chord of passages on social versus interhuman interactions, which I believe illuminate a key difference between introverts and extraverts.
Extraverts seem to prefer social interactions, where each person plays a role as a participant in some cultural order. Introverts seem to prefer interpersonal dialogue exposing the unique particularity of the individual (which in some ways undermines cultural roles).
This preference becomes conspicuous at lunchtime. Introverts will seek a situation where intimate conversation is possible, so they’ll sneak off with two or three introvert co-conspirators, carefully avoiding extraverts, who are likely to unthinkingly change the situation to suit their own tastes, by grabbing as many people as possible on the way out of the building, and creating a situation where people will perform for one another around the table. For an extravert that is what good times are, but for an introvert it ruins the possibility of anything truly fascinating happening.
- Buber: The Social and the Interhuman — It is usual to ascribe what takes place between men to the social realm, thereby blurring a basically important line of division between two essentially different areas of human life. … we have to do here with a separate category of our existence, even a separate dimension, to use a mathematical term, and one with which we are so familiar that its peculiarity has hitherto almost escaped us. Yet insight into its peculiarity is extremely important not only for our thinking, but also for our living. … We may speak of social phenomena wherever the life of a number of men, lived with one another, bound up together, brings in its train shared experiences and reactions. But to be thus bound up together means only that each individual existence is enclosed and contained in a group existence. It does not mean that between one member and another of the group there exists any kind of personal relation. … it must be said that the leading elements in groups, especially in the later course of human history, have rather been inclined to suppress the personal relation in favour of the purely collective element. Where this latter element reigns alone or is predominant, men feel themselves to be carried by the collectivity, which lifts them out of loneliness and fear of the world and lostness. When this happens — and for modern man it is an essential happening — the life between person and person seems to retreat more and more before the advance of the collective. The collective aims at holding in check the inclination to personal life. It is as though those who are bound together in groups should in the main be concerned only with the work of the group and should turn to the personal partners, who are tolerated by the group, only in secondary meetings.
- Nietzsche: Dialogue. — In a dialogue, there is only one single refraction of thought: this is produced by the partner in conversation, the mirror in which we want to see our thoughts reflected as beautifully as possible. But how is it with two, or three, or more partners? There the conversation necessarily loses something of its individualizing refinement; the various considerations clash, cancel each other out; the phrase that pleases the one, does not accord with the character of the other. Therefore, a man interacting with several people is forced to fall back upon himself, to present the facts as they are, but rob the subject matter of that scintillating air of humanity that makes a conversation one of the most agreeable things in the world. Just listen to the tone in which men interacting with whole groups of men tend to speak; it is as if the ground bass of all speech were: “That is who I am; that is what I say; now you think what you will about it!”
- Nietzsche: The first distinction to draw regarding artworks. — Everything that is thought, written, painted, composed, even built and sculpted, belongs either to monologue art or to art before witnesses. The second category must also include the seemingly monologue art involving faith in God, the entire lyricism of prayer; for solitude does not yet exist to the pious — this invention was first made by us, the godless. I know no deeper distinction in an artist’s entire optics than this: whether he views his budding artwork (‘himself’) from the eye of the witness, or whether he ‘has forgotten the world’, which is the essential feature of all monologue art — it is based on forgetting; it is the music of forgetting.
- Nietzsche: The cynic speaks. — At the theatre, one is honest only as a mass; as an individual one lies, lies to oneself. One leaves oneself at home when one goes to the theatre; one relinquishes the right to one’s own tongue and choice, to one’s taste, even to one’s courage as one has it and exercises it within one’s own four walls against god and man. No one brings the finest senses of his art to the theatre; nor does the artist who works for the theatre: there, one is people, public, herd, woman, pharisee, voting cattle, democrat, neighbour, fellow man; there, even the most personal conscience is vanquished by the levelling magic of the “greatest number”; there, stupidity breeds lasciviousness and is contagious; there, the “neighbour” reigns; there, one becomes a neighbour’.