People
tell themselves stories, tell each other stories – listen to each other's
stories. That's how we think, and live
together in a shared conceptual world.
When it matters enough, people need to get their stories straight –
straight enough to sort out the problems they have – and interact well
together.
That's tough for
anyone, for everyone – and a great deal of our effort, emotion, and time is
expended doing just that – for our whole lives. That's been true as long as human being have been around – and
will continue to be true.
People know systems of
stories - interactive webs of stories - from different points of view -
fashioned from different "collections of the dots" and
"connections of the dots" - and they are often different - for all
sorts of reasons.
People need to know technically and at the level of humane feeling - how they come to the systems of stories and schema that fill their heads - or some things that would otherwise be easy will remain impossible. And people need to know logically and practically how people and groups – including staffed organizations http://www.mrshowalter.net/ConnectingDotsForStaffedOrganizations.htm can learn to get their stories straight amongst themselves.
A technical fact
is that we have to communicate enough so that we have enough common ground and
common knowledge so that we can learn to agree - or agree to disagree - safely
and stably. And only fight when we actually "have to." A
Communication Model http://www.worldtrans.org/TP/TP1/TP1-17.HTML
Almost all kids
learn to tie their shoes - and maybe people can learn to reduce the incidence
and waste of unnecessary fighting.
The following
excerpts from the NYT Missile Defense board represent efforts to get that
across – related to a motif of "teaching kids to tie their shoes" –
and print out to about 8 pages.
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- - -
- - - - -
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http://www.mrshowalter.net/a_new_13000s/13352.htm
I've spent a lot of time working on early childhood education.
Here's an idea that impressed me. Little kids need to learn to tie their shoes. Kids and caretakers agree on this, by and large. There are questions about that teaching and learning that skill - and different points of view. Here are key questions professionals, who have to deal with groups of children, argue about:
Should you teach kids to tie their shoes "early" - or later?
Should you expect them to tie their shoes early, or later?
A professor I respect felt clear about his answers.
You should teach kids the skill - in the sense of presenting the lesson - as early as seemed comfortable for teacher and child - and keep doing it from time to time. Only a good deal later should you expect kids to actually master the skill. Some kids pick up the skill earlier than others. All normal kids eventually learn the skill.
People who do jobs masterfully, logically, and well didn't start out so masterfully. They had to learn.
Often, they screw up, and have to go back and try things again and again. Sometimes, a skill or idea that didn't work for them they first thought of it, or first heard of it, works for them later.
And people are different. Toscanini and Fats Waller were both masters - but they were different masters of different things.
Both, earlier on, had to struggle some to learn to tie their shoes.
http://www.mrshowalter.net/a_new_13000s/13354.htm
Because things are as serious as they are - we need to face up to the
basics. The things that Eisenhower warned about in his Farewell Address have
happened. Watergate happened - and some key problems weren't fixed. This is a
mess. We have to be careful. And sometimes angry. But there's a lot to
preserve, and that takes care.
almarst2002 - 09:48am Aug 22, 2003 EST (# 13355 of 13604)
The LIES and MESSES have a nasty tendency to MULTIPLY and PILE in
"legitimate" self-defense... Untill the BIG bang blows it and
surounding cheering crowd AWAY
http://www.mrshowalter.net/a_new_13000s/13453.htm
I was asked . . . to solve problems - and to find ways to teach them effectively . Some involved simulation - finding ways so that people can learn to be more sure they're right before going ahead - and more able to deal with events - that cannot be completely predicted - but that will converge into patterns - where people have to care about results.
Many of these problem involve logic, and control. The most key aspects of that logic - and the most important facts about control - are simple enough that they could be taught effectively in nursery school, kindergarten, and the elementary grades. Now, not even the greatest leaders know them well enough - and I was assigned by a great leader - Eisenhower - to take steps toward fixing that. The lessons aren't all that much more difficult than the lessons involved in teaching kids to tie their shoes. But not a lot easier, either.
There's a Guardian Talk thread on Fractals –http://talk.guardian.co.uk/WebX?8@1234567@.4a90f6e9/160 and these posts deal with things that have concerned me since 1967 (because they concerned Eisenhower) - including some passages cited on this thread. I wish I'd been fast enough to get to show either Eisenhower, or Casey, or Steve Kline, these passages (81-84).
"With care - and switching - designed for particular cases and calibrated - excellent performance can be achieved. It isn't likely to happen by accident . . "
http://talk.guardian.co.uk/WebX?8@@.4a90f6e9/82
http://talk.guardian.co.uk/WebX?8@@.4a90f6e9/83
http://talk.guardian.co.uk/WebX?8@@.4a90f6e9/84
http://talk.guardian.co.uk/WebX?8@@.4a90f6e9/85
We have basic problems about our understandings of how order, symmettry, and harmony happen - and have to happen, how they depend on each other - and also how chaos, assymmetry, and discord occur. Some of these problems are insoluble unless we get to be better, and more honest, about description - at the level we need so that we can use words, pictures, and math to understand things we have to deal with.
We have some related, and basic problems in our sense of what it means to be human beings.
rshow55 - 11:46am Sep 11, 2003 EST (# 13605-6
http://www.mrshowalter.net/a_new_13000s/13604.htm http://www.mrshowalter.net/a_new_13000s/13606.htm
I feel like posting great pieces on altruism
http://www.mrshowalter.net/OfAltruismHeroismNEvolution'sGifts.htm
and especially
http://www.mrshowalter.net/UrgeToPunishCheatsNotJustHumanButSelfless.htm
Also a wonderful piece, In the Crowd's Frenzy - by Natalie Angier - with a beautiful image. http://www.mrshowalter.net/IntheCrowd'sFrenzy.htm
People go "round and round" - but sometimes - though not so often - sensible things converge.
How does that happen? I was assigned to try to find out. It seemed an "impossible" task - but an important enough task that Eisenhower and some people around him thought it made sense to assign it to somebody - set him up so he had as much of a chance to crack the problem as possible - and make the exceptions that that took. I got fingered.
11721 http://www.mrshowalter.net/a_new_11000s/11721.htm
Sometimes procedures are set up where exceptions are accomodated within a system. To circumvent a chain of command is to break a body or rules -and in the military these are compelling rules. Even so, I was told that anyone anywhere under MacArthur's command with access to a telephone or phone link was two phone calls away from Douglas MacArthur during the last three years of MacArthur's campaign against the Japanese in WWII. MacArthur was a stickler for protocol - and for chains of command - and yet he had a well organized system of exception handling.
11722 http://www.mrshowalter.net/a_new_11000s/11722.htm
AEA was an attempt to answer a number of questions. Here's one:
. "How do you get radical change, optimization, that can actually work in detail, when you have to modify a very large complex system that is already set up and running, involving many technical and interpersonal committments already in place?"
" Casey worried about that question. So did the Eisenhowers, Teller, many people who dealt with Kelly Johnson, and many other senior people, including well connected consultants like Edwin Land. They worried about some problems involving the interface between math and engineering, as well. And they had some specific problems, including missile guidance. There were some other problems, as well . . including some about nuclear stability and some about crypto . . most of them both "obvious" and "deeply classified" - depending how you look at it.
" Working on those problems, from 1967 on, I got involved in some patterns that were definitely exceptional - but that I thought, and others thought - served larger purposes in a fully justifiable way. It was "outrageous" for me to work on some of the problems I worked on. Or know about them. All the same, if those problems were to be worked on - given the people available - and some of the limitations and complexities - "outrageous" things seemed sensible - and downright conservative.
. . .
" I set out, in 1967 along a road where I assumed, and had to assume, that when I needed government help - I could get it. And find ways through channels, even when exceptions had to be made.
- - - - -
Some exceptions have been made - and I think they've been justified by accomplishments. I think Steve Kline would have thought so - and both Eisenhowers - and I think Douglas MacArthur would have approved, too. MacArthur would have been appalled by Bush's inept and badly executed strategies. And his excessive lying.
I don't feel like giving up. Hopeful things happen all the time. Little kids need to learn to tie their shoes. Kids and caretakers agree on this, by and large.
Should you teach kids to tie their shoes "early" - or later?
Should you expect them to tie their shoes early, or later?
It is hard to force a kid to learn anything - or even to listen - though it is surprising, sometimes, how much kids hear "without listening."
On tying shoes. I think, and a lot of people think, that you should teach kids the skill - in the sense of presenting the lesson - as early as seemed comfortable for teacher and child - and keep doing it from time to time. Only a good deal later should you expect kids to actually master the skill. Some kids pick up the skill earlier than others. All normal kids eventually learn the skill.
People who do jobs masterfully, logically, and well didn't start out so masterfully. They had to learn.
Often, they screw up, and have to go back and try things again and again. Sometimes, a skill or idea that didn't work for them they first thought of it, or first heard of it, works for them later
The Bush administration is screwing up badly. But there is some learning taking place.
If Bush is
Not afraid to lead.
he's also
Not afraid to lie.
but, so far, he seems very afraid to think hard, or to check assumptions or his work.
Maybe he'll learn. Or maybe people around him - and more voters - will
learn. I don't feel like giving up. It seems to me that there are glimmers of
progress. Also - I promised to try to get some things understood and actually taught.
rshow55
- 02:59pm Sep 11, 2003 EST (#
13607 of 13609)
Can we do a better job of finding truth? YES. Click "rshow55" for
some things Lchic and I have done and worked for on this thread.
"Connecting the dots" works because, when patterns are put together in different ways, and checked for internal consistency and for fit to external information workable "connections of the dots" are very sparse . So sparse that, if you keep at it - there is a very good chance that you'll make progress- and might even find exact truth in a paticular situation.
Because often enough there are relatively very few alternatives consistent with what is known. Uniqueness may not occur. But there are few enough options, often enough, that they can be checked, and the checking is worth it.
Focusing matters. And it is also possible.
3792 http://www.mrshowalter.net/a_new_3000s/3790.htm
http://www.mrshowalter.net/a_new_3000s/3793.htm
Getting the most basic, most frequent facts and relations straight is very important.
For fundamental reasons, for the most common things, it is also very hard. That's both a challenge and a source of hope.
When we learn basic things, the odds of our successfully solving problems can get much better - and impossible jobs can become possible, and sometimes even easy.
That's pretty general - though a lot of kids could follow it, and adults, too. How about a specific example? The connection between math and the physical world offers some examples of work I've done - and that lchic and I have done together - where we've come to new and useful generalizations. Not more complicated than tying one's shoes, maybe - but not a lot easier, either.
Perspectives matter - and different people can feel differently. And there are many ways of looking at things. Edward Tufte cited many of them in a great paragraph
http://www.mrshowalter.net/a_md8000s/md8211.htm . . . http://www.mrshowalter.net/a_md8000s/md8214_8218.htm
But if some things "depend on how you look at it" - some few and precious things focus to sharp clarity - and that can be useful.
Here's a fact. If you will, a "search key" - a way of organizing material. I don't believe that it existed, in such a clear form, until I worked it out - with lchic's help.
Fact: All the math that is applicable to engineering comes from these basic fields - each old - each informing each of the others dialectically, in focusing fashion - every which way.
. Geometry . . . . Calculus
. Arithmetic . . . Algebra
Each of these fields stands, and relates to the others - in an entirely abstract way.
But there are analogies - very, very often essentially exact correspondences - between what is seen in this abstract logical world of mathematics and the real, tangible world we live in - which includes things we sense and measure.
. . . .
You could start teaching kids that in nursery school, if you wanted to. In the beginning, simply as a fact. As they got older, they could understand more about it. It would permit the kids to figure things out for themselves more comfortably and effectively than they do now. It would guide and organize their understanding.
I was asked to do something fairly advanced - to go in and find a "stumper problem" - buried deep in the interface between abstract mathematics on the one side, and science and engineering on the other. Mathematics is an abstract, "unreal" -- indeed magical tradition - and has been for thousands of years. http://talk.guardian.co.uk/WebX?14@@.ee7726f/636 Because people wanted to solve science and engineering problems where the issue matters, and things were going wrong, I was asked to think about the nuts and bolts questions of building "concrete bridges to and from abstract worlds." ( It wasn't as clear as that - people were stumped
http://www.mrshowalter.net/a_new_13000s/13678.htm
Piaget wrote an interesting book centered on the question what's cheating - from the point of view of children of different ages. It would have been a better book if he'd been able to read this piece by Natalie Angier The Urge to Punish Cheats - Not Just Human but Selfless http://www.mrshowalter.net/UrgeToPunishCheatsNotJustHumanButSelfless.htm
Piaget was very clear - as many researchers had been for years before him - that everybody lies - including children of all ages - and that children worry about it. As they grow up - they worry about it with more sophistication. But as people - our sophistication on this issue is still very problematic and limited - witness the associations in http://thesaurus.reference.com/search?q=liar
13666 http://forums.nytimes.com/webin/WebX?8@13.p5d8b8q3F5a.9222188@.f28e622/15359 makes points that I think need to be repeated by a lot of people - till they learn them better.
If people are scandalized, and panic - and run around blinded with passion - every time somebody calls somebody else a ahem "knowing falsifier" - then we're in a hell of a mess.
The incidence of more or less conscious deception - and obviously repressed fiction is something like 10-20 times what people are admitting.
And people are stumped - in all sorts of obvious and stupid ways - some of them bloody - because they're missing that
If people would admit that simple fact we could sort out a lot - and have more fun.
From where we are - it is dangerous not to try to grow up at least enough to do this much.
If you "call me Ishmael" http://www.mrshowalter.net/CaseyRel.html - not a lot that is valid on this thread would change. Though some things would.
The New York Times - Science - Missile Defense thread has been a big effort - and not only for me. http://talk.guardian.co.uk/WebX?14@@.ee7726f/1298
http://www.mrshowalter.net/a_new_14000s/14792.htm
Eventually, hard lessons do get learned. Almost all kids learn to tie
their shoes - and maybe people can learn to reduce the incidence and waste of unnecessary
fighting.
http://www.mrshowalter.net/a_new_15000s/15250.htm
http://www.mrshowalter.net/a_new_15000s/15347.htm
A technical fact is that we have to communicate enough so that we have enough common ground so that we can learn to agree - or agree to disagree - safely and stably. And only fight when we actually "have to." A Communication Model http://www.worldtrans.org/TP/TP1/TP1-17.HTML
Do you NEED to repeat yourself constantly ?
If you're trying to get kids to learn to tie their shoes - you can't avoid repetition.
On negotiation - there are basic lessons that lchic and I care about - and rightly so - that are matters of life and death - that we're trying to get across.
We have hopes it might work.
Speaking of work - lchic and I aren't the only ones who've done a lot
of work on this thread. http://www.mrshowalter.net/Sequential.htm
- so I suppose the NYT cares what happens here - and respects it some.
b http://www.mrshowalter.net/a_new_17000s/17357.htm
Unless we can anchor discourse on some agreed-upon facts - set out and reinforced according to the standards that work for human beings (that is, the standards actually needed in jury trials) there is no solution. But orderly, sharp, solid solutions to problems often do happen.
Often they are series solutions - successive approximations.
I don't have to be right all the time - and neither does anybody else - for
progress to happen.