ASSUME makes an ASS of U and ME

ASSUME makes an ASS of U and ME

I discovered this gem of management-training speak only yesterday. It is a dangerous over-simplification, whose dismissive tone diminishes the importance the reader may place on a relatively significant topic.

Real life is infested with assumptions, within and throughout all aspects of real life. Managers, and humans too, need more than this simplistic advice not to make assumptions.

The most dangerous assumptions are the ones we don't know about. They can be hidden in the detail, or hidden in plain view, but if we don't realise they're there, we could get caught out. So the first and most important guideline in dealing with assumptions is to discover them if you can.

Having discovered an assumption, consider it: if the assumption is wrong, will it have a significant effect on what you're doing? If not, then ignore it, and move on. If so, then your next question should be 'can I avoid this assumption?' If not, document it, and the reason why it can't be avoided, before you move on. [You are NOT making an ass of yourself or your reader; you're taking corrective action to minimise a threat.] If you can avoid this assumption, of course you should do so.

There's not much more to dealing with assumptions than this. So much more useful than a 'smart-ass one-liner', and not all that much longer.

The great circle route

What is the true nature of reality? Because of our imperfect human perception, we have no direct access to the real world we believe to be out there, no objective knowledge of a putative objective reality. This is the message the sophists offered thousands of years ago: not that we should believe that the whole universe is a figment of your imagination, but that we should understand it's a possibility. The nature of the issue is such that we have no means to estimate the probability of it being true, so we can't even dismiss it by thinking "never mind, the chances are less than that of being hit by a meteorite". We just don't know.

So what do we do? We assume that the real world is (more or less) as we perceive and understand it to be. There is no other practical course (that I know of).

So what was the point in discussing sophistry, if we are concluding that we should assume what humans have always assumed, that the real world is as it seems to be? In everyday terms: none!

In philosophical terms, we have achieved something significant. Our assumption that the real world is as it seems to be is out in the open, along with the knowledge that it is an assumption. This tells us that we are in no position to make absolute or certain statements or claims about the real world, and it helps us to keep an open mind when empirical observations seem to jar with our theories of how things ought to be.

If we are certain we are right, that we understand, then we could miss the signs that might direct us to new knowledge. Those signs could actually be invisible to us. Our perception being what it is, we might simply fail to perceive that which we couldn't make sense of. Bearing in mind that we are not sure or certain can help us notice what's in front of our eyes; at worst, it can do no harm.

Pattern-chaser

"Who cares, wins"

Poetry or what?

'Abominable snowmen of androcratic academia: freezers and packagers of learning; chilling throng of frigid fellows, specialists in verbigeration and refrigeration of knowledge.' -- taken from http://wordsmith.org/words/verbigeration.html

Why blog when there's no-one reading?

Like many bloggers, I record my thoughts out here in cyberspace in the hope that someone will read and benefit from them. But that's all that's happening. We're all writing away, but no-one ever reads our gems! This is the ultimate implementation of write-only memory.

Is there anything we can do about this, or is blogging a waste of time?

...

Hello?

...

Is there anybody there?

Pattern-chaser

"Who cares, wins"

Heliocentrism - was Galileo wrong?

Does the Sun revolve around the Earth, or does the Earth revolve around the Sun?

For centuries, we have accepted a heliocentric model, not realising that we also retain the former (Earth-centred) belief, or that it is true! It (literally) depends on your point of view.

If you stand on the Earth's surface, and confine your thoughts and your visual field to that which is nearby, you will see the Sun go around the Earth, and use its position to map your progress through the day. This is not an illusion, it's real and true. If your thoughts drift farther afield, and you start looking at the motion of the planets, a heliocentric view is much more helpful. It's not illusory either. Both perspectives are real and true, and there is no absolute reason to adopt one or the other. We switch between them for our own convenience.

You can work out Jupiter's 'orbit' around the Earth, but it is wildly eccentric, and the calculation is much more difficult than the heliocentric version. Mathematically, it's just a matter of adjusting the origin of the co-ordinate system in use from the centre of the Earth to the centre of the Sun. And if your attention drifts to the relative motion of galaxies, you'll find yet another origin more convenient.

So the title of this blurb, and the question with which it begins are misleading. The title starts with the assumption that an Earth-centred view is true, and wonders if Galileo's heliocentric view was therefore wrong. The question is mis-stated too, as it implies that only one of the options can be true. The fact of the matter is that both are true, and we use whichever one is most convenient for our purposes.

So the next time a debater quotes heliocentrism as an example of intellectual progress, don't forgot to put them straight. Because heliocentrism is true and useful, it doesn't follow that Earth-centrism is untrue and useless. They are not opposites, they're alternatives.

Think about inclusive-OR instead of exclusive-OR. Consider truth in the context it most often occurs, with TRUE and FALSE as the fence-posts, and an infinity of values (the fence) in between.

NOT-TRUE is not the same as FALSE

except in boolean logic, which is only rarely applicable to the real world.

Pattern-chaser

"Who cares, wins"

Prehistory

Here is some stuff I posted on my old blog (http://pattern-chaser.blogeasy.com/), which seems to have disabled all new input.

Some delightful words

gallimaufry - medley; jumble.
stentorian - extremely loud.
lugubrious - mournful, often to an exaggerated degree.
traduce - to lower the reputation of, defame, slander, malign, libel.
hebdomadally - every week.
insufflate - 1: to blow upon or into 2: to disseminate by blowing.

:-)

Pattern-chaser

"Who cares, wins"

Tue Feb 21, 2006 3:16 am MST by Pattern-chaser

The nonconscious mind - what is it?

The nonconscious mind is every mental faculty we have except the conscious mind, which is quite a collection. From the processing that turns raw sensory data into perception, to the execution of complex learned tasks (such as descending stairs or driving a car), and much more.

To get an idea of what the nonconscious mind is, consider this story:

You leave home in a hurry, to do the shopping. During the drive to the supermarket, you spend your time mentally flitting between the bathroom and the kitchen, creating a shopping list. You suddenly find yourself in the supermarket car park with no memory of driving there, or of parking the car. Your nonconscious mind, and your body, did that while 'you' were busy making the list.

Your nonconscious mind is much more than the dark horror that a glancing acquaintance with Freud might indicate. Enough that it, in conjunction with your body, can function independently of 'you', your conscious mind.

You might compare your mind without your consciousness to your body without arms. In many ways fully functional, but with certain abilities you used to have completely absent.

The person I think of as 'me' is actually only one of what we might choose to view as a small community. But we mustn't be tempted to view the nonconscious mind as some kind of invader or alien. It is more a part of each one of us than the (evolutionarily speaking) recent arrival, consciousness. Because the nonconscious mind is, by definition, beyond the focus of conscious attention, it necessarily becomes a sort of silent partner. We aren't aware of it or its presence or operation, so we forget about it.

The nonconscious mind is not available or visible to consciousness, so we all have personality characteristics that others can perceive (via the way we behave and treat ourselves and others), but we cannot!

Fri Jan 13, 2006 2:59 am MST by Pattern-chaser

A human point of view

Some time ago, I attempted to put my own philosophy in writing, and called the piece "What is reality?". [My own philosophy is highly derivative, BTW; I claim no breakthroughs in thinking! ;-)] Now I think I may have been wrong to start with an unanswerable question. Like 'does God exist?', 'what is reality?' has no clear answer, so speculation is ultimately unproductive.

Now I think the sensible starting point is 'what do I see?'. This holds me to a human perspective, of which I know a little, and which could prove useful and relevant to us humans. ;-)

I see two divisions: bodyworld/mindworld (i.e. physical/mental), and inside/outside (or me and not-me). These divisions are convenient and helpful in some respects, but not real. That is, the physical cannot be properly understood independent of the mindworld (and vice versa), nor can not-me be properly understood (by me!) independently of me.

Bodyworld inside: my body.
Bodyworld outside: the physical universe except my body.
Mindworld inside: my mind, thoughts, spirit, soul, etc.
Mindworld outside: all other non-physical-but-real things, particularly including the thoughts of other humans, individually and collectively.

The internal mindworld is divided into conscious mind and the rest: the collection of diverse facilities and functions we call the nonconscious mind.

Only two cuts, to divide Everything into physical and mental, me and not-me, and a third to divide the mind, and the universe starts to look interesting. Where to investigate first? Choices, choices....

Pattern-chaser

"Who cares, wins"

Fri Dec 30, 2005 1:17 pm MST by Pattern-chaser

Descartes - hero or villain?

I refer to mind-body dualism, usually attributed to Descartes.

On the one hand, the holistic-perspective enthusiasts (I include myself here) see the separation of mind and body as a nonsense. If you try to treat the two as though they are genuinely independent, you can miss more than you observe. Much of what makes a human being is the inter-relationships between the embodied mind and the mindful body.

On the other hand, if you can avoid the trap of forgetting that they don't exist in isolation, the mind-body split can offer a useful and worthwhile perspective.

+ The physical world, which we could call the 'bodyworld', comprises all of space-time, specifically excluding minds, souls, spirits, gods and supernatural creatures of all sorts. The bodyworld is what we conventionally see as being 'outside' of ourselves.

+ Similarly, the mindworld is all those things that are real, but not part of the bodyworld. These are conventionally seen as being 'inside' ourselves. [Although much of the mindworld is actually outside of our individual selves. I think this is because the mindworld exists within time, but not in three-dimensional space. Besides time, it has one or more 'dimensions' within which it exists.]

My concepts of bodyworld and mindworld are not exactly the 'mind' and 'body' that Descartes wrote about. I prefer them mainly because they offer a human perspective. [I look outside myself and see the world of the body, of physical things, so I call it the bodyworld. Similarly with the 'mindworld', the world of non-physical (but mostly real) things.] I don't think I've made changes that would significantly affect Descartes' reasoning.

Mon Dec 19, 2005 2:44 am MST by Pattern-chaser

Time - the eternal riddle?

For the purposes of discussion, I shall assume that the past is fixed and known. The future, in contrast is not fixed and not known. The present is that instant where the unknown future solidifies into the fixed and immutable past.

Psychologists and neurologists tell us that it takes about a quarter of a second for our minds to turn raw sense data into something we can understand in the context of the world as we know it. We live not in the present, but just enough in the past to give us the perspective we need to make sense of it.

"History repeats itself" is invariably quoted in the context of repeating past mistakes. I have always thought this misleading. It is only because history repeats itself that we can make sense of the world. We interpret new events according to similar events we have observed in the past. And because history repeats itself, this is a successful strategy.

As the future draws closer to the present, the probabilities of events happening or not happening become clearer. Predicting next month's weather is a guessing game, but predicting the weather for the next ten minutes is a lot less random. Nevertheless, the future can only be understood in terms of the probabilities of events happening or not.

In a process reminiscent of quantum theory, the probability functions governing future events collapse in the moment of the present and become fixed and immutable: the past.

Some belief systems recommend that we try to live in the now. That we suspend the integration of events into our mental world models, and just allow the present to wash over us as it happens. I'm sure this can be approached, if not achieved, but does it have value? Without the integration into our own understandings, limited though that might be, surely we can do nothing but passively observe the future becoming the past? Is our participation in the world a Bad Thing, or is there something I've missed?

Anything new comes from the future, the only place where possibility and potential exist. The present is where it happens, then it's gone. Evanescent; transient; may-fly art. Crumbling as it is created, never to come again. What a glorious tragedy time is!

Pattern-chaser

"Who cares, wins"

Wed Aug 31, 2005 3:42 am MST by Pattern-chaser

What is reality?

This is a piece I've written and re-written over the years. It pre-dates and inspires the series of articles I've posted here:

Reality is what we perceive it to be. This is not an absolute statement, but it's as close as we can get, as the following paragraphs explain.

Axiom[1]: human perception is intrinsically subjective; objective[2] perception is impossible for us. [3]

We can understand the concept of objectivity. We can formulate objective hypotheses. But we cannot objectively verify their truth in the real world, as our perception is not objective. So the pursuit of *objective* - certain - knowledge is pointless (although the search for *knowledge* is not).

[More formally, this has to do with 'completeness': David Hilbert said around 1928 that if we are going to have any fundamental system for all of mathematics it must satisfy three basic requirements: consistency, completeness and decidability. Completeness means that if any statement is true, there must be some way of proving it by using the rules of your system. In this sense, objective science is incomplete, as objective truth cannot be proven according to its own (objective) standards.]

So what is left if we set aside objectivity? This is best answered with a brief thought experiment: Consider a group of creatures living in a reality that has objective existence, whether the creatures know it or not. Select a creature at random. What does it know of the reality in which it lives? It learns of this reality from its perceptions, so on what can its perceptions depend?

1. The reality in which the creature lives.
2. The creature's mind.
3. The mind(s) of one or more of its fellow creatures.
4. Some combination of the above.
5. None of the above.

Option 1 represents objective perception. What the creature perceives is dependent only on the external reality in which it lives. It has certain knowledge of its environment.

Options 2, 3 and 5 represent variations on the theme of solipsism. The creature's perceptions have no connection with the reality in which it lives. It has no certain knowledge of its environment.

I believe that option 4 represents the position in which we (humans) find ourselves, that our perception depends upon our minds *and* on the reality in which we live. We have knowledge of our environment, but it isn't certain (i.e. objective) knowledge. This, in my opinion, is the perceptual reality that lies in between Objectivity and Solipsism.

Abandoning our preoccupation with objectivity has benefits. For example:

+ To affect certain knowledge of an objective world is self-deception that muddies our thinking. Deliberate self-deception (NLP? ;-)) like this requires strong justification, and I can see none.

+ The illusion of certainty masks other possibilities. Any significant and new discovery will probably contradict current wisdom. If we *know* we are right, we discount - or fail to recognise - indications to the contrary, preventing any such discovery. Being aware of the fallibility of our perceptions improves our perception!

+ What we (subjectively) perceive has a probability of being correct. We can attempt to quantify that probability. Previously, it never occurred to us to consider such things: certainty is 100% probable. Learning to evaluate the accuracy of our perceptions will surely move our understanding forward.

So reality is what we perceive it to be. Probably.

------

[1] Axiom: an assumption or act of faith; a statement whose truth is accepted without proof.

[2] Objective: something whose truth is not dependent on people's opinions or conceptions.

[3] As axioms go, this one is relatively safe. Consider:

Hypothesis: human perception is intrinsically subjective; objective perception is impossible for us.

Analysis: If the hypothesis is true, then it is impossible for a human to verify; there can be no objective proof of the hypothesis. If the hypothesis is false, then an objective refutation ought to be possible. The solipsist view - that "I" am the only real thing, and all else is a figment of my imagination - has remained objectively unassailable for millennia. If there were an objective refutation for the solipsist view, it would also invalidate our hypothesis. No such refutation has emerged.

Conclusion: The evidence is not conclusive. On the balance of probabilities, the hypothesis is probably true.

Mon May 30, 2005 3:34 pm MST by Pattern-chaser

Metaphor

George Lakoff thinks we understand new things by recognising their similarity to things we already understand, and using this similarity to understand the new in terms of the old: metaphor.

A simple example is thinking of argument (new thing) as war (something we already understand). We 'marshal' our arguments, 'attack' our opponents, and so on. But it isn't just the words we use. We behave when arguing very much as we would in a war.

See Lakoff's books for much more detail and much better explanations.

Metaphor isn't a little-known poet's tool, it's the bedrock of our language and our understanding of the world.

Pattern-chaser

"Who cares, wins"

Thu Jun 30, 2005 1:44 am MST by Pattern-chaser

Binary logic

We have a bad habit of assuming that, if something is not true, then it must be false. Stated like that, it could be so. But what if I said 'if you're not with us, you're against us'? Any clearer?

Many issues, perhaps most, have more than two possible outcomes! If one of them is shown to be impossible, then one (or more) of those that remain must be the right one.

Even more subtle: if I don't believe that God exists, this doesn't necessarily mean that I believe that God doesn't exist. ... Think about it. Agnosticism states that God may or may not exist - there just isn't enough evidence to make a decision.

Be careful with binary logic, and confirm there are exactly two possible outcomes before you decide that, if the answer isn't A, then it must be B.

Pattern-chaser

"Who cares, wins"

Tue Jun 21, 2005 6:11 am MST by Pattern-chaser

The scientific method

Science is a funny thing. Apparently opposed by many (New Agers?) these days, it has nevertheless delivered a great deal to a great many people. And this is not a science-bashing entry from me, either, just a consideration of what science and the scientific method is useful for.

In brief, the scientific method involves creating hypotheses to explain real-world phenomena, and then attempting to falsify them by experiment. To apply the scientific method, the hypothesis in question must be falsifiable. This means that, if the hypothesis is false, there will be an experiment we can do that will prove it to be false.

Only absolute statements like "all crows are black" can be proved to be false, in this example by observing a single crow that isn't black. The more general (and useful?) guideline "some crows are black" is not falsifiable, in practice.

[If you think about it, if "some crows are black" is false, then it must be the case that "no crows are black", for the original statement covers all other possibilities. Therefore, to prove the original hypothesis false, we would have to examine every crow that exists, every crow that has existed, and every crow that will exist, and show that not a single one of them is black. In practice, this statement is not falsifiable. We can also demonstrate this for other statements of this general (non-absolute) kind.]

Pattern-chaser

"Who cares, wins"