Re: [ba-unrev-talk] Re: Just the facts.
It's hard to know where the dividing line is though. For example, I know that
every good idea I've ever had has just leapt out of my subconscious - or out of
nowhere, if you like, since the source is not really amenable to scientific
investigation at this time. So the kudos has to be in knowing/seeing which ideas
are healthy, and working to promote them in the world through action.
However, the type of action chosen to promote those ideas is also crucial. It is
easy to take a good idea, and subject folks to it mercilessly like a mad tyrant.
Inevitably people will rebel against the actions _and_ the idea.
One of Jack Park's themes is that the orthodox school system tends to take this
approach to learning - so many children just end up as big bags of resentment
with no conceptual centeredness.
So it's almost as though one has to publicise ideas without pushing - make those
ideas tempting in themselves. (01)
Unfortunately there are all sorts of problems with ideas being tempting.
It is possible to make ideas tempting in a way that bears no relation to their
intrinsic rational value by weighting their popularity in respect of some basic
human desire and waiting for the herd instinct to kick in.
Or, as advertisers do these days, simply visually associate an idea with
something shiny/sexy/funny and wait. (02)
Welcome to the meme wars. (03)
In light of this it now seems clear to me that Dr. Engelbart needs to plaster
his papers with more pictures of scantily-clad models.
<sigh> (04)
--
Peter (05)
----- Original Message -----
From: "Gerald Pierce" <g_pierce@pacbell.net>
To: <ba-unrev-talk@bootstrap.org>
Sent: Sunday, October 06, 2002 5:38 AM
Subject: Re: [ba-unrev-talk] Re: Just the facts. (06)
> Well.......you did indeed expand upon it. I am left admiring you and liking
> you. Actually I already did. You and most of the UN-REV crew. There , that
> toned it down a bit. GER
>
> Enough of this. Back to topic. I find the Jazz part of particular interest.
> Sometimes when I speak and sonetimes when I play a musical flute I find that
> I'm not the source of what play. Something wanting to be said/sung is playing
> through me. And YES, I DO have enough ego to think I created it and accept
> credit, but I've engaged in enough self-deception in my life to know that, at
> best, it only delays disaster and usually with interest at that if I am
grabbing
> credit for being more than a messenger when in fact that is what I am. At
other
> times, I work for it and damn well deserve the kudoes.
> GER
>
> Peter Jones wrote:
> > OK, now I've stopped laughing at myself I'll try and articulate better what
I
> > meant.
> >
> > I have the kind of brain that tends towards a high degree of coherence.
> > Everything has to fit together as a whole. If I encounter incongruent
evidence
> > sometimes it takes me days or weeks for my mind to rejig everything so that
it's
> > coherent again. It's not that I'm not open to change, just that assimilation
of
> > new information is an involved process. On the positive side it tends to
lend me
> > a lot of power to exert on matters that call for sophisticated modelling of
the
> > situation. While other people reach for tools to aid their thinking I can
often
> > just think.
> > So, the theory goes, when I start thinking about how to solve world
problems,
> > everything in my head is neat and lined up, and the problems outside are all
> > messy and poorly understood, and the task for me is to move my comprehension
of
> > the mess to the point where I see it as a system and not as a poorly
understood
> > mess. Once I've done that I will start to see solutions. Seen in that light,
> > human wobbliness (to use a neutral term) becomes something that has to be
> > accounted for, factored in, made predictable. That's fine, as long as it's
part
> > of the model building in my head and not a projection outward.
> > Now, I also have creative tendencies. So I would add the following analogy
to my
> > model. Imagine I sit down to play a Beethoven sonata on the piano (for the
> > record I can't play it really), but my playing is truly wobbly. Someone
comes up
> > to me and says, "Great jazz, man!" By sheer chance someone recorded my
playing
> > and my latest jazz composition becomes a hit. Can I replicate the
performance?
> > Not a chance, but apparently it was great jazz when it happened.
> >
> > So, when I take the time to see, error and creativity look like the same
human
> > tendency - wobbliness - placed in different circumstances. Sometimes though,
my
> > model building tendencies override my ability to see the wobbliness of
others in
> > a given context as essentially human and something to build into the model
rathe
> > r than something to squash out. And when I take my desire to squash the
awkward
> > stuff out, and look at it in another light, I'm just being a wobbly human
> > myself. I must be more careful about having fearsome expectations of others.
> >
> > Perhaps extra slack-giving is something we need to build into our future
social
> > systems. Maybe many of our systems even need to be built to capture errors
as a
> > source of creativity.
> >
> > Yours, in penitent wobbliness,
> > --
> > Peter
>
>
> (07)