Archive for February, 2009

Who am I?

Wednesday, February 18th, 2009

It ’s a typical adolescent thing: to ask yourself ‘who am I’. The interesting thing is that the adolescent – and the adult – define themselves always as part of the group. A wonderful way to see this, is in ‘exactitudes‘: two Dutch guys, the photographers Ari Versluis and profiler Ellie Uyttenbroek, portraying people who have the same kind of ‘image’. This website is interesting for anyone exploring the meaning of individuality. You can savour the contrasts of individual vs groups. Individual is the choice of the group you want to belong to. The choice to be different – with others.

Funny how strong the illusion of ourselves as an individual is. And to see how we boil down our ‘individual selves’ to the part of us we know best: our conscious thoughts. We feel our choices to be completely free. We feel we make our own decisions in our conscience mind. The fact is however that our choices are contextual, based on influences we do not always notice. We react to our company. Our voice adapts (without us noticing) to status: the pitch raises if we meet a ‘boss’ and lowers if we feel socially above. This is all behaviour that has been measured and proved – but we are not aware of it. How much individuality is in behaviour we are not aware of?

There is a different level where the illusion of individuality is in tension with reality. In our world achievements are important (sometimes even in the circles that are achievement-aversive,  competing in being more averse to achievement than others). We are highly trained in perceiving personal achievements as ‘individual’: something to be proud of as a person. There is nothing wrong with that, but if you look at any achievement under a looking glass, you will have to notice that there are no ‘purely’ individual achievements. I write this blog on a Mac Air. The software is developed by Blog Press. I lend all of the words from the English language, that – by chance – is the product of many language like Frisian (my origins are from “Fryslan”), French and many others. I learned the language at school. The thoughts I express are lend, if there is any originality in it is the blending of ideas. If there is any skill in language usage, I probably inherited it from my father (a preacher) and my mother (very good in telling stories). But we flourish on the idea of our own achievements. It has been proved that we get depressed if we do not indulge in a exaggerated idea about our own contribution to our successes. We need that ego-boost.

A third level. We are not that aware of how ‘others’ interact with and even ‘form’ our individual selves. I have been living for 23 years with my wife, 20 years of those with our eldest son and 17 with the second one. I live with these persons every day. I am working in a company I bought in 1998. Some of the employees I have been working with for almost 20 years, and I meet them at an almost daily basis. One of my best friends has become a brother in law 15 years ago. We have spend long hours disputing, exchanging ideas. Al of these persons have influenced in one way or another in the way I think, how I feel, how I take my decisions. What is the individual me? Where does it start? Where does it stop?

A fourth level in the ‘illusion of individuality’. Like me as one person. Or you as one. How different are you if you are with your three best friends or with your colleges? How different are you if you are in the company of superiors? If you talk to a beautiful male/female? If you enter a shop? Some of the ‘role changes’ are marked with different clothing. By wearing uniform. By changing attitude.

in the illusion of individuality. The illusion of myself as an invariant phenomenon. The illusion of me being the same as the person I have vivid memories of as a child. There is no single cell in my body that is the same as it was at the time of these memories. Psychology has proven that even these memories are not so much as ‘movies’ ‘proofs of the past’ but as a continuously retold story, changing through time without me noticing. If I look back carefully I see read threads through time, but also many changes. What we tend to see as a clear cut nucleus (our personality) is actually a cloud with not very defined shapes, to be interpreted in many, many ways and to change continiously.

And I do not think that this is a purely individual, philosophic fantasy. There are important implications to marketing and research. If we think that clients are ‘clear cut individuals with predictable choice patterns’ we might be wrong. If our marketing is based upon that conception, the marketing could be wrong.

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Five illusions!

Saturday, February 14th, 2009

Illusions are  interesting phenomena, because they reveal where our thinking gets wrong. An illusion reveals that we make sense of the world in a way that is consistent internal, but not necessarily consistent with the actual reality. There are classes of illusions, like the photo next (from this very interesting website dedicated to optical illusions) is revealing that our brain uses ‘tricks’ to calculate the nearness and size of objects. These tricks can be used to mislead the brain.

Optical illusions reveal ‘faults’ the way we make sense of visual stimuli. It is more difficult to reveal mistakes in the way we make sense of other data. Like the illusion that mankind is the crown of the creation. Or that language is the basis of our thinking. Or that we steer our own thinking. Five illusions that delude us quite often:

1 the illusion of individuality

2 the illusion of stability

3 the illusion of truth as a binary phenomenon (true or false, right or wrong)

4 the illusion of insight and understanding

5 the illusion of knowledge transfer as a rational phenomenon.

In my following blogs I would like to write about those illusions, culminating in the sixth: the illusion of control. I don’t think these  represent a complete and systematic framework of ‘thinking illusions’. But I hope that thinking and writing about them will give me some insight in how we (I, my clients and maybe you) withhold progress in our thinking, and how we systematically deceive ourselves in order to keep alive the illusion of control.

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Flower, flower, all all and all

Monday, February 9th, 2009

I am a big fan of Dylan Thomas ever since I heard a recording of him reciting his poem ‘do not go gentle into that good night’. I heard that 30 years ago on the radio and can still hear him almost singing this poem. I remember that it was followed by a piece of music from Stravinsky, based on this very poem. I have never ever heard it again (if anyone knows where I can get the recording of the combination of poem and music, please let me know) but I did buy the Collected poems.

The language Thomas uses, is actually too difficult for me. Some of his poems I don’t get at all, but when I am fascinated by them that doesn’t stop me from reading them over and over. But when I think about it: that happens to me with Dutch poets as well. The simple concept of meaning doesn’t apply to poetry. It is not possible to get the ‘full meaning’  by definition. Poetry is interesting because the meaning is not a fixed, simple thing. It changes every time you read the poem, it evolves during the time. The meaning grows and evolves. This characteristic applies to many more means of communication, but we do not always realise that. Come to think of it: everything apart from user manuals (and nobody but the writers understand those) shares this characteristic with poems, only less obvious.

Another interesting phenomenon about poems is the hybrid between form and meaning. You can’t separate them. The medium is the message. The words are the message. Especially with Dylan Thomas, who sort of moulds the words by reusing them throughout the poem in slightly different ways. Every time you read the word again in a new context, the meaning of the previous one is echoed, and in this way the words catch more meaning during the poem. But you would never be able to tell how. It is not an obvious meaning that you could define in a dictionary. It is more like the meaning of music. You can’t tell it, you just have to read it. As an experiment I will give you the last couplet of a poem that sort of keeps me busy the last days:

Flower, flower the peoples fusion.
Oh light in zenith, the coupled bud,
And the flame in the flesh’s vision.
Out of the sea, the drive of oil,
Socket and grave, the brassy blood,
Flower, flower, all all and all.

Probably if you read this, you won’t be completely off the world at all, because the words have not yet been ‘moulded’ for you. You haven’t yet had the previous four times ‘flesh’ was used, or the three times of ‘ all and all’  (not to mention the other times the word ‘all’  is used single) or the opening couplet, linking ‘oil’ to both lave and ice. And this as only the linking through words. There is echo in meaning as well.

So try to read the whole poem, and see what happens!

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Proof you are right!

Tuesday, February 3rd, 2009

I came across a very interesting debate on mathematical proof. The debate started with a small subgroup of mathematics who are strong believers in computer verification of proofs. This quest is promoted as the QED project (check out the QED-manifest). In order to verify a proof by computer, it needs to be recoded, because the human proof takes simple steps for granted. The computer proof is a ‘computer program’ whereas the ‘human proof’ is more a formalised story.

The debate is interesting for many reasons and I think it has a broader meaning than maths only. In a sense it is about what we still think is human. We embrace the ‘romantic side’ of maths: the beauty in a proof. I am not a mathematician, but I still remember the beauty of a good proof as I learned in high school. There is beauty in the idea of a solid, water-tight proof but there is also beauty in the steps. The set of different rules, the one leading to another is an art. My son is studying to be a maths teacher and he told me about the wonderful feeling he has if he succeeds in proving something, even if this has been proven already by a great number of students. Needless to say that the feeling of proving something new must be euphoric. Now you could interpret this QED-project as an attack on the romantic side. If there is any feeling and emotion attached in constructing or understanding a proof, the computer version of it is devoid of that. A simple proof that even I can understand is elegant in ‘language’ but not any more in computer language (check out this pdf to see the difference. It is in Dutch but I guess that anyone with algebra background can read it no matter the skills in our Low Lands Language).

In the Dutch daily NRC Bennie Mols wrote an article about the subject. What really struck me in this discussion is the standpoint of Hendrik Lenstra (a Dutch mathematician). He claims that the act of proofing and judging a proof is basically a human act, based on pattern recognition. The act making and checking a proof helps you to better understand the subject. It evokes ‘knowledge’ as an internal phenomenon. He shares an interesting and wonderful story about a theorem he was trying to understand. He wanted to know if it was correct. He had it both computer-checked and asked another mathematician to check it. He consulted an expert in computer mathematician. The computer had to work a day on it, and showed the proof was right. The human expert got about it in a different way. He looked at the theorem and said ‘oh I can calculate that for you’. Within in few minutes he had the maths done – writing it out on a piece of paper. His conclusion: the theorem is wrong. Of course – sorry for those with a romantic view – the expert had made a small miscalculation. The computer was right. The interesting thing though, was that actually mr. Lenstra learned a lot more from the human interaction. Checking the piece of paper, understanding the theory used by the expert gave him deeper understanding about the problem. Sharing this with the computer expert, enabled him to rewrite the computer proof in a much more elegant way, so the computer now needed a few minutes as opposed to the former day of computer time.

I see many learnings is this beautiful story. Too many to ponder about in my blog that I want to be short (actually this posting exceeds my intended maximum manifold, I hope to reach a sort of Haiku blog in the future, revealing basic truths within 11 words. But I haven’t yet reached that skill). Let me highlight some:

1

whether we like it or not, automation of knowledge is bound to grow. Even the critics of QED see that it can be extremely useful to check extremely complicated proofs that human race is not able to verify with 100% certainty

2

This will not squeeze the romance out of our lives. As long as we are here on the planet (could be shorter than intended, but let’s assume we will survive the next 2.000 years) the field of ‘beauty’ will change. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

3

Knowledge and understanding is the field of humans. Up to now the computers can assist.

3

In the end it is all about the human factor. The QED is a sort of ‘bookkeeping’. Converting proofs into computer language is not like hot science, it is more the work of a monk. But that can be very satisfying.  I can imagine the writer of the pdf I referred to above in his feeling that programming a proof is a wonderful thing to do.

4

the frontier on automation is ever changing. The discussion is now about the verification of proofs. Could it ever shift towards production of proofs? Maybe then computers would become like humans more. So that would not really shift things. We would still have the two different states; the understanding state (which is emotional by definition) and the calculating mode. The shift would mean that the emotional state (up to now the privelige of human and probably animals) is now available to computers as well. We are not near that in the least.

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