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June 30, 2010
The other day if found via the interesting “Seth’s blog” this talk by Eric Mazur about how a teacher found out he sucked at teaching – and how he approached the problem.
I find this very inspiring on so many levels. First of all about how he approaches the issue. To search hard data on such vague topic like teaching is not obvious tough, but worth the effort.
Also the huge difference between information vs. understanding is stunning. We commonly equal them (“knows a lot” equals smart) – but they seem nearly unrelated principles. Something I never really noticed research about – I’ll come back to that on later posts.
But when he was describing the symptoms of bad teachings though, it got me flashbacks to another situation: Company meetings. The similarities are stunning. Especially the sentence that just as from the teacher also came always from our bosses “do you have any questions?”. With the same reaction… silence.
And equally despite that, the information that management wanted to transfer did often not get through. After a while the bosses would demand that the employees take notes. Which did not help at all.
That would frustrate both sides. With the management rolling their eyes about the stupidity of the employees. “If they didn’t get it, why didn’t they ask?”.
I never felt that was fair – but I had no answers either. This video explains a lot: Teaching just as business meetings are about transfer of understanding. And: If it doesn’t click its usually the teachers fault, not the students one. So yeah, your employees are usually not idiots.
The “bad version” of teaching was prepared by hiding information until the class started. The teacher did that intuitively so he actually has something to say. He then just reads through it – while speaking among the students was a nuisance. And then he asks “any questions?”.
Before company meetings any news or updates were kept internal to management, until it was shared in the session. Intuitively so, because when spreading the information beforehand it would be a wasted meeting, right? The employees have to stay silent and wait for the “any questions?” closure.
In both cases the data might have transfered, the understanding did not.
And just as the problem is the same – so is in my opinion the solution: Make the information early and easily accessible. It is not about the data! It’s about the understanding!
Secondly – allow the employees to talk to each other. This is in this case even feared by management. A misconception – but it highlights one difference: Especially in these American schools the pupils are the client – they pay, and they can demand good lectures. In a business the management pays – they demand effective work. And if the employees handle their stuff among themselves, the management feels obsolete.
A total misconception – but a common one. I’m talking about several game companies I’ve worked at – it is a familiar theme. I would be curious if other people have the same or different experiences.
The good thing is that more and more modern companies actually start to understand that this thinking is outdated. The bad news is: many didn’t get it yet. And the underlying undemocratic nature of businesses will make it hard to change the roots of the problem.
It also shows something managers, just as the teachers, often are not aware of: they are to a degree in another world – with another perspective. Peers are much more able to understand each others situation. That could scare you – but you could as well use it to your advantage.
May 29, 2010
After the first posting about “words that don’t exist” I was talking with friends about it and inspiring questions came up (i.e. in the comments). I want to use this second part to go into these, for example what I mean with “reality”.
Which also make more clear what I am not trying: I do not want to prove that words are always incorrect to describe reality. Although the word “wolf” from the last example is more abstract than we at first are aware of, it is nonetheless a valuable abstraction. Ghosts on the other hand are not an abstraction, but an invention.
 Somehow this is the image that comes to my mind when thinking about these things. Like looking through a window...
What is reality then? The actual physical world of the universe. In this reality there is no meaning. Things just react physically on the object next to them, that is it.
As soon as genes and evolution appeared something changed. Genes and thus life forms seek to survive. Already the earliest forms reacted to the environment in some way – no brain is needed for that. Bacteria might fall into stasis when food supply is low. In other words, they analyzed reality and categorized it according to “survival” or “non survival”.
The first life with a single light receptor might notice a shadow, and react accordingly. Even though this is more complex than what the bacteria did, it is still a gross simplification of reality – a shadow might mean anything.
Things have come a long way – the drive to sense and analyze the reality has created incredibly complex organisms. But the basics are the same: We gather input, then simplify this into a meaning. We could argue whether by now the goals are more complex than a mere struggle for survival. Still: any life has goals.
I think this is the easiest way to explain what reality is, and why analyzing it helps you achieve your goals better. And just as the simple life form might have mistaken a shadow for food although it was an enemy swimming by, so we are still prone to illusions and misunderstandings of reality.
And that’s why I want to write these articles. I want to find concepts we chase, but that don’t exist. And whatever your goal is, this approach will help.
Does this sound obvious to you? Most people believe otherwise: most spiritual and religious teachings tell people that reality doesn’t matter, that there is another world or that our mind influences the world or is the world.
I think it is natural to not see the distinction. Simple animals just react – done. No need to know what is real or not. And I suspect that even for humans this distinction is very new and quite unnatural. In ancient history whatever someone saw or was told of was reality – they did not know how simplified it was. And it is still surprisingly hard to really convince one (I include myself) that what we think about the world is often completely different of how the world is.
The Greeks are the first we know of to notice that. Just take the example of vision – even Plato still thought that rays leave our eyes so that we see objects. Aristotle then believed that the sun is there to allow the air to take the color of objects, which then touches our eyes.
It took us one thousand years to learn that it is light that allows vision. And nearly two thousand years to learn how much of the spectrum we can’t even see with our eyes. The image we have in our head is a fraction of what is really going on.
 ...or maybe it's the other way around. Although some people glorify the simple times when we were ignorant to reality: They do not really want to live in stone age times.
To understand better reality will help you with your goals. The fact that you could reach your current age and that you can read this text, is thanks to people researching reality – now called scientists.
Since “words” are also in the topic, I will explain what I think they are. Going back to the basic life forms: they would already try to communicate. With simple chemicals one bacteria might signal the other that the food supply is low. It is thus just transmitting the simplified meaning of its analysis.
A barking dog tells the other that danger is near. And words are just the extension – it is always about transmitting an analysis. They carry on the problems it: It is simplified, and it might be wrong, saying something exists that doesn’t. Additionally they might be unclear (I’m often confused what barking dogs try to say  )
So in conclusion: “Reality” and “Words” are both concepts that do exist. And with this series I want to uncover topics were observing reality is lacking, or where unclear words are used.
Spirituality and the motivational industry being the worst. It is so easy to make random sayings sound true, because no one is researching the words – their meaning is completely fuzzy.
Philosophy has a similar problem. And emotional issues are somehow completely exempt from a careful look at the words we use. I don’t think that’s necessary. If today someone is seriously searching ghosts, we know he wastes his time (going back to the idea of a goal: it is impossible to reach) – yet we still put huge efforts looking for concepts and emotions that might just be an illusion.
And I do not pretend there are no limits – I can only use my brain (which is a simplification tool) and words (which multiply the problem).
April 17, 2010
I want to make this into a series – writing about words that in my opinion have no base in reality. It is kind of fun to think this through for certain words but it also has practical reasons.
When I talk to someone about science, philosophy or even just everyday things, discussions often run into a dead end. More and more I notice that it’s often simply a problem of word definition. And not rarely the word/topic we discuss does not even exist in reality. Having an argument about it is a waste of time.
I’ve tried here before to argue about this in the case of “free will”. Which also shows you that these “false words” are not just keeping me and my friends busy – but can spawn whole fields of philosophy and science.
 This image makes everthing clear!! But before I go into tougher concepts like free will, let’s take “ghosts” as an example. It’s an easy one but illustrates really well what I mean. We could have endless discussions about ghosts… can they go through walls? Can they then fall through the ground? Can we see them? Can cameras see them?… forever and ever. If we would realize that ghosts are a mere fantasy, then it changes the whole discussion. Any argument about “what is true” becomes useless. One could still invent stories about them, but its more fun knowing there is no right or wrong.
The example of a ghost also illustrates how alluring a false concept can be. Everyone can imagine ghosts. In fact, most people nowadays still believe in ghosts. And historically it was so common, that it was accepted as part of reality.
Thats why I argue: Many other concepts are just as believable as ghosts were. But they are still around, since they’re harder to check. And this attractiveness keeps even the smartest people busy thinking about them – which is just as wasteful as if they would think about ghosts all day.
If I should indeed have the drive to continue the series, then I need proper conditions what I mean with “does not exist”. So heres a try:
- a definition is not possible – or it’s definition has logical flaws
- the currently existing definition is not realized in the real world (as object or concept)
I’ve shown above the logical problems with defining ghosts – and I think this definition problem is an important hint on at non-existence.
But the fact that things can exist in our minds makes the whole idea more complicated. The ghost for example does exist in our imagination and in stories. And while science can tell us convincingly that ghosts do not exist in the real world – with other concepts it’s tougher. But I do want to try to only accept words as “existent” if they are also outside our heads.
The second example of “wolves” will make the trouble clear.
I’m sure you have an image in your head. But what would your definition be? An animal with big legs, big ears, big eyes, big teeth. The Greeks believed there could be an ideal of what something is – and thats how we know a horse is a horse, a wolf is a wolf. But we learned now its tricky, there are different kinds of wolves and it slowly developed out of other creatures. There is no easy way to tell from the outside – a coyote could be mixed up if someone just goes by a simple description.
We could go by gene code. But thats still fuzzy. When did an animal become a wolf?
Also only a tiny percentage of the cells of a wolf we see are filled with its DNA. As with humans the majority is made of bacteria and other single cell organisms, that live in symbiosis with the actual wolf cells.
Let’s try this: A wolf is a creature made out of many organisms, but held together by cells of wolf-DNA. The skin is the boundary.
Maybe you already see problems there: is everything within the wolf a wolf then? What if he ate a bunny? And this is all just in our human head – the universe itself doesn’t care about the skin boundary. We know that around the skin is a layer of bacteria for protection. Thus wolf changes the environment – so it becomes part of him. Everything mixes. A hint at that is that if you would have to define this animal, you would have to include his environment and that he lives in packs for example. And as major fail from my side: the definition of wolf actually includes the word wolf.
Proves what I’m trying to say though: It is tough to define anything. Any concept we can define will be fuzzy in some way.
Well, we can roughly live with this description. So conclusively: Wolves are a concept. The universe itself does not really care about concepts – but we can find this equivalent in the real world. Thus we can talk about them and research them. We should not though simply take this for granted.
Ghosts are a concept that is harder or even impossible to define – and they have no representation in the real world. Spending too much time on thinking about these things, beyond entertainment, is a waste of time and may lead to wrong roads.
And to anyone who has read ’til here: Welcome to my head!
April 5, 2010
Recently the Large Hadron Collider has been reaching a new record energy output. The main goal of this huge structure is finding the Higgs boson.
Exciting? Hm. The particle is important for high energy physics – without it, the mathematics would be flawed. But we know that the mathematics are highly accurate. The Higgs Boson is part of it since 50 years. So it is likely that they’ll find it.
Doesn’t sound so exiting anymore, does it? And if they find it – would your understanding of the universe be expanded? The particle zoo is already so complex and incomprehensible, that confirmation another inhabitant would not make a big difference (at least for a layman’s view I guess).
Richard Feynman was one of the scientists that worked on a great outburst of discoveries in the field in the 1950s. He laid important theoretic groundwork. At the time new particles have been found every other week (leading to Isidor Rabi’s quote “Who ordered that?”).
Since then the field of quantum electrodynamics had no major new discovery. Feynman himself might highlight why: Scientists before had always just tried to repeat successful approaches. But as he always stressed, the old ways have been tried again and again, they won’t lead to new discoveries. He looked at things in new perspectives. For example he invented the Feynman-diagram.
 Feynman Diagram involving the Higgs Boson. |
 Richard Feynman |
Making cute little pictures to understand physics, instead of complex formulas? It was an outrage back then.
Now you might see what I’m getting at with the topic: He used art as a new way to look at physics.
Ok, I’m stretching the idea a bit – but lets take it further anyways. Because I would argue that as particle physics, so are many other science fields stagnating and hard to understand. Let’s take biology: It was nearly at the same time that the last major breakthrough came. With the discovery of the DNA in 1953.
There have been interesting refinements in our understanding of evolution. But I don’t see anything ground breaking.
Cosmology? The final proof for dark matter/energy has still to be made I guess, but just as with the particles, it is just about proving an existing and highly likely theory. There have been amazing insights close to the beginning of the universe. But there are now natural barriers stopping scientists from looking any further.
Cognitive science? Just taking one area: since Chomsky’s (re)formation of linguistics also in the 50s, there has been no new major insight into language. There is a lot of brain-scanning going on – finding out which part does what. But I don’t see that we really learned anything important yet from that.
Any other science you could think of? Maybe science has to be replaced with a new field to move us further.
Although science has allowed us to take major steps in our understanding, we shouldn’t automatically assume that it is the only way. Human culture probably started out with sounds and the first words. The next step was done by art – leading to a more lasting communication, and to writing. Then writing has dominated, allowing the creation of big stories, religions, states. I guess the dark ages were the great time for the art of war. And only after that science as we know it today began to take shape. Could something else grow out of this?
Feynman himself also painted portraits. But there are other scientists calling for artists – the brilliant mathematician Stephen Wolfram for example. Besides creating Matematica and the search engine WolframAlpha he also wrote “A New Kind of Science”. Mainly he uses the idea of cellular automatons – and took it much further. The basic idea is that you can create endless complexity with a very simple rule. He argues that the whole universe could be based on such a basic rule – the created patterns are infinitely complex.
 Here I imposed a cellular automaton (made with "Mirek's Cellebration") over an seashell I found in Okinawa. Many patterns in nature are based on such very simple rules. There are some beautiful images created by this. A nice entryway for art? Wolfram himself makes some hope – for example by explaining why mathematics is not necessarily the only answer: “It has often been thought that traditional logic-and to some extend mathematics-are somehow fundamentally special and provide in a sense unique foundations. But the Principle of Computational Equivalence implies in fact that there are a huge range of other formal systems, equivalent in their ultimate richness, but different in their details, and in the questions to which they naturally lead.”
He does write in some detail about how art has been using some of these systems before (as in Celtic patterns), but not to the fullest – so he hopes for artists to take this further, and maybe help to spread the idea.
As a curious twist: I only found out while looking up links for this article, that Wolfram and Feynman knew each other very well – you see them together in the picture above (taken from Wolfram’s web page).
The possibilities are endless. Cognitive science, especially the understanding of consciousness is a field that seems stuck and where it is even easier to imagine that art could be the new way to go. I would even say that there are pieces of art that at least give me the sensation of seeing some meaningful message – even though I don’t quite get it.
 Gustav Klimt 1907 - Der Kuss
So why art and not music or poetry? That’s just my bias. Games are also a great candidate. I can’t predict what will happen. Yet even though I simplified and maybe went too far out: I do think that it is time for a new perspective on things. Artists should try to pick up the torch – even though it will not be an easy task. To start to think about it and come up with ideas would be the first step.
 Gustav Klimt 1907 - Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer
January 21, 2010
Recently I found this talk by William Domhoff about dreams. It is always great when researchers talk about such foggy topics with so scientific methods: Just facts, numbers and logic. It’s not only that this helps to get a clearer picture of what is really going on – but exactly this dry approach leads to often very surprising and nearly magical surprises.
(Btw: I found his dream studies after looking at his amazing work about politics – his insights from “Who Rules America?” are just as astonishing.)
I love his ending remarks (watch it first, if you don’t like spoilers) – which start with a quote by Havelock Ellis: “Dreams are real while they last. Can we say more of life?”
An surprising idea – that maybe there is not really more to dreams than we think, but maybe less to reality. I am thinking about this a lot recently, I feel there is something to it.
There are some other things I wonder about. For example why these two worlds seem so different. It is not just replaying life. I dreamed a lot of stories recently, and while I find them amazing, none of them would work in a movie. I also aim at making my pictures more “dreamy” – but dreams don’t seem to give static normal images one could just paint down.
Here is a go at it by Arnold Böcklin (1827 – 1901) that makes me feel its worth trying. He was asked by an old lady to paint a “picture to dream oneself in”. The result is “Die Toteninsel” (“Isle of the Dead”). I took this photo in Berlin, where one of the four existing versions hangs. I can’t quite figure what makes it look like a dream, but it does totally work.
 - die toteninsel 600px.jpg "Arnold Böcklin (1883) - Die Toteninsel (Isle of the Dead)") Arnold Böcklin (1883) - Die Toteninsel (Isle of the Dead)
October 7, 2009
I can’t stop myself to write this (hehe). But this discussion about free will or no free will really bothers me.
There are two blog postings by Aaron Swartz that just got me on the topic again: Is there free will – and may quantum mechanics solve the whole question? It’s a very good blog – and his recent adventures are really interesting – but anyways: As everyone else so far, in my opinion he asks the completely wrong question. I do not understand the problem. And this solution with quantum mechanics certainly does not solve anything.
Let’s just assume something: One really smart mind finds out the answer to the question whether there is free will. Now he tells people “Hey people of the world, the solution is, there is no free will, its all deterministic!”.
What would happen? Nothing. Nothing would change – the world would run as it was.
So let’s assume something else: He finds out that we do have free will. Wow, everyone likes to hear that somehow, but what would actually change? Nothing. Again no one would do anything different just because he knows he has free will.
Ok, so for me the conclusion is: There is no difference. Its both the same – free will or not free will, the problem does not exist.
Oh yeah, there is this third option. The guy finds out: “Its easy, it’s all quantum stuff”.
Well first of all – I don’t get why anyone would conclude that this “reconciles free will”. By definition it means everything is random. No will at all and no determination.
Now what does that solve? Nothing at all. I would even suggest that it’s impossible – since an avoider (as Dennett calls it) could not exist.
Someone tell me please what I’m missing here.
Else the conclusion must be: the question philosophers ask is the wrong one. We do have to find the correct question first – then we can try to find the right answer.
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 - die toteninsel.jpg "Arnold Böcklin (1883) - Die Toteninsel (Isle of the Dead)")