Arts and Minds

Associative Decision-Making: A Challenging Paradox for Management

The Syncretic Process and The Value Of Associative Thinking In A World Of Linear Decision-Making

The products and services—the creative intellectual capital upon which most business are founded—were born in an associative thought process. Paradoxically, later decisions in those same organizations are frequently initiated, managed, and concluded almost entirely within a framework of linear-logical thinking. Syncretic thinking is a mental process that makes non-linear, and therefore unexpected, but nonetheless logical associative connections among seemingly divergent phenomena or data on the basis of subtle qualities they may have in common. This process, present during the conception of a new venture, should not be abandoned or overwhelmed by linearity.

By understanding and resolving this paradox between the creative syncretic process that characterizes the founding stage culture of an organization, and the conservative linear processes that characterize later stages we can generate a new mix of creative thinking that effectively includes and optimizes both elements. These two divergent modes highlight several differences between the mind-sets that typify the young and innovative start up phase of a business, and that same business when later it is more mature and settled into it’s niche. Associative and inventive thinking that generated a novel product or service and founded an organization or industry usually, at maturity, will have yielded to a more rigorous calculus and competitive strategic analysis. In this later phase of organization, rewards linear thinking frameworks that conserve capital and that advance incrementally within a defined and established niche. The creative productive early associative process is discouraged, and linearity, alone, is widely believed to support long-term survival. Neither framework by itself is likely to encourage the growth of new ideas that may form the future re-creations of the organization in a changing market and technical environment.

Bird Flu Virus H5N1 Planning

The problem of bird flu virus H5N1 is brewing, quite literally, in a biological soup in Asia and now on the European continent. It is a time-bomb. We will all be fortunate if it ticks for a few more years before detonating everywhere at the same time (within a week). Isolationist plans are worthless. Post-crisis-planning, as in Katrina, is worse than useless, it is inexcusable. Incompetence and ignorance of science an public health techniques round out a lethal combination for probably many millions worldwide. None of us has any familiarity with calamities of this sort. The death rate from infections of this flu epidemics in humans is around 50%, some predict worse outcome. Those who are not killed would be so ill as to be unable to care for each other. Downstream and later, the effects of this great human trauma would be felt for a century. It horrifies me to personalize this, but should the pandemic occur, about half of us, family, freinds, and strangers might die, at home, together.

Must all governments fail us?

All institutions will eventually fail because institutions comprise gatherings of fallible people. Any institution can only be as successful as the combined strengths and weaknesses in each individual member as described and moderated by the set of the strengths and weakness of their belief systems, mental health, and power within the institutional process. Great institutions of government may fail more spectacularly, and with more severe consequences than small institutions because the kinds of individuals attracted to the greater power and influential positions of high office carry their personal needs for power, entitlement, mental illness and greed along with them into official positions. As an institution grows it gathers like-minded powerful cronies to it’s bosom, As it grows the probability for failure increases proportionally because if is also gathering the flaws, illnesses and weaknesses of all into the process of the institution. It follows from this that the more powerful the institution, the greater will be the probability that it will fail dangerously and do harm to all of us just when it is needed most.

Make a mental list of institutions in your city or town, your state and region and your national government. Try to think of an exception to the rule of eventual catastrophic failure, or at the minimum, nearly ruinous scandal. These are about half of the events comprising what we call history.

Now a further caution: individuals who seek or demand great power (and who are sometimes referred to as ‘an institution unto [himself/herself])’are apparently likely to display greater rates of mental illness as ‘ordinary’ people. But among the power-seekers we may reflect upon the high number of individuals even within living memory who have demonstrated tragic psychotic or psychopathic personal characteristics. It they had worked as gardeners their destructive influence would have had less catastrophic impact.

A-B-C's Of Violence

We, the people of the world, teach violence to children by our actions. I offer this phonetic alphabet, the 'A-B-C's Of Violence, as evidence.

A Alfa > Afghanistan
B Bravo > Beirut
C Charlie > Cambodia
D Delta > Dunkirk
E Echo > Eritrea
F Foxtrot > Fallujah
G Golf > Guadalcanal
H Hotel > Hiroshima
I India > Iraq
J Juliett > Japan
K Kilo > Korea
L Lima > Louisiana
M Mike > Mogadishu
N November > New York
O Oscar > Okinawa
P Papa > Philippines
Q Quebec > Qatar
R Romeo > Republic of Armenia
S Sierra > Stalingrad
T Tango > Texas
U Uniform > Us, USA
V Victor > Vietnam
W Whiskey > Washington
X X-ray > Xiangyang
Y Yankee > Yorktown
Z Zulu > Zambia

Satellite Telephones and Neighborhood Disaster Planning

“The crisis you plan for is not the crisis you get. We learned that even the most basic of assumptions can be violated. In a crisis, failure of phones lines should be expected, but not even cell phones worked consistently on 9/11. Transportation modes can and did cease. We may be unable to count on the public safety agencies that otherwise are reliable day and night,…”

“We learned that even the most basic of assumptions can be violated. In a crisis, failure of phones lines should be expected, but not even cell phones worked consistently on 9/11. Transportation modes can and did cease. We may be unable to count on the public safety agencies that otherwise are reliable day and night… the crisis you plan for is not the crisis you get.” — Marilyn McMillan

“From paper, pens and tape to mutual aid agreements, and sophisticated communications and data back-up, the planning was key to dealing with whatever crisis unfolded.” — John Curry, Executive Vice President, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

The above quotes are taken From a report titled:
Learning History
The Boston Consortium for Higher Education
150 Great Plain Ave
November 2002
Available online: http://64.233.167.104/search?q=cache:bj250eW9FLAJ:web.mit.edu/community/resources/learning_history.pdf+social+unrest+disaster+plan&hl=en&ie=UTF-8

These cautions are truly warnings. We can learn from the experiences of populations and responders under severest stress. In New Orleans (and the Asian Tsunami, the recent floods and earthquakes) almost nothing worked—except for simple things improvised at the local level. For the most part nearby neighbors tried to help each other sharing what they could improvise.

The Rookie and the Geezer

I never liked baseball. Got hit in the head a lot because I was so nearsighted that I could never see the ball unless it was in my hand. I had no idea where it was in the sky until it blew up my tortoise framed eyeglasses. Before I was twelve I decided that balls were flying bombs and contrived to lose my first-baseman’s glove (although it did smell wonderful). I gave my baseball to a friend and thus never learned to spit.

Years later I bought a basketball. It was a bigger ball so I thought it would be easier to see, but in play it moved very fast, and when it hit me, it zonked my whole head, and my eyeglasses, and my right knee. Something told me to stop fooling with my balls, I gave the basketball away and consequently failed to learn two important skills of the American athlete— I can’t either dribble or spit.

ALEX And Like-Minded Birds: Environmental Determinants In The Occurrence of Rival-Model Learning Among Four Birds.

Comparisons among four birds, their early development and behavioral determinants.

ALEX, our finest feathered colleague in the Laboratory of Cognitive Scientist Dr. Irene Pepperberg has died before his work, or hers, was completed. He was somewhat of an avian guru, a teacher, who participated in the Rival-Model learning method, ultimately developing clear human speech. He helped us answer many important questions about cognition and learning in general. He left Dr. Peppergerg and the rest of us who knew him and followed his progress with even more questions about the still largely unexplored animal-to-human interface.

Following the death of ALEX it seems the right moment to sum up some of my own informal observations about the linguistic and emotional language behavior of our own grays in the light of recent Rival-Model Learning discoveries.

ALEX, early years and environment:

ALEX was raised in Dr. Pepperberg’s laboratory, surrounded by students and researchers who kept him busy, interacting nearly all day as they explored his cognitive abilities, and as he learned to use human language. His was a formal, academic society. He lived a life of protocols, affection, repetition of protocols, affection, rest, and he slept alone, retiring gratefully (or so he seemed to indicate) to his cage at night. He did this work five days or more per week for thirty years.

There were also times when he visited friends with Dr. Pepperberg for days at a time. There were hours spent in the care of avian veterinarian Dr. Marjorie McMillan. , and many hospital days in Chicago, There were times he was interviewed in the company of strangers in small rooms or many in large auditoriums; he did not often disappoint.

He befriended Alan Alda, and it appears that ALEX impressed him, but more to the point ALEX made Alda laugh. That Alda laugh—that easy accepting sound—that accompanies so much of what he does, expresses his curiosity, and his pleasure in discovery. ALEX seems to have provided him with all of this in each meeting. Documented evidence of ALDA’s intelligent use of human language can be found on the Discovery Channel, and on video.

Nashi, early years and environment:

Nashi, my own African Grey Parrot is the same species (Psittacus erithacus) as ALEX, but she has had a different kind educational history, physical setting and social environment. Nashi’s life has not only been unlike ALEX’s, but also quite different from the lives of most domestically raised African Gray Parrots, and radically different from her conspecifics in wild flocks.

The Twain Shall Meet At Last!

It has been a guiding principle in our learning, drummed into our brains during primary school years, that one cannot compare apples and oranges because they are different (despite similarities obvious to any schoolchild), and that ‘never the twain shall meet’— that because of these differences they can never be usefully compared or combined. Soon we will all know that it has always been a lie. The twain shall be tied together by Twine.

Today, within minutes after I received my notice that Twine was being demoed At the Web 2.0 conference on Friday, October 19, ’07, I entered the search terms (Twine, radar,) into Google. What I got were eight references to today’s Radar Network’s announcement of the pioneering product Twine, along with an overwhelming number of references to all sorts of things I don’t want to bother with from nubs of string to space-aliens. Google brought me far too many irrelevant pages-full-of-pages, signifying nothing. Google regurgitated the whole hairball including some few useful threads that were not always up front, or even within the first few pages.

That problem, and others, have been addressed by the new product, ‘Twine’, developed by Nova Spivack and his team at Radar Networks. Twine will accomplish at least three grand feats.