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flamingswordNow that you’re doing the work of figuring out what your assumptions are, and they’re becoming more visible, what should we do about them? Well, there are some options! You can look at the context of the assumption and see what else you know about the facts surrounding it, looking for inconsistencies that lead you to suspect that you might not have the whole story. A lot of the time, especially at first, you will have to look up information about your subject on the internet and you will have to do science to your expectations, because your brain will have disregarded information that disagreed with your view (darn you, confirmation bias!). When doing science to things, remember that science is good at giving us facts and enumerating relationships, but that the context of those relationships is sensitive to our previously held biases and assumptions. So it’s vital to take each thing and look at its assumptions and turn each of the assumptions upside down to see if there are unexplained variances that a different perspective on the contents of the science explains.
Alternately, you could look at the disagreement that you had and decide that your view was not enough of a nuanced approach to be the truth (applying Occam’s Razor to humans is a hazard; we are complexodynamic creatures). If you put some thought to questioning your view and know that there’s not enough data available to make a solid judgement call, perhaps you can figure out what the most likely answers are and apply a probability to them. An average distribution curve runs something like answer A= 50-70%; B=10-30%; C= 5-10%; Z= ~2% or less. Why do we think about option Z? Because even if we’ve never seen it happen, if something is likely to happen 2% of the time, and that situation comes up 20 times a year then statistically Z’s number is going to come up every two and a half years, and being completely unprepared is going to make you feel really failsome when it happens. When trying to populate your ratios, be aware that any situation you’ve only seen happen a few times is subject to the Law of Large Numbers, where your values tend to skew back and forth a lot until you build up a large enough statistical base from which to accurately make that judgement. This will make your daily plans and your disaster preparedness a lot simpler.
When you are looking at the possibility space and about to start planning, there is going to be a hurdle to get over. At first, you will want to do nothing. There are going to be some conflicting impulses between doing anything you can think of and being paralyzed for fear of making it worse. But fear is not a plan. Being afraid, of itself, accomplishes nothing, and furthers no plan. Neither does living in the hope that the situation will change on its own, so being able to label these states of inaction as plans and weigh their risk-benefit ratio will help you dismiss them or use them constructively. Figure out the thought space available, the possibilities for the problem, and the risk-benefit assessment for each plan to solve the problem - even though it's hard. It takes a lot of will-power to make yourself stick with doing something like this, so don't be afraid to write things down, leave and come back to it, ask for help, and use all of your creative skills to solve it.
Now there’s a plan in place for making the judgement call, you’ll get faster at making them and won’t have to agonize over them as much. It has the anti-anxiety benefit built into the system, which is helpful, since you don’t have all the energy in the world to wade through fallacies every time you try to do something. Once the assessment phase of the decision making process is not so fraught, you can make plans and decide between them using a risk benefit analysis. Make plans that are sensitive to the conditions of your ABCZ distribution curve. Is there a way to make one plan and it’s backups work for all scenarios? Congratulations, you have achieved a Xanatos Gambit!
"BUT WAIT!!!", you say, "How does this relate to the Sea of Doubt?"
Fair question. Sometimes you have a probability A, and a probability Z, but the rest of your theoretical possibility space is one big ??? and you're not sure what to do about that. How are you supposed to act when you can only account for what seems* like 52% of the possibilities? (*and is realistically even less, since we have to assume we are not omniscient) Well, there are so many types of problems, and so many strategies for solutions that we invented an internet to help deal with them. That we will get into next post.
Alternately, you could look at the disagreement that you had and decide that your view was not enough of a nuanced approach to be the truth (applying Occam’s Razor to humans is a hazard; we are complexodynamic creatures). If you put some thought to questioning your view and know that there’s not enough data available to make a solid judgement call, perhaps you can figure out what the most likely answers are and apply a probability to them. An average distribution curve runs something like answer A= 50-70%; B=10-30%; C= 5-10%; Z= ~2% or less. Why do we think about option Z? Because even if we’ve never seen it happen, if something is likely to happen 2% of the time, and that situation comes up 20 times a year then statistically Z’s number is going to come up every two and a half years, and being completely unprepared is going to make you feel really failsome when it happens. When trying to populate your ratios, be aware that any situation you’ve only seen happen a few times is subject to the Law of Large Numbers, where your values tend to skew back and forth a lot until you build up a large enough statistical base from which to accurately make that judgement. This will make your daily plans and your disaster preparedness a lot simpler.
When you are looking at the possibility space and about to start planning, there is going to be a hurdle to get over. At first, you will want to do nothing. There are going to be some conflicting impulses between doing anything you can think of and being paralyzed for fear of making it worse. But fear is not a plan. Being afraid, of itself, accomplishes nothing, and furthers no plan. Neither does living in the hope that the situation will change on its own, so being able to label these states of inaction as plans and weigh their risk-benefit ratio will help you dismiss them or use them constructively. Figure out the thought space available, the possibilities for the problem, and the risk-benefit assessment for each plan to solve the problem - even though it's hard. It takes a lot of will-power to make yourself stick with doing something like this, so don't be afraid to write things down, leave and come back to it, ask for help, and use all of your creative skills to solve it.
Now there’s a plan in place for making the judgement call, you’ll get faster at making them and won’t have to agonize over them as much. It has the anti-anxiety benefit built into the system, which is helpful, since you don’t have all the energy in the world to wade through fallacies every time you try to do something. Once the assessment phase of the decision making process is not so fraught, you can make plans and decide between them using a risk benefit analysis. Make plans that are sensitive to the conditions of your ABCZ distribution curve. Is there a way to make one plan and it’s backups work for all scenarios? Congratulations, you have achieved a Xanatos Gambit!
"BUT WAIT!!!", you say, "How does this relate to the Sea of Doubt?"
Fair question. Sometimes you have a probability A, and a probability Z, but the rest of your theoretical possibility space is one big ??? and you're not sure what to do about that. How are you supposed to act when you can only account for what seems* like 52% of the possibilities? (*and is realistically even less, since we have to assume we are not omniscient) Well, there are so many types of problems, and so many strategies for solutions that we invented an internet to help deal with them. That we will get into next post.
no subject
Date: 2015-08-05 09:45 pm (UTC)>If you put some thought to questioning your view and know that there’s not enough data available to make a solid judgement call, perhaps you can figure out what the most likely answers are and apply a probability to them.
Assigning probabilities in the absence of solid evidence is much, much harder and more dangerous than it seems. This is where your earlier writing about the Cult of Done becomes super relevant! The important thing is not always to get better at assigning probabilities accurately, the important thing is actually to be ready for unforeseen consequences, in proportion to the scope of ambiguity, when you do the thing. If I only had to pick one paragraph that demands more expansion, it would be that one.
It gets tangly super fast though because knowing the unexpected has become more possible creates some inhibition towards action all on its own. This is also what the sea of doubt is about, am I right?
no subject
Date: 2015-08-24 04:30 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-08-26 03:56 pm (UTC)