────────────────────────────────────
look up blind mens groping the elephant story and put it here
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blind_men_and_an_elephant
The parable of the blind men and an elephant is a story of a group of blind men who have never come across an elephant before and who learn and imagine what the elephant is like by touching it. Each blind man feels a different part of the elephant's body, but only one part, such as the side or the tusk. They then describe the elephant based on their limited experience and their descriptions of the elephant are different from each other. In some versions, they come to suspect that the other person is dishonest and they come to blows. The moral of the parable is that humans have a tendency to claim absolute truth based on their limited, subjective experience as they ignore other people's limited, subjective experiences which may be equally true.[1][2] The parable originated in the ancient Indian subcontinent, from where it has been widely diffused.
The parable
The earliest versions of the parable of blind men and elephant is found in Buddhist, Hindu and Jain texts, as they discuss the limits of perception and the importance of complete context. The parable has several Indian variations, but broadly goes as follows:[7][2]
A group of blind men heard that a strange animal, called an elephant, had been brought to the town, but none of them were aware of its shape and form. Out of curiosity, they said: "We must inspect and know it by touch, of which we are capable". So, they sought it out, and when they found it they groped about it. The first person, whose hand landed on the trunk, said, "This being is like a thick snake". For another one whose hand reached its ear, it seemed like a kind of fan. As for another person, whose hand was upon its leg, said, the elephant is a pillar like a tree-trunk. The blind man who placed his hand upon its side said the elephant, "is a wall". Another who felt its tail, described it as a rope. The last felt its tusk, stating the elephant is that which is hard, smooth and like a spear.
While one's subjective experience is true, it may not be the totality of truth.[4][7]
The parable has been used to illustrate a range of truths and fallacies; broadly, the parable implies that one's subjective experience can be true, but that such experience is inherently limited by its failure to account for other truths or a totality of truth.
At various times the parable has provided insight into the relativism, opaqueness or inexpressible nature of truth, the behavior of experts in fields of contradicting theories, the need for deeper understanding, and respect for different perspectives on the same object of observation. In this respect, it provides an easily understood and practical example that illustrates ontologic reasoning. That is, simply put, what things exist, what is their true nature, and how can their relations to each other be accurately categorized?
In the oldest version, four blind men walk into a forest where they meet an elephant. In this version, they do not fight with each other, but conclude that they each must have perceived a different beast although they experienced the same elephant.[5] The expanded version of the parable occurs in various ancient and Hindu texts. Many scholars refer to it as a Hindu parable.[7][2][8]
a reference, to the parable, appear in bhasya (commentaries, secondary literature) in the Hindu traditions. For example, Adi Shankara mentions it in his bhasya on verse 5.18.1 of the Chandogya Upanishad as follows:
etaddhasti darshana iva jatyandhah
Translation: That is like people blind by birth in/when viewing an elephant.
— Adi Shankara, Translator: Hans Henrich Hock[9]
Seven blind men and an elephant parable at a Jain temple
The medieval era Jain texts explain the concepts of anekāntavāda (or "many-sidedness") and syādvāda ("conditioned viewpoints") with the parable of the blind men and an elephant (Andhgajanyāyah), which addresses the manifold nature of truth. This parable is found in the most ancient Jain agams before 5th century BCE. Its popularity remained till late. For example, this parable is found in Tattvarthaslokavatika of Vidyanandi (9th century) and Syādvādamanjari of Ācārya Mallisena (13th century). Mallisena uses the parable to argue that immature people deny various aspects of truth; deluded by the aspects they do understand, they deny the aspects they don't understand. "Due to extreme delusion produced on account of a partial viewpoint, the immature deny one aspect and try to establish another. This is the maxim of the blind (men) and the elephant."[10]
Modern treatments
The story is seen as a metaphor in many disciplines, being pressed into service as an analogy in fields well beyond the traditional. In physics, it has been seen as an analogy for the wave–particle duality.[21] In biology, the way the blind men hold onto different parts of the elephant has been seen as a good analogy for the polyclonal B cell response.[22]
In the title cartoon of one of his books, cartoonist Sam Gross postulated that one of the blind men, encountering a pile of the elephant feces, concluded that "An elephant is soft and mushy."
An elephant joke inverts the story in the following way, with the act of observation severely and fatally altering the subject of investigation:
Six blind elephants were discussing what men were like. After arguing they decided to find one and determine what it was like by direct experience. The first blind elephant felt the man and declared, 'Men are flat.' After the other blind elephants felt the man, they agreed.
Moral:
We have to remember that what we observe is not nature in itself, but nature exposed to our method of questioning.
— Werner Heisenberg[28]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blind_men_and_an_elephant
────────────────────────────────────
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blind_men_and_an_elephant
Seven blind men and an elephant parable at a Jain temple
The medieval era Jain texts explain the concepts of anekāntavāda (or "many-sidedness") and syādvāda ("conditioned viewpoints") with the parable of the blind men and an elephant (Andhgajanyāyah), which addresses the manifold nature of truth. This parable is found in the most ancient Jain agams before 5th century BCE. Its popularity remained till late. For example, this parable is found in Tattvarthaslokavatika of Vidyanandi (9th century) and Syādvādamanjari of Ācārya Mallisena (13th century). Mallisena uses the parable to argue that immature people deny various aspects of truth; deluded by the aspects they do understand, they deny the aspects they don't understand. "Due to extreme delusion produced on account of a partial viewpoint, the immature deny one aspect and try to establish another. This is the maxim of the blind (men) and the elephant."[10]
anekāntavāda (or "many-sidedness") and
syādvāda ("conditioned viewpoints")
anekāntavāda (or "many-sidedness") and
syādvāda ("conditioned viewpoints")
────────────────────────────────────
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anekantavada
Syādvāda is a theory of qualified predication, states Koller. It states that all knowledge claims must be qualified in many ways, because reality is many-sided.[4] It is done so systematically in later Jain texts through saptibhaṅgīnaya or "the theory of sevenfold scheme".[4] These saptibhaṅgī seem to have been first formulated in Jainism by the 5th or 6th century CE Svetambara scholar Mallavadin,[31] and they are:[30][32][33]
1. Affirmation: syād-asti—in some ways, it is,
2. Denial: syān-nāsti—in some ways, it is not,
3. Joint but successive affirmation and denial:
syād-asti-nāsti—
in some ways, it is, and it is not,
4. Joint and simultaneous affirmation and denial:
syāt-asti-avaktavyaḥ—
in some ways, it is, and it is indescribable,
5. Joint and simultaneous affirmation and denial:
syān-nāsti-avaktavyaḥ—
in some ways, it is not, and it is indescribable,
6. Joint and simultaneous affirmation and denial:
syād-asti-nāsti-avaktavyaḥ—
in some ways, it is, it is not, and it is indescribable,
7. Joint and simultaneous affirmation and denial:
syād-avaktavyaḥ—
in some ways, it is indescribable.
────────────────────────────────────
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaina_seven-valued_logic
The Saptabhangivada, the seven predicate theory may be summarized as follows:[4]
The seven predicate theory consists in the use of seven claims about sentences, each preceded by "arguably" or "conditionally" (syat), concerning a single object and its particular properties, composed of assertions and denials, either simultaneously or successively, and without contradiction. These seven claims are the following.
1. Arguably, it (that is, some object) exists (syad asty eva).
2. Arguably, it does not exist (syan nasty eva).
3. Arguably, it exists; arguably, it doesn't exist (syad asty eva syan nasty eva).
4. Arguably, it is non-assertible (syad avaktavyam eva).
5. Arguably, it exists; arguably, it is non-assertible (syad asty eva syad avaktavyam eva).
6. Arguably, it doesn't exist; arguably, it is non-assertible (syan nasty eva syad avaktavyam eva).
7. Arguably, it exists; arguably, it doesn't exist; arguably it is non-assertible (syad asty eva syan nasty eva syad avaktavyam eva).
There are three basic truth values, namely, true (t), false (f) and unassertible (u).
────────────────────────────────────
THE
SYSTEMS
APPROACH
by C. West Churchman
1968
A Delta Book
(paperback)
Eighth Printing
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
This book was written while the author was conducting social
science research on the managerial problems of research and
development, supported by the National Aeronautics and Space
Administration. Many of the ideas were inspired by this research
effort and by the discussion of the social-science seminar of the
Space Sciences Laboratory at the University of California, Berkeley.
copyright © 1968, 1979 by C. West Churchman
First revised edition printing──December 1979
C. West Churchman, The System Approach, 1968, 1979 [ ]
p.34, p.35, p.35, p.36, p.36
p.34
... The environment of the system is what lies “outside” of the system. This also is no easy matter to determine.
p.35
Perhaps, after all, the super-observer of the blind men trying to describe the elephant was himself rather blind. Does the skin of the elephant really represent the dividing line between the elephant and its environment? Maybe an understanding of the habitat of the elephant is essential, and perhaps the habitat should be regarded as part of the elephantine system.
p.35
Hence the scientist has to have a way of thinking about the environment of a system that is richer and more subtle than a mere looking for boundaries. He does this by noting that, when we say that something lies “outside” the system, we mean that the system can do relatively little about its characteristics or its behaviour. Environment, in effect, makes up the things and people that are “fixed” or “given,” from the system's point of view.
p.36
... But if by some organizational change, the system could influence the budget, then some of the budgetary process would belong inside the system.
p.36
Not only is the environment something that is outside the system's control, but it is also something that determines in part how the system performs. Thus, if the system is operating in a very cold climate so that its equipment must be designed to withstand various kinds of severe temperature change, then we would say that temperature changes are in the environment, because these dictate the given possibilities of the system performance and yet the system can do nothing about the temperature changes.
( THE SYSTEMS APPROACH, by C. West Churchman, 1968, A Delta Book, (paperback), Eighth Printing, SCIENCE/TECHNOLOGY, DELL PUBLISHING CO., INC./PRINTED IN U.S.A., HD 20. 5 C47, p.34, p.35, p.35, p.36, p.36)
────────────────────────────────────
C. West Churchman, The System Approach, 1968, 1979 [ ]
p.44
As we shall see, this problem of measuring the performance of a component gets to be a very tricky and difficult one as we go deeper into the design of large systems.
p.44
... If some other part of the system changes, say because of the technological improvement, then it may become essential to change the measure of performance of the given component.
p.44
... The management of a system has to deal with the generation of the plans for the system, i.e., consideration of all the things we have discussed, the overall goals, the environment, the utilization of resources, and the components. The management sets the component goals, allocates the resources, and controls the system performance.
This description of management, however, creates something of a paradox for the management scientist. After all, it is he who has been scheming and plotting with his models and analyses to determine the goals, environment, resources, and components.
p.45
The truth of the matter is that he doesn't want to. He is not a man of action, but a man of ideas. A man of action takes risks, and if he fails, not only does he get fired but his organization may be ruined; the man of action is willing to risk fortunes besides his own. The management scientist is typically a single risk-taker: if he fails, he doesn't have to bear the responsibility of the whole organization's failure.
Hence, we've found one chink in the scientist's armor: he doesn't really understand how he himself is a component of the system he observes. He likes to think that he can stand apart, like the elephant observer, and merely recommend, but not act. How naïve this must appear to the politician is hard to say, but certainly the politician's appreciation of the situation is the more sophisticated one. “Mere” recommendation is a fantasy; in the management scientist's own terminology, it is doubful whether the study of a system is a separable mission.
p.45
... Indeed, many control procedure operate by exception, so that the management does not interfere with the operations of a component except when the component gives evidence of too great a deviation from plan. However, control does not only mean the examination of whether plans are being carried out correctly; it also implies an evaluation of the plans and consequently a change of plans.
pp.45-46
... As we shall see, one of the critical aspects of the management of systems is the planning for change of plans, because no one can claim to have set down the correct overall objectives, or a correct definition of the environment, or a fully precise definition of resources, or the ultimate definition of the components. Therefore, the management part of the system must receive information that tells it when its concept of the system is erroneous and must include steps that will provide for a change.
( THE SYSTEMS APPROACH, by C. West Churchman, 1968, 1979, A Delta Book, (paperback), Eighth Printing, SCIENCE/TECHNOLOGY, DELL PUBLISHING CO., INC./PRINTED IN U.S.A., HD 20. 5 C47, )
<-------------------------------------------------------------------------->
page 53/307 (pdf)
The map is not the reality (Alfred Korzybski)
... human being do not react to reality, but build their own mental model of reality.
... ... ...
Accepting this scientific fact has fundamental consequences: the mental models of individuals who meet and try to exchange information never match - virtually never! But people have the ability to widen their mental models through and understanding of other people's.
page 58/307 (pdf)
It goes without saying that many generalisations result in incorrect/erroneous judgments. This is one of the major traps of thinking. We are ready to accept information given to us without crosschecking, if it fits into our mental model.
page 61/307 (pdf)
At the start of a consultantcy assignment, the client usually focuses on his problems, often having deficit orientated perceptions of this working environment (such as team problems, etc.). As a result, adaptive behavioural patterns aren't explored.
page 61/307 (pdf)
An anaysis of group processes reveals that hypnotic patterns are self-generating and that on an unconscious level all actors contribute to the problem state: they hypnotize themselves.
source:
The change management toolbook : a collection of tools, methods and strategies, by Holger Nauheimer
https://www.nccmt.ca/uploads/media/media/0001/03/1a75f61d353397066eb0e83a0da69d2fd8ee2ef4.pdf
1a75f61d353397066eb0e83a0da69d2fd8ee2ef4.pdf
was save as : change management toolbook.pdf
____________________________________
https://todayilearnreadingroom.blogspot.com/2023/06/johari-window.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johari_window
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/There_are_unknown_unknowns
https://todayilearnreadingroom.blogspot.com/2023/06/johari-window.html ____________________________________
The Elephant in the Boardroom
Sometimes after the March meeting of the board of directors of Sylvan Forest Products, an elephant came out of the forest and moved into the boardroom. Nobody noticed, until the September meeting when the managing director couldn't open the door. “There's something in there,” said the managing director, “and it's blocking the door.”
Peering under the door, the comptroller saw the shadow of the elephant's feet. “It looks as if some trees have grown inside. Better send for the silviculturist.”
The silviculturist managed to splinter the find oak door partway open with his peavey, but the elephant leaned to one side and slammed it shut again. “I don't think it's trees,” said the silviculturist. “It's huge gray monster--more like a whale.”
The board then sent for a cetaceanologist, who advised them to flood the boardroom so that the whale coudl swim out. But as the room filled with water, the elephant simply blew it out with her trunk through the broken door. Seeing the trunk, the cetaceanologist said, “No wonder it doesn't swim out. It's not a whale at all, but a large snake.”
Next, the board summoned an ophiologist, who advised, “Toss in some burning oily rags. That will drive out any snake.” But the elephant simply stamped out the flames as fast as the burning rags could be thrown through the door. The board decided to call the janitor to clear the anteroom of splintered wood, muddy water, and oily, smoked furniture.
The janitor asked about the mess. After the managing director told the story, he reached in his pocket and pulled out some peanuts. When he held one through the door, the elephant--which was by this time mightily hungry--grabbed it with her trunk. “Come on, Little One,” the janitor coaxed, holding out the other peanuts, and in a moment, the elephant lumbered out the door. After feasting a while on peanuts, she shyly retreated to the forest.
“But how did you know it was an elephant?” the astonished comptroller asked.
“Oh, I didn't know. I only suspected because it was partly like a forest, partly like a whale, and partly like a snake. It was only a theory, so I figured it would be better to risk one of my peanuts than to cause further damage to your boardroom.”
Out of Your Depth
If you had an elephant in your boardroom, which specialist would you call? The toughest problems don't come in neatly labeled packages. Or they come in packages with the wrong labels. That's why they're so tough.
Three times out of four, consultants find themselves asked to work on problems that aren't their “speciality.” The consultant just looks like a specialist to a nonspecialist. But good consultant can handle many of those problems anyway, because in addition to being specialists, they are problem-solvers. If you dig into their bag of tricks, you'll find that their best ones have nothing whatsoever to do with their specialties, but can be used by consultants in any field.
(The secrets of consulting, Gerald M. Weinberg, © 1985, pp.37-38)
<-------------------------------------------------------------------------->
Byzantine fault
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byzantine_fault
Characteristics
A Byzantine fault is any fault presenting different symptoms to different observers.[4] A Byzantine failure is the loss of a system service due to a Byzantine fault in systems that require consensus.[5]
The objective of Byzantine fault tolerance is to be able to defend against failures of system components with or without symptoms that prevent other components of the system from reaching an agreement among themselves, where such an agreement is needed for the correct operation of the system.
The remaining operationally correct components of a Byzantine fault tolerant system will be able to continue providing the system's service as originally intended, assuming there are a sufficient number of accurately-operating components to maintain the service.
Byzantine failures are considered the most general and most difficult class of failures among the failure modes. The so-called fail-stop failure mode occupies the simplest end of the spectrum. Whereas fail-stop failure mode simply means that the only way to fail is a node crash, detected by other nodes, Byzantine failures imply no restrictions, which means that the failed node can generate arbitrary data, including data that makes it appear like a functioning node. Thus, Byzantine failures can confuse failure detection systems, which makes fault tolerance difficult. Despite the analogy, a Byzantine failure is not necessarily a security problem involving hostile human interference: it can arise purely from electrical or software faults.
Caveat
Byzantine fault tolerance is only concerned with broadcast consistency, that is, the property that when one component broadcasts a single consistent value to other components (i.e., sends the same value to the other components), they all receive exactly the same value, or in the case that the broadcaster is not consistent, the other components agree on a common value. This kind of fault tolerance does not encompass the correctness of the value itself; for example, an adversarial component that deliberately sends an incorrect value, but sends that same value consistently to all components, will not be caught in the Byzantine fault tolerance scheme.
If all generals attack in coordination, the battle is won (left). If two generals falsely declare that they intend to attack, but instead retreat, the battle is lost (right).
In its simplest form, a number of generals are attacking a fortress and they must decide as a group whether to attack or retreat. Some generals may prefer to attack, while others prefer to retreat. The important thing is that all generals agree on a common decision, for a halfhearted attack by a few generals would become a rout, and would be worse than either a coordinated attack or a coordinated retreat.
The problem is complicated by the presence of treacherous generals who may not only cast a vote for a suboptimal strategy, they may do so selectively. For instance, if nine generals are voting, four of whom support attacking while four others are in favor of retreat, the ninth general may send a vote of retreat to those generals in favor of retreat, and a vote of attack to the rest. Those who received a retreat vote from the ninth general will retreat, while the rest will attack (which may not go well for the attackers). The problem is complicated further by the generals being physically separated and having to send their votes via messengers who may fail to deliver votes or may forge false votes.
<-------------------------------------------------------------------------->
page 122/307 (pdf)
Planning and project management
The reason I have included planning and project management (PM) in a Change Management Toolbook is because Change Management originates in the crisis that classical PM faces right now. Originally developed as a sub-discipline of engineering, PM assumes that if you design a concise plan and put the resources right in place, you will achieve your predefined objectives.
Reality has proven this is rarely the case. More than 50% of projects fail in the sense that they:
1. do not achieve their objectives., or
2. do not deliver the promised results, or
3. sacrifice the predefined quality, or
4. are not completely in the given time schedule, or
5. use more resources than originally planned.
(For a more detailed description of the reasons for project failure, go to Risk Analysis).
However, I still believe that the classical PM tools have their merits and can help for example, aiding a team in structuring their tasks. In my work I have found out that many project teams are open to Change Management intervention, particularly if they have already started their journey and experienced the first flaws. They start to ask, "Why don’t we achieve what we want to achieve?", and "What can we do differently?" That is a perfect entrance point for a Change Management facilitator. Depending on the project, and on the limitations the team experiences, any of the tools described in this Toolbook might be applicable. There are, however, some general considerations (and some very specific tools) that should be applied at the beginning of a planning process:
source:
The change management toolbook : a collection of tools, methods and strategies, by Holger Nauheimer
https://www.nccmt.ca/uploads/media/media/0001/03/1a75f61d353397066eb0e83a0da69d2fd8ee2ef4.pdf
1a75f61d353397066eb0e83a0da69d2fd8ee2ef4.pdf
was save as : change management toolbook.pdf
____________________________________
────────────────────────────────────
V. S. Ramachandran., and Sandra Blakeslee., Phantoms in the brain: probing the mysteries of the human mind, 1998
p.229
(“qualia” simply means the raw feel of sensations such as the subjective of “pain” or “red” or “gnocchi with truffles” )
p.229
The central mystery of the cosmos, as far as I'm concerned, is the following: Why are there always two parallel descriptions of the universe--the first-person account (“I see red”) and the third-person account (“He says that he sees red when certain pathways in his brain encounter a wavelength of six hundred nanometers”)? How can these two accounts be so utterly different yet complementary? Why isn't there only a third-person account, for according to the objective worldview of the physicist and neuroscientist, that's the only one that really exists? (Scientists who hold this view are called behaviorists.) Indeed, in their scheme of “objective science”, the need for a first-person account doesn't even arise--implying that consciousness simply doesn't exist. But we all know perfectly well that can't be right.
pp.229-230
First, imagine that you are a future superscientist with a complete knowledge of the working of the human brain. Unfortunately you are also completely color-blind. You don't have any cone receptors (the structures in your retina that allow your eyes to discriminate the different colors), but you do have rods (for seeing black and white), and you also have the correct machinery for processing colors higher up inside your brain. If your eyes could distinguish colors, so could your brain.
Now suppose that you, the superscientist, study my brain. I am a normal color perceiver--I can see that the sky is blue, the grass is green and a banana is yellow--and you want to know what I mean by these color terms. When I look at objects and describe them as turquoise, chartreuse or vermilion, you don't have any idea what I'm talking about. To you, they all look like shades of gray.
But you are intensely curious about the phenomenon, so you point a spectrometer at the surface of a ripe red apple. It indicates that light with a wavelength of six hundred (600) nanometers is emanating from the fruit. But you still have no idea what COLOR this might correspond to because you can't experience it. Intrigued, you study the light-sensitive pigments of my eye and the color pathways in my brain until you evetually come up with a complete description of the laws of wavelength processing. Your theory allows you to trace the entire sequence of color perception, starting from the receptors in my eye and passing all the way into my brain, where you monitor the neural activity that generates the word “red”. In short, you completely understand the laws of color vision (or more strictly, the laws of wavelength processing), and you can tell me in advance which word I will use to describe the color of an apple, orange, or lemon. As a superscientist, YOU HAVE NO REASON TO DOUBT THE COMPLETENESS OF YOUR ACCOUNT.
Satisfied, you approach me with your flow diagram and say, “Ramachandran, this is what's going on in your brain!”
But I must protest. “Sure, that's what's going on. But I also SEE red. Where is the red in this diagram?”
“What is that?” you ask.
“That's part of the actual, ineffable experience of the color, which I can never seem to convey to you because you're totally color-blind.”
This example leads to a definition of “qualia”: they are aspects of my brain state that seem to make the scientific description incomplete--from my point of view.
pp.230-231
As a second example, imagine a species of Amazonian electric fish that is very intelligent, in fact, as intelligent and sophisticated as you or I. But it has something we lack--namely, the ability to sense electrical fields using special organs in its skin. Like the superscientist in the previous example, you can study the neurophysiology of this fish and figure out how the electrical organs on the sides of its body transduce electrical current, how this information is conveyed to the brain, what part of the brain analyzes this information and how the fish uses this information to dodge predators, find prey and so on. If the fish could talk, however, it would say, “Fine, but you'll never know what it feels like to sense electricity.”
These examples clearly state the problem of why qualia are thought to be essentially private. They also illustrate why the problem of qualia is not necessarily a scientific problem. Recall that your scientific description is complete. It's just that your account is incomplete epistemologically because the actual experience of electric fields or redness is something you never will know. For you, it will forever remain a “third-person” account.
p.231
These examples clearly state the problem of why qualia are thought to be essentially private.
p.231
Indeed, I believe that this barrier is only apparent and that it arises as a result of langauge. This sort of obstacle emerges when there is ANY TRANSLATION from one language to another.2
p.231
One is the language of nerve impulses--the spatial and temporal patterns of neuronal activity that allow us to see red, for example. The second language, the one that allows us to communicate what we are seeing to others, is a natural spoken tongue like English or German or Japanese--rarefied, compressed waves of air traveling between you and the listener. Both are languages in the strict technical sense, that is, they are information-rich messages that are intended to convey meaning, across synapses between different brain parts in one case and across the air between two people in the other.
p.231
The problem is that I can tell you, the color-blind superscientist, about my qualia (my experience of seeing red) only by using a spoken language. But the ineffable “experience” itself is lost in translation. The actual “redness” of red will remain forever unavailable to you.
pp.237-238
Thus the crucial difference between a qualia-laden perception and one that doesn't have qualia is that the qualia-laden perception is irrevocable by higher brain centers and is therefore “tamper-resistant”, whereas the one that lacks qualia is flexible; you can choose any one of a number of different “pretend” inputs using your imagination. Once a qualia-laden perception has been created, you're stuck with it. (A good example of this is the dalmatian dog in Figure 12.2. Initially, as you look, it's all fragments. Then suddenly everything clicks and you see the dog. Loosely speaking, you've now got the dog qualia. The next time you see it, there's no way you can avoid seeing the dog. Indeed, we have recently shown that neurons in the brain have permanently altered their connections once you have seen the dog.)8
These examples demonstrate an important feature of qualia--it must be irrevocable.
p.238
Well, imagine that you are in a coma and I shine a light into your eye. If the coma is not too deep, your pupil will constrict, even though you will have no subjective awareness of any qualia caused by the light. The entire reflex arc is irrevocable, and yet there are no qualia associated with it. You can't change your mind about it. ... The key difference is that in the case of the pupil's constriction, there is only one output--one final outcome--available and hence no qualia.
(Ramachandran, V.S., Phantoms in the brain : probing the mysteries of the human mind / V. S. Ramachandran, and Sandra Blakeslee., 1. neurology--popular works., 2. brain--popular works., 3. neurosciences--popular works., 1998, 612.82, )
____________________________________
V. S. Ramachandran., and Sandra Blakeslee., Phantoms in the brain: probing the mysteries of the human mind, 1998
p.134
But now suppose something comes along that does not quite fit the plot. What do you do? One option is to tear up the entire script and start from scratch: completely revise your story to create a new model about the world and about yourself. The problem is that if you did this for every little piece of threatening information, your behavior would soon become chaotic and unstable; you would go mad.
What your left hemisphere does instead is either ignore the anomaly completely or distort it to squeeze it into your preexisting framework to preserve to stability.
pp.135-136
Imagine, for example, a military general about to wage war on the enemy. It is late at night and he is in the war room planning strategies for the next day. Scouts keep coming into the room to give him information about the lay of the land, terrain, light level and so forth. They also tell him that the enemy has 500 tanks and that he has 600 tanks, a fact that prompts the general to decide to wage war. He positions all of his troops in strategic locations and decides to launch battle exactly at 6:00 A.M. with sunrise.
Imagine further that at 5:55 A.M. one little scout comes running into the war room and says, “General! I have a bad news.” With minutes to go until battle, the generals asks, “What is that?” and the scout replies, “I just looked through binoculars and saw that the enemy has 700 tanks, not 500!”
What does the general--the left hemisphere--do? Time is of the essence and he simply can't afford the luxury of revising all his battle plans. So he orders the scout to shut up and tell no one about what he saw. Denial! Indeed, he may even shoot the scout and hide the report in a drawer labeled “top secret” (repression). In doing so, he relies on the high probability that the majority opinion--the previous information by all the scouts--was correct and that this single new item of information coming from one source is probably wrong. So the general sticks to his original position. Not only that, but for ffear of mutiny, he might order the scout actually to lie to the other generals and tell them that he only saw 500 tanks (confabulation). The purpose of all of this is to impose stability on behavior and to prevent vacillation because indecisiveness doesn't serve any purpose. Any decision, so long as it is probably correct, is better than no decision at all. A perpetually fickle general will never win a war!
In this analogy, the general is the left hemisphere5 (Freud's “ego”, perhaps?), and his behaviour is analogous to the kinds of denials and repressions you see in both healthy people and patients with anosognosia. But why are these defense mechanisms so grossly exaggerated in the patients? Enter the right hemisphere, which I like to call the Devil's Advocate. To see how this works, we need to push the analogy a step further. Supposing the single scout comes running in, and instead of saying the enemy has more tanks, he declares, “General, I just looked through my telescope and the enemy has nuclear weapons.” The general would be very foolish indeed to adhere to his original plan. He must quickly formulate a new one, for if the scout were correct, the consequences would be devastating.
p.136
Thus the coping strategies of the two hemispheres are fundamentally different. The left hemisphere's job is to create a belief system or model and to fold new experiences into that belief system. If confronted with some new information that doesn't fit the model, it relies on Freudian defense mechanisms to deny, repress or confabulate--anything to preserve the status quo. The right hemisphere's strategy, on the other hand, is to play “Devil's Advocate”, to question the status quo and look for global inconsistencies. When the anomalous information reaches a certain threshold, the right hemisphere decides that it is time to force a complete revision of the entire model and start from scratch. The right hemisphere thus forces a “Kuhnian paradigm shift” in response to anomalies, whereas the left hemisphere always tries to cling tenaciously to the way things were.
Now consider what happens if the right hemisphere is damaged.6 The left hemisphere is then given free rein to pursue its denials, confabulations and other strategies, as it normally does.
(Ramachandran, V.S., Phantoms in the brain : probing the mysteries of the human mind / V. S. Ramachandran, and Sandra Blakeslee., 1. neurology--popular works., 2. brain--popular works., 3. neurosciences--popular works., 1998, 612.82, )
____________________________________
Gary Klein, Sources of power : how people make decision, 1998 [ ]
p.69
Marvin Cohen (1997), snap-back
Marvin Cohen (1997) believes that mental simulation is usually self-correcting through a process he has called snap-back. Mental simulation can explain away disconfirming evidence, but Cohen has concluded that it is often wise to explain away mild discrepancies since the evidence itself might not be trustworthy. However, there is a point when we have explained away so much that the mental simulation becomes very complicated.6 We look at all the new evidence that had been explained away to see if maybe there is not another simulation that makes more sense. Cohen believes that until we have an alternate mental simulation, we will keep patching the original one. We will not be motivated to assemble an alternate simulation until there is too much to be explained away.
p.274
Decision makers noticed the signs of a problem but explained it away. They found a reason not to take seriously each piece of evidence that warned them of an anomaly. As a result, they did not detect the anomaly in time to prevent a problem.5
p.70
This has also been called the garden path fallacy: taking one step that seems very straightforward, and then another, and each step makes so much sense that you do not notice how far you are getting from the main road. Cohen is developing training methods that will help people keep track of their thinking and become more aware of how much contrary evidence they have explained away so they can see when to start looking for alternate explanations or predictions.
p.70
That was the moment of snap-back; the accumulated strain of pushing away inconvenient evidence caught up with me.
(Klein, Gary, Sources of power : how people make decision / Gary Klein., 1. decision-making., 1998, 685.403, MIT Press, )
____________________________________
V. S. Ramachandran., and Sandra Blakeslee., Phantoms in the brain: probing the mysteries of the human mind, 1998
p.147
To understand what is going on here, let us return to our general in the war room. I used this analogy to illustrate that there is a sort of coherence-producing mechanism in the left hemisphere--the general--that prohibits anomalies, allows the emergence of a unified belief system and is largely responsible for the integrity and stability of self. But what if a person were confronted by several anomalies that were not consistent with his original belief system but were nonetheless consistent with each other? Like soap bubbles, they might coalesce into a new belief system insulated from the previous story line, creating multiple personalities. Perhaps balkanization is better than civil war. I find the reluctance of cognitive psychologists to accept the reality of this phenomenon somewhat puzzling, given that even normal individuals have such experiences from time to time.
(Ramachandran, V.S., Phantoms in the brain : probing the mysteries of the human mind / V. S. Ramachandran, and Sandra Blakeslee., 1. neurology--popular works., 2. brain--popular works., 3. neurosciences--popular works., 1998, 612.82, )
____________________________________
"You are right." bubble
http://www.script-o-rama.com/movie_scripts/f/fiddler-on-the-roof-script.html
Where are you from?
Kiev. I was a student in the university there.
Tell me. Is that the place where you learned how not to respect your elders?
That is where I learned there is more to life than talk.
You should know about events in the outside world!
Careful, my paper.
Why should I break my head about the outside world?
Let the outside world break its own head.
Well put!
He is right.
As the Good Book says,
"If you spit in the air, it lands in your face. "
Nonsense.
You can't close your eyes to what's happening in the world.
He is right.
He's right and he's right?
They can't both be right.
You know, you are also right.
He is right. He's too young to wipe his own nose.
____________________________________
____________________________________
