One of the things I've been trying to do with this blog is foster discussion. Unfortunately, that hasn't really happened. I know for a fact that most of my readers haven't told me they read it, and the ones who do rarely leave comments.
I'm not unhappy that this hasn't been happening, because I wasn't optimistic about its chances chances in the first place. For one, this blog is fairly personal. While I'm transitioning from "this is what I'm doing" to "These are the ideas I'm trying to adopt", everything is still said in the context of 'me'. I'm drawing really heavily on my own ideas, actions, and interactions for this, and I think it makes it trickier to talk about it generally.
I'm starting to think that the Internet is very bad at fostering discussion, though. Something about the combination of personal distance, unlimited time to think, and the expectation to write completely coherent thoughts kinda kills it. But what I'm really looking for isn't just talking about one topic. I also want a discussion that spirals into tangents and eventually ends miles away from where it started. Like 95% of my best ideas happen in these discussions. Hell, I've already mentioned that 'Reason' and 'Elitism' came about from arguments. I'd probably be updating this blog a hundred times more often if I wasn't so agreeable.
When I think of 'online discussion', the image I get is a forum. Remember those? Built around specific interests. You get a few categories, somebody posts a topic, and everything throws on responses. Because active topics are thrown to the top people keep talking about it and new people keep joining in. Eventually everybody gets bored and moves on to other topics people posted, because every topic expects people talking about it.
Nowadays they've mostly been replaced by facebook, which is a lot worse at doing this. Statuses aren't really the best place for talking about things for a number of reasons (which probably are the same in blogs). Notes make things a bit easier, but I don't think anybody uses notes anymore. The old groups could-sorta-get-this-a-bit-kinda. The new groups not so much.
I'd try making a forum to see if it provides what I want, but the chances of getting enough people to consistently use it is... 0. Other possibilities include saying lots of inflammatory things on this blog (angry people write more) and posting terrible things to Facebook. I don't think I can do either without being a terrible person, though.
That's where my brain runs out of thinky-juice. How can we foster more discussion online in the context of our current networks? Primarily facebook, email, and blogs. It might just be a cultural problem, where we don't use these things to discuss because we never have. But I still think none of them are well suited for it. Maybe there's something fancy you could do with google docs? Some way to cope with the new groups? There's no easy solution I see.
Oh hey, it's almost like we should talk it over!
Showing posts with label Dynamics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Dynamics. Show all posts
Thursday, June 14, 2012
Wednesday, May 16, 2012
The Dynamic
Preliminary: post-once-per-day ended up being a fairly bad idea, since I don't actually have content for more than one post a week.
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In On Ideas and The Fallacy of Reason I talked about how important dialog is. We are limited by ourselves and the only way to break that limit is to try stepping outside. The key to that lies in social interaction, which lets us see both the world and ourselves from another perspective. In False Promises I said that my ability to change is limited by who I am. How do I break past that?
I've always thought it's important to study topics outside your professional field, and even outside your interests. That's a way of opening new modes of thought. One thing that's hit me recently is the importance of interchangeability in thinking. A teacher I greatly admire once said that you could think of skills as a form of knowledge- the knowledge-how instead of the knowledge-of. The inverse of this is we can see knowledge as a form of skill- the ability to aggregate and process information. The skill of operating on what you know to figure out what you don't.
The more I think about it, the more I believe that other mental constructs are also interchangeable. Of course, the two I'm most interested in are worldviews and improvements. Let's say they are the same thing. Improvement is the act of moving into new worldviews that better suit you. For example, patience is simply the realization that waiting is good. On the flip side, worldviews reflect your state of being, and changing worldviews requires a change in state.
Okay, let's assume we can establish isomorphism. Cool trick. Now what? Well, We have this incredibly powerful tool for modifying worldviews. It or a modification of it should be equally powerful for fueling growth. Not only that, but it'd also be the most powerful tool, just like it is for beliefs. There can be other methods, but they'd pale in comparison.
If improvement is primarily triggered by external events, then we cannot barrel into it with sheer willpower. But just because an event is external does not mean it is random. Any force outside you can cause it. So if there was a way of making external events cause it, that would be the most powerful tool for growth.
So improvement <-> worldviews, external events <-> talkin' with people. What I'm trying to say here is that we need our friends to help us grow.
The idea of having friends contribute to your changes has been bouncing around my head for a long time, and I think it's a pretty trivial idea. The new bit is that I'm starting to think that it's not just helpful, it's required. Nothing else in your arsenal can match the power of the social network. And if properly harnessed, the network can cause profound levels of development. At will.
Okay, maybe not at will. But much more often than you'd get if you didn't tap it.
The term 'dynamic' springs to mind. Whenever I think about this, it just feels right. The social network is the frame on which we build dynamics, connections designed to cause growth. It isn't dependent of other connections. We can have friendships without the dynamic, and dynamics without friendship. Even so, I imagine that maintaining a strong dynamic without friendship would be incredibly difficult.
This provides a huge launching point. We can beat stagnation and inaction through proper use of the dynamic. Unfortunately, just the outline is there. There's a topic in mathematics called Generalized Abstract Nonsense, which is the art of using objects in proofs without knowing their properties. I'm arguing that dynamics are essential to growth. Hooray. This doesn't tell us how to use them, or even what makes them so much more powerful than anything else. In order to properly harness dynamics we'd probably have to work out those bits.
Even so, I'm confident about this. Even if the interchangeability breaks down, the worst it could do is refute the idea that dynamics are the most powerful tool. I don't think you'd have any trouble establishing their usefulness without using mathemagics.
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In On Ideas and The Fallacy of Reason I talked about how important dialog is. We are limited by ourselves and the only way to break that limit is to try stepping outside. The key to that lies in social interaction, which lets us see both the world and ourselves from another perspective. In False Promises I said that my ability to change is limited by who I am. How do I break past that?
I've always thought it's important to study topics outside your professional field, and even outside your interests. That's a way of opening new modes of thought. One thing that's hit me recently is the importance of interchangeability in thinking. A teacher I greatly admire once said that you could think of skills as a form of knowledge- the knowledge-how instead of the knowledge-of. The inverse of this is we can see knowledge as a form of skill- the ability to aggregate and process information. The skill of operating on what you know to figure out what you don't.
The more I think about it, the more I believe that other mental constructs are also interchangeable. Of course, the two I'm most interested in are worldviews and improvements. Let's say they are the same thing. Improvement is the act of moving into new worldviews that better suit you. For example, patience is simply the realization that waiting is good. On the flip side, worldviews reflect your state of being, and changing worldviews requires a change in state.
Okay, let's assume we can establish isomorphism. Cool trick. Now what? Well, We have this incredibly powerful tool for modifying worldviews. It or a modification of it should be equally powerful for fueling growth. Not only that, but it'd also be the most powerful tool, just like it is for beliefs. There can be other methods, but they'd pale in comparison.
If improvement is primarily triggered by external events, then we cannot barrel into it with sheer willpower. But just because an event is external does not mean it is random. Any force outside you can cause it. So if there was a way of making external events cause it, that would be the most powerful tool for growth.
So improvement <-> worldviews, external events <-> talkin' with people. What I'm trying to say here is that we need our friends to help us grow.
The idea of having friends contribute to your changes has been bouncing around my head for a long time, and I think it's a pretty trivial idea. The new bit is that I'm starting to think that it's not just helpful, it's required. Nothing else in your arsenal can match the power of the social network. And if properly harnessed, the network can cause profound levels of development. At will.
Okay, maybe not at will. But much more often than you'd get if you didn't tap it.
The term 'dynamic' springs to mind. Whenever I think about this, it just feels right. The social network is the frame on which we build dynamics, connections designed to cause growth. It isn't dependent of other connections. We can have friendships without the dynamic, and dynamics without friendship. Even so, I imagine that maintaining a strong dynamic without friendship would be incredibly difficult.
This provides a huge launching point. We can beat stagnation and inaction through proper use of the dynamic. Unfortunately, just the outline is there. There's a topic in mathematics called Generalized Abstract Nonsense, which is the art of using objects in proofs without knowing their properties. I'm arguing that dynamics are essential to growth. Hooray. This doesn't tell us how to use them, or even what makes them so much more powerful than anything else. In order to properly harness dynamics we'd probably have to work out those bits.
Even so, I'm confident about this. Even if the interchangeability breaks down, the worst it could do is refute the idea that dynamics are the most powerful tool. I don't think you'd have any trouble establishing their usefulness without using mathemagics.
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