John, thank you very much for your mail. I have been out of the house last
week - sorry for a delayed response. You wrote:
>For me, turning emotional (negative) reaction into curiosity has always
>been an important way to learning. I have a well-developed "crap
>detector" that generates emotional response to nonsense, illogic, "junk"
>science, etc. When my crap detector goes off, loud bells ring and bright
>lights flash in my mind and, as you describe, "hot feelings" result.
Your thoughts are really complementary to mine. Nothing, that I feel
compelled to argue about, just the other side of the coin, which I must
have in mind as well to get a balanced picture.
I think I have a similar crap detector, but I use it mainly to jugde my
own thinking. I try not to allow myself to judge others thinking with this
detector. The main reason is, that with any sentence said or written,
there are plenty of unsaid sentences, in which at least two types of
assumptions are hidden: RTL-assumptions about the relations of the terms
used in that sentence and CEL-assumptions about what causes lead
necessarily or sufficiently or just partly to what effects.
Respect for other people is one of my highest values. This may be due to
the fact, that I grew up in a foreign culture, Japan, and survived two
major cultural shocks, one age two and the second 10 years later. My
understanding of respect includes the assumption, that everybody
expressing anything has something sensible in mind. So when I get an alarm
from my crap detector, I know that there are differences in our hidden
systems of assumptions. In such a case, the riddle is to find out those
assumptions, which make the "crap" valid and which differ from mine, that
judged the expression to be crap. Up to now, I NEVER met anybody who
stated a clear fallacy! So I came to the conclusion that logic is common
sense.
>This
>is a signal to stop, reflect on (not just accept) what I just read/heard,
>and test it (with logic and against my own knowledge and understanding.)
>I often do this by arguing against it. What is absolutely necessary, in
>this process, is that for learning to occur my arguments must be made
>forcefully (so the test will be a good test) but with an open mind.
>
>It is not unusual for me to argue strongly for one point of view, then to
>adopt the other at the end of the day -- and even more common for me to
>find some new understanding that benefits from both (all) viewpoints.
You describe your way of uncovering the hidden assumptions. "I often do
this arguing against it". It is the method of discussion and debate. Not a
bad method in my view, but limited in its usefulness to two comparably
strong partners who additionally agree on the purpose of such
discussion/debate: To uncover sense. Dialogue is another method which I
think as somewhat broader in its applicability on the task of learning.
I should add an example: The relation of order, chaos and entropy.
In a mind, which relates the terms as
order e chaos ("All oder is not chaos") and
entropy a chaos ("All entropy is chaos", or in better english:
Entropy is one out of several possible measures of chaos)
the valid conclusion about the relation of entropy and order is
entropy e order ("All entropy is not order")
thus making any attempt to explain about "entropy a order" nonsense.
Now imagine you are confronted with the statement "entropy a order" for
the first time. The crap detector rings loudly alarm. A process of
learning starts. Several possibilities:
a) You make yourself clear in your own terms why "entropy a order" is
nonsense. Now you can reject any later attack of "entropy a order" easily.
The immune reaction type of learning: A new "anti-particle" has been
created.
b) You thank your alarm for ringing and switch from rejection mode to
curiosity mode, questioning not the conclusion but the premises and decide
which to follow in future.
c) You just turn the alarm off and decide: "Nothing of importance", or "I
better shut my mouth" or "attack actively" or... or... or...
In my context of hierarchy and production, bosses tend to attack actively,
and workers decide to better shut their mouths.
>However, I believe none of this learning and growth is possible (at least
>for me) without my first having a well-developed crap detector to trigger
>it. I fear that many people today do not have one (judging by the
>unending stream of ridiculous, disproved, unproved, illogical,
>unscientific, dangerous, indefensible, poorly reasoned but persuasively
>presented ideas I hear espoused every day all around me.)
>
>Thus, I am much more concerned with helping people develop their crap
>detectors than I am with opening them up to possibilities.
Again, in my experience, I have NEVER met anybody who has not a very good
developed crap detector. But the output-alarm is triggered by a set of
input-assumptions, so the alarm pattern differ widely from person to
person. If I call the set of input-assumptions the calibration of the
detector, then I agree with you, that many detectors need a lot of
recalibration. Even stronger: Any detector, including my own are in
constant need of recalibration. It is best done in cycles of emergent and
digestive learning.
John, I have difficulities to work on such recalibration, without opening
up to possibilities as a prerequisite. Although At de Lange did not yet
introduced the essentiality "openness" in a special contribution, I have
the strong feeling, that it is just that: essential, not an add-on for
later.
But may be, I interpreted your words too narrowly, for you wrote in the
beginning:
>For me, turning emotional (negative) reaction into curiosity has always
>been an important way to learning.
Liebe Gruesse,
Winfried
--"Winfried Dressler" <winfried.dressler@voith.de>
Learning-org -- Hosted by Rick Karash <rkarash@karash.com> Public Dialog on Learning Organizations -- <http://www.learning-org.com>