R World (Ron Davison muses aloud)
Showing posts with label possibility. Show all posts
Showing posts with label possibility. Show all posts
25 June 2010
Committing to Possibility
“What is possible is not independent of what we believe to be possible. “
- Neil MacCormick
“If I were to wish for anything, I should not wish for wealth and power, but for the passionate sense of the potential, for the eye which, ever young and ardent, sees the possible. Pleasure disappoints, possibility never. And what wine is so sparkling, what so fragrant, what so intoxicating, as possibility!”
-- Soren Kierkegaard
“The nature of a breakthrough is for you to stand on what you’ve gotten, what you’ve loved, what’s been important to you, what’s touched you, what’s inspired you, what’s turned your life on; to stand on that value you’ve already created for yourself and look out at the possibility for being alive that opens up, like a freedom, in front of you.”
- Werner Erhard
"It’s daunting how many possibilities there are in life for everyone of us. But rather than face that I might be a failure or success – I think both of them are terrifying – people find diversions.”
- Tim Allen
10 April 2009
Bernard Questions the Direction of Causality
Bernard got right to it. “Do you suppose that we’ve got causality backwards?”
“Meaning?”
“Well, we think that the event that comes before causes the event to follow.”
“Ah. You are talking about the hic hoc postal ergo hoc fallacy?” I said, proud that I’d remembered this from my philosophy class.
Bernard frowned. “You mean post hoc ergo propter hoc?” he queried. “Since an event follows another it must have been caused by it?”
“Uh, yeah,” I said. Suddenly drawing a complete blank on what I’d just said or how I had pronounced it. “Isn’t that what I said?”
“Sort of,” he said, wrinkling his nose. “But no, that is not what I am talking about.”
“Oh,” I said in what I hoped was an intelligent tone.
“I’m talking about something broader than that. We know that just because an event comes before another it did not necessarily cause it. But we also know that cause comes before effect. We know that if something did cause something else, it always happens first. But what if that is not the case?”
“What?” I asked, baffled.
“Well, look at it like this. All your life you have seen wind blow. You know that when things move, the movement comes from being pushed, being blown away. And then one day someone turns on a vacuum cleaner and now things don’t move because they are blown away. They move because they are sucked in. In our models of the world, causality is blown away from the cause, comes after. But maybe effects are sucked towards the cause, effects come before.”
“Got it.” I thought. But was not sure.
“Well what if causality were like that? What if the past didn’t cause things? What if the future were the cause of things? We get sucked towards a future rather than caused by our past?”
“Are you arguing for predestination?”
“No. I think that the future has infinite options. It is just that we’re pulled forward by these possible futures.”
“But you have to admit that some things are caused by past events. A boy sets a fire and the hillside erupts into flames. The event before caused the wildfire after. Right?”
“What if that is simply a failure of imagination? The past event causes the next because it came before? The invention of the telegraph, for instance. You think that was caused by what came before? Or do you think that it was caused by a possibility – what came after?”
“So, you think that the notion of causation ought to be replaced by the notion of possibility? Or you really saying that causation works from the future to the past?”
“I’m really saying that the two ideas are the same. Current events are caused by future possibility. I think that we keep looking into the past to see the cause and we should be looking to the future.”
“Bernard,” I rubbed my forehead. “Some days you give me a headache.”
“It’s probably low blood sugar. Here,” he handed me the menu. “Order something to eat. You’ll feel better.”
The prospect of food did make me feel a little better. Maybe his notion of causation was worth considering. Did the hunger cause me to order or did the prospect of food cause me to order? Wait. Just as it seemed that Bernard was starting to make sense, I lost it again.
Bernard smiled. “You think I might be on to something?”
“Yes Bernard, I do think that you might be on something.” And then I looked for our waitress.
"'Hip hop, postal hick,' fallacy" Bernard shook his head disgustedly. "It wouldn't surprise me if someday you get a recall notice from your alma mater, asking you to send your degree back."
“Meaning?”
“Well, we think that the event that comes before causes the event to follow.”
“Ah. You are talking about the hic hoc postal ergo hoc fallacy?” I said, proud that I’d remembered this from my philosophy class.
Bernard frowned. “You mean post hoc ergo propter hoc?” he queried. “Since an event follows another it must have been caused by it?”
“Uh, yeah,” I said. Suddenly drawing a complete blank on what I’d just said or how I had pronounced it. “Isn’t that what I said?”
“Sort of,” he said, wrinkling his nose. “But no, that is not what I am talking about.”
“Oh,” I said in what I hoped was an intelligent tone.
“I’m talking about something broader than that. We know that just because an event comes before another it did not necessarily cause it. But we also know that cause comes before effect. We know that if something did cause something else, it always happens first. But what if that is not the case?”
“What?” I asked, baffled.
“Well, look at it like this. All your life you have seen wind blow. You know that when things move, the movement comes from being pushed, being blown away. And then one day someone turns on a vacuum cleaner and now things don’t move because they are blown away. They move because they are sucked in. In our models of the world, causality is blown away from the cause, comes after. But maybe effects are sucked towards the cause, effects come before.”
“Got it.” I thought. But was not sure.
“Well what if causality were like that? What if the past didn’t cause things? What if the future were the cause of things? We get sucked towards a future rather than caused by our past?”
“Are you arguing for predestination?”
“No. I think that the future has infinite options. It is just that we’re pulled forward by these possible futures.”
“But you have to admit that some things are caused by past events. A boy sets a fire and the hillside erupts into flames. The event before caused the wildfire after. Right?”
“What if that is simply a failure of imagination? The past event causes the next because it came before? The invention of the telegraph, for instance. You think that was caused by what came before? Or do you think that it was caused by a possibility – what came after?”
“So, you think that the notion of causation ought to be replaced by the notion of possibility? Or you really saying that causation works from the future to the past?”
“I’m really saying that the two ideas are the same. Current events are caused by future possibility. I think that we keep looking into the past to see the cause and we should be looking to the future.”
“Bernard,” I rubbed my forehead. “Some days you give me a headache.”
“It’s probably low blood sugar. Here,” he handed me the menu. “Order something to eat. You’ll feel better.”
The prospect of food did make me feel a little better. Maybe his notion of causation was worth considering. Did the hunger cause me to order or did the prospect of food cause me to order? Wait. Just as it seemed that Bernard was starting to make sense, I lost it again.
Bernard smiled. “You think I might be on to something?”
“Yes Bernard, I do think that you might be on something.” And then I looked for our waitress.
"'Hip hop, postal hick,' fallacy" Bernard shook his head disgustedly. "It wouldn't surprise me if someday you get a recall notice from your alma mater, asking you to send your degree back."
06 November 2008
O-bama-barded with Possibilities
My mind is abuzz with this shift in what is now possible. I have started probably 8 posts that all trail off into incoherence as I try to think through the implications of the new possibilities with an Obama administration.
I am a sucker for the story of progress - for the notion that each half century or so, life gets better. This non-linear, erratic, and messy process invariably results in a world that past generations could not predict.
The fact that a black is soon to be our president reminds us that progress happens and that what has not happened yet is nonetheless possible. Unprecedented does not mean impossible. That very notion - that what has yet to happen is possible - is intoxicating and the spirit of possibility that Obama's election helps to usher in may be as much of a catalyst for progress and change as any 20 specific policy proposals.
What if we started from the question, What is possible? rather than the question, What is wrong?
What if this country were again seized with the power of possibility?
What would be possible then?
I am a sucker for the story of progress - for the notion that each half century or so, life gets better. This non-linear, erratic, and messy process invariably results in a world that past generations could not predict.
The fact that a black is soon to be our president reminds us that progress happens and that what has not happened yet is nonetheless possible. Unprecedented does not mean impossible. That very notion - that what has yet to happen is possible - is intoxicating and the spirit of possibility that Obama's election helps to usher in may be as much of a catalyst for progress and change as any 20 specific policy proposals.
What if we started from the question, What is possible? rather than the question, What is wrong?
What if this country were again seized with the power of possibility?
What would be possible then?
27 August 2008
Most Problems Cannot Be Solved
Perhaps my favorite Peter Drucker quote is, "Most problems cannot be solved. And most problems are made irrelevant by success."
The point is, we can waste a great deal of effort in our lives trying to solve things. For instance, a business may spend a huge amount of effort to stem the erosion in market share of a product that is becoming obsolete instead of focusing that effort on creating a new product line. A person may work on correcting an annoying habit of someone they love or even to lose ten pounds rather than focus on living an extraordinary life and simply sweeping along whoever wants to come.
It's possible to put false predecessors before joy, before living life fully, before success. It might be that losing ten pounds helps you to feel happier or even to find the perfect person. It might be. It might also be that you can simply become the happier person and make the weight loss irrelevant (and perhaps even easier to attain once you are happy).
Which brings us to politics. We're facing record deficits. A huge wave of entitlement payments looms over us as baby boomers begin to retire. Wages have stagnated. It would be easy to look at the landscape spoiled by George W. and conclude that we have a great many problems to solve. But if we were to focus instead on creating new industries - industries like alternative energies, nanotechnology, teleporting, neuron manipulation for enhancing cognition, and the reinvention of education - these issues could be made irrelevant.
A commitment to become a happy adult probably doesn't involve solving all the problems of childhood.
I'm going to attempt devoting more attention at R World to painting what I see as possible, what I see as exciting. I think that our future is both more potentially exciting and positive and more potentially risky and catastrophic than most anyone seems to admit or realize. It is the possible future - a place on the far side of a great many social and technical innovations - that could be so extraordinary as to render moot the problems that so capture the attention of commentators and columnists today.
Imagine a world where our corporations have been transformed into vehicles for creating meaning and engagement at work, where abundance is a natural consequence of the design of systems that align with natural laws and personal convictions, organizations that don't dictate who we should be but, instead, facilitate the process of us defining and realizing who we could be. Imagine a world with technology that make transportation and energy issues sustainable, makes our economy less about consumption that destroys our habitat (a focus on quantity of goods) and more about engagement that defines our individuality (a focus on quality of life).
It would be unseemly for a 47 year old man to spend all his time trying to get "it" right, where "it" was being 13 and in middle school. It's best just to let some things go.
As we shake off the bad memory of the Bush years, or even many of the bad habits and issues of capitalism or even the information economy, it is best not to become too obsessed with solving the many problems that have been left to us. There is too much potential to realize, too many possibilities to explore, to let that be our focus.
The point is, we can waste a great deal of effort in our lives trying to solve things. For instance, a business may spend a huge amount of effort to stem the erosion in market share of a product that is becoming obsolete instead of focusing that effort on creating a new product line. A person may work on correcting an annoying habit of someone they love or even to lose ten pounds rather than focus on living an extraordinary life and simply sweeping along whoever wants to come.
It's possible to put false predecessors before joy, before living life fully, before success. It might be that losing ten pounds helps you to feel happier or even to find the perfect person. It might be. It might also be that you can simply become the happier person and make the weight loss irrelevant (and perhaps even easier to attain once you are happy).
Which brings us to politics. We're facing record deficits. A huge wave of entitlement payments looms over us as baby boomers begin to retire. Wages have stagnated. It would be easy to look at the landscape spoiled by George W. and conclude that we have a great many problems to solve. But if we were to focus instead on creating new industries - industries like alternative energies, nanotechnology, teleporting, neuron manipulation for enhancing cognition, and the reinvention of education - these issues could be made irrelevant.
A commitment to become a happy adult probably doesn't involve solving all the problems of childhood.
I'm going to attempt devoting more attention at R World to painting what I see as possible, what I see as exciting. I think that our future is both more potentially exciting and positive and more potentially risky and catastrophic than most anyone seems to admit or realize. It is the possible future - a place on the far side of a great many social and technical innovations - that could be so extraordinary as to render moot the problems that so capture the attention of commentators and columnists today.
Imagine a world where our corporations have been transformed into vehicles for creating meaning and engagement at work, where abundance is a natural consequence of the design of systems that align with natural laws and personal convictions, organizations that don't dictate who we should be but, instead, facilitate the process of us defining and realizing who we could be. Imagine a world with technology that make transportation and energy issues sustainable, makes our economy less about consumption that destroys our habitat (a focus on quantity of goods) and more about engagement that defines our individuality (a focus on quality of life).
It would be unseemly for a 47 year old man to spend all his time trying to get "it" right, where "it" was being 13 and in middle school. It's best just to let some things go.
As we shake off the bad memory of the Bush years, or even many of the bad habits and issues of capitalism or even the information economy, it is best not to become too obsessed with solving the many problems that have been left to us. There is too much potential to realize, too many possibilities to explore, to let that be our focus.
04 April 2007
Faux Fortune Cookie
What is the difference between a day when joy grabs you by the lapels and head butts you into giddy gladness and days when you're inclined to turn off the phone and go fetal? It might be your choice of recreational drug. Or, it might be the difference between living in possibility and living in expectation.
It's a complex world and expectations are simple. So many things can happen that the odds of our exact expectations being realized are remote, rather like winning the lottery.
When the world fails to meet our expectations it hasn't failed. The world is still there - busily buzzing at the intersection of past and future, what has been and what will be, just as it has been for your entire life. The world is innocent. We are the ones who occasionally lose sight of the fact that we're one in six billion and unlikely to do much to steer this unwieldy planet. We'd have better luck driving an office building and yet we persist to sit at the window and honk our horns, shake our fist, and feel frustrated when the building next to us won't get out of the way and let us through. Our expectations are often as silly as quoting Drucker to an infant or tickling the belly of a businessman.
And this is not so bad. What are the odds that our expectations of life will ever be as amazing as life? What these finite minds project onto an infinite universe will always be some fraction of what is possible.
With that in mind, here is a low-calorie, faux-fortune cookie:
Let the world be what it is and simply see what it has in store for you. Open yourself up to possibility today, laying aside the stale expectations that would otherwise drive you like a flock of bored habits.
It's a complex world and expectations are simple. So many things can happen that the odds of our exact expectations being realized are remote, rather like winning the lottery.
When the world fails to meet our expectations it hasn't failed. The world is still there - busily buzzing at the intersection of past and future, what has been and what will be, just as it has been for your entire life. The world is innocent. We are the ones who occasionally lose sight of the fact that we're one in six billion and unlikely to do much to steer this unwieldy planet. We'd have better luck driving an office building and yet we persist to sit at the window and honk our horns, shake our fist, and feel frustrated when the building next to us won't get out of the way and let us through. Our expectations are often as silly as quoting Drucker to an infant or tickling the belly of a businessman.
And this is not so bad. What are the odds that our expectations of life will ever be as amazing as life? What these finite minds project onto an infinite universe will always be some fraction of what is possible.
With that in mind, here is a low-calorie, faux-fortune cookie:
Let the world be what it is and simply see what it has in store for you. Open yourself up to possibility today, laying aside the stale expectations that would otherwise drive you like a flock of bored habits.
19 January 2007
Leadership, Possibility and Us Critics
Life is full of possibilities, most which we don’t even consider.
It's Friday and tonight you could read a book and enjoy it thoroughly. You could read a book but if you do you'll miss out on hitting the clubs with your friends, attending a play, watching a live concert, rock wall climbing, dining at the new tapas restaurant you've been curious about, jogging in preparation for a half-marathon scheduled for this summer, trying out that new curried chicken recipe that looked so good, starting to write your own book, mustering up the courage to contact the Toastmaster's group, begin a weight-lifting program, drive out to Las Vegas for the weekend, wander around the mall with your friend, experiment with meditation, buy a DNA kit and send in a sample for analysis and family history, make sandwiches for 20 homeless people, volunteer at a youth club, visit a .... You get the idea. For every one thing you consciously choose to do you are consciously or unconsciously choosing not to do about a million other things.
Powerful leaders have the ability to tune us in to possibilities that we had not previously, or seriously, considered.
"By the end of this decade, we will put a man on the moon and return him safely," JFK said. We are going to make a personal computer that the average person will want to use. We will make our downtown areas so safe and so stimulating that families will feel delighted to have their children go downtown at any time. We will transform people's idea of fast food into meals that make people feel more vibrant, more alive, to feel healthy.
A leader works like a radio receiver, able to pull signals out of the air, signals that the rest of us perceive only as static, and broadcast that possibility as something compelling, into a tune we can dance to. After a leader speaks, static turns into a tune we hum.
So what is our job here in the blogosphere? It is to point out to the humming masses that there are alternatives to the tune they are humming. Opportunity costs suggests that we don't just judge the book you're reading but actually consider what else you could be doing. A social critic notes that we're about to spend $1.2 trillion on the occupation of Iraq and asks what else one could buy with that sum.
Your mission, should you accept it, is to sing songs of possibility that are so compelling that leaders and the humming masses have little choice but to tune in. It's hard work, but what else were you going to do with your blog?
It's Friday and tonight you could read a book and enjoy it thoroughly. You could read a book but if you do you'll miss out on hitting the clubs with your friends, attending a play, watching a live concert, rock wall climbing, dining at the new tapas restaurant you've been curious about, jogging in preparation for a half-marathon scheduled for this summer, trying out that new curried chicken recipe that looked so good, starting to write your own book, mustering up the courage to contact the Toastmaster's group, begin a weight-lifting program, drive out to Las Vegas for the weekend, wander around the mall with your friend, experiment with meditation, buy a DNA kit and send in a sample for analysis and family history, make sandwiches for 20 homeless people, volunteer at a youth club, visit a .... You get the idea. For every one thing you consciously choose to do you are consciously or unconsciously choosing not to do about a million other things.
Powerful leaders have the ability to tune us in to possibilities that we had not previously, or seriously, considered.
"By the end of this decade, we will put a man on the moon and return him safely," JFK said. We are going to make a personal computer that the average person will want to use. We will make our downtown areas so safe and so stimulating that families will feel delighted to have their children go downtown at any time. We will transform people's idea of fast food into meals that make people feel more vibrant, more alive, to feel healthy.
A leader works like a radio receiver, able to pull signals out of the air, signals that the rest of us perceive only as static, and broadcast that possibility as something compelling, into a tune we can dance to. After a leader speaks, static turns into a tune we hum.
So what is our job here in the blogosphere? It is to point out to the humming masses that there are alternatives to the tune they are humming. Opportunity costs suggests that we don't just judge the book you're reading but actually consider what else you could be doing. A social critic notes that we're about to spend $1.2 trillion on the occupation of Iraq and asks what else one could buy with that sum.
Your mission, should you accept it, is to sing songs of possibility that are so compelling that leaders and the humming masses have little choice but to tune in. It's hard work, but what else were you going to do with your blog?
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