Wilhelm Busch:

Im Menschen findet sich ein Motiv bzw. eine Gruppe von Motiven, die den Menschen dazu anstiften, jede Menge Unfug zu tun. So das ungefähre Leitthema der illustrierten Geschichten von Wilhelm Busch.

Pomodoro-Technik

Fokussierungstechnik: Für einen bestimmten Zeitraum (z.B. 20 oder 25 Minuten) engt sich das Denken stark ein / wenden sich die Gedanken einem einzelnen Thema zu. Danach folgt ein kurze (z.B. 5 minütige) Phase der Enstpannung. Phasen der Anspannung wechseln mit Phasen der Entspannung bis ein bestimmtes Tagessoll (z.B. 8 fokussierte Einheiten) erfüllt ist.

Die Kernaufgabe besteht somit in einer wiederholten, bewussten, gezielten Einengung bzw. Beschränkung gedanklicher Spielräume.

"It's not only deep thinking that requires a calm, attentive mind. It's also empathy and compassion."

Nicholas Carr

Das Gehirn "von der Leine lassen"

Freizeit/freie Tätigkeit:

Sofern die Möglichkeit gegeben ist, ein bis zwei Stunden am Tag einplanen, wo man das Gehirn einfach tun lässt. Alles, bis auf eigentlich "ablenkende" Tätigkeiten.

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Damit sich spontane Tätigkeit als fruchbar erweist, haben wir zuvor Grenzen abzustecken.

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Die Furcht vor der Spontanität lässt sich somit folgenderweise interpretieren: Als Furcht, dem Gehirn freien Lauf zu lassen.

"I wrote and rewrote, and lost all my fluency."

Keith Johnstone

[See also: Prewriting]

Latente Inhibition:

"Latente Inhibition ist eine Form des Lernens, die ständig abläuft und die kaum jemand bemerkt: zu lernen, was bedeutungslos ist."

Konrad Lehmann

Ineffizienz:

Was passiert, wenn ein Mensch "die Wege, die am raschesten zum Ziel führen", verlässt? Wie viel Ineffizienz (+ Spiel und Übermut) kann sich ein Mensch leisten?

Konformismus

Konrad Lehmann:

"Die meisten Menschen sind Konformisten. Sie sind ängstlich darum bemüht, nicht aufzufallen; sie benehmen sich gerne so wie alle anderen in ihrem Umfeld, kleiden sich genauso, sprechen ebenso, denken - wenn man das so nennen will - das Gleiche und zweifeln selten an der Weisheit der Mehrheit. Man soll das nicht verachten: ... Anscheinden ist der Drang zur Konformität ein sozialer Klebstoff, der nicht nur komplexe Gruppenstrukturen, sondern auch - überraschenderweise - hohe Formen der Intelligenz erst möglich macht. Doch so sehr Konformisten auch die Fundamente der Gesellschaft sein mögen: Ihre ideensprühenden Geistesvulkane sind sie eher nicht, sagt die Wissenschaft."

Flow and Creativity

Arne Dietrich:

"The spontaneous creativity mode and the experience of flow are similar in that they both operate in the mind’s unconscious hinterland. But this is also where the similarities end."

[Siehe auch: Hochstimmung und Kreativität]

The prediction machine

Arne Dietrich:

"An emerging organizing theme in neuroscience is that the brain has evolved, fundamentally, to make predictions (Bar, 2007; Grush, 2004). The claim here is not that the business of anticipating events is one of the brain’s important chores, it is the main reason for having (big) brains in the first place."

"We can interact with the world in an infinite number of ways. Such complexity would quickly overwhelm us. So for behavior to be purposeful and timely in such a high-dimensional environment, the set of possible choices must be pruned. We accomplish this by continuously, automatically and, importantly, unconsciously generating expectations that meaningfully inform – constrain – perception and action at every moment in life (Llinás, 2009)."

To prune

Wiktionary:

• (transitive, horticulture) To remove excess material from a tree or shrub; to trim, especially to make more healthy or productive.
• (transitive, figuratively) To cut down or shorten (by the removal of unnecessary material).

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Online Dictionary:

• to cut or lop off (twigs, branches, or roots).
• to cut or lop superfluous or undesired twigs, branches, or roots from; trim.
• to rid or clear of (anything superfluous or undesirable).
• to remove (anything considered superfluous or undesirable).

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Synaptic Pruning:

"many major mental illnesses start to emerge in adolescence, which may be caused by aberrant synaptic pruning."

Konzentriertes Arbeiten

Einige Punkte aus Deep Work:

• Bedeutung des maximal fokussierten Arbeitens für die Wertschöpfung
• Problem: Geschäftigkeit/Pseudo-Produktivität
• Philosophie der Handwerkskunst
• "virtues like quality, craftsmanship, and mastery"
• vollkonzentrierte Tätigkeit: eigentlich wertschöpfende/sinnvolle Tätigkeit
• Verschiedene Herangehensweisen an das tiefe Arbeiten
• Teamarbeit & tiefes Arbeiten
• Benefits of Laziness (Vermeidung der Geschäftigkeit)
• Shutdown-Prozedere am Nachmittag oder Abend
• Toleranz von Langeweile zur Steigerung der Konzentrationsfähigkeit
• "Produktive Meditation"
• Problem des "Any-Benefit-Mindsets"
• Umgang mit sozialen Medien
• Umgang mit E-Mails

March of the tadpoles:

Denken wie ein Handwerksmann:

So Good They Can't Ignore You, Cal Newport

Zusammenfassend einige Punkte:

• "Suche nach der eigenen Leidenschaft" - Leerformel, generell nicht praktikabel
• negative Fallbeispiele

•  Fähigkeitenentwicklung für das Arbeitsleben von entscheidender Bedeutung
• "Denken wie ein Handwerksmann"
• die Bedeutung seltener und gefragter Fähigkeiten
• Autonomes Arbeiten und Leben erfordert als Grundlage Fähigkeiten
• zuerst Fähigkeiten, dann Autonomie (und nicht umgekehrt)
• Deliberate Practice (bewusstes, gezieltes Üben)
• längerfristige Dehnung / Streckung der eigenen Fähigkeiten
• gezieltes Üben, wenn es richtig gemacht wird, nicht angenehm
• Gefahr: rasch erreichte Plateaus
• Fallstricke am Weg zur Autonomie
• Sinnkomponente beim Arbeiten ("The Importance of Mission")

Weitschweifigkeit und Verständnis:

Ein gewisses Maß an Weitschweifigkeit ist häufig sinnvoll, um Verständnis zu sichern. Wenn jemand nach maximaler Knappheit im Ausdruck strebt, d.h. danach, tatsächlich nur dasjenige zu sagen, was streng notwendig ist, und sich somit verbietet, dieselbe Information mehrmals, bevorzugt in wechselnder Form, darzubieten, wird das gegebenenfalls die Effektivität seiner kommunikativen Bemühungen drastisch reduzieren.

Notwendigkeit und Zufall im Denken:

Angenommen es würde eine Person existieren, die so straight im Denken wäre, dass, sobald es einem gelänge durch gewisse Umstände im Kopf dieser Person einen beliebigen Gedanken A hervorzurufen, sich sogleich mit Notwendigkeit, d.h. mit der Wahrscheinlichkeit von 1, im Kopf der Person der Folgedanke B einstellen würde. Dann wäre auch ein Gegentypus denkbar, bei dem auf den Gedanken A zufällig einer von n (z.B.: 10) unterschiedlichen Gedanken mit der jeweiligen Wahrscheinlichkeit von 1/n (z.B.: 1/10) folgt. Hierbei ließe sich zwischen "positiver" und "negativer" Zufälligkeit des Folgegedankens unterscheiden. Im ersten Fall würde bei jedem einzelnen der möglichen Folgegedanken stets ein hoher Grad an sinnvollen Bezug zum Vorgedanken bestehen. Im zweiten Fall würden sich auch, primär, oder gar ausschließlich Gedanken einstellen, die keinen sinnvollen Bezug zum Vorgedanken aufweisen.

"Three to four hours a day, five days a week, of uninterrupted and carefully directed concentration, it turns out, can produce a lot of valuable output."

Cal Newport

Traffic flow measured on 30 different 4-way junctions:

[h/t Charles]

Solitude

Cal Newport:

"Style aside, Lead Yourself First makes many interesting points, but there were two lessons in particular that struck me as relevant to the types of things we talk about here. So I thought I would share them:

Lesson #1: The right way to define “solitude” is as a subjective state in which you’re isolated from input from other minds.

When we think of solitude, we typically imagine physical isolation (a remote cabin or mountain top), making it a concept that we can easily push aside as romantic and impractical. But as this book makes clear, the real key to solitude is to step away from reacting to the output of other minds: be it listening to a podcast, scanning social media, reading a book, watching TV or holding an actual conversation. It’s time for your mind to be alone with your mind — regardless of what’s going on around you.

Lesson #2: Regular doses of solitude are crucial for the effective and resilient functioning of your brain.

Spending time isolated from other minds is what allows you to process and regulate complex emotions. It’s the only time you can refine the principles on which you can build a life of character. It’s what allows you to crack hard problems, and is often necessary for creative insight. If you avoid time alone with your brain your mental life will be much more fragile and much less productive."

Minimalism

Cal Newport:

"For some excellent examples of minimalism blogs, I recommend: The Minimalists, Leo Babauta, Joshua Becker, Tammy Strobel, the Frugalwoods and Mr. Money Moustache. See also Joshua and Ryan’s sharp documentary on the topic now streaming on Netflix."

>Minimalism is a lifestyle that helps people question what things add value to their lives. By clearing the clutter from life’s path, we can all make room for the most important aspects of life: health, relationships, passion, growth, and contribution.<

>Digital minimalism is a philosophy that helps you question what digital communication tools (and behaviors surrounding these tools) add the most value to your life. It is motivated by the belief that intentionally and aggressively clearing away low-value digital noise, and optimizing your use of the tools that really matter, can significantly improve your life.<

Aufmerksamkeit

Gerhard Roth, Bildung braucht Persönlichkeit:

"Aufmerksamkeit ist eng mit zwei anderen Phänomenen verbunden, nämlich mit Bewusstsein und Gedächtnis. Im Allgemeinen können wir die Intensität von Aufmerksamkeit mit der Intensität bewussten Erlebens gleichsetzen, auch wenn es Bedingungen gibt, unter denen beide voneinander abweichen. Aufmerksamkeit in Form von Konzentration ist die vielleicht stärkste Form von Bewusstsein: Geschehnisse erscheinen dabei klarer, plastischer, deutlicher und können erheblich besser erinnert und beschrieben werden, und umgekehrt verschwindet etwas umso schneller aus unserem Gedächtnis, je weniger Aufmerksamkeit wir ihm schenken[.]"

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"[Psychologen sind der Ansicht], dass Aufmerksamkeit eine beschränkte Ressource ist, die einen Maximalwert besitzt. Das heißt am Beispiel des Scheinwerfers der Aufmerksamkeit: Ein Scheinwerfer kann eine maximale Lichtmenge abstrahlen, und je mehr Licht ich auf einen Gegenstand werfen will, damit ich ihn besser sehen kann, desto mehr muss ich den Lichtkegel bündeln, und je breiter ich ihn mache, desto schwächer ist die Beleuchtung pro Flächeneinheit. Dies gilt auch für die Zeitdauer der Aufmerksamkeit: Je intensiver ich mich auf ein Geschehen konzentriere, desto schneller sind meine Ressourcen erschöpft.

Das hat wichtige Folgen für das Lernen. Einer anspruchslosen Plauderei des Lehrers (meist handelt es sich um >Erzählungen aus dem eigenen Leben<) kann ich stundenlang zuhören, aber bei schwierigen Zusammenhängen, die hohe Konzentration erfordern, steht mir bald der Schweiß auf der Stirn. Psychologen haben herausgefunden, dass wir nur für wenige Minuten (meist 3-5) konzentriert einer schwierigen Darstellung folgen können, und dass man dass erst einmal eine >Pause< machen muss, weil der >Aufmerksamkeitsvorrat< verbraucht ist und sich >erholen< muss.
Diese Pause muss nicht in einem tatsächlichen Innehalten bestehen, sondern kann durch eine auflockernde Bemerkung, ein Witzchen, einen zusammenfassenden Satz oder eine Verständnisfrage erreicht werden. Es gehört zur hohen Kunst guter Lehrender diesen Umstand in Rechnung zu stellen."

Alternative Productivity’s Tenants

The Alternative Productivity Manifesto:

“Productivity” is an Industrial Era economics term that applies to factories, machines, and economies. When applied to people it often has a dehumanizing effect and negates both individual differences and unique talents.

If your productivity increases, but your pay stays the same, then you’re effectively taking a pay cut (same goes if you begin working longer hours for the same pay).

The 40-hour work week hasn’t changed since 1940 and is ridiculously outdated.

If you’re consistently having trouble focusing, it’s often because you’re focusing on the wrong things (i.e. things you’re not passionate about or things that aren’t best suited to your skillset).

Increased productivity should equal less time on the job. If you’re getting more done, you should get more vacation time.

Most best-selling productivity gurus are working in the interests of large corporations and often advocate values and approaches that are not in the best interests of individuals.

Increased productivity should result in greater carefree time, more vacations, and more time away from work. Most of the time, however, it does not.

We are living in a time and place that is more “productive” than ever before, but high levels of productivity aren’t making us any happier.

Productivity should be designed around our lives, not the other way around.

The workforce is laboring for more hours and for less pay, taking fewer vacations, and generally burning out.

The best way to increase productivity is often to quit a lot of things.

Productivity often poses as the self-development genre but it is not. Self-development and productivity are two very different things. What is best for us as individuals is often bad for productivity.

The societally scripted routes to success via productivity are failing us.

Products marketed towards busy people (e.g. “Productivity for Busy People,” “Cooking for Busy People,” etc.) only serve to reinforce the problem and often glamorize, excuse, and support the unnecessarily busy life and cult of hyperefficiency.

Hacks, tweaks, tricks, etc. have emerged from a productivity hobbyist culture, are largely insufficient at solving bigger life problems, and often do not increase productivity. These hacks etc. are vestiges of the largely “techie” demographic of the early (but self-reinforcing) blogosphere.

Early to bed, early to rise does not necessarily lead to greater productivity. Contrary to several blog posts advocating early rising as a means to greater productivity, the practice of early rising can actually be harmful.

More technology often leads to decreased productivity.

Hyperfocusing on productivity often gets in the way of the messy, circuitous, and discursive routes of personal development.

When most people speak of productivity in the office, they’re usually speaking about a specific kind of productivity: cubical-land, desk-job, information-worker productivity. The methods used to produce this kind of productivity often do not generalize to other contexts.

No productivity system can put you in a zen like, meditative, or mind like water state. A calm, focused, and meditative mind leads to greater productivity, but productivity systems cannot create a mind like water.

Too much productivity can turn you into a real tool.

Massive value creation often happens during times when no work is ostensibly being accomplished and productivity levels are ostensibly nil.

What makes people productive varies considerably from person to person.

Productivity is often a necessary evil: if you dislike your job, you’re going to need a water-tight productivity system in place to keep you on task.

Productivity should be designed around lives, not the other way around.

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[via Cal Newport]

Quality Time with... Cal Newport

Moralische Freiheit:

Eine Art Glaube, der Mensch könne sich zwischen "Gut" und "Böse", zwischen "konstruktiven" und "destruktiven" Motiven und Zielsetzungen entscheiden.

Vollkommene Determiniertheit:

Folgender Gedanke: Zum "Zeitpunkt der Weltentstehung", oder gar vor diesem Zeitpunkt, wurde bereits alles festgelegt, was sich je in dieser Welt ereignen werde.

In solch einer Welt bezeichnet das Wort "Zufall" lediglich subjektive Ungewissheit. D.h. ein Lebewesen dieser Welt kann sich zwar mehrere Ausgänge vorstellen, doch real ist stets nur ein Ausgang, der vorgegebene Ausgang, möglich.

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Alternativ wäre eine Welt denkbar, wo sich in den Dingen selbst, z.B. im Würfel, "Handlungsunsicherheit" findet.

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Das "Freiheitskonzept" wurzelt in dem Glauben, dass der Mensch sich selbst festlegen kann. Hierbei werden "freie Entscheidungen" als "Taten der Selbstfestlegung" aufgefasst. Vertreter dieses Konzepts glauben, dass ein Mensch unter gegebenen Umständen nicht so handeln muss, wie er handelt, sondern auch anders handeln kann.

Konzentration:

(o) Einengung des Denkens auf das Durchdenken eines einzelnen Themas bzw. auf das Durchdenken einiger weniger Themen

(o) Einengung des Handelns auf die Bewältigung einer einzelnen Aufgabe bzw. auf die Bewältigung einiger weniger Aufgaben

Festgelegtheit:

(o) In welchem Ausmaß wurde das, was heute passiert, bereits gestern und vorgestern festgelegt?

(o) In welchem Ausmaß bestimmen die ersten 5-10 Schachzüge den weiteren Verlauf eines Schachspiels?

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Eine wichtige Funktion des Denkens ist es, die Festgelegtheit von Ereignissen und Ereignisfolgen aufzudecken.

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Ein Spiel wäre denkbar, bei dem der erste Zug alle weiteren Züge (z.B. die neun verbleibenden Züge) festlegt. Freilich wäre bei solch einem Spiel bloß der erste Zug eigentlich interessant.

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[Siehe auch: Denken]

"My career in stand-up gave me a vestigial sense of the crowd that I have relied upon over the last twenty-seven years. In the world of filmmaking, where there is no audience, where, in fact, quiet on the set is required, I sometimes try to determine if a particular idea is funny. I picture myself at the back of a darkened theater, watching the bit in question unspooling on the screen, and somewhere, in the black interior of my brain, I can hear the audience’s response. Thankfully, when the movie is finally screened, I discover that my intuition is not always right. If it were, there would be no surprises left; I would be living in a dull comedy heaven."

Steve Martin

"I track the hours spent each month dedicated to thinking hard about research problems."

Cal Newport

From Data to Viz:

https://www.data-to-viz.com/

low-information diet:

"... develop and maintain a low-information diet. Just as modern man consumes both too many calories and calories of no nutritional value, information workers eat data both in excess and from the wrong sources."

Tim Ferriss

Raymond B. Cattell: Bequeathing a Dual Inheritance to Life History Theory

Raymond B. Cattell: Bequeathing a Dual Inheritance to Life History Theory
Steven C. Hertler, Mateo Peñaherrera-Aguirre, Heitor B. F. Fernandes, Michael A. Woodley of Menie

Abstract

Raymond Cattell distinguished crystallized intelligence, akin to stored knowledge, from fluid intelligence, akin to raw reasoning abilities. Likewise, he delineated personality into component parts. Though intelligence and personality each qualify as subdisciplines within psychology, both are subsumed, along with other traits, under the meta-theory of life history evolution. The relationship is profound, though not straightforward. As described in this chapter, both intelligence and personality vary along a life history continuum, such that, as life history slows, population mean intelligence increases, as do personality traits like risk aversion, conscientiousness, anxiety, and agreeableness. Nevertheless, this effect occurs on average, and there is strategic variation occurring, which obscures the relationship between population-mean intelligence, personality, and life history. Once understood, these relationships color and clarify Cattell’s life’s work.

Diana Fleischman on Evolutionary Psychology

[h/t Christian Schmidt]

Erhebungen:

Momente, Stunden oder Tage, im Leben des Menschen, wo bspw. das Schönheitsmotiv oder das Wahrheitsmotiv das Verhalten determinieren.

Mentale Effizienz:

Intuitives Verständnis: Mentale Effizienz bezeichnet die kognitive Tendenz, im Gedankengang, wenn mehrere Wege zum Ziel führen, einen kurzen Weg bzw. den kürzesten Weg einzuschlagen.

Durch effizientes Denken ist eine Aufgabenbewältigung bzw. eine Problemlösung bei geringen Verbrauch an (insb. zeitlichen) Ressourcen möglich.

William James on Conversations:

"When two minds of a high order, interested in kindred subjects, come together, their conversation is chiefly remarkable for the summariness of its allusions and the rapidity of its transitions. Before one of them is half through a sentence the other knows his meaning and replies. Such genial play with such massive materials, such an easy hashing of light over far perspectives, such careless indifference to the dust and apparatus that ordinarily surround the subject and seem to pertain to its essence, make these conversations seem true feasts forgoes to a listener who is educated enough to follow them at all. His mental lungs breathe more deeply, in an atmosphere more broad and vast than is their wont. On the other hand, the excessive explicitness and short-windedness of an ordinary man are as wonderful as they are tedious to the man of genius. But we need not go as far as the ways of genius. Ordinary social intercourse will do. There the charm of conversation is in direct proportion to the possibility of abridgment and elision, and in inverse ratio to the need of explicit statement. With old friends a word stands for a whole story or set of opinions. With new-comers everything must be gone over in detail. Some persons have a real mania for completeness, they must express every step. They are the most intolerable of companions, and although their mental energy may in its way be great, they always strike us as weak and second-rate. In short, the essence of plebeianism, that which separates vulgarity from aristocracy, is perhaps less a defect than an excess, the constant need to animadvert upon matters which for the aristocratic temperament do not exist. To ignore, to disdain to consider, to overlook, are the essence of the ‘gentleman.' Often most provokingly so; for the things ignored may be of the deepest moral consequence. But in the very midst of our indignation with the gentleman, we have a consciousness that his preposterous inertia and negativeness in the actual emergency is, somehow or other, allied with his general superiority to ourselves. It is not only that the gentleman ignores considerations relative to conduct, sordid suspicions, fears, calculations, etc., which the vulgarian is fated to entertain; it is that he is silent where the vulgarian talks; that he gives nothing but results where the vulgarian is profuse of reasons; that he does not explain or apologize; that he uses one sentence instead of twenty; and that, in a word, there is an amount of interstitial thinking, so to call it, which it is quite impossible to get him to perform, but which is nearly all that the vulgarian mind performs at all. All this suppression of the secondary leaves the field clear , -- for higher heights, should they choose to come. But even if they never came, what thoughts there were would still manifest the aristocratic type and wear the well-bred form. So great is our sense of harmony and ease in passing from the company of a philistine to that of an aristocratic temperament, that we are almost tempted to deem the falsest views and tastes as held by a man of the world, truer than the truest as held by a common person. In the latter the best ideas are choked, obstructed, and contaminated by the redundancy of their paltry associates. The negative conditions, at least, of an atmosphere and a free outlook are present in the former. I may appear to have strayed from psychological analysis into aesthetic criticism. But the principle of selection is so important that no illustrations seem redundant which may help to show how great is its scope. The upshot of what I say simply is that selection implies rejection as well as choice; and that the function of ignoring, of inattention, is as vital a factor in mental progress as the function of attention itself."

William James, The Principles Of Psychology

Objektive Redundanz:

In welchem Ausmaß sind Vorgänge, die sich um uns herum ereignen, bestimmt oder bestimmbar?

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Oder anders:

Welch ein Maß an Unordnung, Unbestimmtheit oder Unbestimmbarkeit existiert in der Welt?

Destruktive Motive:

Der Wunsch/die Absicht/die Motiviertheit, etwas kaputt zu machen.

Oder auch:

Der Wunsch/die Absicht/die Motiviertheit, jemanden Schaden/Schmerzen zuzufügen.

East Asia: "Filial Piety"

Peter Frost:

>"Filial piety" is one of the pillars of East Asian cultures. It is the obligation of adult children "to obey, respect, care for, and support their older parents both emotionally and financially" (Yan and Fang 2017, p. 477). Care for elderly parents is thus driven by a different mix of motives in East Asian societies: "While American caregivers cited love and affection more frequently [...], Korean caregivers emphasized that their motivations were primarily based on filial responsibility, strongly influenced by the Confucian sentiment, including three core values: (1) respect for parents, (2) family harmony, and (3) sacrifice for parents" (Chee and Levkoff 2001).

As in Europe, this sort of traditional value has survived better under socialist regimes: "in the PRC, filial piety is still characterized by parental authority and absolute submission.<

Glück und Spannung:

"Glück ist dem Augenblick vorbehalten, das Dauernde des Daseins ist Spannung."

Ein aktives Leben setzt ein gewisses Maß an Anspannungsbereitschaft und an Stressbejahung voraus.

Der christliche Glaube:

Der christliche Glaube gewährt einem Gläubigen ein gewisses Maß an Sicherheit bzw. Klarheit bezüglich dem, was zu tun ist bzw. wie die Welt zu interpretieren ist. Folgendes Problem ist allerdings vorhanden: Da der Glaube einen etwas lockeren Kontakt mit der Wirklichkeit aufweist, kann es sich ereignen, dass bei der ersten intensiveren Berührung des Gläubigen mit der Wirklichkeit, in einer Lebenskrise, der Glaube in sich zusammenbricht. Der ehemals Gläubige findet nun keinen Rückhalt im Glauben mehr, und es rächt sich der Umstand, dass er in vergangenen Jahren oder Jahrzehnten nicht außerhalb der Strukturen des Glaubens Antworten auf die Fragen: "Warum? Woher? Wohin?" suchte.

Wahrheitserleben:

Ein inneres Anteil Nehmen am Erkennen seiner Zeit.

Gegebenenfalls auch: eigene Neuleistung.

On Seeing the Obvious

Amy Alkon:

"My great grandpa spoke Russian, collected metal scrap from trash/streets in Detroit, sold it, and sent my grandpa (who came from Russia at 4) to college and med school. America is a miracle of a place in possibilities for the unskilled who come here - or at least their children."

Gregory Cochran:

"That happens fairly often for some groups, rarely for others. Of course I could say the same about seeing the obvious."

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In Anlehnung an Cochran: Es stellt sich schon manchmal die Frage, warum manche, oder gefühlt sogar viele, nicht bereit oder fähig sind, Sachen zu sehen, die eigentlich offensichtlich scheinen. Unterschiedliche kognitive Fähigkeiten, allein und für sich genommen, können den Sachverhalt nicht ausreichend erklären. Sicher spielen auch motivationale Faktoren eine Rolle. Im Rahmen des Statusstrebens gewöhnen sich vermutlich nicht wenige an, diverse Sachverhalte nicht wahrnehmen zu wollen, von diversen Sachverhalten wegzusehen. Einen Glauben bzw. ein Fürwahrhalten zu hegen, das einen weiterbringt im Leben, nicht aber ein solches, dass größtmögliche Nähe zur Wirklichkeit aufweist.

[Also see: Clever-Sillies I, Clever-Sillies II]

Subjektive Ungewissheit:

In manchen Situationen ist sich ein Mensch völlig unklar darüber, was getan werden sollte oder wie ein Ereignis angemessen interpretiert werden sollte. Andere Situationen kommen vor, in denen bezüglich Handlungswahl und angemessener Interpretation der Lage völlige Klarheit besteht. In vielen Fällen liegt weder völlige Klarheit, noch völlige Unklarheit vor. Diese Fälle lassen sich über das Maß an Ungewissheit abstufen, d.h. darüber, welch ein Maß an zusätzlicher Information vorliegen müsste, dass keine Ungewissheit bezüglich adäquater Handlungswahl oder Interpretation der Lage bestünde.

[Siehe auch: psychological entropy]

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In gegebenen Situationen kann eine Person das Ausmaß an Ungewissheit bzw. an Unklarheit bezüglich adäquater Handlungswahl überschätzen bzw. unterschätzen. Eine Person kann sehr selbstsicher, ohne sich das zu vergegenwärtigen, in den eigenen Untergang hineinsteuern. Andererseits finden sich Situationen, in denen, trotz sonniger Lage, beträchtliche Unsicherheit und starker Zweifel vorliegen.

Das Ichgefühl:

In welchem Ausmaß lässt sich das "Ich-Gefühl" als eine Art "Stärke-Gefühl" bzw. als ein "Gefühl eigener Handlungsbereitschaft und Handlungsfähigkeit" beschreiben?

"Stop Making So Many Damn Plans"

Cal Newport:

"If you want interesting, grand things to happen in your life, stop trying to plan out every last detail. Instead, go out of your way to expose yourself to randomness. Lots of it. And then put in an effort to follow-up.

This pro-randomness philosophy runs counter to the cult of systematization that pervades much of the productivity blogosphere — which is why it intrigues me."

Variations on a theme

Douglas Hofstadter:

The bottom line is that invention is much more like falling off a log than like sawing one in two. Despite Thomas Alva Edison's memorable remark, "Genius is 2 percent inspiration and 98 percent perspiration", we're not all going to become geniuses simply by sweating more or resolving to try harder. A mind follows its path of least resistance, and it's when it feels easiest that it is most likely being its most creative. Or, as Mozart used to say, things should "flow like oil"-and Mozart ought to know! Trying harder is not the name of the game; the trick is getting the right concept to begin with, so that making variations on it is like taking candy from a baby. 

Uh-oh-now I've given the cat away! So let me boldly state the thesis that I shall now elaborate: Making variations on a theme is really the crux of creativity.

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It's not that we say to ourselves, "I think I shall now slip from one concept into a variation of it"; indeed, that kind of deliberate, conscious slippage is most often quite uninspired and infertile. "How to Think" and "How to Be Creative" books-even very thoughtful ones such as George Polya's How to Solve It- are, for that reason, of little use to the would-be genius.

Strange though it may sound, nondeliberate yet nonaccidental slippage permeates our mental processes, and is the very crux of fluid thought. That is my firmly held conviction. This subconscious manufacture of "subjunctive variations on a theme" is something that goes on day and night in each of us, usually without our slightest awareness of it. It is one of those things that, like air or gravity or three-dimensionality, tend to elude our perception because they define the very fabric of our lives.

To make this concrete, let me contrast an example of "deliberate" slippage with an example of "nondeliberate but nonaccidental" slippage. Imagine that one summer evening you and Eve Rybody have just walked into a surprisingly crowded coffeehouse. Now go ahead and manufacture a few variants on that scene, in whatever ways you want. What kinds of things do you come up with when you deliberately "slip" this scene into hypothetical variants of itself?

If you're like most people, you'll come up with some pretty obvious slippages, made by moving along what seem to be the most obvious "axes of slippability". Typical examples are: 

I could have come with Ann Yone instead of Eve Rybody. 

We could have gone to a pancake house instead of a coffeehouse. 

The coffeehouse could have been nearly empty instead of full. 

It could have been a winter's evening instead of a summer's evening. 

Now contrast your variations with one that I overheard one evening this past summer in a very crowded coffeehouse, when a man walked in with a woman. He said to her, "I'm sure glad I'm not a waitress here tonight!" This is a perfect example of a subjunctive variation on the given theme-but unlike yours, this one was made without external prompting, and it was made for the purposes of communication to someone. The list above looks positively mundane next to this casually tossed-off remark. And the remark was not considered to be particularly clever or ingenious by his companion. She merely agreed with the thought by saying "Yeah." It caught my attention not so much because I thought it was clever, but mostly because I am always on the lookout for interesting examples of slippability.

I found this example not just mildly interesting, but highly provocative. If you try to analyze it, it would appear at first glance to force you as listener to imagine a sex-change operation performed in world record time. But when you simply understand the remark, you see that in actuality, there was no intention in the speaker's mind of bringing up such a bizarre image. His remark was much more figurative, much more abstract. It was based on an instantaneous perception of the situation, a sort of "There-but-for-thegrace-of-God-go-I" feeling, which induces a quick flash to the effect of "Simply because I am human, I can place myself in the shoes of that harried waitress-therefore I could have been that waitress." Logical or not, this is the way our thoughts go.

So when you look carefully, you see that this particular thought has practically nothing to do with the speaker, or even with the waitresses he sees. It's just his flip way of saying, "Hmm, it sure is busy here tonight." And that's of course why nobody really is thrown for a loop by such a remark Yet it was stated in such a way that it invites you to perform a "light" mapping of him onto a waitress, just barely noticing (if at all) that there is a sex difference. What an amazingly subtle thought process is involved here!

And what is even more amazing (and frustrating) to me is how hard it is to point out to people how amazing it is! People find it very hard indeed to see what's amazing about the ordinary behavior of people. They cannot quite imagine how it might have been otherwise. It is very hard to slip mentally into a world in which people would not think by slipping mentally into other worlds-very hard to make a counterfactual world in which counterfactuals were not a key ingredient of thought.

Another quick example: I was having a conversation with someone who told me he came from Whiting, Indiana. Since I didn't know where that was, he explained, "Whiting is very near Chicago-in fact, it would be in Illinois if it weren't for the state line." Like the earlier one, this remark was dropped casually; it was certainly not an effort to be witty. He didn't chuckle, nor did I. I simply flashed a quick smile, signaling my understanding of his meaning, and then we went on. But try to analyze what this remark means! On a logical level, it is somewhat like a tautology. Of course Whiting would be in Illinois if the Illinois state line made it be so-but if that's all he meant, it is an empty remark, because it holds just as well for cities thousands of miles from Chicago. But clearly, the notion he had in mind was that there is an accidental quality to where boundary lines fall, a notion that there are counterfactual worlds "close" to ours, worlds in which the Illinois-Indiana line had gotten placed a couple of miles further east, and so on. And his remark tacitly assumed that he and I shared such intuitions about the impermanence and arbitrariness of geographical boundary lines, intuitions about how state lines could "slip".

Remarks like this betray the hidden "fault lines of the mind"; they show which things are solid and which things can slip. And yet, they also reveal that nothing is reliably unslippable. Context contributes an unexpected quality to the knobs that are perceived on a given concept. The knobs are not displayed in a nice, neat little control panel, forevermore unchangeable. Instead, changing the context is like taking a tour around the concept, and as you get to see it from various angles, more and more of its knobs are revealed. Some people get to be good at perceiving fresh new knobs on concepts where others thought there were none, just as some people get to be good at perceiving mushrooms in a forest where others see none, even when they stare mightily.

It may still be tempting to think that for each well-defined concept, there must be an "ultimate" or "definitive" set of knobs such that the abstract space traced out by all possible combinations of the knobs yields all possible instantiations of the concept. A case in point is the concept of the letter V A'. The typographically naive might think that there are four or five knobs to twiddle here, and that's all. However, the more you delve into letter forms, the more elusive any attempt to parametrize them mathematically becomes. One of the most valiant efforts at "knobbifying the alphabet" has been the letterform-defining system called "Metafont", developed at Stanford by the well-known computer scientist Donald Knuth.

Knuth's purpose is not to give the ultimate parametrization of the letters of the alphabet (indeed, I suspect that he would be the first to laugh at the very notion), but to allow a user to make "knobbed letters "-we could call them letter schemas. This means that you can choose for yourself what the variable aspects of a letter are, and then, with Metafont's aid, you can easily construct knobs that allow those aspects to vary. This includes just about anything you can think of: stroke lengths, widenings or taperings of strokes, curvatures, the presence or absence of serifs, and so on. The full power of the computer is then at your disposal; you can twiddle away to your heart's desire, and the computer will generate all the products your knob-settings define.

Going further than letters in isolation, Knuth then allowed letters to share parameters-that is, a single "master knob" can control a feature common to a group of related letters. This way, although there may be hundreds of knobs when you count the knobs on all the control panels of all the letters of the alphabet, there will be a far smaller number of master knobs, and they will have a deeper and more pervasive influence on the whole alphabet. What happens, in effect, is that by twiddling the master knobs alone, you have a way of drifting smoothly through a space of typefaces.

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One of Knuth's main theses is that with computers, we now are'in the position of being able to describe not just a thing in itself, but how that thing would vary.

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One way to imagine how slippability might be realized in the mind is to suppose that each new concept begins life as a compound of previous concepts, and that from the slippability of those concepts, it inherits a certain amount of slippability. That is, since any of its constituents can slip in various ways, this induces modes of slippage in the whole. Generally, letting a constituent concept slip in its simplest ways is enough, since when more than one of these is done at a time, that can already create many unexpected effects. Gradually, as the space of possibilities of the new concept- the implicosphere-is traced out, the most common and useful of those slippages become more closely and directly associated with the new concept itself, rather than having to be derived over and over from its constituents. This way, the new concept's implicosphere becomes more and more explicitly explored, and eventually the new concept becomes old and reaches the point where it too can be used as a constituent of fresh new young concepts.

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This is an important idea: the test of whether a concept has really come into its own, the test of its genuine mental existence, is its retrievability by that process of unconscious recall. That's what lets you know that it has been firmly planted in the soil of your mind. It is not whether that concept appears to be "atomic", in the sense that you have a single word to express it by. That is far too superficial.

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The point is that the concept itself has been reed-this much is proven by the fact that it acts as a point of immediate reference; that my memory mechanisms are capable of using it as an "address" (a key for retrieval) under the proper circumstances. The vast majority of our concepts are wordless in this way, although we can certainly make stabs at verbalizing them when we need to.

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Careful analysis leads one to see that what we choose to call a new theme is itself always some sort of variation, on a deep level, of previous themes. The trick is to be able to see the deeply hidden knobs!

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My own mental image of the creative process involves viewing the organization of a mind as consisting of thousands, perhaps millions, of overlapping and intermingling implicospheres, at the center of each of which is a conceptual skeleton. The implicosphere is a flickering, ephemeral thing, a bit like a swarm of gnats around a gas-station light on a hot summer's night, perhaps more like an electron cloud, with its quantummechanical elusiveness, about a nucleus, blurring out and dying off the further removed from the core it is (Figure 12-5). If you have studied quantum chemistry, you know that the fluid nature of chemical bonds can best be understood as a direct consequence of the curious quantummechanical overlap of electronic wave functions in space, wave functions belonging to electrons orbiting neighboring nuclei. In a metaphorically similar way, it seems to me, the crazy and unexpected associations that allow creative insights to pop seemingly out of nowhere may well be consequences of a similar chemistry of concepts with its own special types of "bonds" that emerge out of an underlying "neuron mechanics".

Novelist Arthur Koestler has long been a champion of a mystical view of human creativity, advocating occult views of the mind while at the same time eloquently and objectively describing its workings. In his book The Act of Creation, he presents a theory of creativity whose key concept he calls "bisociation"-the simultaneous activation and interaction of two previously unconnected concepts. This view emphasizes the comingtogether of two concepts, while bypassing discussion of the internal structure of a single concept. In Koestler's view, something new can happen when two concepts "collide" and fuse- something not present in the concepts themselves. This is in keeping with Koestler's philosophy that wholes are somehow greater than the sum of their parts.

By contrast, I have been emphasizing the idea of the internal structure of one concept. In my view, the way that concepts can bond together and form conceptual molecules on all levels of complexity is a consequence of their internal structure. What results from a bond may surprise us, but it will nonetheless always have been completely determined by the concepts involved in the fusion, if only we could understand how they are structured. Thus the crux of the matter is the internal structure of a single concept and how it "reaches out" toward things it is not. The crux is not some magical, mysterious process that occurs when two indivisible concepts collide; it is a consequence of the divisibility of concepts into subconceptual elements. As must be clear from this, I am not one to believe that wholes elude description in terms of their parts. I believe that if we come to understand the "physics of concepts", then perhaps we can derive from it a "chemistry of creativity", just as we can derive the principles of the chemistry of atoms and molecules from those of the physics of quanta and particles. But as I said earlier, it is not just around the corner. Mental bonds will probably turn out to be no less subtle than chemical bonds. Alan Turing's words of cautious enthusiasm about artificial intelligence remain as apt now as they were in 1950, when he wrote them in concluding his famous article "Computing Machinery and Intelligence": "We can only see a short distance ahead, but we can see plenty there that needs to be done."

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Some readers objected to the slogan of this column-that making variations on a theme is the crux of creativity. They felt-and quite rightly -that making variations (i.e., twisting knobs) is as easy as falling off a log. So how can genius be that easy? Part of the answer is: For a genius, it is easy to be a genius. Not being a genius would be excruciatingly hard for a genius. However, this isn't a completely satisfactory answer for people who pose this objection. They feel that I am unwittingly implying that it is easy for anybody to be a genius: after all, a crank can crank a knob as deftly as a genius can. The crux of their objection, then, is that the crux of creativity is not in twiddling knobs, but in spotting them!

Well, that is exactly what I meant by my slogan. Making variations is not just twiddling a knob before you; part of the act is to manufacture the knob yourself. Where does a knob come from? The question amounts to asking: How do you see a variable where there is actually a constant ? More specifically: What might vary, and how might it vary? It's not enough to just have the desire to see something different from what is there before you. Often the dullest knobs are a result of someone's straining to be original, and coming up with something weak and ineffective. So where do good knobs come from? I would say they come from seeing one thing as something else. Once an abstract connection is set up via some sort of analogy or reminding-incident, then the gate opens wide for ideas to slosh back and forth between the two concepts.

A simple example: A friend and I noticed a fuel-delivery truck pulling into a driveway, and on it was very conspicuously printed "NSF", standing for "North Shore Fuel". However, to us those letters meant "National Science Foundation" as surely as "TNT" means "trinitrotoluene" to Eve Rybody. Now, we could have just let the coincidence go, but instead we played with it. We envisioned a National Science Foundation truck pulling up to a research institute. The driver gets out of the cab, drags a thick flexible hose over to a hole in the wall of a building and inserts it, then starts up a loud motor, and pumps a truckload of money-presumably in large bills-into the cellar of the building. (Wouldn't it be nice if grants were delivered that way?) This vision then led us to pondering the way that money actually does flow between large institutions: usually as abstract, intangible numbers shot down wires as binary digits, rather than as greenbacks hauled about in large trucks.

This very small incident serves well to illustrate how a simple reminding- incident triggered a series of thoughts that wound up in a region of idea-space that would have been totally unanticipable moments before. All that was needed was for an inappropriate meaning of "NSF" to come to mind, and then to be explored a bit. Such opportunities for being reminded of something remote- such double-entendre situations-occur all the time, but often they go unobserved. Sometimes the ambiguity is observed but shrugged off with disinterest. Sometimes it is exploited to the hilt. In this example, the result was not earthshaking, but it did cast things in a new light for both of us, and the image amused us quite a bit. And this way of exploiting serendipity-that is, exploiting coincidences and unexpected perceived similarities-is typical of what I consider the crux of the creative process.

Serendipitous observation and quick exploration of potential are vital elements in the making of a knob. What goes hand in hand with the willingness to playfully explore a serendipitous connection is the willingness to censor or curtail an exploration that seems to be leading nowhere. It is the flip side of the risk-taking aspect of serendipity. It's fine to be reminded of something, to see an analogy or a vague connection, and it's fine to try to map one situation or concept onto another in the hopes of making something novel emerge-but you've also got to be willing and able to sense when you've lost the gamble, and to cut your losses. One of the problems with the ever-popular self-help books on how to be creative is that they all encourage "off-the-wall" thinking (under such slogans as "lateral thinking", "conceptual blockbusting", "getting whacked on the head", etc.) while glossing over the fact that most off-the-wall connections are of very little worth and that one could waste lifetimes just toying with ideas in that way. One needs something much more reliable than a mere suggestion to "think zany, out-of-the-system thoughts".

Frantic striving to be original will usually get you nowhere. Far better to relax and let your perceptual system and your category system work together unconsciously, occasionally coming up with unbidden connections. At' that point, you-the lucky owner of the mind in question-can seize the opportunity and follow out the proffered hint. This view of creativity has the conscious mind being quite passive, content to sit back and wait for the unconscious to do its remarkable broodings and brewings.

The most reliable kinds of genuine insight come not from vague reminding experiences (as with the letters "NSF"), but from strong analogies in which one experience can be mapped onto another in a highly pleasing way. The tighter the fit, the deeper the insight, generally speaking. When two things can both be seen as instances of one abstract phenomenon, it is a very exciting discovery. Then ideas about either one can be borrowed in thinking about the other, and that sloshing-about of activity may greatly illumine both at once. For instance, such a connection (i.e., mapping) -between sexism and racism-resulted in my "Person Paper" (Chapter 8). Another example is Scott Kim's brilliant article "Noneuclidean Harmony", in which mathematics and music are twisted together in the most amazing ways. It can be found in The Mathematical Gardner, an anthology dedicated to Martin Gardner, edited by David Klarner.

A mapping-recipe that often yields interesting results is projection of oneself into a situation: "How would it be for me?" This can mean a host of things, depending on how you choose to inject yourself into the scene, which is in turn determined by what grabs your attention. The man who focused in on the bustling activity in the coffeehouse and said, "I'm sure glad I'm not a waitress here tonight!" might instead have been offended by the sounds reaching his ears and said, "If I were the owner here, I'd play less Muzak" -or he might have zeroed in on someone purchasing a brownie and said, "I wish I were that thin." People are remarkably fluid at seeing themselves in roles that they self-evidently could never fill, and yet the richness of the insights thus elicited is beyond doubt.

When I first heard the French saying Plus ga change, plus c'est la meme chose, it struck me as annoyingly nonsensical: "The more it changes, the samer it gets" (in my own colloquial translation). I was not amused but nonetheless it stuck in my mind for years, and finally it dawned on me that it was full of meanings. My favorite way of interpreting it is this. The more different manifestations you observe of one phenomenon, the more deeply you understand that phenomenon, and therefore the more clearly you can see the vein of sameness running through all those different things. Or put another way, experience with a wide variety of things refines your category system and allows you to make incisive, abstract connections based on deep shared qualities. A more cynical way of putting it, and probably more in line with the intended meaning, would be that superficially different things are often boringly the same. But the saying need not be taken cynically.

Seeing clear to the essence of something unfamiliar is often best achieved by finding one or more known things that you can see it as, then being able to balance these views.

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The cycle shown above spells out what I intend by the phrase "making variations on a theme", and it is this loop that I am suggesting is the crux of creativity. The beauty of it is that you let your memory and perceptual mechanisms do all the hard work for you (pulling concepts from dormancy); all you do is twiddle knobs. And I'll let you decide what this odd distinction is between something called "you" and the hard-working mechanisms of "your memory".

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So in that sense I am gravely doubtful about courses or books that promise to improve your thinking style or capabilities. Sure, you can add new ideas-but that's a far cry from adding pizzazz. The mind's -'perceptual and category systems are too much at the "subcognitive" level to be reached via cognitive- level training techniques. If you are old enough to be reading this book, then your deep mental hardware has been in place for many years, and it is what makes your thinking-style idiosyncratic and recognizably "you".

When a new idea is implanted in a mind, an implicosphere grows around it. Since this means, in essence, the linking-up of this new idea with older ideas, I call it "diffusion in idea-space".

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Slippage of thought is a remarkably invisible phenomenon, given its ubiquity. People simply don't recognize how curiously selective they are in their "choice" of what is and what is not a hinge point in how they think of an event. It all seems so natural as to require no explanation.

Selbstbeherrschung:

Höhere Formen der Selbstbeherrschung sind wohl nicht primär über den persönlichen Zugriff und die persönliche Bestimmung eigener Handlungen zu charakterisieren, sondern mehr noch, über die Kontrolle und Beeinflussung eigener Motive, Motiviertheiten, Gestimmtheiten, Handlungsbereitschaften.

Deep Interests:

"Students at competitive high schools and elite colleges inject unhealthy amounts of stress into their life due to the flawed belief that the quantity of things you do as a student controls how impressive you seem to the outside world. This is not true. You’re typically judged on the thing you do best."

Cal Newport

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"deep interests - pursuits that you return to voluntarily, again and again, whenever you have free time - are near magical in their ability to transform your life from mediocre to interesting."

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"My advice for identifying a focus, therefore, is to start by forming a deep interest. You can then focus your attention on pursuits related to this deep interest."

Thinking:

"Thinking is, in its most general sense, a method of choosing between potential possibilities, that is, possible actions, beliefs, or personal goals."

"By judgment, I mean the evaluation of one or more possibilities with respect to a specific set of evidence or goals."

Jonathan Baron, Thinking and deciding

Playfulness and Humor:

"One can say that both playfulness and humor transform situations and environments, making them more enjoyable and bearable."

G.C. Mireault & V. Reddy, Playfulness

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"At its broadest, humor is playfulness (although unlike play, which can sometimes be serious, humor and playfulness are the antithesis of seriousness)."

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"The absence of spontaneity, of exuberance, of doing more than the necessary, and the attitude of wanting to do something, an attitude that precisely characterises play and playfulness, is what is missing in ..."

"This view of play is not a million miles from the notion of excess energy as a characterization of play (without necessarily accepting this as the motive for play as Spencer does)."

"joy in the midst of tragedy and indeed darkness in the midst of joy. It is precisely its precarious violation of norms, of walking on the edge of the tolerable, of seeing rules as things that can be invented, played with and broken for fun[.]"

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Rod Martin, Ph.D., is a University of Western Ontario psychology professor and one of the foremost thinkers in this field [the psychology of humor]. Author of The Psychology of Humor: An Integrative Approach, he analyzed thousands of peer-reviewed journal articles and other scholarly works, looking for answers.

The American Psychological Association sums up his findings:

What these studies are adding up to is the idea that incongruity—when an idea or an object is out of place—is the heart of humor, Martin says. Truth plays an important role as well: The juxtaposition of the two things often gives people a new insight into a familiar situation, he notes. In fact, much of the enjoyment of humor may come from seeing familiar situations with new eyes.