Foreward

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Foreward

I've always been somewhat confused by forewards in books. They come before the Introduction, which is odd in itself since I would think an introduction would be the first part of a book. And then, the forewards are seldom things I want to read first. They seem to be of interest to me about a quarter of the way through an interesting book when I become more curious about the authors and the back story of the book. Or if I already know and am interested in the author, I might read it first. This foreward is similar, I don't know where to put it, but will take a cue from books and put it here. Feel free to read it first or come back to it later and read it as a "Backward," or skip it entirely.

Imagine this scenario. You are dropped in a room in a country you know little about. Each day a librarian drops off a stack of 10 newspapers and asks you to find the answers to several questions whose answers are contained somewhere in the previous days' newspapers. Initially, you may answer the questions from the memory of what you previously read. Or you may thumb through the pile of past newspapers to find the answer. Soon that becomes unwieldy, and you begin to develop methods for organizing/indexing the previous newspapers. The first methodologies may be somewhat rudimentary, e.g. making a pile of sports sections, another of business sections, etc. But you improve and change the system over time, developing more complex and efficient methods. Perhaps you begin clipping articles and putting them into folders by subject. For articles that belong to multiple folders, you may make copies or save space by creating a cross-index system that only maintains one original. Over time, the number of folders grows, and the files are organized in file cabinets. File cabinets get arranged by subject. Eventually, the room fills up and you choose to discard some articles or perhaps you decide to move some files offsite.

All the while, you are constantly going back and revisiting and improving your indexes. You develop a sense of what sources are most valuable and accurate. After gaining experience, you may not even bother to read some newspapers, and spend more time with others. For some subjects, you might create your own summaries that you write yourself, including your own insights on how to interpret the news.

And once you have built this elaborate system and have gained new insights, you might feel that you would like to share what you have learned with others who don't have the time to read ten newspapers each day. Perhaps you would create outlines, summaries and diagrams for specific audiences to illustrate what you think are the key points of interest? Doing so is often described as "curation."

This scenario is an analogy for how our brains develop over time. We spend the early part of our lives acquiring information. As we grow, we develop systems for organizing and prioritizing that information. We develop levels of trust in various sources. Over time, the value isn't just on how much we know, but more and more on how well we organize and access the information. Knowing where to find information becomes as important as knowing the information.

No need to memorize what you can look up in books. (paraphrase)
- Alfred Einstein

And as humans living in a society, we recognize that part of our role is to pass on information to others and future generations. This may only be communicated to a friend or our children, or perhaps we decide to teach or write a book. In doing so, we act as curators to condense a wide variety of knowledge into something that might be valuable to others.

Our brain architecture, honed by generations of evolution, helps us in this task. While memory is an important component of our brain functionality, the ability to organize, index, and access our knowledge is where our brains truly excel. Our brain wiring provides us with an elaborate cross-indexing system. We might remember a person based on their name, or by their face, or because of something they once told us. Even a perfume can conjure a memory later when we smell a similar perfume. As we age, it isn't so much that we lose memory, but rather that we lose indexes. This loss of memory is well known and often labeled "cognitive decline", but research has shown that our brains aren't necessarily declining, but rather our brains are physically changing to sacrifice some memory/indexing (often referred to as "fluid thinking") for the ability to make connections from disparate data; what cognitive psychologists refer to as "crystallized thinking." Crystallized thinking allows us to better see the "big picture," to see the world more holistically, to see patterns and analogies between various things that we already know. A "shortcut" analogy to understand the difference between fluid thinking vs. crystallized thinking is to think of the difference between knowledge and wisdom. Age is often associated with wisdom, especially in older cultures whose traditions existed before the proliferation of written language.

Why write this?

As I enter "retirement age" I have observed this happening in my approach to the world. I am definitely losing some traditional cognitive abilities. My memory is not as good, finding the right words to express a concept becomes more difficult, and my expertise on subjects gets dwarfed by the amounts of new information available on a daily basis. For each of the thoughts I've expressed, there are numerous books and articles that go into detail and offer insights and nuances that I would benefit from.

And yet, I can feel my crystallized thinking growing every day. I wake up each day with new ideas, seeing new connections. I have an eclectic background, and I find connections between disparate skills that help better understand more complex subjects. For example, seeing the similarities between the way we learn to throw a baseball, solve a math problem, construct a bookcase, and/or bake a cake. With the continuing proliferation of the Internet, the growth in technology and the amount of information and sources available, the need for curation becomes more important. We simply don't have the time to learn everything we'd benefit from learning, so a curated source can help us be more efficient. And on a personal note as one with no children, acting as a curator allows me to satisfy a biological need to feel I am passing something on to a future generation. Whether it is just hubris to think that my insights and reasoning are valuable to others, or whether they are actually valuable to others remains to be seen.

I will undoubtedly get some things wrong. The academic approach would be to do more thorough research, go through peer review, etc. before publishing it. But that is a slower process that I find can also limit creativity and can delay the ability to respond to current issues. Additionally, it is my experience that sometimes by providing the reasoning that leads to an incorrect conclusion, that reasoning may be just the spark needed to spur others to prove it wrong and advance knowledge.

And although the initial posts are primarily written by myself, I am writing as "A Reasoned Voice" with the hope that over time, others will contribute by pointing out errors and omissions, and gradually take on the mantle of maintaining this work-in-progress as a never-ending work-in-progress with authorship and curation by a collective of other reasoned voices.

One of the greatest challenges to documenting what we know-and-think is finding the right framework for communication. This can be written as a lesson plan, a chronological narrative or in encyclopedic form, just to name a few options. There are many choices of how to publish as well. And if we are trying to communicate that to others, which method is best, and the level of detail to impart is highly dependent on the audience and their level of interest. And that may change depending on the circumstances occurring in the reader's life. For example, detailed knowledge of fixing a leak in a pipe will be of little interest to most readers, but at the point that a pipe bursts, that same reader will be highly interested in that knowledge.

The Internet offers us great opportunities. Unlike a book, the same information can be organized in multiple ways. Google searches offer a comprehensive index, but there is still great value in curation by grouping similar information, interpretation, and condensing. This website is designed to attempt to do just that. The goal is to allow the information to be accessed via different methods. There will be linear "blog" formats that can be read chronologically and broken up into daily or weekly chunks. There will also be subject-related paths that allow one to dig deeper into issues of greatest interest, or return to them later. And in them all, there are cross-references and hyperlinks that can help a reader navigate between them. And just like the scenario presented above, this is a continuous process, a continual work-in-progress that will evolve over time.

My initial goal is to set the framework, essentially describing the indexing system and tools that will be used throughout. I will use the blog format to describe my thought process and these steps. Eventually, I hope this morphs into something more akin to a book and a current events blog, focusing on current issues and thoughts, allowing one to "dive right in" to articles and use the cross-references to help identify commonalities and consider the tools later if/when readers are interested in exploring further. "Getting it right the first time" assumes that one already has all the knowledge one needs, but in this circumstance, knowledge will only be gained over time, and will be enhanced by reader feedback.

Another Useful Analogy

I believe that the scenario presented above is not only analogous to the way our brains evolve, but also analogous to the way we learn.

1. We first learn to do. We pick up a rattle and shake it. We learn how to use it to generate a noise.
2. At some point we want to know how it works. We may open it up and see beads inside and realize that the beads hitting the plastic case make a noise. We may use that information to experiment and make abstractions and analogies, e.g. perhaps we try to make a rattle out of rice in a bottle.
3. And if that becomes a major interest, we might be interested in going even deeper, learning more. We might research the history of rattles, or try to understand why it makes a noise, to distinguish different sounds of different materials hitting each other, or how our ears detect sound.

It occurs to me that these are three distinct phases of learning are reflected in our educational system and systems of employment.

1. "Just do it" - Action and doing. We learn to sew, we learn to join pipes, we work in a factory. We cook.
2. "How does it work" - This is engineering. Applying science to the real world. A designer of machinery, an executive chef. Many other factors influence how something works. E.g. a metal chain works well in theory, but it quickly corrodes in a salty environment.
3. "Why it works" - The third is theory such as basic science. Researchers and university professors are examples of those focused on this phase.

Each of us does all of these things, we live in all 3 worlds. It is simply of matter of how much time we spend in each, where we place our emphasis and priorities. Universities focus on 3, engineering schools on 2, and trade schools on 1.

Engineering is the overlap between science and doing. As someone who considers himself an engineer, I have come to recognize just how much we are all engineers. MIT's mascot of the engineer of the animal kingdom is the beaver, but I think that humans are the true engineers of the animal kingdom. (Although I have to admit, the MIT Human, would make for a pretty boring mascot.) A parent may know that a child benefits from early education and good nutrition (science), but it can be difficult to figure out how to provide it while managing all of the other demands of parenthood (that's engineering!)

The writing herein very much takes the form of engineering. It is based on science and theory, but more importantly, the focus is on how that works in a real world that is largely dictated by human behavior. For example, a scientist might describe the rules of logic and how economic choices should be based on expected value, but the real world doesn't work that way. If it did, gambling would not be a $400 billion dollar industry.