Everyone wants to be associated with something new… until it comes to putting some work in for the realization of the vision. There’s a palpable lack of motivation.
People and participating
Leave a reply
Category Archives: Sociology
Others
It’s funny – there are so few people who think like me, and yet I immediately know when I am speaking with one of them. Their entire outlook on life is different from the rest of the population. The individual variations on the theme are unique, but the core values are usually very similar in some vaguely defined way.
Self-efficacy and range of effect
Today I came up with an interesting hypothesis: that the term known as self-efficacy (one’s perceived ability to accomplish tasks) determines the scale of what an individual will attempt to change. The reasoning is simple: when one perceives a clash between his own values and those of others, he invariably spends a certain amount of time, however brief, wondering “is this a problem with me or is this a problem with them?” Those with low self-efficacy (or low self-esteem in general) will conclude that the problem is with themselves, since their belief in their own ability is very weak. Those with higher self-efficacy will blame the practitioners within the system, believing that they are inaccurately expressing a concept that is fundamentally correct (the “if I did this, it would be better” effect). Those with the highest self-efficacy have such confidence in their own ability that they frame the clash as a problem with the system itself and, being very confident in their ability, set out to change it.
Therefore, lest you condemn those with high self-efficacy as being arrogant or pretentious, realize that this is the only way that society can ever advance. Were the world left only to those with low self-efficacy, humanity would no longer exist. What you deem arrogance is therefore virtuous behavior.
There is, however, a danger in having too much self-efficacy: this danger emerges when one begins to believe that the laws of reality, of logic, of causality, no longer apply to oneself. This results in attempting tasks that are inherently impossible, not because of the way society functions, but because their completion would cause a logical contradiction. Of course, we all undertake tasks such as these unknowingly; it becomes pathological when one begins to ignore the logical evidence against what one is attempting to do.
Certain levels of self-efficacy prompt introspection and/or criticism, which must be somehow resolved before one feels capable of taking on larger challenges. Successful resolution of these challenges (success being defined as resolution in a way that does not threaten the integrity of one’s self) causes self-efficacy to increase, as it provides evidence that one is doing “the right thing”.
Essentially, I believe that we can summarize this effect with the following figure:
(Also available in SVG).
The Visionary's Audacity
To truly spur an advancement, you need to do something that appears nigh-impossible. I believe that what separates success and failure is the ability to persevere in spite of these impossible odds for the sake of the vision.
It’s probably very fun to look back on it after it’s all finished… but it’s so much work when it’s just starting.
Society in Fourier Space?
Given my latest psychological principle (the latest of my ongoing attempts to intuitively understand the societal phenomena that swirl around me), “in absence of a clear advantage, expect oscillation”, I am now wondering if there is an idealized Fourier space representation of cultural movements – that is, a theoretical way to convert the categorical periods, such as “modernism”, “classicism”, “baroque”, etc., into actual quantities and then to transform those quantities into frequency space for analysis. It makes no sense, and yet it verges on the edge of making sense because it seems the sort of thing an omniscient entity could do – to objectively quantify the similarity between two historical periods. It isn’t like the comparison has never been made before… anyone attempting to classify a piece of artwork or music must be able to extract some sort of rule that indicates “this is baroque”, for example.
Perhaps the quantities utilized could be more easily measurable things, such as “famous constructivist arguments” vs. “famous deconstructivist arguments” or, even better, “average hair volume” (now THAT’s oscillatory!)
The idea, of course, isn’t to analyze such stupid trends, but to get an idea of the common evolution of societal trends in general. For example, the average hair volume, as stupid a thing to measure as it seems, might be correlated with something less quantitative, such as the musical style of the time.
See? You can sort of dredge some sense out of it.
New Psychological Principle
In absence of a clear advantage, expect oscillation.
Feyerabend
This man has earned my deep respect, for he was probably the only honest scientist remaining to the modern era. He alone disbelieved the self-delusions that most scientists still retain to this day… by subjecting the scientific method itself to scrutiny and recognizing the disparity between the process scientists claimed to follow – and the one they actually used.
His magnum opus is “Against Method”. It should probably be required reading for anyone seeking a scientific career.
Groupwork
Continued where “Dissertation, Week 11” left off.
Ah, the inevitabilities of group work. I’ll never be sure what to answer if asked whether I work well with teams… “depends on the team”? “Yes, I’m that one guy on every team who actually does the work”? “No, because teams are constantly and invariably overwhelmed by the special brand of apathy that comes with knowing someone else will be there to pick up the slack”? Any way I say it, it sounds bad, but it’s been my experience on every team I’ve ever worked with. Perhaps this is the purpose of management, but authority over the team’s organization and operations should not translate into higher rank. If a uniquely talented employee enters an organization, that person is irreplaceable in a manner that few managers are, yet the employee is considered the subordinate.
As Beethoven was supposed to have (roughly) said, “anyone can be an aristocrat, but there is only one Beethoven!” Such superlative skill should confer its own rank. Occasionally it does, but usually through promotion to manager. Do I even need to explain why promoting superlatively talented producers to positions in which they can no longer produce is a bad idea?
Some thoughts from the past…
These are a few thoughts I was puzzling over, unsure of whether to state them because of their unconventionality. I suppose if I were trying to be conventional, however, I’m far too late. Here are three of the least conventional:
“Imposing forgiveness or forgetfulness on the people allows any atrocity to be perpetrated with impunity. There is a time and place to forgive. It cannot be blind.”
Flying in the face of the “forgive and forget” doctrine (which probably exists for precisely this reason, as most other doctrines that attempt to limit the moral behavior of the individual), this is the result of recognizing that anger and other strong emotions can indeed motivate great works (through the process of “sublimation”). It is also the recognition that your forgiveness very often does not cause others to rectify the wrong that they caused. By unconditionally forgiving, you are writing others a blank check to step all over you because they know there will be no consequences for doing so. Finally, forgiveness of this sort bars improvement. If an injustice causes you to recognize the flaws in a system, forgiving it prevents optimization of the system, affirming that the status quo is acceptable when it should not be!
Here’s another in a similar fashion:
“Above all, the consistency of memory is sacrosanct. Lacking this, one lacks
purpose – even orientation in time. As for society, a censorship of the past
prevents all change in the future – no one is left to cry out against
atrocity.”
1984 illustrates exactly why this is important pretty well.
And then there’s this:
“Never be the first to come up with a new idea. It won’t be accepted.”
I think Friendster (and MySpace, Facebook, and LinkedIn, its main successors) probably made me realize this. My “Let’s Compose!” idea confirmed it. If you’re the first to come up with a sufficiently different paradigm, you will meet with failure. The first ones that copy your idea will probably be the ones to meet with wild success if anyone does at all. It’s pretty common.
A Peer Review Benchmark
While discussing different strategies for revamping peer review in order to eliminate some of its many flaws, I came up with a benchmark to test any system’s false dismissal rate against. (Many consider peer review to have failed only if it accepts a paper that should have been rejected, but I consider the opposite a much more grave mistake).
A system is sufficient if it would have permitted Evariste Galois to publish his mathematical work. That’s it. Without changing any of his circumstances, including his general rejection by elite mathematicians (or government) of the time or the poor reputation of his academic institution, I am looking for a system that would have allowed him to circulate his papers (which would later prove revolutionary, after all) uninhibited.
Any system that fails this should be burdened under the knowledge that it would have denied us most of the field of abstract algebra and all ensuing discoveries – basically all of 20th century mathematics.