Naïve Empiricism, care of N.N. Taleb

Nassim Nicholas Taleb writes about naïve empiricism, in The Black Swan:

"We have a natural tendency to look for instances that confirm our story and our vision of the world. You take past instances that corroborate your theories and you treat them as evidence. Even in testing hypotheses, we tend to look for instances where the hypothesis proved true. Cognitive scientists call this confirmation bias."

I found this bias evident in mediation training. The neophyte mediator finds himself thinking about the opposing parties description of their presumed conflict. The mediator's natural inclination is to take the information supplied, fill in the blanks from the mediator's past experiences and apply this gestalt to solve the parties' problems. There is a discipline to resist resolving the dissonance this way. The experienced mediator works towards uncovering needs and issues from the parties (most likely below the surface of the iceberg*), which may have more to do with the conflict than what the parties have assumed.

*An iceberg has only a tiny fraction of its entire mass visible above water. Think Titanic.
What may appear as a simple conflict of interests may actually have a much more complicated scenario, when more issues come to light.

Conflict Resolution as Art

I just completed a training course in the the art of mediation. The class was an intense experience that covered 40 hours of combined classroom and simulated mediation exercises over the course of 5 days. The feedback the trainers provided us with gave the trainees an opportunity to develop with a steep learning curve.

Mediation as art?

Let's examine the context for practicing this art:

The structure of the facilitative mediation provided by the Center for Conflict Resolution (in Chicago) is quite explicit. The mediator acts as a facilitator of a process that engages each side to work together towards an understanding of their different needs and interests.

Within this structure, the mediator must show absolute impartiality. In fact, though solutions may enter the mediator's mind while engaging in the process, the mediator is not allowed to solve any problems. The mediator's role is to work to learn the needs and interests beyond the stated positions of the conflicting parties.


The idea is for the mediator to help both parties shed new light on their situation, and open up a willingness to talk together about a solution. The art is in knowing when to ratchet up tension, provide relief and to use my favorite aesthetic construct, facilitate the dissonance towards a resolution.

Speaking of dissonance, some coaching feedback I received at this training was to specifically display the dissonance between both narratives in contrast with mutually agreeable points of view. The mediator then leads a journey that starts with the conflict, and helps both parties shed light on the dissonance between each party's stated position and their real needs and interests. The resulting resolution of dissonance is an awareness that both parties' problems are, in fact solvable together, (or not.) If the mediator can achieve this by facilitating a discussion between the parties, the mediation is a success.

The structure, discipline, and creativity used to wield the tools are similar to concepts that a musician or painter uses to create their art. Aesthetically speaking, success is achieved in the act towards resolution, and the path that that it takes. Whether or not the resolution actually happens may be out of the artist's hands. The final product is successful, not because of resolution, it is a success if the artist has created awareness.

Orchid or Dandelion?

A friend sent me this piece in the Atlantic Monthly about an unusual genetic marker that is common to only humans and Rhesus monkeys. When present, this marker influences a person's emotional constitution, for better or for worse. In the nature vs. nurture continuum, those with this marker are affected most by the quality of nurture when growing up. This is worth a read.
Here's the Atlantic's synopsis.

Most of us have genes that make us as hardy as dandelions: able to take root and survive almost anywhere. A few of us, however, are more like the orchid: fragile and fickle, but capable of blooming spectacularly if given greenhouse care. So holds a provocative new theory of genetics, which asserts that the very genes that give us the most trouble as a species, causing behaviors that are self-destructive and antisocial, also underlie humankind’s phenomenal adaptability and evolutionary success. With a bad environment and poor parenting, orchid children can end up depressed, drug-addicted, or in jail—but with the right environment and good parenting, they can grow up to be society’s most creative, successful, and happy people.

by David Dobbs

Click here for the link to the article.

Paralysis by analysis

With all this talk of deep practice and cognitive development, it was interesting to see that Jonah Lehrer asks the question of what happens to people with highly developed skills who choke. The TV is full of professional athletes who are highly skilled at their craft, and grossly underperform when under pressure. Leher posits that they are overthinking at the wrong time. He cites analysis of professional golfers who consistently play worse when Tiger Woods is in the field. Those under Tiger's spell start thinking about how they play, instead of relying on well developed processes, that have long ago matured away from the slow, thinking part of their brain, the pre-frontal cortex. Perhaps an element of deep practice (in addition to rigorous feedback and analysis) is to practice performing the skill one has developed with an un-nervous self-conscious. Clear your mind once you're ready to go. I know Yankees fans will immediately think of Jeter vs. A-Rod.

Lehrer:

Scientists have begun to uncover the causes of choking, diagnosing the particular mental differences that allow some people to succeed while others wither in the spotlight. Although it might seem like an amorphous category of failure, their work has revealed that choking is triggered by a specific mental mistake: thinking too much.

The sequence of events typically goes like this: when people get nervous about performing, they become self-conscious. They start to fixate on themselves, trying to make sure that they don't make any mistakes. This can be lethal for a performer. The bowler concentrates too much on his action and loses control of the ball. The footballer misses the penalty by a mile. In each instance, the natural fluidity of performance is lost; the grace of talent disappears.

Sian Beilock, a professor of psychology at the University of Chicago, has helped illuminate the anatomy of choking. She uses golf as her experimental paradigm. When people are learning how to putt, it can seem daunting. There are just so many things to think about. Golfers need to assess the lay of the green, calculate the line of the ball, and get a feel for the grain of the turf. Then they have to monitor their putting motion and make sure that they hit the ball with a smooth, straight stroke. For an inexperienced player, a golf putt can seem unbearably hard, like a life-sized trigonometry problem.

But the mental exertion pays off, at least at first. Beilock has shown that novices hit better putts when they consciously reflect on their actions. The more time they spend thinking about the putt, the more likely they are to hole the ball. By concentrating on their game, by paying attention to the mechanics of their stroke, they can avoid beginner's mistakes.

A little experience, however, changes everything. After golfers have learned how to putt - once they have memorised the necessary movements - analysing the stroke is a waste of time. The brain already knows what to do. It automatically computes the slope of the green, settles on the best putting angle, and decides how hard to hit the ball. Bradley Hatfield, a professor of kinesiology and psychology at the University of Maryland, has monitored the brain wave activity of expert athletes during performance. (Because the subjects have to wear a bulky plastic cap full of electrodes, Hatfield can only study golfers, archers and Olympic rifle shooters.) While the brain waves of beginners show lots of erratic spikes and haphazard rhythms - this is the neural signature of a mind that is humming with conscious thoughts - the minds of expert athletes look strangely serene. When they are performing, they exhibit a rare mental tranquility, as their brain deliberately ignores interruptions from the outside world. This is neurological evidence, Hatfield says, of "the zone", that trance-like mindset which allows experts to perform at peak levels. (As the corporate motto says, the best athletes don't think: they just do it.)

Beilock's data further demonstrate the benefits of relying on the automatic brain when playing a familiar sport. She found that when experienced golfers are forced to think about their putts, they hit significantly worse shots. All those conscious thoughts erase their years of practice. "We bring expert golfers into our lab, we tell them to pay attention to a particular part of their swing, and they just screw up," Beilock says. "When you are at a high level, your skills become somewhat automated. You don't need to pay attention to every step in what you're doing."

This is what happens when people "choke". The part of their brain that monitors their behaviour starts to interfere with actions that are normally made without thinking. Performers begin second guessing skills that they have honed through years of practice. The worst part about choking is that it tends to spiral. The failures build upon each other, so a stressful situation is made more stressful.

Leading activity and active learning

The idea of active learning as an indicator of what the the mind is learning is illuminated by Bordova and Leong.
If we can engage a person with roles and fantasy, their intrinsic motivation to think is accelerated. In children, it is worth observing how they are playing to determine how they are thinking.

Bordova and Leong:

When the development of a child's leading activity lags behind that of other children of the same age, the child may experience difficulties meeting the expectations of his current social context. For example, a school-aged child whose make-believe play has never reached an advanced level might have trouble performing academic tasks that require high levels of symbolic thought and self-regulation, competencies that are required from extensive role-playing. Reversing the clock is not an option; second-grade teachers can't send students back to preschool or even kindergarten. However, individual interventions for these "lagging" students will be more successful when teachers take into account not only the level of their current leading activity - in this case learning activity - but also the level they have reached in the preceding leading activity. Therefore, for a second grader with a "play deficit disorder," playing games that combine academic content with some fantasy elements and structured rules will do more than completing extra worksheets.

Unfolding thinking: teaching makes you smarter?

How do you know if you've been successful at teaching someone a complex process? Specifically, how do you know if your kids really understand what they're supposed to be learning in school? Perhaps the answer is to have them teach it to someone else.

Petter Kristensen, and Tor Bjerkedal wrote in Science that it is possible that the act of teaching may, in fact, make you smarter. Their claim, through a study of Norwegian kids, is that eldest siblings are, on average, 2.3 IQ points more intelligent than their younger brothers and sisters. And it's not necessarily being born first that makes the difference — it's being raised as the eldest child. What causes the difference? The fact that it's down to social upbringing rather than biological birth order leads Kristensen to think it's because of factors such as parental attention to older siblings, or time that the elders spend tutoring younger sisters and brothers.

Leong and Bodrova illuminate us further:

Through talking and communicating with another person, the gaps and flaws in one's thinking become explicit and accessible to correction. Once concepts are internalized, they may exist in a folded state so that mistakes are not easily revealed. Children may be able to come up with an answer but have only a vague understanding of how they got it. In talking and writing, or drawing for someone else, thought becomes sequential and visible to the thinker. Shared activity forces the participants to clarify and elaborate their thinking and to use language. To communicate to another person, you must be clear and explicit. You have to turn your idea into words and talk until you believe the other person understands you. You are forced to look at different aspects of an idea or task and to take another person's perspective. As a result, more and more sides or characteristics of an object or idea are exposed.

The question is, how do you teach children the idea of how to teach? I suspect the answer lies in how one draws out a child in conversation. If it is difficult for a child to explain something, then it is the parent/teacher/coach's responsibility to break the concepts up as simply as possible until the child can explain their thoughts. Those simple concepts will build on each other ultimately, into complex and coherent systems.

Mozart has a Marketing solution to the Recession?

If you're curious about how Mozart resembles an integrated marketer, look no further than this multi-media piece I co-authored with Judy Franks. The audio streaming from this multi-media piece musically illustrates how the current recession plays out for integrated marketers. You then hear what Mozart's solutions would be.

As for the string quartet performance: I sat in playing second violin with friends of mine from the Chicago Symphony Orchestra: Qing Hou, on first violin, Larry Neuman on viola, and Brant Taylor on 'cello. The exception is when I scored the whole quartet for solo violin. I performed that bit of awkward musical gymnastics.