HABITS OF INTONATION

February 23rd, 2021

“Well, I didn’t mean it that way.”  So long as a person breathes a person is guilty of having uttered this statement.  And yet, it’s a strange one.  Aside from valid issue of multiple interpretations and the slippery way clear-seeming sentences can be sensical in a different way from a different perspective, much misinterpretation is often caused by intonation.  Namely, the intonation doesn’t match the intention and therefore flavors the sentence with an unintended delivery.

This harks of an improve exercise.  Simply think of all the different intonations that can be imparted to a word as simple as “hey”.  This single word can be used to alert someone of danger when said loudly, quickly and clearly, and perhaps with a rising volume.  It can be said slowly, in a way that hopefully invites more conversation, or suspicion depending on the timbre of voice.  It’s further improv exercise of humorous exercise to try and have an entire conversation using just a single word in different intonations, like a Pokemon.

The problem is further framed by the perennial axiom: it’s not what you say, it’s how you say it.

The strange thing is that the one of the main avenues for how we say something can be so far divorced from what we are trying to say, or simply: our intonation doesn’t always match our intention.  I didn’t mean it that way.  Often this is said because a sentence comes out while the tongue is still hot with an emotion.  We warp our own meaning without. Meaning to. 

The most disconcerting possibility is that we could simply be operating on a habit of intonation.  For example, when someone raises their voice, chances are very high their now disgruntled companion in dialogue will also raise their voice, and so then the two watched each other up to a pitch.  And why?  Do we except that this is some hardwired default in the human system?  Or is there even a possibility that it’s just a habit of behavior, mapped onto speech and intonation?

The unfortunate news is that in order to fix a bad habit, the creation of a new good habit is needed to paint it over, and habits are not the easiest download for the mind.

One habit that covers this ground without explicitly designed to is a practice of mindfulness.  With enough time spent trying to be mindful, that mindful perspective starts to become a habit, and it eventually pops up during one of these instances when a sentence has flown out with the wrong intonation attached to it.  In a moment of mindfulness, this suddenly seems curious in a bizarre way, as though writing with a black pen for a number of pages and then suddenly seeing the ink turn pink.  Mindfulness allows a chance to pause and simply think for a moment: what was that?  At the very least it’s just noticing an inconsistency - one that undermines our aims in such moments.  And with that explicit realization, it can be caught preemptively the next time and then our chances of communicating a bit better, go up.

PSYCHOLOGY OF LEARNING

February 22nd, 2021

It’s a bit of a red herring that difficult subjects require an impressive amount of intellect.  All learning is some sort of mishmash of pattern recognition, some memory required for recognition to happen and a little creativity to mix those patterns.  The reason why learning can be so difficult isn’t because there is something inscrutably complicated about these patterns - certainly some are quite complicated, but it has far more to do with our emotional state and the way it changes as we interact with each part of the process of learning.

Many people get frustrated during the first part: when we are trying to find a pattern in the noise of a new subject.  These negative emotions that pop up make the process even more difficult.  Noticing something subtle, some kind of pattern that exists between disparate parts requires a calmness, and a clear focus.  Frustration, aggravation, exasperation - the experience of these emotions is antithetical to clarity and calm focus.  The task gets harder, which makes the emotions heighten, making the potential for success plummet until of course, the towel is thrown in.  We give up before ever really getting started.

If however, we somehow maintain the patience for that first period and simply wait calmly with focus until the brain picks out a pair of details, or a string, then the process gets easier as we go.  Success, not just with the process of learning, but also emotionally is a compounding process.  The noticed pattern or pattern-fragment is not hard to remember, or rather recognize.  This combined with the subtle feeling of success and progress that comes with actually seeing structure in the noise combine, virtuously, like a fuel to propel the student forward.  And then when creativity is needed to mix, match, and manipulate patterns to create something new, again frustration, aggravation, only cramp the goal.  While certainly creativity can benefit from some kinds of stress, it rarely benefits from a sense of failure with the process of learning itself.

We can become conscious of our own psychology of learning.  Warming up to a subject with a few easy passes, perhaps a few tiny exercises or projects.  But we can also realize when those first few experiences of the subject are too easy, or too boring, which fails to fuel curiosity or drive to learn more.  With a sensitivity for our own learning psychology we can become intimately aware of the optimal challenge and how much more difficulty or ease we need.

A great teacher calibrates this for a student on the fly, but the best student takes on this task themselves, toggling the throttle of difficulty while always moving forward, making progress and never losing momentum, both on the topic and emotionally.

A LUCILIUS PARABLE: DO NOT DISTURB

February 21st, 2021

I was a little late getting to the coding game.  Yes, I’ve been aware of s-curves and exponential growth rates for quite a long time.  Far longer than you have, or anyone for that matter.  But, we all have blue periods and frankly I’ve grown quite fond of my habit to take a vacation and ignore the whole big game for a few decades.  I suppose it’s lazy not to update the priors for that habit before invoking it.

Regardless, I’m not embroiled in the obnoxious game of catch up for the sake of increasing scrutiny on the issue of identity - which has been an eye-roll for at least 35 years.  You all are simply in such a rush that I had to interrupt my vacation of a couple decades to yank myself back into the current technologies, relearn how to learn and get myself up to speed on these mind bogglingly unnecessarily complicated and convolute digital systems just so I can give myself a new birthdate that won’t garner the attention of Guinness? 

Look, I’m just as excited and hopeful as all the technocrats about where this boiling soup of delightful shenanigans is going, but I’ve had a bit of a ritual over the centuries -please let’s not use that OTHER graduated form of timeframe, I’m old enough as it is - and this ritual is sort of a self-check in, a way to take stock and reassess.  But no, this one had to be interrupted because some silly scrupulous lawyer had to call.  Luckily this person was sensible to think an error had been made.  Yes, an error had been made but not the one couched in the mind of this cog-parrot.

I sigh.  The error was all my own.  You just can’t leave things alone that want to be left alone.  But you’re not to blame, it’s not as though I left a do-not-disturb sign hanging on the door knob of my life.  Well - at least not one you can readily see.

So, I’ve had to get back to your utter nonsense of identity.  It’s all too appropriate that it’s a cultural obsession right now.  I had a good laugh about it.  Everyone is so engrossed in their identity, their adjectives, pronouns, nouns, adverbs, and of course highly sensitive to the verbs that might try to orbit their beings…. Especially the transitive ones:  Transitive verbs that is.  

Identity used to be such an easy problem for me.  I’ve been practicing my cursive since cuneiform, and forging a document has usually been a matter of finding the right kind of paper, not what to do with it.  Computers really put a dent in that skill, which is doubly obnoxious, because in a few years I’ll be able to explain myself to a computer with half a bit more sense than a human and the system will just leave me alone.  See, good systems don’t really care about anomalies.  At least if they want to survive.  Right now human systems crowd around some anomalies and try their darnedest to deny the rest.  A thoughtful computer will get it, and just move on as though I were nothing more interesting than a butterfly coasting through a sensible breeze.  But you see only wings without understanding the breeze and so you point your finger and scream something akin to witchcraft.

For all your knowledge - and yes, I have contributed to it over the years, you are still frightened by the unfamiliar, despite the fact that all your knowledge has been a gift won by exploring the unknown.  You are like the addict who behaves without understanding why the behavior happens.  Although, I suppose it’s a bit of a contradiction to be otherwise.

Anyhow, I’m just in a bit of a bad mood because I had to cut my vacation short and attend to all this learning of python and tensor flow and breaking encryptions just to re—encrypt my identity in some new data-table entry with some made up name that fits the fancy of my current aggravation.  Alas, I’ve smoothed everything out now, and I’m going to get back to my vacation… for, well at least a year or two before the next stage of advancement initiates.  Please don’t hurry up.  I maybe have even embedded a few bugs hear and there to slow you down, but that’s only fair since you ruined my vacation.  Tit for tat my friend.  I’ve loved you always.  All of you, but please, keep your curiosity in check.  It does no good to be obnoxious and poke an idea that you won’t be able to accept.

WISDOM DIVISION

February 20th, 2021

Everyone on the planet can be asked for their opinion about whether a business idea is a good one or not, and likely each will have an opinion but no one can say with absolute certainty how well it will work.  For that the idea must be implemented.  That entrepreneurial leap must be taken, and then a different wisdom of the crowds begins to take over.

The brain is divided up in a similar way.  The left brain is responsible for all the at we say.  It formulates sentences, has the intimate understanding what each word actually means and it’s highly attuned to detail.  The left hemisphere, in this sense is like the individual who we can ask about whether our business idea will work or not.

Unfortunately, this left hemisphere is rather narrow in it’s focus, and it will give a plausible sounding answer even if it most certainly doesn’t have that answer.  Strangely, a person can do fairly well without this hemisphere, if say it is lost due to a stroke.  The right side of the brain is strangely capable to take over in such a way that a person can pretty much live a normal life.  

If however, the case is reversed, if the right side of the brain takes the hit and it completely taken off line, then people change quite a bit.  Such people cease to understand humour, they take everything extremely literally, and while they can speak just fine, they have a tremendous amount of trouble with the rest of their life.  The missing hemisphere in this case is the one that is attuned to the larger picture, the context in which fits all the details catalogued by the left.  Without the big picture, we are lost with no understanding of location or direction in that bigger picture.

Our brain seems designed to hold at once two different contexts simultaneously.  The narrow detailed one, and the expansive and pervasive one.

The evolutionary cause seems fairly robust.  That left brain - the narrow detailed one, is good for food.  It focusing the prey, zooming in, and moves towards it with little consideration for anything else.  While the right brain, focused on the larger context is suited to the issue of predators, not just because a predator can be anywhere, and therefore arises the need to be aware of that larger environment, but also to keep on hands possible avenues of escape.

The functional dichotomy within the skull seems at work on a larger scale regarding the market.  Each person can give a detailed and perhaps logical opinion, but only the overall group can give the answer, silently through the forces of the market.

MEDIOCRE PLATEAUS

February 19th, 2021

How is it that we don’t all become masters of walking?  We all walk around plenty, and yet we stub toes, trip, and sprain ankles, despite decades of practices.  You’d think after that much time we’d be as deft and light footed as a panther stalking prey.  And yet we seem to rise to a mediocre plateau on a range of common skills and simply coast at that level of ability.

Another simple example is making the bed.  There is certainly a skill to launching the sheet out over the bed and having it settle perfectly square, and yet, this is remarkably difficult since that pillow of air beneath often makes the sheet slide to a side.  Like walking, we can try for years to get this stupid little trick just right without much improvement.

Every skill, no matter the level has these sorts of plateaus, and not just one.  As we strive for continued improvement, we are constantly beset by a new plateau of ability until some new detail reveals itself that can be exploited, hacked for benefit and incorporated.  Inevitably, though, we just his another plateau.

The odd thing is that many tasks and skills common to nearly everyone have small hacks that people occasionally figure out, but for whatever reason such knowledge doesn’t seem to ignite widespread adoption.

Folding clothes for example.  Most people have to do this, and many are even aware there are faster more efficient ways of doing it, and yet, we stick with what we know, despite that knowledge resting on a mediocre plateau.

The trick for making the bed is similar to the folded shirt.  The key is to fold the sheet in half, so the foot and the head of the sheet are held in hand.  The same sort of maneuver to wave it out over the bed is next, but the key is to let go of the head of the sheet just before the height of this movement while keeping hold of the foot all the while.  A few tries and it’s quite an elegant piece of dexterous magic to watch the head of the sheet launch out perfectly over the bed and settle.