The Hidden Paradox of Predictability
The weather forecast hasn't been very accurate in our region this year. Warnings of heavy snow storms were mostly false warnings. The response to the warnings was peoples started to store food supplies, fill tanks with fuel for heating homes and cancellation of some scheduled activities. The perceived risk acted as an external force for people to plan.
This is the irony. The unpredictable weather forecast led to the predictable behavior of people to snowy weather. This isn't the whole story. We live in an open system and we change the environment. By doing so, we increase the unpredictability of the weather forecast at the same time we depend on this unpredictability to determine our deterministic future plans!
We may heat limestone in a closed vessel. The volatile produced gas, carbon dioxide, has no way to escape. However; if we use an open vessel this gas may escape, release into the atmosphere, leading to the warming up of the atmosphere and make the weather more unpredictable. We still depend on weather forecasts to make plans for the future.
We interact socially. Like attracts like and we find people forming clusters of people that are bonded by a shared hobby. A cluster of fans supporting a soccer team in opposition of another cluster of fans who support another team is an example. The two clusters may be closed and information circulates among the cluster members. We may predict the behavior because of the closeness of the two clusters. Freedom and free will are confined because the shared denominator among the clusters' members is the support for their favorite teams. But football is a game and so is life. The rules of the game change, the players change, the tactics change, the coaches change, the referees change, the playing grounds change and the weather at playing times change. A soccer match may start in a sunny weather and only to be later interrupted by thunder and rain. How the players adapt will decide to a great extent the result of the match. The closed clusters of supporters can't change the result of the match. It is more what happens at the varying playing ground. It is the creativity of finding new ways to deal with changes and the individual creativity that decide more than anything else the result of the game.
We are like the waters in our bodies that may exist in solid, liquid or gas phases over a short range of conditions. We warm up the environment to warm us and produce more volatiles. As these volatiles escape they cause further warming up of the environment and making it more unpredictable. Yet; we still draw definite plans from the increasingly less predictable weather.
We prison ourselves in determinism. And we are the cause of making the environment (natural environment and work environment alike) less predictable. Back to the soccer example, one team scores a goal that the referee disallows. Tempers boil up, warming and warning heat up, volatility increases and arguments scale up in rejection for the referee's decision. The ball didn't cross the line and the referee shouldn't have crossed the line. New ideas emerge. Why not use video recording? Suddenly the rules of the game change.
May be in future matches we have self-tracking balls such as the self-tracking keys developed for cars. No matter what it is from the chaos that new ordering ideas shall emerge. We take our system to new levels of order that emerges from the chaos we induced.
Do I plan? Yes, but only to change the rules of planning.
""
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التعليقات
Ali Anani
منذ 7 سنوات #16
I am not surprised at all to read your fluency and flow of ideas dear Tausif Mundrawala on the smell sense and what a great read it is!. So, you have to excel and you are up to the challenge.
Ali Anani
منذ 7 سنوات #15
WOW! This response is a buzz on its own and a valuable one too CityVP \ud83d\udc1d Manjit, who contributed a buzz on "Freezing Your Mind". The freezing mind is the abstract ice instrumentt to generate music. You keep my soul warm dear Manjit even in the freezing ice.
CityVP Manjit
منذ 7 سنوات #14
#12 My hive colour for paradox, complexity, creativity, innovation and emergence is violet - a metaphor for ultra violet. Feedback itself is not a paradox but a leadership trait, so this hive colour is blue, and if anything you have reminded me that I have been skipping my own system here ! Why violet is important to me is because the power and ability of abstraction is not something everyone learns to see - at the level of abstraction we are no longer watching football but thinking how we change it. Now when it comes to scientific method and logic and reasoning, my colour for that is magenta (the magenta mind I like the sound of that), which is now separate from culture (yellow like sun). Of course just basic communication skills are GRAY, but it is gray which is at the foundation of learning. It is the two end-point colours of the spectrum which are the road less traveled - the Infra-Red of entrepreneurial mindset, financial mind and mathematical thinking and of course the Ultra-Violet. It is however ultra-violet which is my starting point for thinking about creative thinking and magenta my starting point for thinking about critical thinking. Where RED features is as an economics of predictability which is a totally different beast to the economics of possibility. Ironically predictability is red but possibility is violet - but that is the paradox for me here (without diminishing my other colour hives) - 1. Possibility found through predictability [RED] 2. Predictability found through possibility [VIOLET]
Ali Anani
منذ 7 سنوات #13
Ali Anani
منذ 7 سنوات #12
You are a unique thinker dear CityVP \ud83d\udc1d Manjit. Yes, fortunes swing and how many times the result of a game changed in the added extra time? Coaches plan and misfortunes happen like a defender scoring in his own net or a forward missing an empty goal. I love the way you put it "The chief paradox I am dealing with now is realizing that at the mass scale people are generally uncomfortable with feedback, even good feedback". I am asking myself now responding to your feedback "A mi comfortable"? May be not as much as I wanted. Why/ Because what if I misunderstood your comment? What if my response is shallow? Sometimes, the greater the comment is; paradoxicaly, the greater the discomfort is. I wonder what color you would give this paradox, Manjit!
Ali Anani
منذ 7 سنوات #11
With all honesty I tried to remember the name of the Fermi's Paradox and it just elapsed my memory. Thank you for reminding me of it. There is a lovely reference to youR question and it is startling. http://waitbutwhy.com/2014/05/fermi-paradox.html I shall be back with my personal view once I finish my pondering on your great comment dear
CityVP Manjit
منذ 7 سنوات #10
David B. Grinberg
منذ 7 سنوات #9
Ali Anani
منذ 7 سنوات #8
Great thoughts dear Sara Jacobovici. I appreciate your differences with me. Yes, local supporters can be of help. Yet; I have watched matches in which the supporters got so furious with the performance of their team and chanted for the opponent. What is assumed to be an asset turned into a liability. Despairing audience may turn their team into a bunch of runners. As for the prediction Almanac- it is an astonishing example and I wonder if predictability gets better, same or less. It is a striking example of trying to predict the future. In trying to predict, sometimes we increase unpredictability. Is the a behavior of complex systems? I need to think more. Thank you Sara for provoking my mind with your astute feedback.
Sara Jacobovici
منذ 7 سنوات #7
Ali Anani
منذ 7 سنوات #6
Thank you for making such profound reflection
Ali Anani
منذ 7 سنوات #5
Wonderfully expressed . You are eloquent and I agree with you. Your mentioning of making assumptions is correct ad relevant. Sadly, mostly our assumptions turn to be wrong.
Ali Anani
منذ 7 سنوات #4
You remind me Harvey Lloyd of the weather forecast that about 20 years ago predicted the weather in Brazil would be unusually frosting. It turned out to be and the price of brazilian coffee beans shot up. I fully concur with your lines "...Or am i a part of a much larger environment whereby i have to learn to be successful within"? Yes, I believe this is the better choice and you put your view firmly on ground with your sound explanations. I feel like saying we progressively live in a world of decreasing predictability.
Liesbeth Leysen, MSc.
منذ 7 سنوات #3
Mohammed Abdul Jawad
منذ 7 سنوات #2
Harvey Lloyd
منذ 7 سنوات #1