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Ideas I'm Mulling

By Buster Benson • Release notes

All that you touch you change. All that you change changes you. — Parable of the Sower, by Octavia Butler

We must transform ourselves to transform the world. — Grace Lee Boggs

The way forward is with a broken heart. — Alice Walker

What does a life deserving of human dignity require? — Martha Nussman

Every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you. — Walt Whitman

Index of Ideas I'm Mulling

An alphabetized list of ideas I keep coming back to for some reason.

Blagenflorble

A word I made up in my 2022 annual review that essentially means to be whole and broken at the same time. Things that are blagenflorble:

  • Politics: a completely messed up and broken system, and one that we should still wholeheartedly participate in.
  • Religion and spirituality: Deeply flawed and problematic in so many ways and yet still deeply wired in us as a primary mode for belonging and community and meaning-making.
  • Relationships: the source of our deepest traumas and deepest connections.
  • Careers: the path to independence and autonomy that requires giving up independence and autonomy.

Also related to the idea of brackishness: things that flow up and down at the same time.

Updates:

Brackishness

The word brackish technically means "slightly salty, as is the mixture of river water and seawater in estuaries". Generally this happens when a fresh water river meets a salt-water ocean, and the movement of the tides alternatively pulls salt water into the river, as the river pushes fresh water into the sea. But I use this word to think about anything that has a two-way flow, where there is no perfectly delineated boundary between the two things, and neither of the things is has control of the other.

One of the strongest and most interesting examples of brackishness in my opinion is the concept of "ontological designing", which is the basic idea that everything we design in this world, in turn will in turn design us back. We shape our environment to suit us, and then our environment shapes us and influences what we design in the future. This two-way dialogue between us and not-us, which together make up the natural world, can be seen everywhere once you begin to look for it.

Octavia Butler's book, The Parable of the Sower, repeats many times one of my favorite brackish lines of all time:

All that you touch you change. All that you change changes you. The only lasting truth is change. God is change.

Other examples of brackish things: debate, dialogue, conversations, the Hudson River, roads, neurons, feelings, plumbing, AC electrical current, cause and effect, brainstorming, language, maps, calendars, art, natural selection, service leadership, exercise, kinetic energy and motion, gravity, sleeping and waking, democracy, legal systems.

Updates:

Calendar and Clock Systems

I'm obsessed with clocks and calendars, and the various inventions we've come up with to track and measure and communicate and coordinate about time. They're one of our first inventions, going back many thousands of years... in some ways they don't even feel like an idea anymore. Calendars feel like a fundamental part of nature and spacetime. They're also a perfect example of brackishness in action. We designed our calendar systems to better understand the natural world, and our calendar systems in turn have greatly influenced how we think about the natural world. Seasons map very closely to solar equinoxes and solstices. Months were originally meant to approximate lunar cycles, but now we think of lunar cycles as loosely mapping to months. Weeks, and days of the week, on the other hand, have no counterpart in nature and yet Sunday feels as "real" as Summer. Monday feels as real as May. And, if aliens were observing us from afar, they may be able to observe changes in the world that map to days of the week (traffic patterns, business activity, etc) from space. In a very real way our calendar systems shape nature whether they have any "real" connection to nature at all. In actuality, we are a part of nature, so the systems we create are also a real part of nature.

The quirky calendar:

  • The calendar's years start at the beginnning of our current geological epoch, the Holocene, represented by the end of the last glacial period (9700 BCE). The year 2023 of the Gregorian calendar corresponds to the year 11,723 of the quirky calendar (QC).
  • Days begin at sunrise.
  • Every day has 12 parts: 6 equal parts between sunrise and sunset (cyan, turquoise, green, chartreuse, yellow, orange), and 6 equal parts between sunset and sunrise (scarlet, red, magenta, violet, indigo, azure).
  • Months begin at the first sunrise after a new moon.
  • Every month has 12 equal parts based on the relationship between the sun and the moon at the beginning of the day (month names TBD).
  • The year's start, and the seasons, depend on which hemisphere you're in.
  • Winter (and a new year) begins at the first sunrise after the first new moon after the longest night.
  • Spring begins at the first sunrise after the first new moon after the equinox between Winter and Summer.
  • Summer begins at the first sunrise after the first new moon after the shortest night.
  • Fall begins at the first sunrise after the first new moon after equinox between Summer and Winter.
  • Every year has 4 seasons, every season has either 3 or 4 months, and every year has 12 or 13 months.

Updates:

The Capabilities Approach

This is a moral and politicial philsophy that attempts to improve on the limitations of social contract theory and utilitarianism in a couple ways that I find very compelling. The central question that it strives to answer is "What does a life deserving of human dignity require?" One of the reasons I like it is because it avoids several pitfalls of a lot of the most popular moral and political philosophies. Instead of relying on explicit outcomes (like reports happiness or measurements of prosperity) it focuses on whether people feel like they have the capability / opportunity / agency to make certain choices about their own life, within their own circumstances. I like it because it treats each individual person as an end in themselves (not trying to do math about the greater good that often obscures and justifies inequalities).

Here is an abbreviated list of capabilities suggested by Martha Nussbaum in Creating Capabilities (via Wikipedia).

  • Life. Being able to live to the end of a human life of normal length; not dying prematurely, or before one's life is so reduced as to be not worth living.
  • Bodily Health. Being able to have good health, including reproductive health; to be adequately nourished; to have adequate shelter.
  • Bodily integrity. Being able to move freely from place to place; to be secure against violent assault, including sexual assault and domestic violence; having opportunities for sexual satisfaction and for choice in matters of reproduction.
  • Senses, Imagination, and Thought. Being able to use the senses, to imagine, think, and reason—and to do these things in a "truly human" way, a way informed and cultivated by an adequate education, including, but by no means limited to, literacy and basic mathematical and scientific training. Being able to use imagination and thought in connection with experiencing and producing works and events of one's own choice, religious, literary, musical, and so forth. Being able to use one's mind in ways protected by guarantees of freedom of expression with respect to both political and artistic speech, and freedom of religious exercise. Being able to have pleasurable experiences and to avoid non-beneficial pain.
  • Emotions. Being able to have attachments to things and people outside ourselves; to love those who love and care for us, to grieve at their absence; in general, to love, to grieve, to experience longing, gratitude, and justified anger. Not having one's emotional development blighted by fear and anxiety. (Supporting this capability means supporting forms of human association that can be shown to be crucial in their development.)
  • Practical Reason. Being able to form a conception of the good and to engage in critical reflection about the planning of one's life. (This entails protection for the liberty of conscience and religious observance.)
  • Affiliation: Community. Being able to live with and toward others, to recognize and show concern for other humans, to engage in various forms of social interaction; to be able to imagine the situation of another. (Protecting this capability means protecting institutions that constitute and nourish such forms of affiliation, and also protecting the freedom of assembly and political speech.)
  • Affiliation: Belonging. Having the social bases of self-respect and non-humiliation; being able to be treated as a dignified being whose worth is equal to that of others. This entails provisions of non-discrimination on the basis of race, sex, sexual orientation, ethnicity, caste, religion, national origin and species.
  • Other Species. Being able to live with concern for and in relation to animals, plants, and the world of nature.
  • Play. Being able to laugh, to play, to enjoy recreational activities.
  • Control Over One's Environment: Political. Being able to participate effectively in political choices that govern one's life; having the right of political participation, protections of free speech and association.
  • Control Over One's Environment: Material. Being able to hold property (both land and movable goods), and having property rights on an equal basis with others; having the right to seek employment on an equal basis with others; having the freedom from unwarranted search and seizure. In work, being able to work as a human, exercising practical reason and entering into meaningful relationships of mutual recognition with other workers.

Updates:

Chalant

Chalant is the opposite of nonchalant. Where nonchalance is cool, casual, and unaffected, chalant comes in hot, tries too hard, and is overly earnest and awkward. But on the other hand, it's also true to our unfiltered, uncurated, authentic self. It's the opposite of trying to fit in in order to get along with others. It's a refusal to be inauthentic in exchange for acceptance. A demand for authenticity, even at the risk of not being accepted. Permission to stay connected to what we really care about, and who we really are, even if it's not legible or rewarded by others or the world.

Updates:

Codex Vitae (aka Book of Life or Book of Beliefs)

This is an idea coined by Robin Sloan in his book Mr Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore. The idea is to write a book, the Codex Vitae or Book of Life, that represents everything one has learned in their life. I think of it less as a perfect representation of my life or beliefs or thoughts, and more of a snapshot of how I saw the world and which parts of my worldview I would most like to pass on. It's not an easy thing to write, but it's quite rewarding to attempt.

Updates:

Cognitive Biases

There are around 200 cognitive biases that have been identified over the years. In 2016 I tried to find some way of understanding them through the lens of problems that they help our brains solve (instead of only focusing on their side effects) and published the cognitive bias cheat sheet. John Manoogian III created the poster version to go along with it. This post ended up going kind of viral (over 1.5M reads) and led to an editor reaching out to me and the 2019 publication of my book Why Are We Yelling: The Art of Productive Disagreement.

My biggest take-away from this whole arc of interest is that we have biases out of necessity, and they can never be "fixed".

The 3 conundrums

There are 3 conundrums in the universe that limit our ability to be aware of it, make sense of it, and act on it.

  1. Information: There’s too much information (so we must filter it). Noise becomes signal. The downside: we don’t see everything. Some of the information we filter out is actually useful and important.
  2. Meaning: There’s not enough meaning (so we use stories to make sense). Signal becomes a story. The downside: our search for meaning can conjure illusions. We sometimes imagine details that were filled in by our assumptions, and construct meaning and stories that aren’t really there.
  3. Time: There’s not enough time (so we motivate towards action). Stories become decisions. The downside: quick decisions can be seriously flawed. Some of the quick reactions and decisions we jump to are unfair, self-serving, and counter-productive.

The 3 ways we compensate for the conundrums

To compensate for these three conundrums, we've come up with 13 broad strategies.

  1. We filter information...
  • By depending on the context
  • By accepting what comes to mind
  • By amplifying the bizarre
  • By noticing the new and surprising
  • By reducing to take-aways
  1. We confabulate stories...
  • By filling in the gaps
  • By favoring the familiar
  • By treating experience as reality
  • By simplifying mental math
  • By being overconfident
  1. We jump to conclusions...
  • By sticking to the status quo
  • By protecting existing beliefs
  • By doing the safe thing

Instead of memorizing 200+ oddly named cognitive biases that each have a complicated scientific history (some of which is being seriously questioned these days) I've found that orienting around the 3 conundrums and 13 strategies has helped me not only notice situations where bias is going to have a harmful effect, but to also avoid solutions that reduce one kind of bias only to double down on another kind.

Updates:

Prisoner's Dilemma

I love everything about prisoner's dilemma (wikipedia) because it is a way to think about collaboration and competition directly, and to even experiment with different ideas to test their practicality in different kinds of situations. It's a little difficult to fully get at first, but then incredibly rich once you do. I've held 3 prisoner's dilemma tournaments the last couple years. The twist on the other games is that in my tournaments people decide on strategies within 3 teams, and so the "dilemma" takes a few different forms: the strategy you have against people on other teams, the strategy your team has against other teams, and the strategy you have within your own team. It has led to some really interesting results that I'm still trying to fully understand. It's a set of questions and ideas that my brain seems to return to when it has a little spare time between other projects.

Updates:

Productive Disagreements

I've been mulling this idea for a while… so there's a lot of context to include here.

First, a definition: disagreements are conversations where there are two or more perspectives that differ in an unacceptable way. These differing perspectives can exist within ourselves, between individuals, between groups, etc. It's important to consider the word "unacceptable" here too, because if what we have is an difference that we find acceptable, for whatever reason, then it's not a disagreement. Within the realm of all disagreements, the productive ones are those that result in one of four fruit: insight, connection, enjoyment, and/or security. Most unproductive disagreements fixate on the fruit of security above all else (getting a concession from the other side that they have let go of their difference), but I strongly believe that if we focus on the other three fruit first that the fourth one comes as a freebie.

The ability to have productive disagreements is, in my opinion, one of the most important meta-skills for us to cultivate. I wrote a book titled Why Are We Yelling?: The Art of Productive Disagreement about 8 tips for cultivating this skill. They are:

  1. Watch how anxiety sparks
  2. Talk to your internal voices
  3. Develop honest bias
  4. Speak for yourself
  5. Ask questions that invite surprising answers
  6. Build arguments together
  7. Cultivate neutral spaces
  8. Accept reality, then participate in it

As far as how this continues to be an idea that I am mulling, I think even with these 8 tips, there is a lifetime of practice and mastery required in order to actually be able to fully live up to the possibility of productive disagreement. I'm definitely no master, myself. Even the first step, of watching how anxiety sparks, encapsulates a lifetime of mastery. So maybe the real interest behind this interest is in continuing to keep these questions and practices alive in my life, and continue to follow the new paths that open up as a result of having productive disagreements with people in my life.

Updates:

Wicked Problems

I'm obsessed with the kinds of problems that can't be solved by heroic acts -- the kind that don't fit into our narrative structures and therefore become almost invisible to us because they resist critical thinking and standard problem solving. I took all of the qualities from the wicked problem Wikipedia page and tried to combine them and group them into somewhat coherent categories.

PERSONAL: We can’t avoid the problem

  • Personal. The problem affects us directly, but can’t be solved on our own.
  • Not urgent. Most of the impact is in the future, making it easy to delay treating it urgently right now. And yet, time is running out to implement potential solutions.
  • Getting worse. The problem gets harder to solve as time goes on. The effects of the problem and the resources needed to solve it increase over time.
  • Existential. The problem is ultimately fatal if left unaddressed.

DIFFICULT: The solutions require incredible investment up front

  • Expensive. Every solution to a wicked problem, if they can even be imagined, is exorbitantly expensive.
  • Unconvincing. Proposed solutions that some think are good also spark great resistance from others. The ideal problem solvers are out of contact with the problems and potential solutions.
  • Uncompromising. Multiple solutions can work against each other, making it hard to execute on several at once.

COMPLEX: The problem is hard to pin down

  • Unique. Every wicked problem has unique qualities that differentiate it from all previous problems it might be compared to.
  • Multifaceted. The scope and consequences of the problem can’t be fully understood from a single perspective. There’s no single holistic view of the entire problem.
  • Ambiguous. Different interpretations of the problem will generate contradictory solutions.
  • Systemic. There are numerous possible intervention points. No single intervention will solve the problem once and for all.
  • Interconnected. Most problems are symptoms of solutions to past problems, and most solutions will create new wicked problems while exacerbating existing ones.
  • No accountability. There’s no central authority responsible for the problem or for solving it. Affected parties have radically different world views, different frames for understanding the problem, and will be hurt by it to varying degrees.

CONFLICTED: There’s vast disagreement about viable solutions

  • Complicit. Those seeking to solve the problem are also directly or indirectly benefiting from it in some way.
  • Unviable. Ideological constraints, cultural constraints, political constraints, and economic constraints make proposed solutions unviable.
  • Unpredictable. Some solutions include worst case scenarios that are worse than the problem, and oftentimes more immediate. Most predictive models of the problem generate unreliable predictions.
  • Unmeasurable. Data about the problem is often uncertain, ambiguous, or missing. Unintended consequences of proposed solutions are difficult to estimate or prevent before fully implementing them.

Updates: