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Nonsense and stuff
Dec. 27th, 2015 10:30 pmToday I read Nonsense: The Power of Not Knowing, cover to cover, in an attempt to better understand ambiguity and how to get better at it. Four-Leaf came over yesterday and (though most of the visit was quite nice) she laughed at me for getting this for Christmas, and for about the next 1.5 seconds it was a very good thing I can't kill with my mind.
At any rate, it was a good book, and I liked the wide range of ambiguous situations it pulled into its discussion. People, it seems, are a lot more likely to meet ambiguity with open-minded curiosity when they are well-rested and are not feeling threatened. And I, it seems, have a higher-than-average drive for closure; raise your hand if you're shocked.
The most interesting, relevant bit for me right now was probably about ambiguities created by other people's ambivalence.
And in discussing a particular hostage-negotiation scenario,
Hmm... ouch... yeah, I think I've done that a lot. I'm so decisive myself that when someone is waffling it's very easy for me to think they really, secretly know where they stand and are just fucking me over, trying to let me down easy, lying to me or some other form of calculating duplicity. And if they say something about how they feel, I really have to consciously keep in mind that feelings change over time.
From the chapter on doing ambiguity right comes the idea of embracing confusion as an opportunity to learn, which of course people can only do if they feel safe but is at least a nice idea. There's also the idea that "resolving something -- fitting it into a mental box -- also means that you stop scrutinizing it. Recognition means closure, and it marks the end of thinking, looking and listening."
(Though I thought it went a bit far after that with "prematurely pinning down, like a dessicated butterfly in a display case, someone's vibrantly ambivalent or fluctuating mind-set." Shut up with the purple prose, dude.)
Anyway. This whole sitting with uncertainty thing can fuck you over in a competitive situation, where an enemy can keep one permanently off-balance by acting quickly inside your decision-making loop. And I don't actually want to stop being decisive. And I am trying not to feel like a completely unskilful human... I'm okay at handling ambiguity at work, and I do like puzzles, puns and riddles.
It's one of several things I want to work on, though.
At any rate, it was a good book, and I liked the wide range of ambiguous situations it pulled into its discussion. People, it seems, are a lot more likely to meet ambiguity with open-minded curiosity when they are well-rested and are not feeling threatened. And I, it seems, have a higher-than-average drive for closure; raise your hand if you're shocked.
The most interesting, relevant bit for me right now was probably about ambiguities created by other people's ambivalence.
...we can [easily] misinterpret genuine ambivalence as calculating duplicity. When we're trying to pin down someone's intentions.... we need to realize that ambivalence is a more natural state of mind than we ordinarily assume. Wanting and not wanting the same thing at the same time is so common that we might even consider it a baseline condition of human consciousness.
And in discussing a particular hostage-negotiation scenario,
N knew that K's plans were in flux, while R and J fixated on a snapshot. They picked out a fleeting moment in time and decided to treat an unstable and changeable intention as a stable, hidden one.
Hmm... ouch... yeah, I think I've done that a lot. I'm so decisive myself that when someone is waffling it's very easy for me to think they really, secretly know where they stand and are just fucking me over, trying to let me down easy, lying to me or some other form of calculating duplicity. And if they say something about how they feel, I really have to consciously keep in mind that feelings change over time.
From the chapter on doing ambiguity right comes the idea of embracing confusion as an opportunity to learn, which of course people can only do if they feel safe but is at least a nice idea. There's also the idea that "resolving something -- fitting it into a mental box -- also means that you stop scrutinizing it. Recognition means closure, and it marks the end of thinking, looking and listening."
(Though I thought it went a bit far after that with "prematurely pinning down, like a dessicated butterfly in a display case, someone's vibrantly ambivalent or fluctuating mind-set." Shut up with the purple prose, dude.)
Anyway. This whole sitting with uncertainty thing can fuck you over in a competitive situation, where an enemy can keep one permanently off-balance by acting quickly inside your decision-making loop. And I don't actually want to stop being decisive. And I am trying not to feel like a completely unskilful human... I'm okay at handling ambiguity at work, and I do like puzzles, puns and riddles.
It's one of several things I want to work on, though.
