At Monterey Bay Aquarium.
Alex Soojung-Kim Pang, Ph.D.
I study people, technology, and the worlds they make
Month: August 2008 (page 1 of 4)
Not a surprise, I suppose.
At Monterey Bay Aquarium.
The Real Cost Cafe is the kids’ favorite exhibit.
John Kay, in a review of Philip Tetlock’s book Expert Political Judgment: How Good Is It? How Can We Know?, talking about Isaiah Berlin and expert opinion:
Isaiah Berlin, historian of ideas, made a distinction between the intelligence of the hedgehog – which knows one big thing – and the intelligence of the fox – which knows many little things. Hedgehogs fit what they learn into a world view. Foxes improvise explanations case by case. The world needs both but today it needs fewer hedgehogs and more foxes. Berlin’s terms are used to describe styles of reasoning by the American psychologist Philip Tetlock, who has spent 20 years asking pundits to predict who will win elections, what countries will acquire nuclear weapons or enter the European Union and how the first Gulf war would end. He has tested 30,000 predictions from 300 experts against outcomes.
Mr Tetlock finds that his respondents are not very good. They do better than a chimp who answers at random, but not much, and worse than simple forecasting rules based on extrapolation. But some pundits are better than others. A little knowledge is helpful. Dilettantes – people with the information you will acquire from diligent reading of this newspaper – do much better than undergraduates who based their judgment on a one-page summary of the issues. But experts have little advantage over dilettantes. The reputation of the experts is a guide to which are worth following. But not in the way you might expect. Bad forecasters are consulted more frequently than good ones. The more famous the expert, the worse his prognostications….
Foxes are better at prediction than hedgehogs because they derive information from many sources, adjust their views in line with events and see a range of perspectives on each situation. Hedgehogs have one clear view, seek evidence that confirms that view and have ready explanations for apparent failures of foresight.
But these hedgehog characteristics are exactly those that politicians, journalists and business leaders demand of advisers and commentators. Harry Truman famously sought a one-armed economist, who would never say: “On the one hand, then on the other.” Broadcast media look for snappy soundbites. Corporate executives demand “the elevator pitch” for new ideas. Fund managers want specific forecasts. Business audiences do not want to hear that the world is a complex and uncertain place. But, unfortunately, it is.
(John Kay, “The World Needs More Foxes and Fewer Hedgehogs,” Financial Times, 20 June 2006)
Via Mid-Life MBA.
There is a line among the fragments of the Greek poet Archilochus which says: ‘The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing’. Scholars have differed about the correct interpretation of these dark words, which may mean no more than that the fox, for all his cunning, is defeated by the hedgehog’s one defense. But, taken figuratively, the words can be made to yield a sense in which they mark one of the deepest differences which divide writers and thinkers, and, it may be, human beings in general. For there exists a great chasm between those, on one side, who relate everything to a single central vision, one system less or more coherent or articulate, in terms of which they understand, think and feel-a single, universal, organizing principle in terms of which alone all that they are and say has significance-and, on the other side, those who pursue many ends, often unrelated and even contradictory, connected, if at all, only in some de facto way, for some psychological or physiological cause, related by no moral or aesthetic principle; these last lead lives, perform acts, and entertain ideas that are centrifugal rather than centripetal, their thought is scattered or diffused, moving on many levels, seizing upon the essence of a vast variety of experiences and objects for what they are in themselves, without consciously or unconsciously, seeking to fit them into, or exclude them from, any one unchanging, all-embracing, sometimes self-contradictory and incomplete, at times fanatical, unitary inner vision. (from Isaiah Berlin, The Hedgehog and the Fox)
I discovered this picture that my son took with my camera while we were at a cafe in Hamburg.
via flickr
After he took the picture, he went to the bathroom and managed to get himself locked in a stall. The manager had to get him out.
I fully intend to tell that story again at his wedding.
Gregg Zachary in last week's New York Times wrote a terrific little piece on "a little-noticed movement in the world of professional design and engineering: a renewed appreciation for manual labor, or innovating with the aid of human hands."
Using computers to model the physical world has become increasingly common; products as diverse as cars and planes, pharmaceuticals and cellphones are almost entirely conceived, specified and designed on a computer screen. Typically, only when these creations are nearly ready for mass manufacturing are prototypes made — and often not by the people who designed them.
However, some engineers and designers are realizing that there are losses that come from virtualizing. There have long been stories of students who design things on CAD that are impossible to manufacture, or that are 10 or 100 times too large, because virtualizing the design process divorces it from actual things. As one designer I know put it, learning to draw teaches common sense; doing things on a computer doesn't. Or as Gregg puts it, "'A lot of people get lost in the world of computer simulation,' says Bill Burnett, executive director of the product design program at Stanford. 'You can’t simulate everything.'"
Creative designers and engineers are rebelling against their alienation from the physical world. "The hands-on part is for me a critical aspect of understanding how to design," said Michael Kuniavsky , a consultant in San Francisco who for three years has convened a summer gathering of leading designers, called "Sketching in Hardware." …
Fifty years ago, tinkering with gadgets was routine for people drawn to engineering and invention. When personal computers became widespread starting in the 1980s, “we tended to forget the importance of physical senses,” says Richard Sennett, a sociologist at the London School of Economics.
Making refinements with your own hands — rather than automatically, as often happens with a computer — means “you have to be extremely self-critical,” says Mr. Sennett, whose book “The Craftsman” (Yale University Press, 2008), examines the importance of “skilled manual labor,” which he believes includes computer programming.
Even in highly abstract fields, like the design of next-generation electronic circuits, some people believe that hands-on experiences can enhance creativity. “You need your hands to verify experimentally a technology that doesn’t exist,” says Mario Paniccia, director of Intel’s photonics technology lab in Santa Clara, Calif. Building optical switches in silicon materials, for example, requires engineers to test the experimental switches themselves, and to build test equipment, too.
Bringing human hands back into the world of digital designers may have profound long-term consequences. Designs could become safer, more user-friendly and even more durable.
This is particularly important right now, I think, because we're in a period in which more and more high-tech design is aimed not at creating things that are going to be used by other engineers, or in carefully predictable and constrained circumstances- clean rooms or server rooms, for example- or just online; but that will be used out in the world, every day. The rediscovery of the senses in design is another sign of the decline of cyberspace, and the assumption that you could- or should seek to- create worlds that had nothing to do with the real world. Designing for the world means designing in the world.
The New York Times recently had an article on how the U.S. electric grid is turning out to hinder the development of wind power:
When the builders of the Maple Ridge Wind farm spent $320 million to put nearly 200 wind turbines in upstate New York, the idea was to get paid for producing electricity. But at times, regional electric lines have been so congested that Maple Ridge has been forced to shut down even with a brisk wind blowing.
That is a symptom of a broad national problem. Expansive dreams about renewable energy, like Al Gore’s hope of replacing all fossil fuels in a decade, are bumping up against the reality of a power grid that cannot handle the new demands.
The dirty secret of clean energy is that while generating it is getting easier, moving it to market is not.
The grid today, according to experts, is a system conceived 100 years ago to let utilities prop each other up, reducing blackouts and sharing power in small regions. It resembles a network of streets, avenues and country roads….
The basic problem is that many transmission lines, and the connections between them, are simply too small for the amount of power companies would like to squeeze through them. The difficulty is most acute for long-distance transmission, but shows up at times even over distances of a few hundred miles….
The power grid is balkanized, with about 200,000 miles of power lines divided among 500 owners. Big transmission upgrades often involve multiple companies, many state governments and numerous permits. Every addition to the grid provokes fights with property owners.
I've heard that some utilities also have trouble with buying power from consumers- running the meter backward, as some like to call it- because their grids aren't designed to take power from the edges (i.e. households): grids are designed around what you might call a broadcast model, not a peer-to-peer model.
Add REST: WHY YOU GET MORE DONE WHEN YOU WORK LESS to your Goodreads shelf
My books on Goodreads
The Distraction Addiction: Getting the Information You Need and the Communication You Want, Without Enraging Your Family, Annoying Your Colleagues, and Destroying Your Soul
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ratings: 316 (avg rating 3.53)
ratings: 316 (avg rating 3.53)
