“Mistakes are beautiful.” Because they introduce a touch of reality to the perfect beauty. They make flawlessness breathe. I have written this article originally for my Turkish fellow citizens. I learned this adage from a conversation at BBC Prime. I believe mistakes are beautiful everywhere on the earth. But please excuse my verbosity for my heartfelt urge to speak out for the benefit of my country’s sensuous people. My word stands primarily for them.
“A player has to pass through some furniture on the stage and run to the front… Unfortunately, an other player hits a chair and the first player’s running way is closed. What would a master player do in this situation? What would you yourself do in this situation?
“According to the character of the play, a master player chooses to: 1- ‘Oh, God would this happen to me also?’, if the play is a serious one such as a tragedy. 2– ‘Haha, only this was missing on my way!’, if the play is a comedy. In the mean time, somebody would rempve the chair from his way.
An experienced performer or artist makes the best out of the unexpected and sometime unwelcome ingredients he meets during his creative process.
A master performance artist, a violonist, shows his skill when he makes a glitch. He uses this slip as a touch of naturalness or may be as a little spicing and converts it to a natural element of her performance.
Isn’t it the same in our daily lives? The more we accept as natural, the mishaps or mistakes we encounter and manage them to our purpose, don’t we get the less hurt and be successful?
Mistakes are beautiful. Because they introduce a touch of reality to the perfect beauty. They make flawlessness breathe.
If mistakes are beautiful, then are errors also beautiful?
Hmm, I am not sure. Because as a result of an error somebody gets hurt, or irrecoverable loses may occur sometimes. But this does not mean that, we should live without making any errors. Is it possible not to make any mistakes? If you have done a mistake you pay or make up for its consequences and you continue. Even if you are punished heavily, sometimes some errors may end up with good or beautiful consequences.
Adam and Eve’s story from the Hollybooks tell this gracefully. After Adam and Eve eat the apple, they
Pay the cost of this error by being thrown out of the paradise. Just think, when viewed from the point of its consequences, aren’t the Holly Books giving the message, that not only the mistakes but even the errors may end up happily at the end of the day?
One should not forget discrepancies. If somebody’s discrepancy or misjudgings have caused the failure of a task, this is the deficiency of that person. One other meaning of deficiency is: a part or element of a finished work which does not comply with generally accepted rules or is not percieved good according to the established appreciation habits.
The role of mistakes and discrepancies in creativity can hardly be ignored. Mozart and many other genius artists’ works are full of ‘discrepancies’ or mistakes that do not abide by the rules that are thought at schools. If a creator does not make mistakes, and apply only the rules written in the theory books, then he can not create original works. It is not the fact that you have made a mistake, but
the way you correct it. How you make that mistake meaningful in such a way that it does not hurt your personality… It is being able. Being able to make a mistake...
Forget about the fear of making a mistake or doing something that will not abide by the principles of your way of doing things. Instead welcome every error and mistake with joy. Wonder what is the thing that has caused you or opponent do this mistake. What can you do with this information? How can you update your point of view and how can you say and do more effective things? Wonder how can you make up for this error and more important make it meaningful?
I wonder, how can a mistake be made more beautiful?
Note: A company, any institution or society has to define what is discrepancy, what is mistake or error
without any hesitation in order to be successful.
4 Kasım 2008 Salı
19 Ağustos 2008 Salı
THINKING STABILITY
(draft)
Thinking stability is a phenomenon that can be observed in brain’s cognitive processes. Stability is an issue in not only cognitive but also emotional processes. It is also possible to witness the word stability in relation with mental stability. On the other hand, stability is a recent issue in neural network models, which are supposedly the basis of brain’s working. Philosophically, Sartre has pondered about a ‘psychic balance’ which has homeostatic limits.
Imagine a friend who has just returned from a long distance vacation and joined your company of three at a caffee… She not only tells everthing she has seen but also changes the subject frequently and tells many unrelated things about her voyage. This is a socially common situation. If a firm context has not been established, the content of the talk can not have stability around a single subject.
You can observe the use of fluently changing subjects by some teachers. The teacher changes the subject so that, his pupil get the opportunity to look at the original subject matter from very different possibly almost unrelated viewpoints… At the end, the teacher succeeds not to tell the fact but make his students understand the truth themselves.
Teaching is a strongly destabilizing process. Learning process requires instability by definition. We should open ourselves to new ideas and accept to discuss the strength of our old ideas. This causes instability both cognitively and possibly emotionally in the case of young people.
Whether done for voluntary or involuntary reasons, changing of subject with a not well formed context, or continuous changing of content are strong signs of the loss of thinking stability.
Thinking depth is the depth in terms of abstraction levels from the subject matter. For example, if you talk about a specific person and then make comments on the nature of women on general and continue on to the character of the human-beings, you have increased the thinking depth three levels of abstraction. Increasing the thinking depth unnecessarily or doing so in every little subject you talk about indicates there is instability in your thinking.
An other case is, the speaker does not increase the depth but gives many examples and continues to give details making the listeners bored. Thinking more than necessary details continuously etc. indicates that there is a problem in your stopping process of your thinking. Thinking stability requires enough details and economic use of mental energy so that there is space for continued mental activity.
Thinking happens in a social environment. If the speed of your information flow to the listeners is much higher than they can understand, this indicates an instability in your communication ability or the structure of your thinking. The functionality of the elements of your thinking and its general structure establish its stability.
The quality of thinking is also important. If you are speaking about a subject but can not reach a conclusion this may also indicate an instability in your thinking. A stable thinking should run into its end. In some cases, such as scetching in art or in brain-storming instability is required by definition.
A special case of thinking instability is remembering things from the past too many. A healthy, stable way of thinking does not get obsessed with the past, of course unless you are a historian writing a history book. Thinking stability requires a healthy balance in the sense of time; past, now and future.
Thinking stability requires a balanced approach to the importance of things in life, family, profession, nation, beliefs, ideas, feelings, everything. Getting obsessed with one of these for long durations hurts the thinking stability of that person. On the other hand, obsession is a precious mental tool that helps us to overcome difficulties. Some professions such as engineering, art etc. requires frequent use of obsessions. It is no wonder, a rate of thinking instability of varying degrees from utilization to mental instability is not uncommon in these professions.
Other than cognition, many examples for perceptional, emotional and motor stability, can be given. For example, sometimes you may need to move and do something continuously or you may answer and react to people extremely quickly and later on find you have said something wrong etc. These examples may be stretched from temporary behavioral abnomolies to mental stability problems in terms of health seriousness.
Loss of thinking stability as a continuous situation may be an indication of various mental problems. On the other hand, a constant strong stability in thinking may also be indicative of other mental problems. A healthy level of dinamism may be necessary to cope with the difficulties of life. The relentless change in our lives requires a certain level of elasticity in our thinking.
Unfortunately, the loss of thinking stability is a daily situation for many professionals from various professions, such as large systems operators, pilots, engineers, artists, musicians, etc. Thinking instability may be caused by creativity, continuous learning, long duration high concentration, decision making under stress working environments. The thinking instability caused by today’s professions is also amplified by the obligation to learn and use 2-3 foreign languages at the same time, which is extremely destabilizing. Correct use of motivation, social environment, family may play the role of stabilizers on a daily basis for these professionals.
Thinking stability may be caused by increase in the thinking speed. SwitchCapacitor filters in electronics loss their stability when the sampling frequency or speed increases relative to the frequency they are desingned for. Similarly, our brain tends to function differently when it works faster. Changing subjects, thinking deeper are known phenomenons.
This is not enough to claim that every thinking instability is caused by some increase in the thinking speed. Neither can I claim that thinking speed increase is caused by the thinking instability… But it is common that problems in thinking stability are generally accompanied by thinking speed problems.
Thinking speed problems can also be related with the SPeaking speed. Similar to thinking stability, speaking speech problems can not be directly attributed to thinking speed problems. But in many cases, they look correlated. Moreover people speaking fast and thinking fast tend to change the subject too much or get too deep, namely they think instablely.
Thinking instability can most easily be detected from the thinking speed and actually the speaking speed. If your colleague is talking too fast continuously, regardless of the situation that may not be a good sign, although it looks like he is getting more clever or more effectively professional.
Trying to speak or think slowly to slow down your thinking may not help either. Thinking speed is adjusted automatically by your brain (probably subconscious), it is impossible to control it directly. There are some indirect methods to control it if things have not got out of control totally. In that worst case, keeping the thinking speed low may become more important than anything else.
I believe, the highness of thinking speed may not pose an issue as much as having all the tools and processes that enable it. These tools and processes remedy high thinking speed’s bad effects automatically, afterwards with adequate relaxation. If you lose these skills because of excessive high concentration, it may become inevitable to gain somewhat time by any possible means to recover them again. Preserving thinking stability is a precious mental asset.
As a last note, I would like to define thinking stability in terms of thinking speed. I believe thinking stability is the ability to automatically adjust the thinking speed. Thinking stability is maintaining a healthy thinking speed which may change according to temporal situations that returns back to pivotal normal level afterwards keeping an affordably low average value overall.
Thinking stability is a phenomenon that can be observed in brain’s cognitive processes. Stability is an issue in not only cognitive but also emotional processes. It is also possible to witness the word stability in relation with mental stability. On the other hand, stability is a recent issue in neural network models, which are supposedly the basis of brain’s working. Philosophically, Sartre has pondered about a ‘psychic balance’ which has homeostatic limits.
Imagine a friend who has just returned from a long distance vacation and joined your company of three at a caffee… She not only tells everthing she has seen but also changes the subject frequently and tells many unrelated things about her voyage. This is a socially common situation. If a firm context has not been established, the content of the talk can not have stability around a single subject.
You can observe the use of fluently changing subjects by some teachers. The teacher changes the subject so that, his pupil get the opportunity to look at the original subject matter from very different possibly almost unrelated viewpoints… At the end, the teacher succeeds not to tell the fact but make his students understand the truth themselves.
Teaching is a strongly destabilizing process. Learning process requires instability by definition. We should open ourselves to new ideas and accept to discuss the strength of our old ideas. This causes instability both cognitively and possibly emotionally in the case of young people.
Whether done for voluntary or involuntary reasons, changing of subject with a not well formed context, or continuous changing of content are strong signs of the loss of thinking stability.
Thinking depth is the depth in terms of abstraction levels from the subject matter. For example, if you talk about a specific person and then make comments on the nature of women on general and continue on to the character of the human-beings, you have increased the thinking depth three levels of abstraction. Increasing the thinking depth unnecessarily or doing so in every little subject you talk about indicates there is instability in your thinking.
An other case is, the speaker does not increase the depth but gives many examples and continues to give details making the listeners bored. Thinking more than necessary details continuously etc. indicates that there is a problem in your stopping process of your thinking. Thinking stability requires enough details and economic use of mental energy so that there is space for continued mental activity.
Thinking happens in a social environment. If the speed of your information flow to the listeners is much higher than they can understand, this indicates an instability in your communication ability or the structure of your thinking. The functionality of the elements of your thinking and its general structure establish its stability.
The quality of thinking is also important. If you are speaking about a subject but can not reach a conclusion this may also indicate an instability in your thinking. A stable thinking should run into its end. In some cases, such as scetching in art or in brain-storming instability is required by definition.
A special case of thinking instability is remembering things from the past too many. A healthy, stable way of thinking does not get obsessed with the past, of course unless you are a historian writing a history book. Thinking stability requires a healthy balance in the sense of time; past, now and future.
Thinking stability requires a balanced approach to the importance of things in life, family, profession, nation, beliefs, ideas, feelings, everything. Getting obsessed with one of these for long durations hurts the thinking stability of that person. On the other hand, obsession is a precious mental tool that helps us to overcome difficulties. Some professions such as engineering, art etc. requires frequent use of obsessions. It is no wonder, a rate of thinking instability of varying degrees from utilization to mental instability is not uncommon in these professions.
Other than cognition, many examples for perceptional, emotional and motor stability, can be given. For example, sometimes you may need to move and do something continuously or you may answer and react to people extremely quickly and later on find you have said something wrong etc. These examples may be stretched from temporary behavioral abnomolies to mental stability problems in terms of health seriousness.
Loss of thinking stability as a continuous situation may be an indication of various mental problems. On the other hand, a constant strong stability in thinking may also be indicative of other mental problems. A healthy level of dinamism may be necessary to cope with the difficulties of life. The relentless change in our lives requires a certain level of elasticity in our thinking.
Unfortunately, the loss of thinking stability is a daily situation for many professionals from various professions, such as large systems operators, pilots, engineers, artists, musicians, etc. Thinking instability may be caused by creativity, continuous learning, long duration high concentration, decision making under stress working environments. The thinking instability caused by today’s professions is also amplified by the obligation to learn and use 2-3 foreign languages at the same time, which is extremely destabilizing. Correct use of motivation, social environment, family may play the role of stabilizers on a daily basis for these professionals.
Thinking stability may be caused by increase in the thinking speed. SwitchCapacitor filters in electronics loss their stability when the sampling frequency or speed increases relative to the frequency they are desingned for. Similarly, our brain tends to function differently when it works faster. Changing subjects, thinking deeper are known phenomenons.
This is not enough to claim that every thinking instability is caused by some increase in the thinking speed. Neither can I claim that thinking speed increase is caused by the thinking instability… But it is common that problems in thinking stability are generally accompanied by thinking speed problems.
Thinking speed problems can also be related with the SPeaking speed. Similar to thinking stability, speaking speech problems can not be directly attributed to thinking speed problems. But in many cases, they look correlated. Moreover people speaking fast and thinking fast tend to change the subject too much or get too deep, namely they think instablely.
Thinking instability can most easily be detected from the thinking speed and actually the speaking speed. If your colleague is talking too fast continuously, regardless of the situation that may not be a good sign, although it looks like he is getting more clever or more effectively professional.
Trying to speak or think slowly to slow down your thinking may not help either. Thinking speed is adjusted automatically by your brain (probably subconscious), it is impossible to control it directly. There are some indirect methods to control it if things have not got out of control totally. In that worst case, keeping the thinking speed low may become more important than anything else.
I believe, the highness of thinking speed may not pose an issue as much as having all the tools and processes that enable it. These tools and processes remedy high thinking speed’s bad effects automatically, afterwards with adequate relaxation. If you lose these skills because of excessive high concentration, it may become inevitable to gain somewhat time by any possible means to recover them again. Preserving thinking stability is a precious mental asset.
As a last note, I would like to define thinking stability in terms of thinking speed. I believe thinking stability is the ability to automatically adjust the thinking speed. Thinking stability is maintaining a healthy thinking speed which may change according to temporal situations that returns back to pivotal normal level afterwards keeping an affordably low average value overall.
25 Temmuz 2008 Cuma
THINKING SPEED
University entrance exams in Turkey or TOEFLE, GRE exams measure mathematics, social, science, Foreign language knowledge and specific skills. It is not enough to know by itself, the person who answers more and correct win, so the person who thinks fast wins.
Every person has moments, hours, days even months that he or she thinks faster than normal. In the months of spring and autumn, specially in September and October, as if God motivates us for the approaching difficulties of the winter, drives us to think faster on the average.
The fast thinking person evaluates events deeper with his/her increased brain energy, real or not, true or false he relates things more and remembers more things ‘related’ to the subject.
If the thinking speed continues to get even faster, digressions to subjects more distantly related to the topic may increase. If the effects of thinking speed increase remains as much as excessive sensitivity, loss of concentration while driving, its affects remain limited by effecting the content of thinking process and the personal success.
Pronin and Wagner wrote about their experiments that showed thinking speed effects mood in their article “Manic Thinking – Independent Effects of Thought Speed and Thought Content on Mood” of 2006. High thinking speed creates and elevated feeling, happiness etc., and in some cases a subjective selfconfidence and grandeur.
Similarly, Winkielman et all. states that high fluency in information processing, for ex. listening to a fluent and easily understandable message, causes the message to be percieved more positive than it really is. ‘Generally speaking, high fluency indicates things are positive, and low fluency negative.’ This ability, given by the creator to us, is named as ‘marking the data hedonically’ or ‘hedonic marking’.
Perceptional fluency, as in the fluency of advertisements, triggers the feeling of positive appraisal. Fluency signal is formed at the very beginning of the input signal. Fluency signal constitutes the best reference when there is little information that can be drawn from the input signal. People sometimes prefer the new, complex and surprising arousal signals to simple and known signals because of this. Thinking speed is an important element in the management of peoples preferences.
Intentionally or not, each person utilizes his/her thinking speed for own purposes by his/her own. Being able to do extraordinary things in emergency situations can be attributed to the skills God has given as much as the individual abilities he/she possess. Human mind and body works with a higher speed in emergency situations.
Even in normal situations, we increase our thinking speed to overcome the difficulties we are faced.
Concentration is to handle everything ve percieve and think from a certain reference point. Focusing is to limit our whole thinking capacity to a singel subject and cognitively process things only within that region. In each of these cases, we leave some part of our brain’s neural network out of functioning and pump blood to only regions that are related.
Another way that we regulate our thinking speed is ‘to feel an emotion.’ Emotions affect the signal propagation and its conditions in the brain via the hormones that trigger them and the hormones the emotions, themselves trigger in response. This situation affects and changes the threshholds that determine the decisions. For example, a driver under the effect of the early days of spring, takes more risk than he does under normal conditions, or political activists participate in higher risk actions. Just imagine that all the threshholds of a society changes approximately at the same time of the year. This also functions as a unique window of opportunity for change and novelties in the human society which is inherently conservative and conformist.
I believe, thinking speed should be proportionate with the thinking energy. In his “Sketch for a Theory of the Emotions”, Sarte says, ‘if one can not handle a situation with his cognitive abilities he then transforms his “psychic energy”, he becomes afraid.’ The increase of thinking speed, should be one of the ways to decrease the psychic energy, I believe… The increase of thinking speed, causes the appearence of our abilities such as imagination, planning, obsession, that help us to manage the difficulties that we are faced with.
Our ability to be successfull is not solely determined by our cogitive abilities. An affective maturity which nourishes, manages and sustains its cognitive abilities is also required. This is necessary for the success of a team as well as a single person, from the point of Crew Resource Management.
In an airplane accident at USA, the dispatcher send the airplane into a region with bad weather forecast, to land in a certain opportunity window. The plane hits the ground. The investigation shows that the copilot effects the pilot decision positively in every and each decision he has made, like ‘No problem we will make it or it’s OK we will land!’ In fact, the pilot and the copilot should have acted as parts of an unity. While the captain was open to the effects of the surroundings and the aircraft, the copilot should be adjusting his affective situation and regulate his decision threshholds. The problem in this situation was the copilot did the adjustment not so well.
In our country too and unfortunately there have been quiet a few accidents in which pilots became martyrs landing in bad visual conditions etc… To reduce these cases, maybe, we should look at Barbara E. HOLDER’s Phd Thesis once more:
“A dominance interaction occurs when one pilot does everything—processes instrument representations, speaks, acts, decides, without assistance or concurrence from his partner. The other pilot tends to remain a passive partner even if he was not passive before. This pattern is often characterized by a unidirectional flow of representations centering on one pilot. Pilots construct an understanding of the situation independent of
each other and the understanding of the dominant pilot may sway the understanding of the other pilot. Communication between pilots tends to be one-sided flowing from the dominating pilot to the other pilot with little or no opportunity for negotiation and discussion.“
I am afraid, our people’s dominant character which has made our country run from victory to victory
is being evaluated as a single ‘pilot’s mistake’ in the current airplane accidents or at least is being pronounciated as such...
Holder has prepared her thesis by attending sea helicopter trainings and has recorded the trainings of other people in helicopter simulators. She has interesting comments on the effect of pilot copilot rank relations…. After everything is explained about the Isparta accident and when precautions are being discussed this rank issue could be pondered upon. It is possible to find Holder’s thesis on the internet.
I have studied the God given ability of thinking speed and its application from the individual, social,
economical and aviation applications in this article. I have pointed at the relation between thinking speed, psychic energy and emotions. I would like to ponder on the transformation of psychich energy
to thinking speed as in imagination, planning and affections in my next articles. The conversion of imagination to dreams, day dreams and sleep etc… The role of the sense of time in this etc…
Every person has moments, hours, days even months that he or she thinks faster than normal. In the months of spring and autumn, specially in September and October, as if God motivates us for the approaching difficulties of the winter, drives us to think faster on the average.
The fast thinking person evaluates events deeper with his/her increased brain energy, real or not, true or false he relates things more and remembers more things ‘related’ to the subject.
If the thinking speed continues to get even faster, digressions to subjects more distantly related to the topic may increase. If the effects of thinking speed increase remains as much as excessive sensitivity, loss of concentration while driving, its affects remain limited by effecting the content of thinking process and the personal success.
Pronin and Wagner wrote about their experiments that showed thinking speed effects mood in their article “Manic Thinking – Independent Effects of Thought Speed and Thought Content on Mood” of 2006. High thinking speed creates and elevated feeling, happiness etc., and in some cases a subjective selfconfidence and grandeur.
Similarly, Winkielman et all. states that high fluency in information processing, for ex. listening to a fluent and easily understandable message, causes the message to be percieved more positive than it really is. ‘Generally speaking, high fluency indicates things are positive, and low fluency negative.’ This ability, given by the creator to us, is named as ‘marking the data hedonically’ or ‘hedonic marking’.
Perceptional fluency, as in the fluency of advertisements, triggers the feeling of positive appraisal. Fluency signal is formed at the very beginning of the input signal. Fluency signal constitutes the best reference when there is little information that can be drawn from the input signal. People sometimes prefer the new, complex and surprising arousal signals to simple and known signals because of this. Thinking speed is an important element in the management of peoples preferences.
Intentionally or not, each person utilizes his/her thinking speed for own purposes by his/her own. Being able to do extraordinary things in emergency situations can be attributed to the skills God has given as much as the individual abilities he/she possess. Human mind and body works with a higher speed in emergency situations.
Even in normal situations, we increase our thinking speed to overcome the difficulties we are faced.
Concentration is to handle everything ve percieve and think from a certain reference point. Focusing is to limit our whole thinking capacity to a singel subject and cognitively process things only within that region. In each of these cases, we leave some part of our brain’s neural network out of functioning and pump blood to only regions that are related.
Another way that we regulate our thinking speed is ‘to feel an emotion.’ Emotions affect the signal propagation and its conditions in the brain via the hormones that trigger them and the hormones the emotions, themselves trigger in response. This situation affects and changes the threshholds that determine the decisions. For example, a driver under the effect of the early days of spring, takes more risk than he does under normal conditions, or political activists participate in higher risk actions. Just imagine that all the threshholds of a society changes approximately at the same time of the year. This also functions as a unique window of opportunity for change and novelties in the human society which is inherently conservative and conformist.
I believe, thinking speed should be proportionate with the thinking energy. In his “Sketch for a Theory of the Emotions”, Sarte says, ‘if one can not handle a situation with his cognitive abilities he then transforms his “psychic energy”, he becomes afraid.’ The increase of thinking speed, should be one of the ways to decrease the psychic energy, I believe… The increase of thinking speed, causes the appearence of our abilities such as imagination, planning, obsession, that help us to manage the difficulties that we are faced with.
Our ability to be successfull is not solely determined by our cogitive abilities. An affective maturity which nourishes, manages and sustains its cognitive abilities is also required. This is necessary for the success of a team as well as a single person, from the point of Crew Resource Management.
In an airplane accident at USA, the dispatcher send the airplane into a region with bad weather forecast, to land in a certain opportunity window. The plane hits the ground. The investigation shows that the copilot effects the pilot decision positively in every and each decision he has made, like ‘No problem we will make it or it’s OK we will land!’ In fact, the pilot and the copilot should have acted as parts of an unity. While the captain was open to the effects of the surroundings and the aircraft, the copilot should be adjusting his affective situation and regulate his decision threshholds. The problem in this situation was the copilot did the adjustment not so well.
In our country too and unfortunately there have been quiet a few accidents in which pilots became martyrs landing in bad visual conditions etc… To reduce these cases, maybe, we should look at Barbara E. HOLDER’s Phd Thesis once more:
“A dominance interaction occurs when one pilot does everything—processes instrument representations, speaks, acts, decides, without assistance or concurrence from his partner. The other pilot tends to remain a passive partner even if he was not passive before. This pattern is often characterized by a unidirectional flow of representations centering on one pilot. Pilots construct an understanding of the situation independent of
each other and the understanding of the dominant pilot may sway the understanding of the other pilot. Communication between pilots tends to be one-sided flowing from the dominating pilot to the other pilot with little or no opportunity for negotiation and discussion.“
I am afraid, our people’s dominant character which has made our country run from victory to victory
is being evaluated as a single ‘pilot’s mistake’ in the current airplane accidents or at least is being pronounciated as such...
Holder has prepared her thesis by attending sea helicopter trainings and has recorded the trainings of other people in helicopter simulators. She has interesting comments on the effect of pilot copilot rank relations…. After everything is explained about the Isparta accident and when precautions are being discussed this rank issue could be pondered upon. It is possible to find Holder’s thesis on the internet.
I have studied the God given ability of thinking speed and its application from the individual, social,
economical and aviation applications in this article. I have pointed at the relation between thinking speed, psychic energy and emotions. I would like to ponder on the transformation of psychich energy
to thinking speed as in imagination, planning and affections in my next articles. The conversion of imagination to dreams, day dreams and sleep etc… The role of the sense of time in this etc…
15 Temmuz 2008 Salı
TO FEEL RIGHT?
What does it mean ‘to feel right’ or ‘to feel the right emotion’? Can we have an objective judgment on this? What good will it do after all? Will it help us to increase the quality of our lives? Will it help special people as air traffic controllers, nuclear plant or transportation systems operators, large systems engineers in coping with the difficulties of their jobs?
If most of the people watching a movie feel the emotion of sorrow, and you also feel sorrow, that means you feel the right emotion or at least the socially acceptable emotion. This is a great simplification, though. If you are a foreigner, you may not understand the jokes in a movie and you may not laugh when others do… An other example, from the point of precision or repeatability could be; You should feel approximately the same emotions everytime you watch your favorite movie… This is also a great simplification because it does not take into account the time and the accumulation of experience and knowledge(and sometimes boredom).
To feel the right feeling depends not only on the precision but also on the accuracy. What you feel should be ‘appropriate’ to your personality and to the situation that you are in. I may be getting dangerously subjective, I know. What is appropriate may change according to time, society, individual, family, culture, education etc… But still, there is a limit to appropriateness…
The sense of self sets a rough border to what is appropriate and what is not.
‘Is this me who feels this?’ is the golden question to ask. But even then, self is not a constant, undeveloping, non-spontaneous entity. So, I admit, my starting question does not have an objective answer, I deeply doubt it has any either.
Please, let me change my question then… Why can’t we decide we feel right or wrong? Unfortunately for me, the answer of this question has been given well ahead.
Sartre has stated that ‘emotional conciousness is non-reflective at first’. He says ‘The emotional consciousness is primarily the consciousness of the world’. So, when you feel afraid of something you get under its magic effect which causes you to concentrate on it more and more rather than percieving your own self and situation. In his ‘Sketch for a Theory of the Emotions’ (Translated by Philip Mairet – Routledge Classics) Sartre states in fact ‘ The self does not appear at all in ‘ this type of automatic process.
The reason we do not feel whether our feeling is right or wrong is, feeling is not a reflective process. Sartre chooses not to call it an automatic process. He says ‘unreflective conduct is not unconscious conduct’. The unreflective character of feeling can be observed in the situation where you become aware of your feelings. For example, when you become aware that you are very angry, your feeling disappears.
If it is impossible to decide whether our feeling is right or appropriate how come so many people happen to feel the same and mostly the ‘right’ feeling? It may be related to the way we learn our feelings first of all. The first feeling we learn is ‘trust’. We human beings develop the feeling of trust by getting ‘feeded’ regularly by our mamas in the beginning of our lives. It’s no surprise getting regular good food is critically important at large systems, ATC centers etc., where everthing is designed on a single human feeling, namely ‘trust’.
Secondly, our emotions are continuously conditioned by life, by the society we live in or the team we work in etc... The culture that we live in sets the noetic thresholds for our emotions. My Singaporean fiancee once had mentioned ‘Everything in Turkey is hyper! Even the cows in the picture on the milk bottles look hyper!’... The character of a people is set by its culture. Music, in all cultures, teaches and conditions people to what should be expected within a given mood.
Sartre states “In a word, to experience any object as horrible, is to see it against the background of a world which reveals itself as already horrible.” Sartre does not mention mood in his book but I believe what he calls at the very end of his sketch as ‘background of a world’ can also be related to ‘mood’.
If we are conditioned to feel certain emotions under certain conditions or moods, the new question should be “Would it be possible to bring ourselves up to become a better self or a better ourselves?”. And “Would it be possible to better train so that large systems engineers, ATCOs, pilots and other large systems operators feel better while they are doing their jobs, react to emergencies much better and faster so that they be more successful in their professions?” I believe, Sartre’s ‘Sketch for a Theory of the Emotions’ is a precious legacy which must be studied by the aviation community, specially the trainers and teachers and their training institutes.
Sartre’s work helps us to understand ourselves better, consequently, to know.
Ali R+ SARAL
If most of the people watching a movie feel the emotion of sorrow, and you also feel sorrow, that means you feel the right emotion or at least the socially acceptable emotion. This is a great simplification, though. If you are a foreigner, you may not understand the jokes in a movie and you may not laugh when others do… An other example, from the point of precision or repeatability could be; You should feel approximately the same emotions everytime you watch your favorite movie… This is also a great simplification because it does not take into account the time and the accumulation of experience and knowledge(and sometimes boredom).
To feel the right feeling depends not only on the precision but also on the accuracy. What you feel should be ‘appropriate’ to your personality and to the situation that you are in. I may be getting dangerously subjective, I know. What is appropriate may change according to time, society, individual, family, culture, education etc… But still, there is a limit to appropriateness…
The sense of self sets a rough border to what is appropriate and what is not.
‘Is this me who feels this?’ is the golden question to ask. But even then, self is not a constant, undeveloping, non-spontaneous entity. So, I admit, my starting question does not have an objective answer, I deeply doubt it has any either.
Please, let me change my question then… Why can’t we decide we feel right or wrong? Unfortunately for me, the answer of this question has been given well ahead.
Sartre has stated that ‘emotional conciousness is non-reflective at first’. He says ‘The emotional consciousness is primarily the consciousness of the world’. So, when you feel afraid of something you get under its magic effect which causes you to concentrate on it more and more rather than percieving your own self and situation. In his ‘Sketch for a Theory of the Emotions’ (Translated by Philip Mairet – Routledge Classics) Sartre states in fact ‘ The self does not appear at all in ‘ this type of automatic process.
The reason we do not feel whether our feeling is right or wrong is, feeling is not a reflective process. Sartre chooses not to call it an automatic process. He says ‘unreflective conduct is not unconscious conduct’. The unreflective character of feeling can be observed in the situation where you become aware of your feelings. For example, when you become aware that you are very angry, your feeling disappears.
If it is impossible to decide whether our feeling is right or appropriate how come so many people happen to feel the same and mostly the ‘right’ feeling? It may be related to the way we learn our feelings first of all. The first feeling we learn is ‘trust’. We human beings develop the feeling of trust by getting ‘feeded’ regularly by our mamas in the beginning of our lives. It’s no surprise getting regular good food is critically important at large systems, ATC centers etc., where everthing is designed on a single human feeling, namely ‘trust’.
Secondly, our emotions are continuously conditioned by life, by the society we live in or the team we work in etc... The culture that we live in sets the noetic thresholds for our emotions. My Singaporean fiancee once had mentioned ‘Everything in Turkey is hyper! Even the cows in the picture on the milk bottles look hyper!’... The character of a people is set by its culture. Music, in all cultures, teaches and conditions people to what should be expected within a given mood.
Sartre states “In a word, to experience any object as horrible, is to see it against the background of a world which reveals itself as already horrible.” Sartre does not mention mood in his book but I believe what he calls at the very end of his sketch as ‘background of a world’ can also be related to ‘mood’.
If we are conditioned to feel certain emotions under certain conditions or moods, the new question should be “Would it be possible to bring ourselves up to become a better self or a better ourselves?”. And “Would it be possible to better train so that large systems engineers, ATCOs, pilots and other large systems operators feel better while they are doing their jobs, react to emergencies much better and faster so that they be more successful in their professions?” I believe, Sartre’s ‘Sketch for a Theory of the Emotions’ is a precious legacy which must be studied by the aviation community, specially the trainers and teachers and their training institutes.
Sartre’s work helps us to understand ourselves better, consequently, to know.
Ali R+ SARAL
5 Temmuz 2008 Cumartesi
The Importance of Sartre's 'Sketch for a Theory of Emotions' for Aviation
Sartre's 'Sketch for a Theory of Emotions' could prove to be a tangible asset for air traffic controller and pilot training. It could be a solid reference for the teachers who have to teach the role of emotions in decision making.
Large Systems engineers would definitely benefit from it forcontrolling themselves when working under heavy load or usinghigh concentration for long durations.
Philip Mairet's translation from Routledge Classics says"A conciousness becoming emotional is rather like a consciousness dropping asleep" p. 51.
In fact Sartre refers to emotions as a special type of consciousness as in an "unreflective conduct" which is not unconscious as in the act of writing.
He explains the origin of emotions as a " lesser existence or a lesser presence(or a greater existence, etc.). In a word, during emotion, it is the body which, directed by the consciousness,changes its relationship with the world so that the worldshould change its qualities. If emotion is playacting, the play is one that we believe in p. 41.
As Sartre suggests, we degrade ourselves into a lower, fictionalworld when we are faced with facts that we cannot manage to overcomewith our ususal abilities. At this point, our consciousness "gets caught in its own snare." It has created a fictional world to escape into and now it believes what it has created, as in dreams p.52.
Sartre's explanation on p. 52 of Rouledge's edition may explain vertigo situations and false sense of safety caused by'over confidence' and similar feelings in aviation.
Sartre's 'Sketch for a Theory of Emotions' is a difficult to absorb but a precious treasury that can be used to understand Crew Resource Management and other situations in aviations. It has to be studied by teachers and the results have to betaught to pilots, ATCO's and engineers. The aviation world could be a better place if only this were done.
Ali R+ SARAL
Kış Eğitim Merkezi Komutanlığı
Bursa, Uludağ Orduevi
Large Systems engineers would definitely benefit from it forcontrolling themselves when working under heavy load or usinghigh concentration for long durations.
Philip Mairet's translation from Routledge Classics says"A conciousness becoming emotional is rather like a consciousness dropping asleep" p. 51.
In fact Sartre refers to emotions as a special type of consciousness as in an "unreflective conduct" which is not unconscious as in the act of writing.
He explains the origin of emotions as a " lesser existence or a lesser presence(or a greater existence, etc.). In a word, during emotion, it is the body which, directed by the consciousness,changes its relationship with the world so that the worldshould change its qualities. If emotion is playacting, the play is one that we believe in p. 41.
As Sartre suggests, we degrade ourselves into a lower, fictionalworld when we are faced with facts that we cannot manage to overcomewith our ususal abilities. At this point, our consciousness "gets caught in its own snare." It has created a fictional world to escape into and now it believes what it has created, as in dreams p.52.
Sartre's explanation on p. 52 of Rouledge's edition may explain vertigo situations and false sense of safety caused by'over confidence' and similar feelings in aviation.
Sartre's 'Sketch for a Theory of Emotions' is a difficult to absorb but a precious treasury that can be used to understand Crew Resource Management and other situations in aviations. It has to be studied by teachers and the results have to betaught to pilots, ATCO's and engineers. The aviation world could be a better place if only this were done.
Ali R+ SARAL
Kış Eğitim Merkezi Komutanlığı
Bursa, Uludağ Orduevi
25 Haziran 2008 Çarşamba
HOMEOSTASIS IN ATC
Homeostasis (from Greek: ὅμος, homos, "equal"; and ιστημι, histemi, "to stand" lit. "to stand equally"; coined by Walter Bradford Cannon) is the property of either an open system or a closed system, especially a living organism, that regulates its internal environment so as to maintain a stable, constant condition. Multiple dynamic equilibrium adjustments and regulation mechanisms make homeostasis possible. The concept was created by Claude Bernard, often considered as the father of physiology, and published in 1865. (WIKIPEDIA)
Air Traffic Control systems are discreet event dynamic large systems. They are composed of three sub systems the visualization of the traffic data – radar data processing, the planning and partitioning of the operational load – flight data processing, and all the related communications – ATN . There is also the substructure which provides the necessary services for these three subsystems – SYSTEMS. ATC system are also a combination of human and machine elements. There are many operators of different types.
I would like to point out at the homeostasis in the air traffic control systems between the technical and operational groups. The operational group comprises air traffic controllers and the various people in their management hierarchy. Most of these people come from an air traffic controller back ground.
The technical group is composed of a mix of engineers and air traffic controllers… Some of the engineers come from a technical background while some of them come from math and science university education and engineering faculties. Air traffic controllers in the technical group function as interface to the operational group. They work in requirements specification, quality control, configuration management and testing.
The safety created by an air traffic control center is the result of a combination of the work of the operational and technical work done. When the technical side fails, the operational measures are used. For example, seperation is increased. Also, when the technical facilities get old and are out of date, operator load increases. For ex. if the radar views are not good, operators have to cope with this difficulty somehow.
The homeostasis between the technical and operational side works in ATC so that when the technical side goes down the role of the operational side increases or vie versa. When everything is perfact operational side relaxes a little bit.
Why am I writing this note? It is not a big deal up to this point. The interesting phenomenon begins when we observe: If one of the two elements that comprise the homeostasis dominates the relation,
what happens then? For ex. operational side effects the technical decisions for various reasons…
These decisions may vary from setting unrealistic deadlines to deciding which technical systems to buy…
The dynamic nature of the homeostatic balance may determine the sudden or unjustified changes in the balance. In fact the flexibility of the system is designed so that even if the radar views are lost air traffic control can continue with the strips. The risk of losing touch with the technical reality is more on the long run. I believe, it is very difficult to maintain and develop a technically upto date system while carrying on the day to day ATC duties.
There is a tangible risk in ATC which may arise from the tendency of one of the technical and operational groups to dominate the other.
Ali R+
Note: I woke up to the importance of this issue because of the contrast I noticed btw Turkey and Karlsruhe in regards to this matter. Thanks again to Herr Ehrenberger (ECO).
Air Traffic Control systems are discreet event dynamic large systems. They are composed of three sub systems the visualization of the traffic data – radar data processing, the planning and partitioning of the operational load – flight data processing, and all the related communications – ATN . There is also the substructure which provides the necessary services for these three subsystems – SYSTEMS. ATC system are also a combination of human and machine elements. There are many operators of different types.
I would like to point out at the homeostasis in the air traffic control systems between the technical and operational groups. The operational group comprises air traffic controllers and the various people in their management hierarchy. Most of these people come from an air traffic controller back ground.
The technical group is composed of a mix of engineers and air traffic controllers… Some of the engineers come from a technical background while some of them come from math and science university education and engineering faculties. Air traffic controllers in the technical group function as interface to the operational group. They work in requirements specification, quality control, configuration management and testing.
The safety created by an air traffic control center is the result of a combination of the work of the operational and technical work done. When the technical side fails, the operational measures are used. For example, seperation is increased. Also, when the technical facilities get old and are out of date, operator load increases. For ex. if the radar views are not good, operators have to cope with this difficulty somehow.
The homeostasis between the technical and operational side works in ATC so that when the technical side goes down the role of the operational side increases or vie versa. When everything is perfact operational side relaxes a little bit.
Why am I writing this note? It is not a big deal up to this point. The interesting phenomenon begins when we observe: If one of the two elements that comprise the homeostasis dominates the relation,
what happens then? For ex. operational side effects the technical decisions for various reasons…
These decisions may vary from setting unrealistic deadlines to deciding which technical systems to buy…
The dynamic nature of the homeostatic balance may determine the sudden or unjustified changes in the balance. In fact the flexibility of the system is designed so that even if the radar views are lost air traffic control can continue with the strips. The risk of losing touch with the technical reality is more on the long run. I believe, it is very difficult to maintain and develop a technically upto date system while carrying on the day to day ATC duties.
There is a tangible risk in ATC which may arise from the tendency of one of the technical and operational groups to dominate the other.
Ali R+
Note: I woke up to the importance of this issue because of the contrast I noticed btw Turkey and Karlsruhe in regards to this matter. Thanks again to Herr Ehrenberger (ECO).
7 Haziran 2008 Cumartesi
ON THE NATURE OF CONCENTRATION
To Mr. Cevdet ACAR
This is the first of a series of my articles on the nature of human concentration. Actually, concntration is not an exclusive attribute of the human-being.
Concentration is an attribute of matter. Concentration is described as ‘the situation of coming together at one point.’ Concentric means ‘having a common centre.’
The meaning changes a bit when it comes to the concentration ability of the human mind. Merriam-Webster defines it as ‘direction of attention to a single object’. It is misinterpreted as focusing in the daily usage.
An easy way to understand, demonstrate and control the abilities of the human mind is to think visually. In terms of looking with our eyes, concentrating means to look at something and see other things only in relation to this reference point. To focus means to look at something and not see other things at all.
To focus means to limit your attention to a specific object(for ex. inclusion of something into attention). To concentrate means to change the character of your attention so that included thing appears in your focus on the basis of some sort of exclusion of others, so to speak.
It is possible to lose concentration but keep focus, when looking. You can relax your attention, but change the size of the area that you look at, for ex.a whole person or a face. This is important for implementing relaxed attention.
You may also increase your concentration but lose focus, if you like, a little bit more complex though. You may look at nothing specific, but enjoy fully the wide wiew on the coast of Istanbul Bosphorus.
Concentration and focusing abilities are not totally visual. These can be observed in all forms of perception, cognition, motor faculties. The embodiment of self, the sense of being is closely related with the sense of time. We feel our being, our existence at the moment we are in, namely ‘the specious present’, or now.
The length of specious present changes, according to the situation we are in. Also, the frequency of the renewal of our sense of now or feeling one’s self or being changes. When we are doing something we do not feel our being directly all the time. In fact concentrating on the thing we do reduces the frequency of our feeling of self. This also reduces the sense of time. This frequency also corresponds to the perception frequency. When the perception frequency increases sensitivity increases.
The specious present concept is somewhat belaguered at this point. The specious present is a duration of perception, of which total duration is effected-determined by concentration.
Attention is an abstraction of focus. Attention determines the limits of things we deal with at one moment. If we deal with more than one thing the length of the moment expands, so the specious present increases.
This explains why with high concentration sometimes, we do not feel the time that passes and sometimes we do feel it longer than it really is. If we do a single simple thing with high concentration, specious present is short, so we do not feel the time, or feel it as if shorter. On the contrary, if we do a complex thing with high concentration we feel as if the time passed is much longer than it really is.
The specious present are the moments that we feel our being, self.The specious present are the times that the brain’s cognition works consciously. Healthy functioning of human mind depends on the average balance between the conscious and subconscious activities. For example, to understand a foreign language with facility, you should not concentrate too much but you should relax a little bit, so that the things you hear at the specious durations get processed between them by your subconscious.
Working on complex tasks with high concentration for long durations, causes us to develop skills that enable us keep our specious present as long as possible, with the highest frequency. If one is not well equipped and trained to handle these skills, long duration high concentration complex jobs may suppress and hurt the human subconscious or increase the perception to the point of seeing-hearing halucinations. The suppression of subconscious may inevitably hurt the whole psychology and cause the human mind to react in a series of psychosis.
In order to avoid all this mess, you should simply apply the 20 20 20 rule while working. “Every 20 minutes, pause whatever you’re doing and stare at something 20 feet away about 10-15 paces away) for 20 seconds.”
The bottom line is, this type of jobs are one of many choices, you may choose to climb a high mountain or serve at an air traffic control center as an engineer or air traffic controller, or choose to serve as a surgeon. It is up to you.
This is the first of a series of my articles on the nature of human concentration. Actually, concntration is not an exclusive attribute of the human-being.
Concentration is an attribute of matter. Concentration is described as ‘the situation of coming together at one point.’ Concentric means ‘having a common centre.’
The meaning changes a bit when it comes to the concentration ability of the human mind. Merriam-Webster defines it as ‘direction of attention to a single object’. It is misinterpreted as focusing in the daily usage.
An easy way to understand, demonstrate and control the abilities of the human mind is to think visually. In terms of looking with our eyes, concentrating means to look at something and see other things only in relation to this reference point. To focus means to look at something and not see other things at all.
To focus means to limit your attention to a specific object(for ex. inclusion of something into attention). To concentrate means to change the character of your attention so that included thing appears in your focus on the basis of some sort of exclusion of others, so to speak.
It is possible to lose concentration but keep focus, when looking. You can relax your attention, but change the size of the area that you look at, for ex.a whole person or a face. This is important for implementing relaxed attention.
You may also increase your concentration but lose focus, if you like, a little bit more complex though. You may look at nothing specific, but enjoy fully the wide wiew on the coast of Istanbul Bosphorus.
Concentration and focusing abilities are not totally visual. These can be observed in all forms of perception, cognition, motor faculties. The embodiment of self, the sense of being is closely related with the sense of time. We feel our being, our existence at the moment we are in, namely ‘the specious present’, or now.
The length of specious present changes, according to the situation we are in. Also, the frequency of the renewal of our sense of now or feeling one’s self or being changes. When we are doing something we do not feel our being directly all the time. In fact concentrating on the thing we do reduces the frequency of our feeling of self. This also reduces the sense of time. This frequency also corresponds to the perception frequency. When the perception frequency increases sensitivity increases.
The specious present concept is somewhat belaguered at this point. The specious present is a duration of perception, of which total duration is effected-determined by concentration.
Attention is an abstraction of focus. Attention determines the limits of things we deal with at one moment. If we deal with more than one thing the length of the moment expands, so the specious present increases.
This explains why with high concentration sometimes, we do not feel the time that passes and sometimes we do feel it longer than it really is. If we do a single simple thing with high concentration, specious present is short, so we do not feel the time, or feel it as if shorter. On the contrary, if we do a complex thing with high concentration we feel as if the time passed is much longer than it really is.
The specious present are the moments that we feel our being, self.The specious present are the times that the brain’s cognition works consciously. Healthy functioning of human mind depends on the average balance between the conscious and subconscious activities. For example, to understand a foreign language with facility, you should not concentrate too much but you should relax a little bit, so that the things you hear at the specious durations get processed between them by your subconscious.
Working on complex tasks with high concentration for long durations, causes us to develop skills that enable us keep our specious present as long as possible, with the highest frequency. If one is not well equipped and trained to handle these skills, long duration high concentration complex jobs may suppress and hurt the human subconscious or increase the perception to the point of seeing-hearing halucinations. The suppression of subconscious may inevitably hurt the whole psychology and cause the human mind to react in a series of psychosis.
In order to avoid all this mess, you should simply apply the 20 20 20 rule while working. “Every 20 minutes, pause whatever you’re doing and stare at something 20 feet away about 10-15 paces away) for 20 seconds.”
The bottom line is, this type of jobs are one of many choices, you may choose to climb a high mountain or serve at an air traffic control center as an engineer or air traffic controller, or choose to serve as a surgeon. It is up to you.
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