What is noise? It is a threshold. A threshold at which point a signal loses its identifiability. Here, signal means meaningful activity which has a purpose or value. A group of people sitting at a bar, makes noise because of talking with each other relative to the silent state of the bar or relative to the music being played at that moment.
Noise may carry abstract meanings and may carry various threshold functions such as noise in public decision enquettes or unrelated information on a subject you are trying to make a decision.
If we think of neural networks in our brains, these circuits make correct decisions although they get some garbage(noise) in their inputs, namely not very clear situtions.
Mysteriously, noise may decide what is wrong what is right because it sets the environment to make a decision.
It eliminates what is relevant what is not according to the subject, it sets the boundaries of the elemnts that will make the decision.
Noise sets the threshold for making a decision. In situations where the input namely our observations of the phenomena around us are not clear, we try to clear things by changing or adjusting to the environment before we make decisions. In fact we solve the problem by adjusting the noise threshold. Noise may be necessary in order to make healthy decisions when the inputs are not completely clear.
4 Temmuz 2009 Cumartesi
7 Haziran 2009 Pazar
THE FUNCTION OF SYMBOLS IN ATC AND ITS MENTAL EFFECTS
INTRODUCTION
Miller’s rule states that a human can handle seven plus minus one things in his/her mind at the same time. If the number increases the human mind groups these items so that the number of groups remain less than seven plus minus one(attention span).
Grouping things according to a certain point of view is called abstraction.You can group things first than you can group the groups you have formed and so on. Every step of grouping in this process is called an abstraction level.
Whenever the human mind tries to handle things that overpassess its capacity to handle things simultaneously
it does abstraction. Air traffic control(ATC) is no exception of this fact. ATC systems are complex discrete event dynamic systems. These systems are huge in the sense that they can handle the whole air space of large countries such as Germany or Turkey.
An air traffic control system ensures that airplanes move safely from one geographical point to another. In order to do this each airplane’s safety is given to the responsibility of an air traffic control officer (ATCO) at each point of time in its journey.
The complexity arises from the fact that you have to establish areas of control responsibility for each controller. An ATCO can handle upto 12-13 airplanes at the same time depending on the size of its control area and density of the air traffic. So, in order to control an air space as large as Turkey there must be quiet a number of control sectors. Actually, you generally have first, a number of air spaces depending on the geography and the height, such as eastern Turkey, western Turkey air spaces and lower air space and higher air space which may be divided at flight level 280. The more the number of sectors the more difficult it is to assign tasks to these sectors in coordination with others.
It is inevitable to use abstractions when one just imagines the complexity and the size of an ATC system and the risks involved with it. The first abstraction is the types of control, such as area control, approach control and tower control. The type of the traffic specifies the character of the system that handles it. For the sake of simplicity, and due to my experience I will mention only the area control from now on.
THE USES OF SYMBOLS
The human-kind expressed itself with symbols long before he/she found the letters and writing[1]. Symbols provide a visual representation of an idea or word as can be observed in Far Eastern alphabets and languages. The symbols played a vital role in the development process of alphabets. One can only imagine a little bit the difficulty people experienced in inventing a language first, then writing and then creating an alphabet. But it should be simple even for a dummy to appreciate the importance of using symbols in our life to fight against the difficulties that we meet.
“Symbols provide a visual representation of an idea or word. Children who find difficulty in reading can be helped to visualise the meanings of words by seeing a symbol.” Symbols In Education - Why we use symbols [2].
“Unlike things, feelings and ideas are difficult to exchange. People wishing to exchange physical objects may simply hand them to each other. Feelings and ideas, however, are without physical substance. They cannot be handed directly to another person. Rather, they must be exchanged through the use of symbols–things that represent or stand for other things.”[3]
The origins of our existence, the meaning of life und so weiter are no simple things to handle and this situtaion is not an exception to our ways of handling difficulties. For example : “The concept of using images in worship finds its origins in the Old Testament. The Temple contained numerous visual images, including the cherubim on the Ark of the Covenant. The Temple Solomon built for the Lord contained many carvings of trees, gourds, flowers, and angels (1 Kings 6). It is clear that God did not forbid images used in the Sanctuary to glorify God[4].”
Abstraction and the use of symbols are vital elements in solving math problems or others in science. The use of arbitrary symbols and the process of symbolisation have made possible the discourse of modern mathematics and logic. “Mathematics uses symbols in creative ways. Two such methods, one dealing with the process of `alphabetisation' and the other based on the notion of `formal similarity', are described. Through these processes, originally meaningless symbols get embodied and coded with meaning through mathematical writing and praxis[5].”
We use symbols when things are difficult to rxpress such as feelings, like a red rose for a lady. Arts is a wide spread application area of this use of symbols. “In the play Macbeth, Shakespeare uses many symbols to add to his story. His use of blood, water, light, dark, rampant animals, and even the witches are examples of how he used symbols to add depth to his play. These symbols were often times recurring and they were all related to the central plot of the play[6].”
THE FUNCTION OF SYMBOLS
1- Symbol extracts what is important – relevant and preserves it
2- Symbol makes it reacheable against all odds its a KEY
3- Symbol provides insulation – better cooperation at the related levels.
4- Symbol provides preservation.
5- Symbol increases processing speed.
6- Symbol decreases mental workload and the amount of relevant speech.
7- Symbol provides space for future enhancements by making abstractions.
THE USE OF SYMBOLS IN ATC
The air space used by the airplanes have to be abstracted so that a human being can easily manage the airplanes flying in his own area of responsibility. Simply this means a map but that does not suffice alone…
You must abstract the height, the third dimension in a humanly controllable manner: This means flight levels. The height difference between FL’s are something around 300Ms. Breaking the third dimension to constant and seperate flight levels gives us many facilities: the ability to fly at a certain direction at each level, given a certain filight level you do not have to worry on vertical seperation, limitation references for ascends and descends and many more…
After you have the airspace map, you should choose reference points to fly from and to fly to, also reference points where certain actions have to be taken such as entry and exit points where adjacent centers or sectors have to be acknowledged…
If you think about the size of the German air space, and the number of planes flying concurrently, you can quickly appreciate that a single controller is vital but totally insufficient to do the job. A single ATCO can control 12-15 aircrafts(A/C) at the same time. So you must divide the airspace into enough small sized sectors to reduce the workload to humanly manageable levels. Once more we made an abstraction and created sectors.
Each sector has a symbol, a few characters long to symbolize the section of the airspace they stand for.
An other abstraction is done to facilitate the route declaration in the voice and electronic communications.
Instead of telling each point the A/C is going to fly over, the pilot says uppergreenone (UG1), this indicates a sequence of many points in direction depending on the departure and arrival airport. Each route has a symbol like UG1 which identifies it.
All the symbols used in ATC, points, routes, and their attributes such as entry(NP),exit(XP) etc. are identified in a static data storage or Static Data Bank(SDB). SDB is the symbol of the Static Data Bank. The marvelous character abstraction is you can do abstractions to create the entities that are used to make abstractions of the real life. The Term SDB is used by both ATC interface people who change the static properties of the system and also by the engineers who maintain the software system that supports the operations. The world of the ATC engineers is a complete abstraction full of symbols, actually they use online dictionaries while it is impossible to remember everything.
SDB handles the static properties of the air traffic. The dynamic properties of the air traffic is handled in the Dynamic Data Bank – DDB. Flight level changes, mid air entries, category changes, speed changes usw. all are recorded in the DDB. DDB is an abstraction of the dynamic attributes of the air traffic. It is defined via many symbols that reflect these attributes.
Actually the ATCOs are generally not aware of what is in DDB or SDB. They use other abstractions and many symbols. A flight plan is an abstraction of what a pilot tends to do with his airplane indicating departure and arrival aerodromes, speed, height over all the route points, route, time schedule etc. Strips are small strip of paper which outlines this information in this small area with many symbols. The area must be as small as possible because of the spae limitation on the ATCOs control table. The controller has also the keyboard and display system, the radar screen and ATN messages to use. All of these are highly abstract modellings of the real life air traffic. All of them use many symbols.
THE ROLE OF SYMBOLS IN ATC
From the point of an air traffic controller using symbols is not only being able to identify them but also having the right feel of them. Aviation is not only a science based technological area but it is also an art and air traffic control is no exception to that.
The use of symbols makes things more identifiable and increases comprehension by the use of phrasepology in the pilot – controller voice communication. An air plane appears as a small symbol and a vector indicates the direction and speed it flies on the radar screen. There is height, speed etc data all written as symbols + numeric values… The static control points, airports etc. all are indicated as symbols. There is even a book of ICAO which you can find these values.
But, the controller is not supposed to see all these symbols and overabundance of information, in all this mass, he simply has to keep the mental picture of the traffic in his mind. Similar to a theatre artist, he should not try to remember the text or what movements he should do, he has to keep his audience going according to the point where they are in the act.
This is also reflected in the evolution of a controller. He begins with the easiest sector and like performer he rehearses his role many times and gets to know the stage he is acting. If you remember my example about the use of symbols in Sheakspear plays, symbols help the controller to get hold of the reality, the actual reality at that moment of time during the play… Symbols play a crucial role in helping the air traffic controller to do so.
THE EFFECT OF SYMBOLS ON THE ATCO FROM THE POINT OF SYSTEMS PSYCHOLOGY
The use of symbols reduce the mental load of the air traffic controller. Unfortunately, the homeostatic
tendency and ever increasing traffic load causes the air traffic controller get more load in this situation.
At the end of the day, the use of symbols causes the air traffic controller to get more traffic load.
Similarly spatial processing increases the load of the controller instead of decreasing it. Large radar screens provide ample space to hold many more symbols, tables, etc.
One important point to remember; symbols contribute to our subconscious. Anything we do not understand goes to our subconscious. When concentrating on a traffic situation both on voice and radar a controller’s subconscious gets busy with the other things, and these are symbols which he does not have attentional resources to deal with. So, they go to the subconscious. Just like watching and art work that you do not understand.
You try to make an abstraction to overcome the difficulty you face by pushing that thing into your subconscious.
If you know how to interact with your subconscious then your subconscious will pop up the problem back to you, and in percieving the problem once more you will have formed abstraction of it, namely ah that flight that ı skipped.
In fact, symbols are the key to understanding the character of air traffic control. Phraseology reminds me abstract languages, the rule based structure the logic, all the symbols on the radar screen and the slow stepwise movements of airplanes has a certain lyric effect almost poetic, and the strength of symbols has a religious tone, with all the controllers and engineers walking slowly in and around the control center like the Branchid priests serving at the antic oracle’s Didyma.
KAYNAKLAR:
[1] The Park Ridge Center, al.hurd@advocatehealth.com
“Before the written word, human beings used symbols as the primary means of self-expression. Hope and fear, joy and sorrow, sickness and health, love and hate, good and evil, yin and yang, feminine and masculine — all found early expressions as symbols.”
[2] Symbols In Education - Why we use symbols
“Symbols provide a visual representation of an idea or word. Children who find difficulty in reading can be helped to visualise the meanings of words by seeing a symbol.”
[3] Britannica Student's Encyclopedia
“Unlike things, feelings and ideas are difficult to exchange. People wishing to exchange physical objects may simply hand them to each other. Feelings and ideas, however, are without physical substance. They cannot be handed directly to another person. Rather, they must be exchanged through the use of symbols–things that represent or stand for other things.”
[4] The use of Images, Signs, and Symbols in Anglican Worship By Rev. Rebecca
“The concept of using images in worship finds its origins in the Old Testament. The Temple contained numerous visual images, including the cherubim on the Ark of the Covenant. The Temple Solomon built for the Lord contained many carvings of trees, gourds, flowers, and angels (1 Kings 6). It is clear that God did not forbid images used in the Sanctuary to glorify God .”
[5] The Use of Symbols in Mathematics and Logic by Sundar Sarukkai
“Abstract. It is commonly believed that the use of arbitrary symbols and the process of symbolisation have made possible the discourse of modern mathematics as well as modern, symbolic logic. This paper discusses the role of symbols in logic and mathematics, and in particular analyses whether symbols remain arbitrary in the process of symbolisation. It begins with a brief summary of the relation between sign and logic as exempli_ed in Indian logic in order to illustrate a logical system where the notion of `natural' sign-signi_ed relation is privileged. Mathematics uses symbols in creative ways. Two such methods, one dealing with the process of `alphabetisation' and the other based on the notion of `formal similarity', are described. Through these processes, originally meaningless symbols get embodied and coded with meaning through mathematical writing and praxis. It is also argued that mathematics and logic di_er in the way they use symbols. As a consequence, logicism becomes untenable even at the discursive level, in the ways in which symbols are created, used and gather meaning.”
[6] ESSAY SAMPLE ON "THE USE OF SYMBOLS IN MACBETH" The Use of Symbols in Macbeth
“In the play Macbeth, Shakespeare uses many symbols to add to his story. His use of blood, water, light, dark, rampant animals, and even the witches are examples of how he used symbols to add depth to his play. These symbols were often times recurring and they were all related to the central plot of the play.”
15 Ocak 2009 Perşembe
TO TRANSCEND THE GLASS
Many times that I have stood in front of a toy seller’s shop, had this small boy in me wished to transcend the glass shield and reach out to one of the toys on the display. Although light can pass through the glass we can not. This feeling that you feel against the seperating property of a shield of glass, the feeling of powerlessness because of the inability to reach something you yearn for hurts me deeply. On the other hand, “one should not reach out to the things he is not able to catch” says our parents.
As the years pass by, notices one that our lives are divided with glass shields, a compartment next to another… Sometimes there exists nothing, not even a glass shield between. Somebody new born to this system of life does not notice these ‘glass’ compartments in the beginning, only till he tries to reach something he does not deserve…
To speak is a privelege of this type. When you look around everybody talks. It’s just as simple as happening by itself without any effort… But, when it is up to you to speak to a foreigner, to a teacher, to a supervisor or to one of your students or a farmer, just try and see what happens… One notices that it is not as simple as it looks to speak to others, just like does a small kid who tries to reach something higher than his own height…
Imagine a child aged around two years old! He can understand what’s going on around him. He keeps track of every close thing . He is even aware that he is a seperate being which owns its own life. But he cannot speak… An unseen shield of glass stops his voice to be heard when tries to speak… He is aware that he has a voice. He does not know what he cannot do. He tries to reach out to and touch things that only his words could touch. He fails. He does not succeed because there is an unseen transparent thing between. Indeed he tries to find what that is. At the end, he does find it. A few words come out of his mouth. Something like “mom, dad”… The foundations of the structure which have been laid underneath will help him stand up for the rest of his life. This is the name of the thing that stands between him and others: SELF.
Each person who succeeds to speak lives similar difficulties a couple of more times in their life. The most striking example of these situations is learning the first foreign language. Specially if one goes to a country of which language he does not know well and learns it slowly day by day like a small kid, this situation becomes quiet similar to the process in his very childhood. Psychological problems that may appear in people living abroad may have substantial relation with this phenomenon. If scrutinized, schizophrenia and other similar problems have some roots in this difficult period of life around 2 years old.
Many have English as a second language in Turkey. Unfortunately, as one of my visiting European colleagues has mentioned ‘Everybody speaks Turkish in Turkey, but all does so badly.’ Hence we are a society who can speak the second language not so good. OK, what happens if one tries to learn the 3rd and even 4th languages as many do in Europe? Unfortunately, the number of people who knows this, who has tried and succeeded are very few in Turkey compared to key European countries. When pushed to learn the 3rd language your second language begins to waver, you begin to forget some words etc… When pushing the 4th language the grammar difficulties in every language including your mother tongue may appear… You forget words, or mix languages using French words in English etc. Even worse is,you think you are speaking your native tongue when speaking an other language, your students although benefiting from this, politely make fun of it. The worst, because of not knowing which language to listen while passing people are speaking on the street you may think some Germans are speaking quiet good Turkish. The rest of your life, you hear French, German, English words in the noise that you hear…
Foreign language education is a strategically important subject in our country. Around our country lies Greek, Bulgarian, Serbian and other ex-Yuogoslavian, Romenic, Hungarian, Russian, Ukranian, Moldovian, Checnic, and other ex-Russian, Armenian, Persian, Arabic speaking countries. From the European perspective we have to count English, French, German, Italian and Spanish to name a few… Turkey can succeed against this great challenge by only good organization, planning and specialization, not by acts of good luck.
The complexity of the Turkish geography surrounded with oceans has created the obligation of a closed culture in a single umbrella language and culture. The physical largeness and the neessity to keep everything in order has caused the development of practices that may not be in parallel with Europe for many centuries…
Turkey tries to improve her relations with the European Union primarily for economical obligations. But similar to the child learning to speak for the first time Turkey has communication difficulties with Europe. The struggle to express her own concerns and convince her counterparts to give her deserved rights, is driving Turkey to redefine and find herself anew in the 21st century world. When mixed with the effort to reown her own culture coming from the past, the effort to transcend the invisible glass between Europe and Turkey, pushes the Turkish society to the limits of her cultural and sipiritual strengths. An adventure initiated by economical obligations is having much wider and unforeseen effects on our society driving her to the limits of healthy development.
As the years pass by, notices one that our lives are divided with glass shields, a compartment next to another… Sometimes there exists nothing, not even a glass shield between. Somebody new born to this system of life does not notice these ‘glass’ compartments in the beginning, only till he tries to reach something he does not deserve…
To speak is a privelege of this type. When you look around everybody talks. It’s just as simple as happening by itself without any effort… But, when it is up to you to speak to a foreigner, to a teacher, to a supervisor or to one of your students or a farmer, just try and see what happens… One notices that it is not as simple as it looks to speak to others, just like does a small kid who tries to reach something higher than his own height…
Imagine a child aged around two years old! He can understand what’s going on around him. He keeps track of every close thing . He is even aware that he is a seperate being which owns its own life. But he cannot speak… An unseen shield of glass stops his voice to be heard when tries to speak… He is aware that he has a voice. He does not know what he cannot do. He tries to reach out to and touch things that only his words could touch. He fails. He does not succeed because there is an unseen transparent thing between. Indeed he tries to find what that is. At the end, he does find it. A few words come out of his mouth. Something like “mom, dad”… The foundations of the structure which have been laid underneath will help him stand up for the rest of his life. This is the name of the thing that stands between him and others: SELF.
Each person who succeeds to speak lives similar difficulties a couple of more times in their life. The most striking example of these situations is learning the first foreign language. Specially if one goes to a country of which language he does not know well and learns it slowly day by day like a small kid, this situation becomes quiet similar to the process in his very childhood. Psychological problems that may appear in people living abroad may have substantial relation with this phenomenon. If scrutinized, schizophrenia and other similar problems have some roots in this difficult period of life around 2 years old.
Many have English as a second language in Turkey. Unfortunately, as one of my visiting European colleagues has mentioned ‘Everybody speaks Turkish in Turkey, but all does so badly.’ Hence we are a society who can speak the second language not so good. OK, what happens if one tries to learn the 3rd and even 4th languages as many do in Europe? Unfortunately, the number of people who knows this, who has tried and succeeded are very few in Turkey compared to key European countries. When pushed to learn the 3rd language your second language begins to waver, you begin to forget some words etc… When pushing the 4th language the grammar difficulties in every language including your mother tongue may appear… You forget words, or mix languages using French words in English etc. Even worse is,you think you are speaking your native tongue when speaking an other language, your students although benefiting from this, politely make fun of it. The worst, because of not knowing which language to listen while passing people are speaking on the street you may think some Germans are speaking quiet good Turkish. The rest of your life, you hear French, German, English words in the noise that you hear…
Foreign language education is a strategically important subject in our country. Around our country lies Greek, Bulgarian, Serbian and other ex-Yuogoslavian, Romenic, Hungarian, Russian, Ukranian, Moldovian, Checnic, and other ex-Russian, Armenian, Persian, Arabic speaking countries. From the European perspective we have to count English, French, German, Italian and Spanish to name a few… Turkey can succeed against this great challenge by only good organization, planning and specialization, not by acts of good luck.
The complexity of the Turkish geography surrounded with oceans has created the obligation of a closed culture in a single umbrella language and culture. The physical largeness and the neessity to keep everything in order has caused the development of practices that may not be in parallel with Europe for many centuries…
Turkey tries to improve her relations with the European Union primarily for economical obligations. But similar to the child learning to speak for the first time Turkey has communication difficulties with Europe. The struggle to express her own concerns and convince her counterparts to give her deserved rights, is driving Turkey to redefine and find herself anew in the 21st century world. When mixed with the effort to reown her own culture coming from the past, the effort to transcend the invisible glass between Europe and Turkey, pushes the Turkish society to the limits of her cultural and sipiritual strengths. An adventure initiated by economical obligations is having much wider and unforeseen effects on our society driving her to the limits of healthy development.
3 Ocak 2009 Cumartesi
ON THE NATURE OF PROBLEMS
Fighting Techniques II
To the memory of our father Hasan SARAL.
“the chemist Kekule came upon one of the most important discoveries of organic chemistry, the structure of the benzene ring, in a dream. Having pondered the problem for some time, he turned his chair to the fire and fell asleep:’Again the atoms were gamboling before my eyes…. My mental eye…could now distinguish larger structures…all twining and twisting in snkae-like motion. But look! What was that? One of the snakes had seized hold of its own tail, and the form whirled mockingly before my eyes. As if by a flash of lightning I awoke.” The spontaneous inner image of the snake biting its own tail suggested to Kekule that organic compounds, such as benzene, are not open structures but closed rings[1].”
Everyday, we fight with many difficulties of many kinds. Some of these are as simple and short as loosening of the shoelaces. Some of them are as difficult and long as making an invention and some of them as abrupt and serious as a traffic accident… If you have a look at the many problems that we fight with you will notice that we can categorize them and their solutions in different groups. Although these groups may carry similarities in their quantity, quality and content attributes, their use by individual persons and the importance assigned to them may differ. Also, even though the problems and their solutions may be similar the personalities of the individuals that they interact may cause them to appear different.
Studying the nature of problems makes it possible for us to solve similar problems easily and also understand ourselves better We can categorize problems in various ways. For example, problems that repeat endlessly are called chronic in medicine. I am afraid, some of our political problems may be called the same. On the other hand some problems are seasonal. For example, opening the streets to transportation by cleaning the snow. These problems repeat with more or less a certain period. Acute problems happen suddenly and are serious to handle. For example, a sewage pipe gets broken in your house… Some problems are ubiqutious. You meet them in many areas of life. Some are wide spread with in a limited area. Your computer program does not work. When nothing works at all you have made a main mistake with wide results. Focused problems affect a certain functionality and the system recovers as soon as you fix it. Like a tooth ache…
Some problems are light but persist for a long duration. In fact, we can group the problems by their durations that they sustain, short – long etc. or according to their largeness. The way the problems happen may be classified also. Few or many in quantity. Fighting with more than one problem at the same time increases the total difficulty. The way we categorize problems is not constant. It changes according to the subject of the problem and the context it happens. To put a tiny piece of thread through a sewing needle may be percieved as difficult while a much more concentration demanding computer programming task may be percieved easier, just like a technical problem may be percieved much more difficult after midnight than at noon.
The fact that our perception of the problems is variable makes our categorization of the problems more difficult and hence reduces the benefit that arises from the categorization. If you are throwing anything you get hold of to your target in a chaos that you can not apprehend you have come to that point where you have to take a deep breath and try to categorize the problems correctly. If you can categorize the problems as convenieint as possible to reach the target your chance of hitting your target via a similar solution. Solving problems is basically a problem of classification.
I had mentioned the chronic problems in the beginning. The word ‘chronic’ means ‘: marked by long duration or frequent recurrence’ by Merriam-Webster. The most apparent characteristic of a chronic problem
is repetition or continuity. Reduction of the repetition intervals indicates that the problem gets severe or light. For example, a severe crisis give way to the lighter ones but more frequent or irregular problem periods, or the increase in the severity of problems and the increase of the frequency may indicate a worsening.
The repetition of the problem in chronic problems may happen in various ways:
1-The problem arises in a flow of random events. The crux of the issue here is; the events other than the chronic problem are random and carry no relation with the problem.
2- The chronic problem happens after a chain of happening events. After each occurence things repeat the same iteration of events. In this case, repeating event is not only the chronic problem but the events that prepare it.
The events’ iteration does not have to be constant array of events. The presence of some events may be obligatory, but two seperate iterations may be composed of completely different events. But most of the events that form the iteration belong to the set of events that form the reasons of chronic problem.
If we look at a chronic problem from a closer point of view, we may observe that a single crisis begins at a moment in time, continues and finishes, or the problem has begun at a moment and continues for a long duration without any interruption. Aset of the general conditions that prepare the outbreak of the crisis, a set of the causes that push the events to happen and a set of the triggers which may come just before the crisis may be observed. In the case of the repeating crisis, there is a set of conditions that prepare, a set of causes that make it happen and a set of triggers that initiate the end of the crisis.
One component of the equation that gives rise to the chronic event is a function which may change by time but may also be accepted as constant for relatively short periods of time. This function may be related to the events in the past or to the material dependent on the nature of the interacting elements/participants of the problem.
When studided closely, the reasons, the causes and the triggers that lead to the outbreak of the crisis may be related to their own previous values and also may be related to the previous crises values. For example, the seriousness of a previous crisis, its duration, its attack/sustain/release durations. Sometimes the slowness of the evolution of the problem, namely slowness in its attack period, mathematically its 1st and 2nd derivatives being small, or precautions that balance and slow sudden changes may stop the forming of crisis episodes. The dependence of the reasons that form the chronic crisis to the characteristics of previous crises and to its own evolution leads to the unmanageable repetition of a chronic problem.
Above, I had mentioned a chronic problem that occurs among unrelated random events. There may be such problems that may be dependent on only themselves and their own past iterations. These self triggering chronic problems are recursive[3] in nature. In fact they may be evaluated as a special case of functions mentioned in the 2. item.
If I may return back to the beginning of this article, if we have a closer look at the story of the chemist who found the benzene ring, we may now come to appreciate the value of the symbol ‘the snake which bites its own tail’. The metaphor of ‘the snake which bites its own tail’ or ‘the scorpion biting itself’ is a method utilized in solving problems that are very difficult. The problem is so difficult that it can not be solved or cured by external effects such as, force, medicine etc. It becomes inevitable that the energy at the source of the problem may be used to kill itself. This kind of solutions may not be present or evident. I believe, chronic problems have the ability to be solved by using the metaphor of ‘the snake which bites its own tail’ on the premises of their own definition.
Ali R+ SARAL
Note: My simple article ‘A Mathematical Model of Chronic Problems’ is available at my blog
http://tekne-techne.blogspot.com in Turkish.
Kaynaklar:
[1] Rober H. McKim, Experiences in Visual Thinking , Brooks/Cole Pub. Co. Monterey, California, s. 11.
[2] Merriam-Webster Dictionary
Main Entry: chronic
Etymology: French chronique, from Greek chronikos of time, from chronos
Date: 1601
1 a: marked by long duration or frequent recurrence : not acuteb: suffering from a chronic disease the 2 a: always present or encountered ; especially : constantly vexing, weakening, or troubling
Medical Merriam-Webster:.
1 a : marked by long duration, by frequent recurrence over a long time, and often by slowly progressing seriousness : not acute Chronic her b : suffering from a disease or ailment of long duration or frequent recurrence chronic
2 a : having a slow progressive course of indefinite duration -- used especially of degenerative invasive diseases, some infections, psychoses, and inflammations chronic-- comparre ACUTE 2b(1) b : infected with a disease-causing agent (as a virus) and remaining infectious over a long period of time but not necessarily expressing symptoms
[3] Merriam-Webster Dictionary
Main Entry: re•cur•sion
Pronunciation: \ri-ˈkər-zhən\
Function: noun
Etymology: Late Latin recursion-, recursio, from recurrere
Date: 1616
1: RETURN 2 : the determination of a succession of elements (as numbers or functions) by operation on one or more preceding elements according to a rule or formula involving a finite number of steps 3 : a computer programming technique involving the use of a procedure, subroutine, function, or algorithm that calls itself one or more times until a specified condition is met at which time the rest of each repetition is processed from the last one called to the first — compare ITERATION
Main Entry: it•er•a•tion
Pronunciation: \ˌi-tə-ˈrā-shən\
Function: noun
Date: 15th century
1: the action or a process of iterating or repeating: as a: a procedure in which repetition of a sequence of operations yields results successively closer to a desired result b: the repetition of a sequence of computer instructions a specified number of times or until a condition is met —compare RECURSION 2: one execution of a sequence of operations or instructions in an iteration
To the memory of our father Hasan SARAL.
“the chemist Kekule came upon one of the most important discoveries of organic chemistry, the structure of the benzene ring, in a dream. Having pondered the problem for some time, he turned his chair to the fire and fell asleep:’Again the atoms were gamboling before my eyes…. My mental eye…could now distinguish larger structures…all twining and twisting in snkae-like motion. But look! What was that? One of the snakes had seized hold of its own tail, and the form whirled mockingly before my eyes. As if by a flash of lightning I awoke.” The spontaneous inner image of the snake biting its own tail suggested to Kekule that organic compounds, such as benzene, are not open structures but closed rings[1].”
Everyday, we fight with many difficulties of many kinds. Some of these are as simple and short as loosening of the shoelaces. Some of them are as difficult and long as making an invention and some of them as abrupt and serious as a traffic accident… If you have a look at the many problems that we fight with you will notice that we can categorize them and their solutions in different groups. Although these groups may carry similarities in their quantity, quality and content attributes, their use by individual persons and the importance assigned to them may differ. Also, even though the problems and their solutions may be similar the personalities of the individuals that they interact may cause them to appear different.
Studying the nature of problems makes it possible for us to solve similar problems easily and also understand ourselves better We can categorize problems in various ways. For example, problems that repeat endlessly are called chronic in medicine. I am afraid, some of our political problems may be called the same. On the other hand some problems are seasonal. For example, opening the streets to transportation by cleaning the snow. These problems repeat with more or less a certain period. Acute problems happen suddenly and are serious to handle. For example, a sewage pipe gets broken in your house… Some problems are ubiqutious. You meet them in many areas of life. Some are wide spread with in a limited area. Your computer program does not work. When nothing works at all you have made a main mistake with wide results. Focused problems affect a certain functionality and the system recovers as soon as you fix it. Like a tooth ache…
Some problems are light but persist for a long duration. In fact, we can group the problems by their durations that they sustain, short – long etc. or according to their largeness. The way the problems happen may be classified also. Few or many in quantity. Fighting with more than one problem at the same time increases the total difficulty. The way we categorize problems is not constant. It changes according to the subject of the problem and the context it happens. To put a tiny piece of thread through a sewing needle may be percieved as difficult while a much more concentration demanding computer programming task may be percieved easier, just like a technical problem may be percieved much more difficult after midnight than at noon.
The fact that our perception of the problems is variable makes our categorization of the problems more difficult and hence reduces the benefit that arises from the categorization. If you are throwing anything you get hold of to your target in a chaos that you can not apprehend you have come to that point where you have to take a deep breath and try to categorize the problems correctly. If you can categorize the problems as convenieint as possible to reach the target your chance of hitting your target via a similar solution. Solving problems is basically a problem of classification.
I had mentioned the chronic problems in the beginning. The word ‘chronic’ means ‘: marked by long duration or frequent recurrence’ by Merriam-Webster. The most apparent characteristic of a chronic problem
is repetition or continuity. Reduction of the repetition intervals indicates that the problem gets severe or light. For example, a severe crisis give way to the lighter ones but more frequent or irregular problem periods, or the increase in the severity of problems and the increase of the frequency may indicate a worsening.
The repetition of the problem in chronic problems may happen in various ways:
1-The problem arises in a flow of random events. The crux of the issue here is; the events other than the chronic problem are random and carry no relation with the problem.
2- The chronic problem happens after a chain of happening events. After each occurence things repeat the same iteration of events. In this case, repeating event is not only the chronic problem but the events that prepare it.
The events’ iteration does not have to be constant array of events. The presence of some events may be obligatory, but two seperate iterations may be composed of completely different events. But most of the events that form the iteration belong to the set of events that form the reasons of chronic problem.
If we look at a chronic problem from a closer point of view, we may observe that a single crisis begins at a moment in time, continues and finishes, or the problem has begun at a moment and continues for a long duration without any interruption. Aset of the general conditions that prepare the outbreak of the crisis, a set of the causes that push the events to happen and a set of the triggers which may come just before the crisis may be observed. In the case of the repeating crisis, there is a set of conditions that prepare, a set of causes that make it happen and a set of triggers that initiate the end of the crisis.
One component of the equation that gives rise to the chronic event is a function which may change by time but may also be accepted as constant for relatively short periods of time. This function may be related to the events in the past or to the material dependent on the nature of the interacting elements/participants of the problem.
When studided closely, the reasons, the causes and the triggers that lead to the outbreak of the crisis may be related to their own previous values and also may be related to the previous crises values. For example, the seriousness of a previous crisis, its duration, its attack/sustain/release durations. Sometimes the slowness of the evolution of the problem, namely slowness in its attack period, mathematically its 1st and 2nd derivatives being small, or precautions that balance and slow sudden changes may stop the forming of crisis episodes. The dependence of the reasons that form the chronic crisis to the characteristics of previous crises and to its own evolution leads to the unmanageable repetition of a chronic problem.
Above, I had mentioned a chronic problem that occurs among unrelated random events. There may be such problems that may be dependent on only themselves and their own past iterations. These self triggering chronic problems are recursive[3] in nature. In fact they may be evaluated as a special case of functions mentioned in the 2. item.
If I may return back to the beginning of this article, if we have a closer look at the story of the chemist who found the benzene ring, we may now come to appreciate the value of the symbol ‘the snake which bites its own tail’. The metaphor of ‘the snake which bites its own tail’ or ‘the scorpion biting itself’ is a method utilized in solving problems that are very difficult. The problem is so difficult that it can not be solved or cured by external effects such as, force, medicine etc. It becomes inevitable that the energy at the source of the problem may be used to kill itself. This kind of solutions may not be present or evident. I believe, chronic problems have the ability to be solved by using the metaphor of ‘the snake which bites its own tail’ on the premises of their own definition.
Ali R+ SARAL
Note: My simple article ‘A Mathematical Model of Chronic Problems’ is available at my blog
http://tekne-techne.blogspot.com in Turkish.
Kaynaklar:
[1] Rober H. McKim, Experiences in Visual Thinking , Brooks/Cole Pub. Co. Monterey, California, s. 11.
[2] Merriam-Webster Dictionary
Main Entry: chronic
Etymology: French chronique, from Greek chronikos of time, from chronos
Date: 1601
1 a: marked by long duration or frequent recurrence : not acute
Medical Merriam-Webster:.
1 a : marked by long duration, by frequent recurrence over a long time, and often by slowly progressing seriousness : not acute Chronic her b : suffering from a disease or ailment of long duration or frequent recurrence chronic
2 a : having a slow progressive course of indefinite duration -- used especially of degenerative invasive diseases, some infections, psychoses, and inflammations chronic-- comparre ACUTE 2b(1) b : infected with a disease-causing agent (as a virus) and remaining infectious over a long period of time but not necessarily expressing symptoms
[3] Merriam-Webster Dictionary
Main Entry: re•cur•sion
Pronunciation: \ri-ˈkər-zhən\
Function: noun
Etymology: Late Latin recursion-, recursio, from recurrere
Date: 1616
1: RETURN 2 : the determination of a succession of elements (as numbers or functions) by operation on one or more preceding elements according to a rule or formula involving a finite number of steps 3 : a computer programming technique involving the use of a procedure, subroutine, function, or algorithm that calls itself one or more times until a specified condition is met at which time the rest of each repetition is processed from the last one called to the first — compare ITERATION
Main Entry: it•er•a•tion
Pronunciation: \ˌi-tə-ˈrā-shən\
Function: noun
Date: 15th century
1: the action or a process of iterating or repeating: as a: a procedure in which repetition of a sequence of operations yields results successively closer to a desired result b: the repetition of a sequence of computer instructions a specified number of times or until a condition is met —compare RECURSION 2: one execution of a sequence of operations or instructions in an iteration
4 Kasım 2008 Salı
”MISTAKES ARE BEAUTIFUL”
“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.
“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.
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…
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