Continuing to discuss Taoism for the Modern Age...
Let's say I give you two sums: 1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1 and 4+4. Both sum up to 8, and from a pure arithmetic point of view this means they mean the same thing.
Now let's say that the first expression represents a coach going out and recruiting athletes to make up the eight of the rowing team, and the second expression represents a man with three sons marrying a woman with three daughters (i.e the Brady Bunch).
Either way you end up with eight people. Counting the people, turning them into numbers, and then summing them to a total is an example of reductive meaning. This might be just what you want if you need to fill a block of 8 seats in the theatre, or a table of 8 at a banquet, since any eight people will fill the bill.
But for the purposes of winning at Henley or starting a sitcom, the two groups of 8 are not equivalent. A lot of detail about the full picture gets eliminated when you sum things up into a simplified whole.
Language is also reductive in a similar way to arithmetic. When I call the first eight people as "a rowing team", I focus on a subset of the attributes of those people, and I lose the fact that one of them is, say, called Fred and is a fanatical supporter of Manchester United. When I call the second eight people as a "blended family", I may lose the information that Jan is jealous of the attention her older sister Marcia receives.
Any reality is much more complex than any description of it. The limitations of our minds and of our language require us to reduce what we experience to such descriptions. For this reason, we need to remind ourselves that we never have the whole picture if we want to remain in touch with reality.
While it may be convenient for a focused purpose to reduce things down to a simpler description, the true meaning of things can only ever be in their full, indescribable complexity.
Showing posts with label Philosophy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Philosophy. Show all posts
January 11, 2016
January 7, 2016
No Good or Evil, Only the Tao
Continuing to discuss Taoism for the Modern Age...
Most people will be familiar with the Taoist symbol known as the taiji (even if you didn't know it was called that. By the way, that name is the first part of the Chinese martial art/exercise system called taijiquan or Tai Chi.)
It is a circle with two different colour "swirls" with a dot of the opposite colour in each swirl. It represents the union of yin and yang in the Tao. Each of these is traditionally associated with particular qualities (yin is darkness, femininity, cold, etc.; yang is light, masculinity, heat, etc.). But for philosophical purposes, it really only matters that these are opposite qualities.
In most of the western religious and philosophical tradition, dualism is the norm. Good and evil, spirit and matter, to take two obvious examples, are conceived as utterly distinct and opposing things. Once you have classified something as one or the other, it is permanently and solidly in that category.
In contrast, the Taoist approach to opposites is monistic, in that the opposites are conceived as being part of the same thing, flowing organically into one another. (Hence the opposite dot in each swirl.) The whole philosophy of the Yijing is based on this idea: yin lines change into yang ones and vice versa, the speed and ordering of the changes producing the different flows and outcomes.
The canonical model of Chinese dynastic history follows this model: an old dynasty becomes corrupt and ineffectual, and is replaced by a new, virtuous and vigorous dynasty that will ultimately succumb to the same fate (hopefully after centuries).
We see similar examples all the time in the modern world: the hot, new thing becomes tomorrow's cliche, today's hero is tomorrow's villain (and sometimes vice versa).
A major form of dualism these days is political dualism: left and right, conservative vs. liberal. Strangely, when the Left/Right metaphor originally became current, the conservatives were those who believed that the state (the king) should control everything for the common good, and the liberals were those who believed in free markets, free enterprise and individual autonomy. Today, these words tend to have the opposite associations.
The big problem with demonizing one's enemies and being so sure that your side is on the side of the angels is that it can be a little bit too easy to miss the changes in the flow. Today's liberator is tomorrow's dictator. Today's high-minded idealist is using gutter techniques to beat "the bad guys" next week.
A Taoist outlook reminds us that there are no hard lines between opposites and that these lines are always moving and shifting. Rather than clinging to certainties, it is better to keep a holistic, realistic perspective. Those who cling too vigorously to a particular "good" often end up not noticing when the thing they are clinging to has shifted over to the side of harm.
Taoism suggests that it is better to be healthy and happy in ambiguity than to be rigidly and lifelessly on the side of "the good and the right".
Most people will be familiar with the Taoist symbol known as the taiji (even if you didn't know it was called that. By the way, that name is the first part of the Chinese martial art/exercise system called taijiquan or Tai Chi.)
It is a circle with two different colour "swirls" with a dot of the opposite colour in each swirl. It represents the union of yin and yang in the Tao. Each of these is traditionally associated with particular qualities (yin is darkness, femininity, cold, etc.; yang is light, masculinity, heat, etc.). But for philosophical purposes, it really only matters that these are opposite qualities.
In most of the western religious and philosophical tradition, dualism is the norm. Good and evil, spirit and matter, to take two obvious examples, are conceived as utterly distinct and opposing things. Once you have classified something as one or the other, it is permanently and solidly in that category.
In contrast, the Taoist approach to opposites is monistic, in that the opposites are conceived as being part of the same thing, flowing organically into one another. (Hence the opposite dot in each swirl.) The whole philosophy of the Yijing is based on this idea: yin lines change into yang ones and vice versa, the speed and ordering of the changes producing the different flows and outcomes.
The canonical model of Chinese dynastic history follows this model: an old dynasty becomes corrupt and ineffectual, and is replaced by a new, virtuous and vigorous dynasty that will ultimately succumb to the same fate (hopefully after centuries).
We see similar examples all the time in the modern world: the hot, new thing becomes tomorrow's cliche, today's hero is tomorrow's villain (and sometimes vice versa).
A major form of dualism these days is political dualism: left and right, conservative vs. liberal. Strangely, when the Left/Right metaphor originally became current, the conservatives were those who believed that the state (the king) should control everything for the common good, and the liberals were those who believed in free markets, free enterprise and individual autonomy. Today, these words tend to have the opposite associations.
The big problem with demonizing one's enemies and being so sure that your side is on the side of the angels is that it can be a little bit too easy to miss the changes in the flow. Today's liberator is tomorrow's dictator. Today's high-minded idealist is using gutter techniques to beat "the bad guys" next week.
A Taoist outlook reminds us that there are no hard lines between opposites and that these lines are always moving and shifting. Rather than clinging to certainties, it is better to keep a holistic, realistic perspective. Those who cling too vigorously to a particular "good" often end up not noticing when the thing they are clinging to has shifted over to the side of harm.
Taoism suggests that it is better to be healthy and happy in ambiguity than to be rigidly and lifelessly on the side of "the good and the right".
January 5, 2016
Just Smart Enough To Be Dangerous
Continuing on the theme of Taoism for the modern age...
When we are in elementary school or high school (and for some, even to the end of undergraduate university), we learn the "facts" as known by experts in whatever discipline we are studying, and when we memorize and internalize them, we do well on our tests, papers and exams. If we do well enough, we congratulate ourselves that we are "smart".
We learn about all the technological, scientific and sociological advancements our civilization has made, and we feel that the world is fully understandable and controllable, if not by us personally, then by some "expert" somewhere else.
Some of us reject these "mainstream" experts, but put our faith in some other kind of expert: alternative medicine, pseudoscience, conspiracy theories, religious beliefs, etc. But this boils down to the same thing: the belief that we can understand and control the world, by some means or another.
The problem is that, if you study any subject area deep enough, you discover that the nice little story you learned at the novice stage is basically a massive simplification of the truth, and there are a lot of unanswered questions, and problems too complex to reduce to an understandable and controllable system.
If we look at just quantum mechanics, a well-studied field with real consequences for many modern technologies, we find that even after almost a century of study, a basic, universally-agreed-upon understanding of what it even means is still elusive.
And this seems to be true of every field I have ever examined: any system we invent to understand, predict and control things, while it may be very useful in specific ways, ultimately collapses in the face of the effortless complexity of the world.
Given that the biggest threats to our existence ( climate change, destruction of the ocean ecosystem, nuclear annihilation still lurking off to the side, etc. ) are the direct result of our over-confidence in our own intelligence, perhaps we need to work on our humility a bit, and pay attention to the actual workings of the world around us right now, beyond the narrow confines of our various disciplines and theories. Because as remarkable as our technological accomplishments are, it is starting to look like we might be just smart enough to be dangerous.
When we are in elementary school or high school (and for some, even to the end of undergraduate university), we learn the "facts" as known by experts in whatever discipline we are studying, and when we memorize and internalize them, we do well on our tests, papers and exams. If we do well enough, we congratulate ourselves that we are "smart".
We learn about all the technological, scientific and sociological advancements our civilization has made, and we feel that the world is fully understandable and controllable, if not by us personally, then by some "expert" somewhere else.
Some of us reject these "mainstream" experts, but put our faith in some other kind of expert: alternative medicine, pseudoscience, conspiracy theories, religious beliefs, etc. But this boils down to the same thing: the belief that we can understand and control the world, by some means or another.
The problem is that, if you study any subject area deep enough, you discover that the nice little story you learned at the novice stage is basically a massive simplification of the truth, and there are a lot of unanswered questions, and problems too complex to reduce to an understandable and controllable system.
If we look at just quantum mechanics, a well-studied field with real consequences for many modern technologies, we find that even after almost a century of study, a basic, universally-agreed-upon understanding of what it even means is still elusive.
And this seems to be true of every field I have ever examined: any system we invent to understand, predict and control things, while it may be very useful in specific ways, ultimately collapses in the face of the effortless complexity of the world.
Given that the biggest threats to our existence ( climate change, destruction of the ocean ecosystem, nuclear annihilation still lurking off to the side, etc. ) are the direct result of our over-confidence in our own intelligence, perhaps we need to work on our humility a bit, and pay attention to the actual workings of the world around us right now, beyond the narrow confines of our various disciplines and theories. Because as remarkable as our technological accomplishments are, it is starting to look like we might be just smart enough to be dangerous.
December 31, 2015
Taoism for the Modern Age
I used to be on a popular dating site where you answered a bunch of questions to try to match with like-minded people. One of the questions was "How do you feel about Taoism?". The positive answer option was "I love the Tao Te Ching!" and the negative was "Don't like it. Taoists are too passive."
This irritated me in two different ways.
First, there is a second major Taoist text, the Chuang Tzu, that is a much better exposition of Taoist ideas. It's funnier, clearer, and is made up of narrative pieces that make it a better read. Unfortunately, other than the famous piece about Chuang Tzu dreaming he is a butterfly, it is not as well-known in the west.
The better known Tao Te Ching is quite challenging to translate, even by the usually challenging standards of Classical Chinese texts (there is a whole other post in that), and some of the translations available in English are really quite loopy, so that people can interpret them however they want with very little understanding.
This might account for the second irritation: the belief that Taoism is essentially the philosophy for slackers who plan to smoke dope in their basement for the rest of their lives.
On the contrary, I think Taoism is exactly the philosophy needed for modern western people, especially North Americans. Unfortunately, Benjamin Hoff had the same idea with his book The Tao of Pooh, a book that was popular when I was in university. And though his book is amusing, I think it gave a lot of people the wrong idea about Taoism by aggressively attacking "Confucian" ideas (really North American success values by proxy) and making it seem that Taoism was just hippy "dropping out" from an ancient Chinese source.
But Taoism is much more sophisticated than that. Sure, Chuang Tzu light-heartedly spoofs other contemporary philosophers, such as Confucius and Hui Tzu (the latter a philosopher of logical reasoning), but it is not to negate them, but show that their concerns are only part of a greater whole, a bigger picture.
We don't need to give up our ideas, values and goals, or abandon our strivings, so much as to remember that we are part of a huge, complex world, with its own forces and "ends". Learning to go with the world's natural flow and align our designs with the currents (human and natural) around us would allow us save some of our energy and to enjoy our lives more: you don't have to paddle so much if you are going with the current.
So a good Modern Taoist doesn't have to be a slacker. They will just spend more time figuring out how they can use the current to get them somewhere they might like to go, rather than ignoring that current and blindly going up against it and making themselves miserable in the process.
This irritated me in two different ways.
First, there is a second major Taoist text, the Chuang Tzu, that is a much better exposition of Taoist ideas. It's funnier, clearer, and is made up of narrative pieces that make it a better read. Unfortunately, other than the famous piece about Chuang Tzu dreaming he is a butterfly, it is not as well-known in the west.
The better known Tao Te Ching is quite challenging to translate, even by the usually challenging standards of Classical Chinese texts (there is a whole other post in that), and some of the translations available in English are really quite loopy, so that people can interpret them however they want with very little understanding.
This might account for the second irritation: the belief that Taoism is essentially the philosophy for slackers who plan to smoke dope in their basement for the rest of their lives.
On the contrary, I think Taoism is exactly the philosophy needed for modern western people, especially North Americans. Unfortunately, Benjamin Hoff had the same idea with his book The Tao of Pooh, a book that was popular when I was in university. And though his book is amusing, I think it gave a lot of people the wrong idea about Taoism by aggressively attacking "Confucian" ideas (really North American success values by proxy) and making it seem that Taoism was just hippy "dropping out" from an ancient Chinese source.
But Taoism is much more sophisticated than that. Sure, Chuang Tzu light-heartedly spoofs other contemporary philosophers, such as Confucius and Hui Tzu (the latter a philosopher of logical reasoning), but it is not to negate them, but show that their concerns are only part of a greater whole, a bigger picture.
We don't need to give up our ideas, values and goals, or abandon our strivings, so much as to remember that we are part of a huge, complex world, with its own forces and "ends". Learning to go with the world's natural flow and align our designs with the currents (human and natural) around us would allow us save some of our energy and to enjoy our lives more: you don't have to paddle so much if you are going with the current.
So a good Modern Taoist doesn't have to be a slacker. They will just spend more time figuring out how they can use the current to get them somewhere they might like to go, rather than ignoring that current and blindly going up against it and making themselves miserable in the process.
September 21, 2013
Some Thoughts on Malcolm X
I've been a fan of Spike Lee's movies for a long time, and I still remember seeing his "Malcolm X" in the theater.
Though it may seem like an odd thing for a white guy, I left that theater an admirer of the icon of Black Power who would later choose the name Malik El-Shabazz, and earn the honorific El-Hajj.
And it wasn't just the universalist El-Shabazz I admired, the one who had given up his anger and hatred against me and my kind, but, in part thanks to the brilliance of Lee's movie-making, I also learned to admire, and appreciate the necessity for, his time as "Malcolm X", when he would have been perfectly happy to call me a "white devil" to my face.
When you believe passionately that diversity is a strength and an enhancement to the quality of your life, when you feel that you are "one of the good guys" reaching out in friendship, the venomous rejection that X and the Nation of Islam were spewing out is very hard to take, even if you recognize the justice of the grievances that inspired it. It isn't easy being told "We don't want you here" when you feel you are on the same side.
But I learned through Spike Lee and Malcolm X that the "white devil" message was not about me, and not for me. In a way, it was none of my business.
It was about purging the internalized sense of inferiority, shame, and envy that had been instilled by centuries of domination and abuse. The truth is that equality is not conferred by others: it needs to grow and become firmly established within first. Once it is there, others can accept it or not, but then that is THEIR problem.
Centuries of collective, and decades of personal, anger and hurt had to be vented, processed, and transcended before El-Shabazz could emerge, equal not because someone else (or some document) told him he was, but because he just was, and knew it as surely as he knew his own freely-chosen name.
Another important thing I admired about Malcolm X, and the Nation of Islam, were the discipline and focus they brought to their activities, and while the message may have sounded vitriolic, they stopped short of actual violence. This is not a trivial accomplishment, and it makes all the difference.
Recently, it has come to my attention that I need to relearn the lesson that Mr. Lee and El-Hajj El-Shabazz were kind enough to teach me over twenty years ago.
In my larger professional community of software developers, there are new groups with real historic grievances, and they are getting to the point where they too want to sit at the table without having to apologize for who they are. I've been fortunate to work in environments with a lot of diversity, and I welcome more of it enthusiastically.
But some of these aggrieved groups are working through the anger and hate built up from their long suppression, from the mistreatment they have received from our industry and society at large. And sometimes what they say and do makes me uncomfortable, seems to target me or seems to contravene the values of diversity as I understand them.
As I said, this can be hard to take. But maybe I have to remember the lesson of Malcolm X: it's not about me, and it is not for me. In a way, it's not even my business.
Rather than taking offense, or speaking up, maybe the best thing I can do is LET them hate my male, white, hetero, cis, middle-aged ass.
If it gets too much, I can look away, ignore it, bite my tongue, live my values in some other way. Short of actual violence, or the genuine threat of it, maybe I need to let them express themselves, however they like, until they've worked it through.
Diversity is one of MY most deeply-held values, and no one said that living your values was going to be easy (actually, I'm pretty sure that it being hard and doing it anyway is how you know it really is a value). I will continue living that value, even if sometimes it is rejected by those I'm reaching out to.
Perhaps the best I can do is to continue to be a SILENT ally, and to be ready, when they have worked through all that anger, when they are healed, to welcome them as the friends, colleagues and siblings in the universal family that I already know them to be.
Though it may seem like an odd thing for a white guy, I left that theater an admirer of the icon of Black Power who would later choose the name Malik El-Shabazz, and earn the honorific El-Hajj.
And it wasn't just the universalist El-Shabazz I admired, the one who had given up his anger and hatred against me and my kind, but, in part thanks to the brilliance of Lee's movie-making, I also learned to admire, and appreciate the necessity for, his time as "Malcolm X", when he would have been perfectly happy to call me a "white devil" to my face.
When you believe passionately that diversity is a strength and an enhancement to the quality of your life, when you feel that you are "one of the good guys" reaching out in friendship, the venomous rejection that X and the Nation of Islam were spewing out is very hard to take, even if you recognize the justice of the grievances that inspired it. It isn't easy being told "We don't want you here" when you feel you are on the same side.
But I learned through Spike Lee and Malcolm X that the "white devil" message was not about me, and not for me. In a way, it was none of my business.
It was about purging the internalized sense of inferiority, shame, and envy that had been instilled by centuries of domination and abuse. The truth is that equality is not conferred by others: it needs to grow and become firmly established within first. Once it is there, others can accept it or not, but then that is THEIR problem.
Centuries of collective, and decades of personal, anger and hurt had to be vented, processed, and transcended before El-Shabazz could emerge, equal not because someone else (or some document) told him he was, but because he just was, and knew it as surely as he knew his own freely-chosen name.
Another important thing I admired about Malcolm X, and the Nation of Islam, were the discipline and focus they brought to their activities, and while the message may have sounded vitriolic, they stopped short of actual violence. This is not a trivial accomplishment, and it makes all the difference.
Recently, it has come to my attention that I need to relearn the lesson that Mr. Lee and El-Hajj El-Shabazz were kind enough to teach me over twenty years ago.
In my larger professional community of software developers, there are new groups with real historic grievances, and they are getting to the point where they too want to sit at the table without having to apologize for who they are. I've been fortunate to work in environments with a lot of diversity, and I welcome more of it enthusiastically.
But some of these aggrieved groups are working through the anger and hate built up from their long suppression, from the mistreatment they have received from our industry and society at large. And sometimes what they say and do makes me uncomfortable, seems to target me or seems to contravene the values of diversity as I understand them.
As I said, this can be hard to take. But maybe I have to remember the lesson of Malcolm X: it's not about me, and it is not for me. In a way, it's not even my business.
Rather than taking offense, or speaking up, maybe the best thing I can do is LET them hate my male, white, hetero, cis, middle-aged ass.
If it gets too much, I can look away, ignore it, bite my tongue, live my values in some other way. Short of actual violence, or the genuine threat of it, maybe I need to let them express themselves, however they like, until they've worked it through.
Diversity is one of MY most deeply-held values, and no one said that living your values was going to be easy (actually, I'm pretty sure that it being hard and doing it anyway is how you know it really is a value). I will continue living that value, even if sometimes it is rejected by those I'm reaching out to.
Perhaps the best I can do is to continue to be a SILENT ally, and to be ready, when they have worked through all that anger, when they are healed, to welcome them as the friends, colleagues and siblings in the universal family that I already know them to be.
April 9, 2011
Truth, Sales and Leadership
Salesmen, politicians and chief executives are all cut from the same mould. Their fundamental job is to impress and make others feel good about buying what they have to sell.
As someone who has spent his career in product delivery, and who is sceptical by nature, I’ve had a mixed relationship with the sales and presentation types. I have all too often ended up on the hook when one of them sold unicorns when what we had in the barn was donkeys.
But, unlike many technically oriented delivery specialists, I have a deep appreciation for the value and necessity of presentation and sales. I understand the symbiotic nature of our separate disciplines. In the end, things only work out well when both roles are filled competently, and both sides need to remember their dependence on the other if they want to succeed.
If at this point you aren’t sure which side of this proposed divide is your natural home, let me propose a simple way to decide: which do you think is more important, to impress or to be impressive? If you don’t understand this distinction, let me rephrase: would you rather be famous and admired for something that you didn’t put a lot of effort or skill into, or be amazingly accomplished at something that no one knew about you?
Now some of you are I’m sure objecting that these are always or usually the same thing: accomplishment and skill, and recognition for that accomplishment and skill generally go hand in hand.
But the truth is that it is rarely the case that the two go together naturally. Are the best singers and actors the biggest stars, and vice versa? Are the most successful politicians most often the smartest and most qualified decision-makers? Is your average CEO the biggest expert in the business he is running?
This isn’t a complaint that the world isn’t fair. On the contrary, I think there is a good reason why things work this way. Impressing people requires that you present yourself in terms that they can understand, evaluate and appreciate. Being impressive requires honing your abilities and understanding beyond the experience and comprehension of most people, to make distinctions and to have perceptions beyond what is evident to a non-expert.
Each of these sides has its obvious pitfalls, and to understand these, all you have to do is think about the negative stereotypes of these two groups.
The bad salesman or politician is full of hot air, with plenty of promises that never get kept. The bad salesman is convinced he could “sell snow to the Eskimos”, the bad politician certain that he could finesse over the most egregious scandal and get away with breaking every promise.
The bad expert (let’s use software developer as an example) is disdainful of the buying public, mystified that they don’t see the deep technical skill that went into solving several difficult and subtle challenges but are instead impressed or put off by trivial details, such as the colour choices on the main screen. The bad software developer is convinced that good software will always sell itself, and sales and marketing are clueless bozos who soak up money and accolades that rightfully belong to the technical geniuses.
Both of these stereotypical bad guys are wrong: they desperately and inseparably need each other.
To illustrate the symbiosis of these two callings, I will draw on an example that has literally been battle-tested over centuries. It is traditional in the military for there to be two command roles for every unit: Commanding Officer (CO) and Executive Officer (XO).
The CO is the external face of the unit. It is his job to represent the skills of his unit up the chain, to convince the command hierarchy to give his unit more resources, and to cheerlead and praise his men for their accomplishments. Ideally, he should be loved by his men, and they should feel proud and honoured to serve under him.
The XO is the internal manager and disciplinarian of the group. It is his job to push, prod, terrorize and manhandle his men to improve their skills and achieve their mission goals. He must be the first to observe and criticize any short-comings and ruthlessly punish any breach of discipline. He is the expert in building the best possible soldiers. Ideally, he should be respected and feared, at best grudgingly liked, and made fun of when the men are absolutely, positively certain that he can’t hear them.
With such radically different profiles, you would expect that these two officers should not work together very well, right?
But the truth is that, if both men actually understand their roles, they should be working in perfect collusion with each other. The XO should be feeding the CO with good things about the men that can be praised, and let him know when the men are achieving their best and can’t be expected to give anymore. The CO will let the XO know if any bad reports are coming in from outside the unit and share his fears of how the unit might fail in upcoming missions.
The two roles are distinct, and require different focuses, but they must be done in perfect concert to achieve maximum effectiveness in the situation. Such dual leadership roles can and often are performed by a single person in non-military leadership situations, but there is something to be said for the collaborative specialization of individuals dividing up the areas of responsibility. Even if you find yourself with both roles, you have to find some way to separate them in the minds of others so that they don’t contaminate and undermine each other.
I think we would all agree that the ideal situation is the one where things both seem good and are good, but where the downside is also known and managed. Being aware that some aspects of the truth (possibly not the most important ones) need to be highlighted for the sake of presentation is important for experts to understand. Keeping in mind that finding and fixing negatives is essential for quality products and that it is in everyone’s interests to not diverge too far from the truth in presentation is vital for sales to understand.
A well-packaged truth can only come about when both perspectives work together and respect each other.
As someone who has spent his career in product delivery, and who is sceptical by nature, I’ve had a mixed relationship with the sales and presentation types. I have all too often ended up on the hook when one of them sold unicorns when what we had in the barn was donkeys.
But, unlike many technically oriented delivery specialists, I have a deep appreciation for the value and necessity of presentation and sales. I understand the symbiotic nature of our separate disciplines. In the end, things only work out well when both roles are filled competently, and both sides need to remember their dependence on the other if they want to succeed.
To Impress or to Be Impressive
If at this point you aren’t sure which side of this proposed divide is your natural home, let me propose a simple way to decide: which do you think is more important, to impress or to be impressive? If you don’t understand this distinction, let me rephrase: would you rather be famous and admired for something that you didn’t put a lot of effort or skill into, or be amazingly accomplished at something that no one knew about you?
Now some of you are I’m sure objecting that these are always or usually the same thing: accomplishment and skill, and recognition for that accomplishment and skill generally go hand in hand.
But the truth is that it is rarely the case that the two go together naturally. Are the best singers and actors the biggest stars, and vice versa? Are the most successful politicians most often the smartest and most qualified decision-makers? Is your average CEO the biggest expert in the business he is running?
This isn’t a complaint that the world isn’t fair. On the contrary, I think there is a good reason why things work this way. Impressing people requires that you present yourself in terms that they can understand, evaluate and appreciate. Being impressive requires honing your abilities and understanding beyond the experience and comprehension of most people, to make distinctions and to have perceptions beyond what is evident to a non-expert.
When Sales or Fulfillment Goes Bad
Each of these sides has its obvious pitfalls, and to understand these, all you have to do is think about the negative stereotypes of these two groups.
The bad salesman or politician is full of hot air, with plenty of promises that never get kept. The bad salesman is convinced he could “sell snow to the Eskimos”, the bad politician certain that he could finesse over the most egregious scandal and get away with breaking every promise.
The bad expert (let’s use software developer as an example) is disdainful of the buying public, mystified that they don’t see the deep technical skill that went into solving several difficult and subtle challenges but are instead impressed or put off by trivial details, such as the colour choices on the main screen. The bad software developer is convinced that good software will always sell itself, and sales and marketing are clueless bozos who soak up money and accolades that rightfully belong to the technical geniuses.
Both of these stereotypical bad guys are wrong: they desperately and inseparably need each other.
Commanding Officer and Executive Officer
To illustrate the symbiosis of these two callings, I will draw on an example that has literally been battle-tested over centuries. It is traditional in the military for there to be two command roles for every unit: Commanding Officer (CO) and Executive Officer (XO).
The CO is the external face of the unit. It is his job to represent the skills of his unit up the chain, to convince the command hierarchy to give his unit more resources, and to cheerlead and praise his men for their accomplishments. Ideally, he should be loved by his men, and they should feel proud and honoured to serve under him.
The XO is the internal manager and disciplinarian of the group. It is his job to push, prod, terrorize and manhandle his men to improve their skills and achieve their mission goals. He must be the first to observe and criticize any short-comings and ruthlessly punish any breach of discipline. He is the expert in building the best possible soldiers. Ideally, he should be respected and feared, at best grudgingly liked, and made fun of when the men are absolutely, positively certain that he can’t hear them.
With such radically different profiles, you would expect that these two officers should not work together very well, right?
But the truth is that, if both men actually understand their roles, they should be working in perfect collusion with each other. The XO should be feeding the CO with good things about the men that can be praised, and let him know when the men are achieving their best and can’t be expected to give anymore. The CO will let the XO know if any bad reports are coming in from outside the unit and share his fears of how the unit might fail in upcoming missions.
The two roles are distinct, and require different focuses, but they must be done in perfect concert to achieve maximum effectiveness in the situation. Such dual leadership roles can and often are performed by a single person in non-military leadership situations, but there is something to be said for the collaborative specialization of individuals dividing up the areas of responsibility. Even if you find yourself with both roles, you have to find some way to separate them in the minds of others so that they don’t contaminate and undermine each other.
Truth and Presentation
I think we would all agree that the ideal situation is the one where things both seem good and are good, but where the downside is also known and managed. Being aware that some aspects of the truth (possibly not the most important ones) need to be highlighted for the sake of presentation is important for experts to understand. Keeping in mind that finding and fixing negatives is essential for quality products and that it is in everyone’s interests to not diverge too far from the truth in presentation is vital for sales to understand.
A well-packaged truth can only come about when both perspectives work together and respect each other.
November 17, 2010
The Usefulness of Philosophy
I came across a comment on a blog recently where the author adjured the other participants to stop “philosophizing” so much and get down to the real matter at hand. This reminded me that, for many people, “philosophy” is a term of abuse. For them, philosophy is pointless blather among elitist twits with no practical consequence - the very opposite of anything practical and useful.
Given the name of this blog, you can guess that I don’t agree with this negative sentiment. I won’t deny there are some philosophers and some philosophies that I think are pointless blather, but to take them as our basic definition is to throw the baby out with the bath water.
I want to propose that philosophy is the study of mental models, and, as I said in my previous post, I think mental models are the basis of our competence. Since our competence determines how well we manage and how effective we are at realizing our goals, there is obvious practical importance in understanding how mental models work, getting used to taking them apart and building new ones.
As I explained in my very first post regarding my chosen name for the blog, I think software development is an eminently philosophical activity. It is all about constructing mental models of systems and manipulating those systems using the mental models. It doesn’t matter whether these systems are machines, protocols, teams, problem domains, programming languages, etc: how effectively you work with them depends on your ability to construct and manipulate good mental models of how they work.
Being unaware of your own mental models is a limit to your own effectiveness. We have all known people who thought they had found the perfect hammer and were busy nailing everything. Likewise, we have probably known someone who repeated the same dysfunctional pattern over and over again in spite of not getting the desired result.
Philosophy as the study of mental models can make you aware of the mental models underlying these behaviours and can give you the skills you need to improve them.
A word of warning though: as Socrates found out the hard way, people often get very upset when you question their cherished mental models, and this can happen even when we question our own. However, if you want to improve effectiveness and grow in competence, there is much to recommend the use of philosophy to take apart and rebuild our mental models.
Given the name of this blog, you can guess that I don’t agree with this negative sentiment. I won’t deny there are some philosophers and some philosophies that I think are pointless blather, but to take them as our basic definition is to throw the baby out with the bath water.
I want to propose that philosophy is the study of mental models, and, as I said in my previous post, I think mental models are the basis of our competence. Since our competence determines how well we manage and how effective we are at realizing our goals, there is obvious practical importance in understanding how mental models work, getting used to taking them apart and building new ones.
As I explained in my very first post regarding my chosen name for the blog, I think software development is an eminently philosophical activity. It is all about constructing mental models of systems and manipulating those systems using the mental models. It doesn’t matter whether these systems are machines, protocols, teams, problem domains, programming languages, etc: how effectively you work with them depends on your ability to construct and manipulate good mental models of how they work.
Being unaware of your own mental models is a limit to your own effectiveness. We have all known people who thought they had found the perfect hammer and were busy nailing everything. Likewise, we have probably known someone who repeated the same dysfunctional pattern over and over again in spite of not getting the desired result.
Philosophy as the study of mental models can make you aware of the mental models underlying these behaviours and can give you the skills you need to improve them.
A word of warning though: as Socrates found out the hard way, people often get very upset when you question their cherished mental models, and this can happen even when we question our own. However, if you want to improve effectiveness and grow in competence, there is much to recommend the use of philosophy to take apart and rebuild our mental models.
November 14, 2010
The Importance of Mental Models
Many years ago, my wife and I were in Paris, staying in a quaint Left Bank hotel that did not provide an iron and ironing board. My mental model of a hotel is that it should provide these, free of charge, and preferably one to each room: I like having wrinkle-free clothes, even on holiday. However, as we will see, I’ve learned that my mental models are not always adequate representations of reality, and that in order to solve my problems, I may have to construct a new mental model. We decided that the solution to our problem was to buy a compact travel iron to solve the problem once and for all.
At home in Toronto, the obvious place to buy a small electrical appliance would be at a large department store, so we thought that the first place to look for our quarry would be at a well-known Parisian department store a healthy walk from our hotel. When we got there, we wandered around a bit, but couldn’t see an appliances department, so we asked a saleslady where we could find such a thing. (We are both fluent in French, so we had a leg up on most tourists in such a situation.)
The saleslady was polite and helpful, but bewildered that we would be looking for an iron in her store: in her mind this clearly wasn’t the kind of place you shopped for such things. It was as if I had gone into a sporting goods store and asked if they had a fresh produce section.
Another faulty mental model: in spite of being two adults with years of experience fending for ourselves, able to speak the local language, familiar with Paris from previous trips, it dawns on us that we are simply lacking the competence to perform the simple task of buying a travel iron in Paris.
Luckily, when we asked our friendly saleslady where we might purchase an iron nearby, she offered one word: “Darty.” We weren’t sure if this was the name of a street, a neighbourhood, a local shop-keeper or a store, but she pointed us vaguely up the street, and off we went. Along the way, we found a small shop whose sign indicated that they sold electrical supplies, and we thought this might be what we were looking for, but in fact this store only sold light bulbs of every shape and variety, all stored in rows of wooden drawers mounted like a library’s old card-catalog on the walls. My mental model of the world did not contain the possibility of such a store, so I was mystified and delighted: if I ever need a light bulb in Paris, I will now know where to go.
After wandering around in circles through the figure eight streets, repeatedly asking reservedly helpful passersby for directions, and being vaguely pointed, sometimes in contradictory directions, we finally found a fairly large store, set back from the street with a sign proclaiming it to be “Darty”. At last!
Once we entered the store, it was clear we had found the right place. There were rows and rows of various kinds of home appliances and electrical gadgets. Not all of the logical groupings were readily apparent to me: for example there might be electric fans and electric razors in the same shelving island. Each item had a single display model, out of box, on a shelf with a small card with a number next to it. After some wandering around, we did find a small row of irons, one of which was a compact travel iron.
Now for our next challenge: how to buy one? There were no boxed models to pick up and take to the sales counter, just the floor model and the little number. We stood their looking and feeling clueless for a while, until a saleslady spotted us and asked if we needed help. Saved! Now, we thought, she will get us our item, process our transaction and our quest will be over.
We indicated to her the travel iron we had selected. She took out a little paper form, filled out the number of our item on it, handed it to us, and cheerfully bid us good day. Another perfectly good mental model crushed by a cruel Gallic world! I sheepishly asked where I was supposed to take the form. She pointed vaguely across the store, saying there was a counter.
Sure enough, we crossed the store and found a counter with several clerks standing around. We handed one of them our form, they processed our payment, gave us a new stamped form, and bid us a somewhat perfunctory good day. I waited for a moment, expecting our iron to appear, in spite of the fact that our clerk seemed to have completely lost interest in us. After a few moments, I asked where my iron was. They pointed vaguely in a new direction across the store, and we traipsed off, ending up among rows of televisions sets.
The sales guy there took pity on us, despite my mild irritation that I had already paid for my iron, but did not yet have it in my hand (another mental model). He explained that we actually had to leave the store, and walk half-way down the hall of the indoor mall it was in and we would be able to get our iron there. I’m starting to feel like a sucker: they’ve taken my money, but they are now telling me to leave the store with just a little stamped form and someone down the way will give me my item? Riiiight! Nonetheless, we followed his instructions, finding a little kiosk down the way, unmarked and unattended. After a few moments standing there, dejected and simmering, an attendant appeared, took our stamped form, and handed us our boxed travel iron. At last!
Now you could take this story as a mockery of the French way of doing things, but the American tourists I’ve seen loudly berating French workers for their bad customer service have got that angle covered.
In fact, I love these kinds of experiences, though they can be distressing at the time, and they are exactly part of the reason I travel. I want to have my mental models challenged by a different culture.
There is a perfectly good system at work there that Parisians navigate every day, I just didn’t understand it, but now I do, and having done so, I’m now just a little bit more competent at how to get needful things done in Paris.
Though you could just read this as an amusing anecdote about travel, my real purpose in telling it is to apply it to thinking about useful systems. Doing software development, or managing a team, or running a business are all about navigating, manipulating and improving systems. To work with a system effectively, you need to have a good mental model of that system.
If you want to lead a team, one of your biggest challenges is to communicate your mental model of the undertaking you want the team to pursue. Only if all the members of the team share a mental model which is adequate to the task at hand can they work together to produced the desired end.
In fact, I would go so far as to say that to call yourself competent at some skill is to say that you have acquired an adequate mental model of that skill.
As the iron-buying story illustrates, it can be frustrating and humiliating to be confronted by a foreign mental model. We are comfortable considering ourselves to be competent adults, knowing how to do things in the world, and being confronted with our own incompetence in the face of an unknown mental model can be painful.
This often leads us to disparage the people that have that mental model. For example, I’ve seen tech teams and sales teams run each other down behind their backs, each side thinking that what they do is complex and valuable, and what the other does is simple or over-valued. The fact is that each has invested a lot into understanding a complex mental model that underlies their respective competence, and it is easier to run down the other’s mental model than to accept their own lack of competence in the other’s domain.
My experience is that if I’m not getting the results I want, or if I’m having trouble communicating with someone else, the challenge is to discover the right mental model to make me competent at that task. The necessary ingredient, sometimes hard to practice, is the humility to abandon the comfortable mental model I’ve already mastered to be able to absorb the new mental model at which I am just a clueless newbie. Only by accepting my incompetence can I find the road to competence.
To Find an Iron in Paris: How Hard Can It Be?
At home in Toronto, the obvious place to buy a small electrical appliance would be at a large department store, so we thought that the first place to look for our quarry would be at a well-known Parisian department store a healthy walk from our hotel. When we got there, we wandered around a bit, but couldn’t see an appliances department, so we asked a saleslady where we could find such a thing. (We are both fluent in French, so we had a leg up on most tourists in such a situation.)
The saleslady was polite and helpful, but bewildered that we would be looking for an iron in her store: in her mind this clearly wasn’t the kind of place you shopped for such things. It was as if I had gone into a sporting goods store and asked if they had a fresh produce section.
Another faulty mental model: in spite of being two adults with years of experience fending for ourselves, able to speak the local language, familiar with Paris from previous trips, it dawns on us that we are simply lacking the competence to perform the simple task of buying a travel iron in Paris.
What the Heck Is “Darty”?
Luckily, when we asked our friendly saleslady where we might purchase an iron nearby, she offered one word: “Darty.” We weren’t sure if this was the name of a street, a neighbourhood, a local shop-keeper or a store, but she pointed us vaguely up the street, and off we went. Along the way, we found a small shop whose sign indicated that they sold electrical supplies, and we thought this might be what we were looking for, but in fact this store only sold light bulbs of every shape and variety, all stored in rows of wooden drawers mounted like a library’s old card-catalog on the walls. My mental model of the world did not contain the possibility of such a store, so I was mystified and delighted: if I ever need a light bulb in Paris, I will now know where to go.
After wandering around in circles through the figure eight streets, repeatedly asking reservedly helpful passersby for directions, and being vaguely pointed, sometimes in contradictory directions, we finally found a fairly large store, set back from the street with a sign proclaiming it to be “Darty”. At last!
Making a Purchase: What Could Be Easier?
Once we entered the store, it was clear we had found the right place. There were rows and rows of various kinds of home appliances and electrical gadgets. Not all of the logical groupings were readily apparent to me: for example there might be electric fans and electric razors in the same shelving island. Each item had a single display model, out of box, on a shelf with a small card with a number next to it. After some wandering around, we did find a small row of irons, one of which was a compact travel iron.
Now for our next challenge: how to buy one? There were no boxed models to pick up and take to the sales counter, just the floor model and the little number. We stood their looking and feeling clueless for a while, until a saleslady spotted us and asked if we needed help. Saved! Now, we thought, she will get us our item, process our transaction and our quest will be over.
We indicated to her the travel iron we had selected. She took out a little paper form, filled out the number of our item on it, handed it to us, and cheerfully bid us good day. Another perfectly good mental model crushed by a cruel Gallic world! I sheepishly asked where I was supposed to take the form. She pointed vaguely across the store, saying there was a counter.
Sure enough, we crossed the store and found a counter with several clerks standing around. We handed one of them our form, they processed our payment, gave us a new stamped form, and bid us a somewhat perfunctory good day. I waited for a moment, expecting our iron to appear, in spite of the fact that our clerk seemed to have completely lost interest in us. After a few moments, I asked where my iron was. They pointed vaguely in a new direction across the store, and we traipsed off, ending up among rows of televisions sets.
The sales guy there took pity on us, despite my mild irritation that I had already paid for my iron, but did not yet have it in my hand (another mental model). He explained that we actually had to leave the store, and walk half-way down the hall of the indoor mall it was in and we would be able to get our iron there. I’m starting to feel like a sucker: they’ve taken my money, but they are now telling me to leave the store with just a little stamped form and someone down the way will give me my item? Riiiight! Nonetheless, we followed his instructions, finding a little kiosk down the way, unmarked and unattended. After a few moments standing there, dejected and simmering, an attendant appeared, took our stamped form, and handed us our boxed travel iron. At last!
The Joys of Travelling
Now you could take this story as a mockery of the French way of doing things, but the American tourists I’ve seen loudly berating French workers for their bad customer service have got that angle covered.
In fact, I love these kinds of experiences, though they can be distressing at the time, and they are exactly part of the reason I travel. I want to have my mental models challenged by a different culture.
There is a perfectly good system at work there that Parisians navigate every day, I just didn’t understand it, but now I do, and having done so, I’m now just a little bit more competent at how to get needful things done in Paris.
Working with Systems Is Working with Mental Models
Though you could just read this as an amusing anecdote about travel, my real purpose in telling it is to apply it to thinking about useful systems. Doing software development, or managing a team, or running a business are all about navigating, manipulating and improving systems. To work with a system effectively, you need to have a good mental model of that system.
If you want to lead a team, one of your biggest challenges is to communicate your mental model of the undertaking you want the team to pursue. Only if all the members of the team share a mental model which is adequate to the task at hand can they work together to produced the desired end.
In fact, I would go so far as to say that to call yourself competent at some skill is to say that you have acquired an adequate mental model of that skill.
Humility Is the Path to Competence
As the iron-buying story illustrates, it can be frustrating and humiliating to be confronted by a foreign mental model. We are comfortable considering ourselves to be competent adults, knowing how to do things in the world, and being confronted with our own incompetence in the face of an unknown mental model can be painful.
This often leads us to disparage the people that have that mental model. For example, I’ve seen tech teams and sales teams run each other down behind their backs, each side thinking that what they do is complex and valuable, and what the other does is simple or over-valued. The fact is that each has invested a lot into understanding a complex mental model that underlies their respective competence, and it is easier to run down the other’s mental model than to accept their own lack of competence in the other’s domain.
My experience is that if I’m not getting the results I want, or if I’m having trouble communicating with someone else, the challenge is to discover the right mental model to make me competent at that task. The necessary ingredient, sometimes hard to practice, is the humility to abandon the comfortable mental model I’ve already mastered to be able to absorb the new mental model at which I am just a clueless newbie. Only by accepting my incompetence can I find the road to competence.
February 16, 2010
Lessons from Confucius for Software Development
In my previous post, I talked about lessons from Confucius that I think are still useful in the modern world, but there is a field of endeavour that I think can particularly benefit from understanding the Confucian worldview: software development.
At first glance, it seems highly unlikely that Confucianism might have some application to software development. The Confucian values of respect for the past, harmonious social relations, decorum and moral leadership don’t have an obvious affinity for an industry that is known for its focus on what is new and shiny, and which is stereotypically populated by raging individualists with a disregard for social standards.
But it is worth considering that the Confucians represent one of the earliest groups of knowledge workers in human history. They were trained in specialized knowledge for specialized tasks in a complex society, and they had a sense that their specialized knowledge made them an elite group in society.
An important concept in Confucian texts that bears on this is junzi. Etymologically, it means “ruler’s son, prince”, but already in Confucius’ time it is used more metaphorically, often translated into English as “superior man”, “gentleman”. The Yiddish term “mensch” has a similar ring. It represents what every Confucian was striving to be.
In spite of its etymology, junzi is one of the earliest-known notions of elite status that is not derived from the happenstance of one’s birth, such as being the literal son of a ruler, or a free man of Athens. The kind of “superior man” we are talking about here is defined entirely by his knowledge and skills, and his savoir faire in using them. Confucianism is a truly meritocratic system of thought, and a modern IT specialist can easily relate to such an ethic.
A second consideration is the fundamentally social nature of software development. If it ever truly existed, the age of the lone genius changing the world with his software is over. Any non-trivial software development these days involves a whole team of people with different specialties and knowledge, and building reliable and maintainable applications requires that these people work together as an effective and harmonious community.
The Confucian junzi has a sense of noblesse oblige, a sense that the status conferred on him by his knowledge and skills requires that he use them for the betterment of his society and to achieve collective goals. He is willing to lead and mentor new members of the fraternity of knowledge workers, and does this not by pontificating, but by providing an example through good practices.
The very fact that these kind of values are not what most of us think of when we consider software development suggests that there is still much benefit and advantage to be gained by nurturing them in software teams, and a team lead could do worse than to study the Analects of Confucius to prepare for the challenges they face.
After all, Confucius and his followers have several centuries of experience organizing and training knowledge workers to draw on.
At first glance, it seems highly unlikely that Confucianism might have some application to software development. The Confucian values of respect for the past, harmonious social relations, decorum and moral leadership don’t have an obvious affinity for an industry that is known for its focus on what is new and shiny, and which is stereotypically populated by raging individualists with a disregard for social standards.
But it is worth considering that the Confucians represent one of the earliest groups of knowledge workers in human history. They were trained in specialized knowledge for specialized tasks in a complex society, and they had a sense that their specialized knowledge made them an elite group in society.
An important concept in Confucian texts that bears on this is junzi. Etymologically, it means “ruler’s son, prince”, but already in Confucius’ time it is used more metaphorically, often translated into English as “superior man”, “gentleman”. The Yiddish term “mensch” has a similar ring. It represents what every Confucian was striving to be.
In spite of its etymology, junzi is one of the earliest-known notions of elite status that is not derived from the happenstance of one’s birth, such as being the literal son of a ruler, or a free man of Athens. The kind of “superior man” we are talking about here is defined entirely by his knowledge and skills, and his savoir faire in using them. Confucianism is a truly meritocratic system of thought, and a modern IT specialist can easily relate to such an ethic.
A second consideration is the fundamentally social nature of software development. If it ever truly existed, the age of the lone genius changing the world with his software is over. Any non-trivial software development these days involves a whole team of people with different specialties and knowledge, and building reliable and maintainable applications requires that these people work together as an effective and harmonious community.
The Confucian junzi has a sense of noblesse oblige, a sense that the status conferred on him by his knowledge and skills requires that he use them for the betterment of his society and to achieve collective goals. He is willing to lead and mentor new members of the fraternity of knowledge workers, and does this not by pontificating, but by providing an example through good practices.
The very fact that these kind of values are not what most of us think of when we consider software development suggests that there is still much benefit and advantage to be gained by nurturing them in software teams, and a team lead could do worse than to study the Analects of Confucius to prepare for the challenges they face.
After all, Confucius and his followers have several centuries of experience organizing and training knowledge workers to draw on.
January 15, 2010
Lessons from Confucius
When I was in university studying East Asian studies, it was the height of the political correctness era. Of the three major streams of Chinese “religious” thought — Confucianism, Taoism and Buddhism — Confucianism was considered to be the “bad guy”, representing everything that is authoritarian, sexist and hierarchical in Chinese culture.
By contrast, everyone loved the individualistic enthusiasm of Taoism, which extolled the virtues of the feminine, or the egalitarian austerity of Buddhism. Confucians, though, were the “dead white men” of Chinese studies.
So, while I got an early grounding in Taoist and Buddhist thought, it wasn’t until I had been in the work-world for some years that I came back to Confucius, starting by reading the Analects in translation, and later, in the original.
The Confucius I found was quite different from my pre-conceived understanding of him, and I was surprised to find that his outlook and advice were unexpectedly relevant to modern life. I also found an attitude quite different from the stern authoritarian stereotype I had previously accepted.
In fact, my surprise started with the first line of the Analects (translations are my own):
I had, of course, learned as a student about the traditional Chinese respect for learning, but I had been left with the impression that the kind of learning that was meant was rote memorization in strict conformance to orthodox interpretation. But this primary source of Confucius’ personal thought starts off with a child-like enthusiasm for the simple pleasure of learning, a feeling I knew well. This attitude struck me as even more relevant for our modern world, where there is so much to learn and where knowledge and skills are the currency of our society.
Another traditional value of the Confucians I had learned about in my student days was often translated as “ritual”, but it seems to encompass politeness, observance of correct social forms and social hierarchy, as well as what we would think of as actual rituals. We used to roll our eyes at this, since we tended to think that these things are intended to suppress our sincere, individual feelings – that they are empty formalities intended to ensure conformity. But in another line from the Analects, I got another surprise:
Confucius is genuinely concerned with the observance of social forms (and the social forms of his time and place sometimes seem very foreign to us), but he doesn’t recommend them as a replacement for individual feeling, but rather as a vehicle to allow the free expression of individual feeling in harmony with the functioning of the community.
This sense of communal harmony is underlined by the cardinal virtue of Confucian thought, often translated as “benevolence”. It is related to the Chinese word for “person”, and I can’t help but feel that the best modern equivalent for it is the Yiddish word “mensch”. Etymologically, “mensch” means “person”, but its full meaning is someone who has a strong sense of community, someone who can be relied upon to help others and who has the courage to stand up for what is right. This is a pretty close match with the Confucian principle.
Confucius is also very concerned with good leadership, and a recurring preoccupation of Confucians (and ancient Chinese thinkers in general) is how to be an effective ruler. Here is another representative passage from the Analects:
Contrary to my early stereotype, Confucius has no time for the “because I said so” school of leadership. This is all the more remarkable when you consider that rulers in ancient China did have absolute power. His prescription for leadership is firmly in the “lead by example” camp. Those millennia ago, Confucius had already recognized that people can tell the difference between a cynical, self-serving leader and one who genuinely has the collective good at heart. He knew that the difference between genuine commitment and mere grudging compliance rests on this distinction.
So, my re-examination of Confucian thought not only changed my mind about its essence but actually showed me that there were values and lessons to be learned that I could apply to my life, personally and professionally.
A genuine love of learning, accepting social forms as ways of collectively expressing individual feeling, cultivating sincere feelings of communality with others, and leading by moral example: all of these ideas are still relevant in the 21st century and, if practiced, can make a real difference in one’s life as a leader and as a human being.
By contrast, everyone loved the individualistic enthusiasm of Taoism, which extolled the virtues of the feminine, or the egalitarian austerity of Buddhism. Confucians, though, were the “dead white men” of Chinese studies.
So, while I got an early grounding in Taoist and Buddhist thought, it wasn’t until I had been in the work-world for some years that I came back to Confucius, starting by reading the Analects in translation, and later, in the original.
The Confucius I found was quite different from my pre-conceived understanding of him, and I was surprised to find that his outlook and advice were unexpectedly relevant to modern life. I also found an attitude quite different from the stern authoritarian stereotype I had previously accepted.
In fact, my surprise started with the first line of the Analects (translations are my own):
To learn something, and to review it now and again, isn’t it pleasurable?
I had, of course, learned as a student about the traditional Chinese respect for learning, but I had been left with the impression that the kind of learning that was meant was rote memorization in strict conformance to orthodox interpretation. But this primary source of Confucius’ personal thought starts off with a child-like enthusiasm for the simple pleasure of learning, a feeling I knew well. This attitude struck me as even more relevant for our modern world, where there is so much to learn and where knowledge and skills are the currency of our society.
Another traditional value of the Confucians I had learned about in my student days was often translated as “ritual”, but it seems to encompass politeness, observance of correct social forms and social hierarchy, as well as what we would think of as actual rituals. We used to roll our eyes at this, since we tended to think that these things are intended to suppress our sincere, individual feelings – that they are empty formalities intended to ensure conformity. But in another line from the Analects, I got another surprise:
Lin Fang asked about the basics of ritual. Confucius said: A big question! In ritual, prefer modesty to extravagance; in mourning, prefer sincere sadness to formality.
Confucius is genuinely concerned with the observance of social forms (and the social forms of his time and place sometimes seem very foreign to us), but he doesn’t recommend them as a replacement for individual feeling, but rather as a vehicle to allow the free expression of individual feeling in harmony with the functioning of the community.
This sense of communal harmony is underlined by the cardinal virtue of Confucian thought, often translated as “benevolence”. It is related to the Chinese word for “person”, and I can’t help but feel that the best modern equivalent for it is the Yiddish word “mensch”. Etymologically, “mensch” means “person”, but its full meaning is someone who has a strong sense of community, someone who can be relied upon to help others and who has the courage to stand up for what is right. This is a pretty close match with the Confucian principle.
Confucius is also very concerned with good leadership, and a recurring preoccupation of Confucians (and ancient Chinese thinkers in general) is how to be an effective ruler. Here is another representative passage from the Analects:
Ji Kang asked: How can the people be made to respect the ruler, to be loyal and take his advice? Confucius said: Ruling them with solemnity will result in respect; showing respect for elders and being kind will result in loyalty; promoting good and instructing the unskilled will result in persuasion.
Contrary to my early stereotype, Confucius has no time for the “because I said so” school of leadership. This is all the more remarkable when you consider that rulers in ancient China did have absolute power. His prescription for leadership is firmly in the “lead by example” camp. Those millennia ago, Confucius had already recognized that people can tell the difference between a cynical, self-serving leader and one who genuinely has the collective good at heart. He knew that the difference between genuine commitment and mere grudging compliance rests on this distinction.
So, my re-examination of Confucian thought not only changed my mind about its essence but actually showed me that there were values and lessons to be learned that I could apply to my life, personally and professionally.
A genuine love of learning, accepting social forms as ways of collectively expressing individual feeling, cultivating sincere feelings of communality with others, and leading by moral example: all of these ideas are still relevant in the 21st century and, if practiced, can make a real difference in one’s life as a leader and as a human being.
September 30, 2009
Creativity is a Balance of Freedom and Control
About a year ago, I took up playing a middle-eastern instrument called the oud.
One of the characteristic forms of music for the oud is called a taqsim , which is a short improvisation. I’ve always loved improvisational musical styles, and this was part of the draw of the oud for me.
Improvisational music can be a very pure form of spontaneous creativity, and when it is going well, it gives a powerful feeling of freedom and self-expression.
Many people who don’t play an instrument or who play an instrument only by reading sheet music often ask me how one can possibly make up music on the fly, and I always tell them it is easier than it sounds.
A common misconception is that to be creative means that you throw all rules and restraints out the window, pulling great stuff out of thin air, as if by magic. Many people think that creativity is somehow inherently chaotic and random. But a simple example can show that this is false.
Have you ever listened to a small child with no musical training hammer away at a piano? Based on the “creativity is chaos” misconception, this should be the height of creative expression, since the child is following no structures or rules aside from the physical limits of the piano. But most people would agree that the result is not music, but rather irritating noise.
The first thing that many piano methods do with our budding creative genius is to teach the scales. This is because these are the basic structures that underpin western music. To be either a competent listener or a competent player of western-style music begins by internalizing the sound landscape that is defined by the diatonic (or pentatonic) scales and the melodic and harmonic palette they imply.
After learning even one of the scales, our enriched child could hammer away the same as before, but restrict the hammering to the notes of that scale. Because there is some musical structure, most people would judge the result as more musical, and in that sense morecreative.
This is the trick with improvisation: you aren’t really making up something from scratch. All common forms of musical improvisation I’ve ever studied (Indian classical raga , the blues , Middle Eastern maqamat and Jazz , for example) actually have a lot of structure to begin with: there are specific scales, rhythms, sequences and patterns that have to be learned and internalized or else the result won’t sound like music, or at least not the kind of music you are trying to play.
Once the player (or the listener) has internalized all the rules and structure, then freedom from rules comes back into play. If you have too many rules followed too rigidly, the results become boring and predictable and the music loses its vitality. Great improvisers know where their freedom lies and know where and how to break the rules to produce something fresh and unexpected, and it is this quality that can make improvised music so vital and exciting for players and listeners. So-so improvisers sometimes fall flat on their face by going too far away from the basic structure and have to scurry back to it. But even this freedom to fail is part of the process.
What is true for music seems to be true for other domains with complex structure that require creative solutions: software development, management, politics and economics, for example.
In any of these domains, too few rules results in inharmonious chaos, and too many stifles inventive and effective approaches.
Any approach to these problem areas that looks only at adding regulation or only at removing regulation is probably missing the boat.
The real question always is: “How do you plan to balance freedom and control to maximize harmonious creativity?” Any philosophy of these domains that can’t answer this question is probably not worth considering.
One of the characteristic forms of music for the oud is called a taqsim , which is a short improvisation. I’ve always loved improvisational musical styles, and this was part of the draw of the oud for me.
Improvisational music can be a very pure form of spontaneous creativity, and when it is going well, it gives a powerful feeling of freedom and self-expression.
Many people who don’t play an instrument or who play an instrument only by reading sheet music often ask me how one can possibly make up music on the fly, and I always tell them it is easier than it sounds.
A common misconception is that to be creative means that you throw all rules and restraints out the window, pulling great stuff out of thin air, as if by magic. Many people think that creativity is somehow inherently chaotic and random. But a simple example can show that this is false.
Have you ever listened to a small child with no musical training hammer away at a piano? Based on the “creativity is chaos” misconception, this should be the height of creative expression, since the child is following no structures or rules aside from the physical limits of the piano. But most people would agree that the result is not music, but rather irritating noise.
The first thing that many piano methods do with our budding creative genius is to teach the scales. This is because these are the basic structures that underpin western music. To be either a competent listener or a competent player of western-style music begins by internalizing the sound landscape that is defined by the diatonic (or pentatonic) scales and the melodic and harmonic palette they imply.
After learning even one of the scales, our enriched child could hammer away the same as before, but restrict the hammering to the notes of that scale. Because there is some musical structure, most people would judge the result as more musical, and in that sense morecreative.
This is the trick with improvisation: you aren’t really making up something from scratch. All common forms of musical improvisation I’ve ever studied (Indian classical raga , the blues , Middle Eastern maqamat and Jazz , for example) actually have a lot of structure to begin with: there are specific scales, rhythms, sequences and patterns that have to be learned and internalized or else the result won’t sound like music, or at least not the kind of music you are trying to play.
Once the player (or the listener) has internalized all the rules and structure, then freedom from rules comes back into play. If you have too many rules followed too rigidly, the results become boring and predictable and the music loses its vitality. Great improvisers know where their freedom lies and know where and how to break the rules to produce something fresh and unexpected, and it is this quality that can make improvised music so vital and exciting for players and listeners. So-so improvisers sometimes fall flat on their face by going too far away from the basic structure and have to scurry back to it. But even this freedom to fail is part of the process.
What is true for music seems to be true for other domains with complex structure that require creative solutions: software development, management, politics and economics, for example.
In any of these domains, too few rules results in inharmonious chaos, and too many stifles inventive and effective approaches.
Any approach to these problem areas that looks only at adding regulation or only at removing regulation is probably missing the boat.
The real question always is: “How do you plan to balance freedom and control to maximize harmonious creativity?” Any philosophy of these domains that can’t answer this question is probably not worth considering.
June 14, 2009
What problem are you trying to solve?
Anyone who has worked in IT for any period of time is going to be familiar with the dilemma of choosing one particular solution over another. Should I learn language X or language Y? Should I use framework A or framework B for my next project? Should I use the Foo Architecture or the Bar Architecture? Is the Widget application better than the Grommet application?
Since sometimes it seems that the choice you make can have big costs in terms of your project’s success (and your future employability), these dilemmas can result in a lot of stress. It doesn’t help that for each solution you have some proponent telling you that if you don’t use their approach you are stupid and ugly (see Linus Torvalds talking about his source control tool ).
So what’s the smart way to decide?
I think the first step is to realize that you have the wrong question. Technology people by definition tend to be interested in technology (tools and solutions) and we tend, as a result, to give short shrift to the problems themselves, especially when they fall outside our domain. As a result, solutions pile up faster than you can evaluate them, and problems often get shoehorned in a pet solution. So what is the right question?
Do you remember those word problems we used to have to do in school? Trains leaving the station at certain times and speeds, Mary and Bill trying to divide up a pie, and all those hypothetical problems?
The secret of those problems was often just figuring out what the problem was in the simplest terms. Once you rephrased the question, you often knew exactly which technique from that week’s lesson to apply to solve it. You could just whack the problem with all the techniques you had learned, hoping to hit the right one, but you would probably take too much time or might even get an “answer” that was totally off base.
To make this brute force approach even less likely to succeed, the teachers and textbook sometimes threw in irrelevant details that sounded important but had nothing to do with the real solution, in the same way that mystery writers throw in red herrings to make it harder to guess whodunit.
So the only reliable way to solve these problems correctly was to learn to filter out the extraneous blather and find the pithiest answer to the question “What problem am I really trying to solve?”
So how can we use this to solve our solutions dilemma? Let’s start by recognizing that the real problem is not what solution to choose but rather resolving the problem the solution is for. Trying to choose a tool without explicitly defining the real problem is exactly like trying to solve those word problems by throwing all the techniques you know at them. You may get lucky, but more likely you will make a mess.
If you realize, having thought about it, that the problem you are trying to solve is to avoid having others think you are ugly and stupid, then there is an easy solution to the problem: give up on technology altogether. In technology there is always someone telling you are ugly and stupid because you didn’t choose the same solution as them, so you might as well get used to it. If you want to go one step further, reject all forms of ideological thinking on principle, and craft your own rational set of criteria by which to judge things.
If you discover instead that there is some substantive problem you want to solve, spend some time trying to understand the problem. Ask yourself what the essential characteristics of the problem are. Identify some things that might normally be of interest but don’t really apply in this case or have less importance than normal. The truth is that no solution is perfect, all solutions require trade offs, and the secret of success is focusing on the must-haves while sacrificing the merely nice-to-haves or, more often, even the not-quite-so-must-haves.
Sometimes I find it very useful to start sketching out my own solution from scratch. At some point you realize either that you have a nice simple solution and don’t need to go any further, or that, now that you have a better feel for the problem and its challenges, that you have clear criteria upon which to base the choice of an external solution.
Anyone who wants to get good at software architecture has to be willing to throw out conventional wisdom and make choices that fit the problem at hand, not the problem that advocates of particular solutions tell them they should have. Sometimes just spending some quality time with your specific problem clarifies what you really need and melts the solutions dilemma away.
Since sometimes it seems that the choice you make can have big costs in terms of your project’s success (and your future employability), these dilemmas can result in a lot of stress. It doesn’t help that for each solution you have some proponent telling you that if you don’t use their approach you are stupid and ugly (see Linus Torvalds talking about his source control tool ).
So what’s the smart way to decide?
I think the first step is to realize that you have the wrong question. Technology people by definition tend to be interested in technology (tools and solutions) and we tend, as a result, to give short shrift to the problems themselves, especially when they fall outside our domain. As a result, solutions pile up faster than you can evaluate them, and problems often get shoehorned in a pet solution. So what is the right question?
Do you remember those word problems we used to have to do in school? Trains leaving the station at certain times and speeds, Mary and Bill trying to divide up a pie, and all those hypothetical problems?
The secret of those problems was often just figuring out what the problem was in the simplest terms. Once you rephrased the question, you often knew exactly which technique from that week’s lesson to apply to solve it. You could just whack the problem with all the techniques you had learned, hoping to hit the right one, but you would probably take too much time or might even get an “answer” that was totally off base.
To make this brute force approach even less likely to succeed, the teachers and textbook sometimes threw in irrelevant details that sounded important but had nothing to do with the real solution, in the same way that mystery writers throw in red herrings to make it harder to guess whodunit.
So the only reliable way to solve these problems correctly was to learn to filter out the extraneous blather and find the pithiest answer to the question “What problem am I really trying to solve?”
So how can we use this to solve our solutions dilemma? Let’s start by recognizing that the real problem is not what solution to choose but rather resolving the problem the solution is for. Trying to choose a tool without explicitly defining the real problem is exactly like trying to solve those word problems by throwing all the techniques you know at them. You may get lucky, but more likely you will make a mess.
If you realize, having thought about it, that the problem you are trying to solve is to avoid having others think you are ugly and stupid, then there is an easy solution to the problem: give up on technology altogether. In technology there is always someone telling you are ugly and stupid because you didn’t choose the same solution as them, so you might as well get used to it. If you want to go one step further, reject all forms of ideological thinking on principle, and craft your own rational set of criteria by which to judge things.
If you discover instead that there is some substantive problem you want to solve, spend some time trying to understand the problem. Ask yourself what the essential characteristics of the problem are. Identify some things that might normally be of interest but don’t really apply in this case or have less importance than normal. The truth is that no solution is perfect, all solutions require trade offs, and the secret of success is focusing on the must-haves while sacrificing the merely nice-to-haves or, more often, even the not-quite-so-must-haves.
Sometimes I find it very useful to start sketching out my own solution from scratch. At some point you realize either that you have a nice simple solution and don’t need to go any further, or that, now that you have a better feel for the problem and its challenges, that you have clear criteria upon which to base the choice of an external solution.
Anyone who wants to get good at software architecture has to be willing to throw out conventional wisdom and make choices that fit the problem at hand, not the problem that advocates of particular solutions tell them they should have. Sometimes just spending some quality time with your specific problem clarifies what you really need and melts the solutions dilemma away.
April 2, 2009
Ideology vs Principles
Ideologies are strangely seductive.
Ideologies promise a sure-fire recipe to solve all problems. They often give you a single value to maximize, and equally often tell you who to blame.
Got a problem? Easy. Just trust the free market. Or increase government spending. Or blame the wealthy. Or blame the poor.
Whichever solution an ideology offers, that is supposed to be the first solution to apply whenever a problem arises, and if that doesn't work you're supposed to do apply it again until it does work.
Given the complexity of some of the problems that face us in our daily lives as individuals and even more so in our collective life as a society, it is easy to see the allure of straightforward solutions you don't have to think about too much.
But history has shown us over and over again that ideologies are fairly poor at solving problems in the short run, and in the long run usually create worse problems of their own.
If you want effective problem solving, you're better off with principles rather than ideology.
A set of principles is like an ideology in that it expresses values upon which to base decisions, but principles can't be applied unconditionally. Principles compete with each other, forcing you to make trade-off decisions. The exact trade-offs have to be worked out differently for each instance of a problem.
Ideology is like the imaginary fifties family where everyone listens to Dad and the kids never compete for attention. Principles are like a real family, where you love everybody, but you can't always make everybody happy.
The amount of work required to implement a decision is about the same for both ideological and principled approaches is. The real difference is in the amount of certainty you have, both before you choose a solution, and after you've made a choice.
In a principled approach, you always have to wonder if you could have gotten the balance of competing values better, and you may have to constantly rejig the balance as new situations develop. With an ideology, you always have it right, even if you aren't getting the results you want.
As nice a feeling as it is to be certain, if you really care about outcomes, uncertainty has the benefit that it keeps you more closely in touch with the realities of your problem. It makes you listen more attentively to the feedback from your solution. You are much more likely to succeed in the end, even if paradoxically you are less sure at any one point in time that you have found the right solution.
Abandoning certainty leads to greater confidence of real success.
This idea has so many applications to software development, project management, government, and other governance and systems thinking domains, I'll leave elaboration to future posts.
Ideologies promise a sure-fire recipe to solve all problems. They often give you a single value to maximize, and equally often tell you who to blame.
Got a problem? Easy. Just trust the free market. Or increase government spending. Or blame the wealthy. Or blame the poor.
Whichever solution an ideology offers, that is supposed to be the first solution to apply whenever a problem arises, and if that doesn't work you're supposed to do apply it again until it does work.
Given the complexity of some of the problems that face us in our daily lives as individuals and even more so in our collective life as a society, it is easy to see the allure of straightforward solutions you don't have to think about too much.
But history has shown us over and over again that ideologies are fairly poor at solving problems in the short run, and in the long run usually create worse problems of their own.
If you want effective problem solving, you're better off with principles rather than ideology.
A set of principles is like an ideology in that it expresses values upon which to base decisions, but principles can't be applied unconditionally. Principles compete with each other, forcing you to make trade-off decisions. The exact trade-offs have to be worked out differently for each instance of a problem.
Ideology is like the imaginary fifties family where everyone listens to Dad and the kids never compete for attention. Principles are like a real family, where you love everybody, but you can't always make everybody happy.
The amount of work required to implement a decision is about the same for both ideological and principled approaches is. The real difference is in the amount of certainty you have, both before you choose a solution, and after you've made a choice.
In a principled approach, you always have to wonder if you could have gotten the balance of competing values better, and you may have to constantly rejig the balance as new situations develop. With an ideology, you always have it right, even if you aren't getting the results you want.
As nice a feeling as it is to be certain, if you really care about outcomes, uncertainty has the benefit that it keeps you more closely in touch with the realities of your problem. It makes you listen more attentively to the feedback from your solution. You are much more likely to succeed in the end, even if paradoxically you are less sure at any one point in time that you have found the right solution.
Abandoning certainty leads to greater confidence of real success.
This idea has so many applications to software development, project management, government, and other governance and systems thinking domains, I'll leave elaboration to future posts.
March 30, 2009
Explaining through Skillful Means
In Buddhist philosophy, there is a concept whose Sanskrit name is upaya. This is often translated as "skillful means", though, as with many other ancient philosophical terms, it is hard to translate exactly and has many interpretations.
To illustrate one useful interpretation, I'll start by explaining a little bit about Buddhism. If you boil Buddhism down to a one-sentence summary, it is about reducing your suffering (and that of the world) by living a moderate life and practicing meditation.
As simple as this sounds, there is a lot of theory behind it, covering — for example — what it means to live a moderate life, why that helps reduce suffering, what good meditation is and how it works, and a host of other questions.
The theory and practice of Buddhism is in fact so complex that it is usually taken for granted that it takes years of study and practice to really understand it. To make matters worse, there are many different opinions about what kind of study and practice, and how much.
But most of the concepts can be understood at first in a simplified way, and since all students of any complex skill have to start somewhere, people often start with these simplified forms that aren’t quite right to a more advanced student.
For example, there is an uncomplicated form of Buddhism called Pure Land, that more or less believes that if you faithfully chant a particular mantra, you will be reborn in a special paradise. You can still see in this belief some of the elements in my one-sentence summary above: chanting a mantra is a form of meditation, being reborn in a paradise is a reduction of suffering, and faithfully practicing a good habit is a rudimentary form of living a disciplined life.
So even though a “more advanced” student of Buddhism might roll their eyes at the simplicity of this approach, they would have to admit that practicing it was still an advancement in the direction of the aims of Buddhism, and therefore better than no understanding of Buddhist principles.
This, in a nutshell, is what upaya means: it is OK to let someone have a “wrong” idea about something you are explaining to them, so long as it takes them one step closer to understanding.
What does this have to do with software development?
Software development, boiled down, is about solving practical problems by producing reliable applications with maintainable code bases. (All of these things, incidentally, also reduce suffering. ;-) )
There is a complex skill set and complex methodologies that must be learned to accomplish this task. It is taken for granted (at least by some people) that mastering them takes years of study and practice, but there are many different opinions about what kind of study and practice, and how much.
But many concepts have a simplified version, and since all learners have to start somewhere, you often see versions of good practices that a more advanced practitioner would see as not quite right.
For example, a developer with less experience — or perhaps just different experience — might chant a mantra such as “always document”, “never document”, “always design before you program”, “never design before your program”, or “paradigm/language/library/framework X is always better than Y”. These mantras might strike you as over-simplified or incorrect based on your experience (especially when you favour an opposite version of the chant. ;-) ).
You can still see that they share the core concern of solving the practical problem reliably and maintainably. Maybe it is OK to let them be “wrong” for now, so long as they are engaged with the ultimate concerns of software development and are using the mantra to get one step closer to understanding.
When mentoring developers as a team lead or when introducing new ideas, techniques and methodologies to your peers or to an on-line community, it can be hard to determine when to hold a hard line, to nitpick or to qualify and when not to. Often it is best to introduce a simplified form of the idea and let them run with it for a while, trusting that if they share the same goals they will come to a deeper understanding on their own and that they will ask for more input when they need it.
Sometimes the best policy is to let others be "wrong" for the time being.
To illustrate one useful interpretation, I'll start by explaining a little bit about Buddhism. If you boil Buddhism down to a one-sentence summary, it is about reducing your suffering (and that of the world) by living a moderate life and practicing meditation.
As simple as this sounds, there is a lot of theory behind it, covering — for example — what it means to live a moderate life, why that helps reduce suffering, what good meditation is and how it works, and a host of other questions.
The theory and practice of Buddhism is in fact so complex that it is usually taken for granted that it takes years of study and practice to really understand it. To make matters worse, there are many different opinions about what kind of study and practice, and how much.
But most of the concepts can be understood at first in a simplified way, and since all students of any complex skill have to start somewhere, people often start with these simplified forms that aren’t quite right to a more advanced student.
For example, there is an uncomplicated form of Buddhism called Pure Land, that more or less believes that if you faithfully chant a particular mantra, you will be reborn in a special paradise. You can still see in this belief some of the elements in my one-sentence summary above: chanting a mantra is a form of meditation, being reborn in a paradise is a reduction of suffering, and faithfully practicing a good habit is a rudimentary form of living a disciplined life.
So even though a “more advanced” student of Buddhism might roll their eyes at the simplicity of this approach, they would have to admit that practicing it was still an advancement in the direction of the aims of Buddhism, and therefore better than no understanding of Buddhist principles.
This, in a nutshell, is what upaya means: it is OK to let someone have a “wrong” idea about something you are explaining to them, so long as it takes them one step closer to understanding.
What does this have to do with software development?
Software development, boiled down, is about solving practical problems by producing reliable applications with maintainable code bases. (All of these things, incidentally, also reduce suffering. ;-) )
There is a complex skill set and complex methodologies that must be learned to accomplish this task. It is taken for granted (at least by some people) that mastering them takes years of study and practice, but there are many different opinions about what kind of study and practice, and how much.
But many concepts have a simplified version, and since all learners have to start somewhere, you often see versions of good practices that a more advanced practitioner would see as not quite right.
For example, a developer with less experience — or perhaps just different experience — might chant a mantra such as “always document”, “never document”, “always design before you program”, “never design before your program”, or “paradigm/language/library/framework X is always better than Y”. These mantras might strike you as over-simplified or incorrect based on your experience (especially when you favour an opposite version of the chant. ;-) ).
You can still see that they share the core concern of solving the practical problem reliably and maintainably. Maybe it is OK to let them be “wrong” for now, so long as they are engaged with the ultimate concerns of software development and are using the mantra to get one step closer to understanding.
When mentoring developers as a team lead or when introducing new ideas, techniques and methodologies to your peers or to an on-line community, it can be hard to determine when to hold a hard line, to nitpick or to qualify and when not to. Often it is best to introduce a simplified form of the idea and let them run with it for a while, trusting that if they share the same goals they will come to a deeper understanding on their own and that they will ask for more input when they need it.
Sometimes the best policy is to let others be "wrong" for the time being.
March 27, 2009
Software is "Philosophy Made Manifest"
What does the name "Philosophy Made Manifest" have to do with software development? Here is the answer:
Though I have worked most of my adult life in software development, my original academic background is in Linguistics and East Asian Studies. Since this seems like a bit of a leap, I have often been asked what, if anything, I gleaned from those studies that helped me in my career.
My answer is: a surprisingly large amount. In fact, sometimes I think these things give me a big advantage over computer science or software engineering graduates.
The influence of Linguistics on my thinking about software development probably deserves its own post, but to explain "Philosophy Made Manifest", the most relevant area of my past studies was the philosophy portion of East Asian Studies: Buddhism, Taoism, Confucianism and others.
When you first dip into the surface of these systems of thought, some of the stuff sounds pretty far out there, especially from a modern western point of view, but once you get past the surface, it turns out that these philosophies are the end result of a long line of astute observers and thinkers who were concerned with very real and practical problems: how to live harmoniously with other people, how to set up effective government, how to live a happy and productive life, and many others.
In order to succeed as a student of these philosophies, you have to get good at figuring out the how these people in far away times and places understand the world. And to make their ideas relevant, you have to get good at seeing beyond the foreign trappings of the ancient vocabulary and forgotten social customs, to get at the heart of what they have to say about the unchanging realities of human life.
Once you've mastered this, you can then translate these ideas into more immediately applicable forms, ones that speak to the vocabulary and social customs of the here and now.
Which, perhaps surprisingly, leads us to software development.
Effective software development is not only about the clever use of technology, it is a profoundly human activity that requires an understanding of how people work together and how users, business leaders, developers and others think about the world.
At its core, software development is synthesizing a philosophy of some problem domain, based on these different world-views, and implementing it as a concrete, practical tool that supports and enables the activities of that problem domain.
This is how software development is "philosophy made manifest".
Though I have worked most of my adult life in software development, my original academic background is in Linguistics and East Asian Studies. Since this seems like a bit of a leap, I have often been asked what, if anything, I gleaned from those studies that helped me in my career.
My answer is: a surprisingly large amount. In fact, sometimes I think these things give me a big advantage over computer science or software engineering graduates.
The influence of Linguistics on my thinking about software development probably deserves its own post, but to explain "Philosophy Made Manifest", the most relevant area of my past studies was the philosophy portion of East Asian Studies: Buddhism, Taoism, Confucianism and others.
When you first dip into the surface of these systems of thought, some of the stuff sounds pretty far out there, especially from a modern western point of view, but once you get past the surface, it turns out that these philosophies are the end result of a long line of astute observers and thinkers who were concerned with very real and practical problems: how to live harmoniously with other people, how to set up effective government, how to live a happy and productive life, and many others.
In order to succeed as a student of these philosophies, you have to get good at figuring out the how these people in far away times and places understand the world. And to make their ideas relevant, you have to get good at seeing beyond the foreign trappings of the ancient vocabulary and forgotten social customs, to get at the heart of what they have to say about the unchanging realities of human life.
Once you've mastered this, you can then translate these ideas into more immediately applicable forms, ones that speak to the vocabulary and social customs of the here and now.
Which, perhaps surprisingly, leads us to software development.
Effective software development is not only about the clever use of technology, it is a profoundly human activity that requires an understanding of how people work together and how users, business leaders, developers and others think about the world.
At its core, software development is synthesizing a philosophy of some problem domain, based on these different world-views, and implementing it as a concrete, practical tool that supports and enables the activities of that problem domain.
This is how software development is "philosophy made manifest".
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