Black Box Thinking By Matthew Syed: My associations within my blog. Part 2: The Problem

It wasn't enough of my previous blog post to describe the associations within my blog about Matthew Syed Black box thinking. I promised a review before, but the review is not more important as much as the importance of the main topics (yes, it does contains a lot of topics', not just "one" topic - in the same way as we can't describe the whole universe with only one science formula but many science formulas at hand).

After all, as I discussed in my last blog posts, it is imperative to have a goal at hand by being "great and correct leaders" . Because anybody can be great, but few can be correct. As you can see, a goal can self satisfy me, but it may not satisfy others. Ergo, it was not designed for the whole system. Actually, there are a lot of challenges that are ahead of us, but the most important one is that we are having too many great leaders and few great and correct leaders, that leads our society in a stall state instead to keep us innovating to our external world, as well to our inner self. A challenge that I invite and I propose to anyone of great value to our world, as one I indicate to be one of the biggest purposes within our current context, current generation, current life which we all collaborate in this society within our world is the following: "correct" leaders to be "correct". It is simple and straightforward, but from experience and experience of others, it is better most of its part is approached in an indirect instead of a direct way. To look at it based of as a pattern of ideas that are intertwined together with all sharing a common issue instead of fighting alone as an individualized case. It is like wiping out a fire with water instead of finding the source of where the fire comes out from. If we only wipe out fire with water and not finding where the source of fire comes from, then we are not solving a common problem, but only fixing what is just in front of us. If that is not obvious, then let us see, why just even to our this day we live, that besides psychotherapy is ineffective in most these days, that besides many high role people behave in many situations for their self interest instead of the collective level of the world, and worst of all, we still to this day cannot pass scientific breakthroughs. Seems science is not the potent solution to everything. Because people to this day have not mastered the skill of black box thinking, a skill that it is not natural, but can only be acquired through experience, an art that compliments our other half half to our other half half we are knowledgeable of to bring the best productivity not just locally, but globally.

This is not much better illustrated of the problem in detail (but not explaining too much the mechanics and its solutions) within the recent real life story that is not very old to this day and still on going problem described in the movie Concussion. The funny thing about the movie Concussion is that it is really a black box thing. To elaborate, the movie unfolds of a story that finds a scientific breakthrough of a new diagnosed brain trauma caused by the repeated events of concussion , called CTE. The alarming thing is that this disease cannot be identified through scientific evidence with our current technology until the body of the host dies (as such as opening the black box of an airplane that crashed). The second thing is that these deteriorating symptoms that makes the individual close to his death do not happen immediately after the event of repeated concussion, but after 1-2 decades. So we have 2 problems: There is no decisive evidence why a disease happened and there is no immediate cause and effect. Because of those 2 arguments, it brings individuals to have lower confidence of diagnosing the real reason of the disease, as it has to 1. correlate with a pattern that happens from past events for those affected individuals and 2. have similar symptoms 3. cannot be identified with some physical evidence. It is in such sense, that people have not mastered the art of black box thinking, that they only rely their confidence of descriptive statistics which are visible and have a correlation within a close gap of time. Not only that, but nobody ever attempted to open a black box thing to see the underlying cause of that disease for many years that was misdiagnosed until one man, Dr. Bennet Omalu, an open minded man, who had the capacity and ability to uncover the uncertainty of the black boxes he opened up beyond the confidence of only descriptive statistics, but to also correlate with past events of individuals and bring out sound explanation and conclusions, with his first journey for the discovery of CTE being Mike Webster. The first hurdle of having physical evidence was present, but the correlation from a past event of concussions being the underlying cause was not a feasible task, as you have to do, as described from black box thinking, A/B testing. The operations of dissecting a brain to identify CTE and the time required for dead bodies to show up with symptoms of CTE is expensive and time consuming. With limited funds and time to do the most possible good on the earliest possible, with those constraints set, yet rightfully, by the scientific community, what can you do if we are actually right and let others keep doing the same mistake for a long time and get paid the consequences? When time is ticking and  your fate is like being in a world of war, when your only options is to correlate data, how do you handle uncertainty? It is purely to the point that finding and explaining the underlying mechanics with the most "big picture" answer, the more supporting it is. Let us take from the excerpt of "black box" that illustrated the example of airplanes that returned back to the base had most of its shots done within the wing of the airplane and none within the cockpit. That may seem from first impressions that the planes need more protection from the wing. But if we accommodate the "big picture of things", that only the fraction of the airplanes were the ones that returned, and that most of the airplanes didn't return, the conclusion becomes the opposite - as the strongest airplanes that returned was because they were not hit by the cockpit. Thus protecting the cockpit was the correct answer as it accounted all use cases instead of only few cases. It is ironic, as within the movie Concussion, it followed the same suit, but took the wrong direction, only seeing the symptoms that can be identified when a patient is alive and not by the ones that were already dead, giving medications that repeatedly couldn't figure out what was the underlying cause of the problem. But the problem is not having physical evidence as much as the attitude of not having any evidence. It is like taking our previous example and saying that we don't have any physical evidence of what the rest of the planes that have already sink what the underlying cause was and we will try all different combinations until we find what the cause is. We don't correlate the surviving planes as the cause not being hit by the cockpit. We don't correlate the people who were identified CTE were playing as football players 10 years ago. Any correlation may take a lot of time to be explained sufficiently, this includes the mystery of our own existence and our purpose on this world, a black box thing that cannot be easily or maybe not enough time to be unraveled (or maybe impossible to be unraveled within our limited perception and ability) with physical evidence and/or close proximity of cause and effect. However, what we can do best, as in the same case as of CTE, is to bring some evidence and a sound explanation that resembles the best big picture. But, here is the big "but" 1. many people don't like to solve problems with uncertainty and only want to solve problems with certainty and we must teach them to be brave to explore uncertainty and 2. There are some people that among evidence and sound explanation, they cannot change their ideas, either because their ideologies and the groups they follow are conservative or they have priority of their own self they represent (what career they work for, what possessions, assets, reputation they have) at the stake of the collective level. Point two in most cases becomes a trump in a game of cards, always taking victory of covering up deep beneath the seas the underlying black box through our history of times. Little do they know that there is a same satisfying feeling to accomplish something for the collective level of the world, like Dr. Omalu spending his own money for doing the expensive experiment under Mike Webster. On the other hand, the NFL at that time having a lack of feeling for that scientific discovery, for several years it tried to block or divert a scientific breakthrough to go to public. It shows the effects of cognitive dissonance, as Black Box Thinking by Matthew Syed provided within his book.

The two important points to advance our world one step further:

1. Mastering the correct art of Black Box thinking

It is surprising that to this day that many can't be brave on making correlations of theirs and other experiences to bring innovation and instead just follow the status quo, having others fear to condemn them for being opinionated and to just follow whatever is already descriptive, whatever is the status quo. We expect that what we say should be facts, but we shouldn't, it is not a world where everything we listen should be of certain certainty, and what we say to be should only of certain certainty, as we will be more in stall of innovation, of situations with limited time and resources. As long exploring things with expectations that what we say may be wrong with open arms, I don't find this type of attitude is inappropriate, instead a potent one. That is a thing that can be understood more well by learning and experiencing the mechanics of human behavior. Much of it can be found by the suggested books "The Executive Paradox" , "Black Box Thinking", and mental symmetry's website by Lorin Friesen. They all do the same thing: correlate a theory of how our mind works and how it should work optimally. It is a learning experience that you have to conceptualize it within your own context and ultimately be driven by it. All has been provided, but is laid out in theoretical grounds. In practical grounds, we "are not there yet" because of  point 2, sometimes, even masters of black box thinking can fall prey by following point 2 sometimes. So for that reason, the rest direction of this blog and my personal life will be spent on:

2. The people who block or are against Black Box Thinking

And here is our main thesis of why this is so important: What is the point of people who practice or start to practice black box thinking, like Dr Omalu, bringing the scientific breakthrough of the mental disease named CTE, only to be humiliated and condemned through society? How can we motivate other people to change themselves to a better mindset when most who follow that path are looked as being inappropriate and instead should conform to the status quo and respect the sensitivities of others? In other words, black box thinking as a mindset is not ready yet to dive in this world. It is like a programming language that is not mature yet. It does not have all the library components or tools to protect itself and be more rich of itself, it needs a community, a foundation, that it can cross the lake over a log of tree without drowning itself. Otherwise, people will not be confident to stray on that path and feel protective. For that reason, my next blog post will go on the direction of how to tackle Point 2 at a collective instead of an individualistic approach,the reason why it has to be approached that way, what are the most prevalent attacks point 2 does that destroys black box thinking, and what are some practical solutions as a community we can create to prevent from those happening.