The old philosopher Socrates was famous of the doctrine of induction. We form induction from generalities (Perceiver-> Teacher). In contrast, a deduction is based on translating ambiguity and metaphors (Teacher-> Perceiver). Induction is when you create a general hypothesis and test them if they work well or not in statistics. We make a deduction on NPL and artificial intelligence in the effort on decoding the words described by a person to a set of specific, concrete examples that can fit.
Induction is forming a belief or theory out of evaluating things in the concrete world. Our values are sensitive and to a point emotional when they get contrasted with something that does not fit into our equation. Given this assertion, the easiest way for others to accept an induction is for allowing others on the bias to act. The philosopher Socrates did induction in a specific way. In most cases, he never did the induction of others from his thinking, but instead facilitated others to do their induction themselves when they asked questions to him about the grand explanation of the world (which represent a grand scheme theory or belief). This bias of action, letting others have control of answering their version of faith is easier to do than giving one that may not match (emotional beliefs are paid off considerate attention. Society already understands that perception so much that it protects the beliefs of others - whether they are the right path from the rest is another story - whether they take a high emotional toll on the individual is scientifically evident). The philosopher Socrates was a Facilitator person, and Facilitator people are the ones that can create the most acquaintances. Their ability to delegate, especially in the way induction was presented for others to have control of, made people easier to the debate of philosophical things. Instead of conflicting views to escalate to a dead end discussion, the conversation was able to keep flowing. Maybe it was a way to motivate people to do philosophy. However, whether philosophy was able to transition to the right direction by the way the practice of induction was presented is a different story. When it was time for the philosopher Socrates to address there was one form of God on controlling the system of the world instead of the existing twelve Greek gods ancient Greece had, the conflict was so adamant to society, that society thought that his version of thinking was poisonous to society. He didn't accept the world being of a form of paradox. He didn't believe the world need to rely on the different type of gods for the various needs for different situations. He believed there was one integrated system in place for handling all things. Socrates was a proponent of the unity of virtue. That virtue represents “one and the same” and “parts of a single whole”. If he didn't give up his views, the government warned that it would take his life. In the end, he didn't give up on his views and died for his beliefs.
What can we learn motivation is off? If it is of having control and it doesn't match with what our situation is, when is it appropriate to change plans? The tipping point is motivation alone can lead to a dead end. It indeed leads you to do things correctly on things that are not of complex nature. But if they are too complex, then foundations need to be addressed to tackle those complications. It is like riding on a race track. Nobody will ride a road these days straight out with their legs. They will instead get some form of education to be able to ride some car to get a head start up instead of re-inventing the wheel. At that point, the foundations are competitive enough to bulge into mediocrity and beyond, but maybe not so much to the top. It may be disappointed by the disillusionment that it has the right platonic forms. As Alex Danco paradigm shift machine article resonates me, "But if you don’t get the paradigm right, then you won’t learn the right lessons! 'Fail fast, learn faster' is only truly useful information if you understand how things are arranged—otherwise you’ll draw the wrong conclusions." At the other hand, people who do not motivate to do anything of their ideas about their beliefs will also be disappointed as well. So motivation has a two-way street. More specifically, motivation is the Exhorter mode which has access to Mercy and Teacher mode. Motivation not only addresses on doing things with ourselves (Mercy) but also creating our foundations (Teacher). Creating a mental map resides in Teacher Mode and doing things with ourselves resides in Mercy Mode. Joining them together is technically where the rubber hits the road. It learns the ropes (or foundations to say the least) and puts the tires on the road (applies those foundations in real life). Since Exhorter consciousness overrides Contributor consciousness, the plans are done in a sketchy way instead of being polished. We can see that the material is grasped like "castles in the air", such as the parody theory of "the flying spaghetti monster" (low Perceiver confidence) while the skills shown are sloppy as it is on their first encounter (low server confidence). Some people are good at initiating things (Exhorter mode), and others just like to maintain things being stable and orderly (which represents Contributor mode). We see those two types of personalities often in executive positions. Any work requires those two cognitive styles. Firstly, by creating a prototype and later making that prototype mature. On the other hand, if we have no motivation to start anything, we leave our mental maps in an idle state.
Unfortunate events happen to us when we already have something that we believe, yet don't do any actions on learning how to cross the path, without creating a mental map. Furthermore, it can lead to the habit of having depression, and ultimately to have higher risks of Parkinson disease as described in one of my past presentations. Creating a mental map either through abstractions (a better path to not re-invent the wheel as discussed before) and concrete experiences (learning from real mistakes - more potent when in a safe environment) is essential. For Perceiver and Teacher cognitive styles, they usually focus on foundations first. For Server and Mercy cognitive styles, they often focus on experiences first. Exhorter, Contributors and Facilitator cognitive styles can both switch to foundations and experiences like turning on and off a switch. Usually, those type of personality types that can swap between the two are the ones that can drive a car earlier. Usually, the passive consumer prefers them to experience life on the "here and now", so they tend to be attracted more on experiences instead. Perceiver and Teacher leave the car in the garage to collect dust and Server and Mercy model a car that can maneuver very well, but is inferior compared to the average leader.
As a Perceiver person, Exhorter motivation regarding foundation had come in good chunks of pleasure every time I supported my mental map that explained existing concepts I knew as stronger pieces that I can replace within my main puzzle. However, the cost and reward of replacing parts are becoming to such a degree that the reward becomes less and less for each learning material. I encounter that there is less gaining something as most of re-inventing the wheel of the best architecture has already been completed. What I am worried is how alienating, and far away I am from the rest of the people who will not be able to grasp it. It is like I am the situation of being the author of Thomas Kuhn Scientific Revolutions and you know you won't get out more explaining about paradigm shifts if society does not accept and grasp the concept in the first place. At some point, it becomes depressing focusing more on foundations as there is no intrinsic reward to it. In contrast, the potential of intrinsic motivational rewards on applying that mental map to self is abundant. For the Perceiver person, the path ultimately is to actually drive the model car that you compiled out of your foundation. What the car represents is of great design from the rest of the cars that only did primary education that did not contain much personal development. However, even a great design is still one at inferior state compared to other cars where their model is inferior. That is because those inferior designed cars upgraded all the components to the max and they can maneuver it smoothly. Those are some elements that a Perceiver style may have never touched. With a great designed car, the maximum capacity to outperform other cars is there. To reach there, it needs my effort to get the proper server skills that will give me the upgrades. It needs me to practice a lot to get the maneuverability to ride the car in such a way that it will outperform the rest. I only have the base car, not the details or how to use it properly yet. The real world is messy so on the first tries, I will be a failure, but ultimately, if we have the correct paradigm, we will eventually win after many failed attempts.
I still mainly favor for all of you people to learn foundations until you are confident to change the switch where you are sure you can move in your life and start riding the car. There is some few stuff that I wanted to end this year, such as analyzing the book "Smarter Faster Better" by Charles Duhigg and the magazine "Philosophy Now". I also wanted to analyze the two movies Pulp Fiction and Moneyball that I planned to watch. I am afraid that I am planning to cancel them permanently. My aim focus right now is to generate some Server Confidence. That means to use my commanding skill, and ultimately, I think nobody will be able to stop me because I have emboldened my mental map better than others. I do feel that I have the correct paradigm. My paradigm is the following:
There is a need for personal development to happen. The process must be convenient for people. We need to change the attitude for people not setting others as a dead end but instead to see their real motivations, needs, and the progress of their personal growth. The theory of mental symmetry fits the bill. We extract information from others in a messy, unorganized, slow manner. People don't have free time or the efficient tools to express their mental map and their progress or able to identify others mental map and development. We need to make that scarce resource that wastes time with inaccuracies to become seamlessly efficient and accurate. There is a lot of search and social media tools that are either over saturated or under saturated and should be balanced instead where everyone gets enough feedback. There is a lot of unorganized content expressed about needs and the qualities of people these days that we need to transform it or facilitate people to convert it into useful information. We have to understand the situation by comprehending how the current behavior of individuals are first and make conclusions out of it. From there, we can create innovative solutions for improving the quality of relationship and communication. Right now it is estimated that each person has close high-quality relationships down to less than a dozen people because it takes a lot of effort to know them. We want to increase that number from 100 to 1000 individuals with the new model. I am persistent that personal development exists from many accounts and we have to solve this in new radical ways or else we will never solve this problem.
Smarter Faster Better has been discussed in most part on my blog already. I discussed Chapter 8 about breaking down information on my previous blog. We address chapter 1 motivation in this post. Chapter 2 is mainly a mix of my analysis of the book Feedback Revolution and Black Box Thinking. However, I think Black Box Thinking discusses better which organizations progress better. It is true psychological safety may make employees happy, but there is no guarantee if they stray away from the original mission statement of the company to fit their needs. My previous short snapshot blog illustrated my mental map, which represents an example of what Chapter 3 talks all about. Chapter 6 Bayesian thinking is actually how Perceiver Mode works with abstract concepts while placing each a level of confidence. That level of confidence always changes when new samples for the same category come in. I am conscious at this mode. I at some point got fed up evaluating self-development that I want to chip big bets instead of my chips collecting dust or the equivalent of a car collecting dust. Chapter 4 is all about planning and setting closure.These traits are the strengths of Contributor thought. I illustrated Chapter 5 "Managing others" on how an organization can be agile by the use of Executive Paradox diagram.
I can go on about describing cognitive styles. It is already self-evident to me as this is the closest theory to explain everything in general. Maybe it is not self-evident for you. So I leave the work for the rest of you, to test your doubts, whether I played the chips right or wrong, or whether it was all a bluff. At first, I didn't start reading any books to analyze the topic of mental symmetry. I tried to believe them and explain what each cognitive style does. In early stages of my blog, you can see a lot of posts about Mental Symmetry that discusses a lot of topics about it in detail [1]. Most of them are easy to read. The website www.mentalsymmetry.com by Lorin Friesen did the best job of describing those concepts so please go ahead on that site and read them there. My early posts are relevant only to see that you also need to explain those concepts in your context. It helps you start motivating yourself, pushing the button of bias to action, to be more interested in the theory of Mental Symmetry. After that, you can push yourself to correlate that theory with other books. In the end, you have the choice whether you want to stick with this paradigm or believe there is a better theory you know that can address all the problems. Because each person has a different personality, your adventure will have a different style from the mine you see here now. If you have some strong general knowledge from your previous education, this journey takes around 1-2 years with deliberate practice. Consider them as an investment to your future. Know when you don't get more reward out of it after you practiced enough out of it.
Creating a mental map is really like a lengthy side trip climbing a mountain all alone without anyone telling you to do it or anyone able to visibly see the token of value underneath. It is true that I created a mental map. However, the adventure of refining the mental map is not over yet. When driving a car, the fun part is not keeping the mental map frozen, but how to accommodate the mental map in reality to trespass all the challenges that are ahead of you. Trying a lot and failing will work well enough if you have the correct mental map, because one way or another, you will be able to know how to slide in all the challenges ahead of you. Nonetheless, there will always be times where you have to rethink the existing mental map whether something is missing or not. Those will be easy to unfold as having a great mental map from start leaves you out from doing any significant leaps that will be impossible to take head-on. In addition, you also have to acquire the right skills to upgrade the parts of your car and try out as many environments to practice in order to accommodate your vehicle to have better maneuverability and stamina between all situations.
I would like to thank the authors who created the material that helped me create my mental map. I would like to thank a lot the Theory of Mental Symmetry by Lorin Friesen. If the old philosopher Socrates resurrected, we would hope the type of God Lorin Friesen described is the one he would follow. I believe the theory of mental symmetry Lorin Friesen describes and its associations with Theology. Since it is always a challenge to communicate Mental Symmetry to society, I extracted similar content that describes the same concepts from other books. I want to thank the Journalists "Matthew Syed" for "Black Box Thinking", "Charles Duhigg" for "The Power of Habit" and "Smarter Faster Better", "Professor Karen J Pine" for "Mind What you Wear", the practitioner of leadership "David G. Jensen" for "Executive Paradox", "Peter Maclauglin" for "Feedback Revolution", the class of "Philosophy of Values" in my university at "Cal Poly Pomona" that introduced me to philosophers "John Locke", "Imannuel Kant", the national library of Singapore and its curators for placing the books "Black Box Thinking", "Executive Paradox", "Feedback Revolution" in the main highlight shelves. You guys have a great taste. Without all of you, all this amazing work would have been a missed opportunity.
That is it for my journey. I leave most of the rest up to all of you: interpret your story with your context whenever you are stuck, rely more on your internal self-esteem instead of external self-esteem (Chapter 8 Analysis of "The Power Of Habit").
[1] Highlight posts that illustrate are Internal Problems with my existing current job describing the dynamics of mental networks within the working environment, Parkinson Disease in 5 minutes discusses how chemicals in the brain activate specific cognitive styles and a brief description of Exhorter strategy, the interplay of emotion and confidence discuss about the purpose emotions (Exhorter, Mercy, Teacher) and confidence (Perceiver, Server, Contributor) exist and how they interact together, Obstacles of the ideal critical thinking discuss the blind spots and limitations each cognitive style has, concluding that most of us have not a clear visibility or clarity of other cognitive styles which can stray us from ideal critical thinking, Types of Pain discusses the different type of pains (physical, mental networks, denial) and the dynamics of the cognitive styles that happen beneath that process, Visualization and Consequence talks about humans only being limited by mercy mental networks as input and how those can be transformed to a perpetual abstract foundations which we must implement with the help of visualization. Although those articles may be incomplete and I didn't have enough confidence at that time on them because they were not supported by others experiences, they were the supporting pillars for me to motivate myself to research more heavily on the topic of personal development.
Update
About the movies: Although I am not going to analyze movies I aforementioned, I still advise you guys to watch them. Pulp Fiction illustrates there must be a correct sense of mental map before enforcing righteousness. It is a great watch coupled with Nihilism by Mark Conard & further analysis by idleafterdark. Moneyball is a decent movie. Statistics is valued not for an unfair game, but people not following marginal gains within the rules of the game. There is always an open space in sports and business when people care less when they feel their resources are too abundant becoming an easier victim like the story David and Goliath. Furthermore, it would have been better if people were obsessed with scarce resources and personal development instead of baseball tickets and hot dogs. In addition, both in baseball and business, we see the power of money can kill the motivation of others to innovate.
My last words: This is my final words on my mental map epilogue. I am putting my last advice of words as a rite of passage to myself. I hope this helps for others that walk on this same journey.