We easily take for granted the marvellous job that the human brain does. The purpose of the brain is to make stable patterns for dealing with a stable world. Life would be totally impossible if we had to figure things out each time. There are 39,916,800 ways of getting dressed with eleven items of clothing - assuming that no previous patterns have been formed. If we were to try one such way every minute we would need to live to be 76 years old before we had tried every variation. On such a basis, life would be impossible.
Instead of that, we establish a routine pattern for getting dressed and then follow that pattern. There are also sub-patterns that we learn. For example, you cannot put your shoes on before you put on your socks.
The way the nerve networks in the brain form such patterns is described in my book The Mechanism of Mind, which was published in 1969 and is available from Penguin Books.
Our traditional thinking methods were set up by the Greek Gang of Three: Socrates, Plato and Aristotle. The contribution of these three was to emphasise the natural behaviour of the brain. Things around us are separated into categories, boxes, definitions etc. All we then have to do is to recognise into which 'box' something fits. Once we have made this recognition, then we know about that thing, about its properties, etc. This is not unlike a doctor in his or her surgery. A child is brought in with a rash. The doctor diagnoses measles. This recognition 'judgment' is based on the physical signs (such as the Koplik spots) and on the history. Once the recognition has been made, then the doctor knows the probable course of the illness, the possible complications and the current treatment. So action can be taken.
This judgment/recognition system is very powerful. Alan Greenspan sitting in the Federal Reserve Bank in Washington assesses whether the economic situation is 'inflation' or 'recession'. If the answer is inflation, then the standard treatment is to lower interest rates, etc. Advertising agencies, no matter how creative, always seek to position the product in one or another box that can be recognised by the potential buyer. Just being different for the sake of being different may seem 'creative', but does not sell anything.
In their daily lives people make these judgment/recognitions all the time. Almost all our behaviour is on this basis. What other basis could there be?The system is immensely successful. It has worked very well in science and technology. If a scientist is dealing with 'copper', then the scientist knows the properties of copper. These properties are predictable, constant and permanent. Combining these properties with other properties gives us technology. Science is the process of categorising materials and processes. Technology is the process of combining materials and processes to deliver some value.
HUMAN AFFAIRS
While we have made astonishing progress in science and technology, we have made virtually no progress in human affairs. Science has provided us with more powerful weapons, but the way we use them has hardly changed at all.
We usually ascribe this lack of success in human affairs to emotions, perceptions, etc. We blame the failure on the difficulty of dealing with human nature. It does not seem to occur to people that the failure is due to the inadequacy of traditional thinking methods.
Traditional judgment thinking does not work well with human affairs. That is why we have been so successful in science and technology and so unsuccessful in human affairs.
People are somewhat unpredictable. Each person is a mixture of genes, experience and the mood of the moment. This is very different from the predictable behaviour of copper.
If you call someone an 'idiot', that person is no longer the same person you called an idiot. The person has been changed by your attack. It is feedback loops such as this which make traditional judgment/recognition so useless in human affairs. Our thinking system depends on permanence and predictability: copper will always behave as copper should.
TRUTH
Truth is very central to our thinking. We seek truth. We judge the value of our thinking by assessing 'truth'. Yet you can only have truth about the present or about the past. You cannot have truth about the future. You can have possibility and even probability. This needs a different sort of thinking. Chinese technology, which was far ahead of the West two thousand years ago, came to a dead end when the scholars believed you could move from 'certainty' to 'certainty'. As a result the Chinese thinkers never developed the 'possibility system'.
THE DESIGN OF VALUE
In today's highly competitive world efficiency is not enough. Competence, information and state-of-the-art technology are becoming commodities. Being a low-cost producer is not an option for many countries. What now matters is the design and delivery of value. That needs design thinking. That needs creative thinking. Judgment thinking alone is not going to be enough.
Most people, in business and elsewhere, have done very well on judgment thinking. Such people are rarely aware of the need for 'design thinking'. They find it difficult to conceive that there is a whole other aspect of thinking that is different from judgment thinking. It is not that such people are complacent. It is simply that they do not know that there is another aspect to thinking.
The paradox is that the sheer excellence of our judgment thinking has made it difficult for us to realise the limitations of judgment thinking.
NEW BOOK
These matters are explored in more depth in my new books with the title: WHY SO STUPID? The sub-title is: 'How the Human Race has never really learned to think'. The title may seem provocative, but it is not meant to be. It is a sober analysis of the current state of affairs with our human thinking. Many people are likely to get upset because they will believe that the book is an attack on their proven excellent thinking. The book is not at all an attack on current thinking. Current thinking is indeed excellent - but it is not enough.
The book is more of a 'change agent' than a book. Organisations are buying several copies of the book to give to their board members and to their executives in order to get a shift in thinking from judgment to the design of value. This is a very fundamental matter indeed.
The book may seem expensive at $250 or £175, but as a change agent it is cheap. It may be ordered from Blackhall Publishing, either directly or through a bookseller.
mail: Blackhall Publishing, 27 Carysfort Avenue, Co. Dublin, Ireland
website:www.whysostupid.com
e-mail: blackhall@eircom.net
tel: 00 353 1 278 5090
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