Solving for 𝒳
I went and had a coffee with a friend for a few hours this evening, and as normal, we spoke of many things. However, one of the conversations tied in with a discussion on life as a series of equations to solve, and how I think that because we are getting less skilled by becoming more reliant on tools, we are losing the ability to solve for 𝒳.
It started with a "simple" question on whether I believe that we have lost our desire to explore, to adventure, which I do believe. I think that this is because our lives have become more stable and we have more tools at our disposal, meaning we have less problems to solve. I also think that a lot of our work is so structured, that as long as we meet the standard, that is enough. There is little incentive to go above and beyond, just meet expectations.
And we know what to expect from the world, because we have removed so much of the randomization, because we have access to specialized service. Gone are the days where we have to be a Jack of all trades to get through life, now we pay for many Jacks.
But it is in our nature to want to solve problems, because that is how we advance and evolve. And, when we don't have real problems to solve, we will make problems for ourselves, regardless of whether they are needed to solve or not. Our lives have become so structured, that the narcissism of small differences is where we live, creating large issues out of the small, just to feel like we are relevant.
We are no longer adventurers looking to discover the secrets of the universe, because we aren't even able to solve for 𝑥 in out daily lives. We have become robotic, living algorithmically, and robots don't solve problems, they run their programs. When they face a challenge they have not been taught to overcome, they fail.
My friend asked if it is a lack of curiosity, and I think this is part of it, but it is also combined with a lack of creativity. Rather than creating solutions to the problems we face, we turn to various help sources that already have the problem solved for us. This makes us feel like we are exploring and expanding, but more often than not, we are just following the steps laid out before us.
I used an example of math as a way to solve problems, and in order to solve complicated and complex issues, the basics have to be learned. However, there is only a handful of people who will ever really use math to make a significant impact for our species. But, in order to get that handful, a massive amount of people have to learn the basics - the less people who learn the basics, the smaller the pool becomes to uncover those gems who will go on to do great things.
It is the same with creativity and our ability to solve the problems we face as a species. The less we all solve problems in our daily lives, the smaller the pool becomes to find those top-end problem solvers, the ones who will cure complicated diseases, or improve complex environmental crises.
But, we can't all change the world, but we can all improve ourselves. And, if we were to look to solve for the solution of "me", we would have to be more practical. Perhaps, it might be useful to break it down into some basic questions to see what might help.
1. What are we spending our resources on?
This includes our attention, and tells us what is important to us. And perhaps if we uncover what we are actually doing, perhaps we would want to alter where we are spending and shift our attention and interests elsewhere. If we know the general direction in which we want to go, it becomes easier.
2. What tools do we have that can help us on the path?
What are our real resources and how can we apply them to where we want to go. Do we have everything we need, where are our gaps, what can we identify we are missing?
3. What people and community do I need around me?
Who can help? Who do I need to interact with in order to move in the direction I want to move? What kinds of groups do I need to be in, surround myself with, and associate?
4. What actions do I need to take in order to move?
What are the long-term goals and what are the short-term actions that start down that path? How do I get connected with the right people? What kinds of equipment or tools to I need to obtain? How am I going to get the resources required to move to the next step?
That is a very simple look at things, but essentially, we need structure in order to be compelled enough to act consistently. without it, our actions become random, and will generally err on the side of laziness, because that is what our nature demands. It wants easy, it wants simple, it wants to not have to think.
And, that is why we have lost our explorative drive. Because we aren't forced to explore our world out of necessity, we just don't. Instead, we sit back and fill our curiosity with engineered content that makes us feel safe, because we chose to consume it. We consume gamified experiences that bring us the sense of satisfaction we would get from real exploration. We avoid the unknown.
We don't walk through the doors and into the jungle of life.
We just watch it through the safety of a window.
𝒳 will never be solved, because we will never start looking.
Taraz
[ Gen1: Hive ]
I have often thought that the only instinct that people are born with is “curiosity” everything else is learned or discovered.
Just your discussion proves you are curious.
I feel that it is being conditioned out of us. Consumerism isn't a fan of curiosity, it likes replicability.
That's my point, it's an instinct. It cannot be removed only suppressed. The first thing a newborn does is try to explore it environment, just with it's eyes first then you can't stop them getting into everything.
Just stop playing Splinterlands :)
That is where my resources go!
Hello @tarazkp, I clearly understand you and the need for everyone to know how to find x, but also I kind of have another view towards this. Using the same Maths as an example, It is important to understand the basics of how x came to be and how to derive at the values of x, but once that is totally understood and there has been a formula or a constant for it, it is advisable to substitute the formula or constant anywhere x is found.
In other words it is very good to have an understanding of how things are been done when there were no technologies to make things better and faster so that when things get confusing sometimes one can go back to the root and get things fixed without fully relying on technology, but in cases where bigger problems needs to be solved it is better to make use of the technologies and innovations that handles the easy tasks by the way in other to focus more in the hard parts and also to enable speed, efficiency and uniformity.
for instance, in car manufacturing companies, technicians can't start building every single part manually for individual cars, if they do, at the end of the day there will be variances among the products and a lot of time will be wasted.
Although life been life been easier makes people tend towards laziness, at the same time it helps some other people solve more difficult problems much easier and faster, not it depends on which category we fall in.
While I understand what you are trying to say, but what you have failed to recognize is the human element of this. If all we do as an individual is what the tools do for us, what are we?
Hummmm, I get you.
I think I read it somewhere about the creation of robot house wife, it's actually crazy. One thing about humans is that we take things to the extreme end sometimes, which might be good or bad at times
I was at a conference a while ago and the keynote speaker had a really good point about how the US used to be innovators, we used to be known for pushing the envelope and being on the forefront of technology. Whether or not that was accurate, I can agree with the idea that we don't ask as many questions as we used to. We don't innovate, we don't explore, etc. Obviously working in education the whole point was to inspire educators to help students become those innovators again. Your post made me think of that speech.
I see that as a whole, the world has become less innovative, because there are less explorers amongst us. In the past, all of us had to innovate by necessity, now it is only expected from corporations. I think that at that level, the innovation is only driven by what makes money, which isn't necessarily what solves the human problems we need solved. It is all like innovation in pharmaceuticals to manage illness, not sure it.
Very true!
I look at it from other angles. Business people may talk lyrically about their mystical faith in innovation and the brave new world it is creating, but the driving force behind their constant innovation is far from utopian. In a vigorous economy, it is a matter of survival, pure and simple. Companies must innovate to stay competitive.
Competition, made up of two Latin words, cum and petere, means to seek together. What every businessman seeks is profit; he seeks it together with his competitors in the paradoxical relationship we call competition.
When a business loses money, it must innovate very quickly, and it cannot do so without foresight. Usually, there is neither the money nor the time for this. In this situation, business people with a strong survival instinct often reason as follows: “If our competitors are more successful than us, they must be doing something right. We must be doing it too, and the only practical way to do it is to imitate them as closely as we can”.
Most people would agree that imitation plays a role in economic recovery, but only in the first phase of the healing process. By imitating its successful competitors, an at-risk firm can innovate relative to itself; it will catch up with its rivals, but it will not invent anything really new. This common sense makes less sense than it sounds. For a start, is there such a thing as “absolute innovation”? In the first phase, no doubt, imitation will be rigid and short-sighted. It will have the ritual quality of external mediation. After a while, however, the novel element will become dominant in the competitor's practice and the imitation will become bolder. At that point, some additional improvement may “or may not” be generated which at first will seem insignificant, because it is not suggested by the model, but which really is the genuine innovation that will change things.
I am not denying the specificity of innovation. I am simply observing that, in a truly innovative process, namely, it is usually in such continuity with imitation that its presence can only be discovered after the fact, through a process of abstraction. Not so long ago, in Europe, Americans were portrayed primarily as imitators “good technicians, no doubt, but the real brain power was in Germany or England”. Then, within a very few years, the Americans became the great innovators.
Public opinion is always surprised to see the modest imitators of one generation become the bold innovators of the next. The constant recurrence of this phenomenon should have something to teach us.
Until very recently, the Japanese were reduced to mere copycats of Western ways, incapable of true invention in any field. They are now the driving force behind innovation in more and more technical fields. When did they acquire the inventive spark they supposedly lacked? At this very moment, the Japanese “Korean, Taiwanese” imitators are repeating the same process. Didn't something similar already happen in the 19th century, when Germany first rivalled England, and then surpassed it in industrial power? The metamorphosis of imitators into innovators happens repeatedly, but we always react to it with amazement. Perhaps we don't want to know about the role of imitation in innovation.
“It is easier to imitate than to innovate”. This is what the manuals tell us. But the truth is that the only shortcut to innovation is imitation; and here is another phrase that illustrates the meaning of innovation: “many people actually imitate when they think they innovate”. This cannot be denied, but it should be added that “many people innovate when they think they imitate”.
Yes. But, business isn't the true application of competition, is it? Competition can be like two sprinters trying to be the fastest runner. They can push each other to be their individual best, not to beat the other, but to be that best.
Business for profit is about beating the other, not about being the best.
Do you believe this to be true? I do not.
And, I will add that all of your examples, are from periods of time prior to mass media and the internet. There is far more homogenization of thought now, which is what I am actually talking about in the article piece. This homogenization changes the normal distribution of people playing in the creative fields, narrowing the pool of the next iteration of innovators, and the range their innovations will take.
Our views of the world are at odds with each other, they certainly diverge because your experience and mine are totally different. I have gone from a third world culture to a first world culture. My personal experience has been nourished by North American currents and certain European countries, this year I hope to visit the colossus of Asia “China”.
I maintain that America is the GREAT innovator and China, for example, is the great IMITATOR, but I recognise that within that imitation is the personal touch of its A, B, C and junk qualities, heh, heh, heh.
I do not share the idea that world thinking has become homogenised or globalised. Furthermore, I am particularly inclined to say that this is a trick that certain interests have wanted to implant in people's brains. The past to which you refer has led us to the present we live in. The internet is only an intangible medium, the reality is more palpable and crude. Passivity is sickening and impoverishing the human being.
Indeed. The quest for adventure was much higher way before technology became as sophisticated as it is now. I believe the tech tools are not meant to quench that thirst but to lend us a helping hand in exploration and discovery.
but they are designed with the opposite in mind. They are made for profit, they are made to keep a person buying, not encourage them to create.
I think growing up is also partly to blame. When people are younger, they have all these dreams and curiosity. But as they grow older, a lot of things get in the way of chasing them. Bills, responsibilities, work, etc, need to come first if they want to live. But that isn't to say no one is able to continue chasing their dreams and curiosities. There are those that incorporated it into their life. Researching for the cure to cancer, astronauts and rocket scientists curious about space, etc.
For the regular people that didn't pursue their dreams, they can still have the desire to explore, by trying to improve a system, studying and training to get promoted, and making the world a better place for their children in their own way.
Yes, it is, which is part of my point. In the past, pretty much everyone was forced to be creative in order to survive daily lives. They had to make for themselves, solve for themselves. How much of what the ordinary worker does in a day is actually creative in the sense that they have to find a solution for themselves, that they have no support to answer?
90% of the world problems are not really math problems but 10% which are, those problems would change a lot of world. And so math should be left alone for those who want to destroy their social life, normal life to churn out answers for the humanity. I used to hate math, still do but I have done engineering and learned enough science to respect math.
What I’m concerned more about this post is that human have problems and we always look for ways to solve it and when we don’t have problems, we tend to create one for ourselves.
Why is that?
Is it not just possible for we humans to live off problems and just enjoy life?
It is really ever possible not to have problems at all?
The earlier we humans will understand that we didn't invent technology to make us become outdated the better it will be for us. I have discovered recently that some students are becoming too lazy as a result of modern technological innovations at their disposal. And, as you have noted in your post, technology has taken the place of curiosity and that is why we cannot solve so many problems that have posed as threats to humans even when we have the capacity because we are not curious about finding solutions to them.
Do you believe in stats that say that it is a small percentage (like 7% or 3%, or 2%, depending on what and where you read it) of active people who would take on the leadership role, the inventor's role, the entrepreneur if that could generalize it?
What can change that ratio and is that necessary?
The more troubling question is... where is that small percentage leading the rest? For it could also be the short-term gain for some but long-term loss for everybody.
Who influences the influential?
Hello tarazkp!
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