Heroes Not Zombies

One of the most interesting points made by Gerd Gigerenzer in his “Gut Feelings” is that in order to understand what has happened it is often useful to consider as much of the information you can collect as possible, but in order to assess something right now, or to make a prediction about the future, you can have too much information and it either confuses you or bogs you down in analyses.

One fascinating example he gives is of a competition to pick stocks and shares. Asked to pick from a given a list of 50 companies in which to invest an imaginary few thousand dollars, the experts and knowledgeable amateurs did a lot of research into the companies then constructed their portfolios in the light of this. Gigerenzer and his colleague went out into the street and asked a random 100 passers-by which companies in the list they recognised. They then made a portfolio of the 10 most frequently recognised companies and this is the portfolio which won hands down, beating ALL the experts.

He gives other examples of this phenomenon. Basically it seems that if we know absolutely nothing about a certain subject then predictions we make will be right no more often than they would by chance. If we know a LOT then our predictions are not great either. However, if we know just a bit, our predictions are very good.

He says this phenomenon is about using intuition rather than a rational analytic consideration of a problem and points out that this intuitive strategy works best in circumstances where uncertainty is high.

When in Tokyo I always pay a visit to my favourite bookstore – Maruzen in Oaza at Maranouchi near Tokyo Central Station. I love the top floor with its interesting English language section and always find some book there that breaks new ground for me. This time it was Smart World by Richard Ogle (ISBN 978-0462099217). Unfortunately books can be very expensive in Japan and even if you can afford them luggage soon gets unmanageable when you stuff your bags with too many of them! So I decided to have a speed-read of this book at one of the reading tables by the window.

I don’t know if you ever speed-read a book but with non-fiction books its quite easy. Most well written books have good summaries at the end of each chapter so what I read was the introduction, then the summaries of all the chapters.

I read enough to be thoroughly fascinated by it. The author focuses on the new science of networks to create what he calls the nine laws of the science of creativity, his thesis being that creativity is an emergent process of the function of networks. He draws heavily on the ideas of Varela and others about the concept of the embodied mind – the idea that we cannot understand the mind if we attempt to contain it to what happens inside a skull but rather have to understand it as inextricably woven into the environments in which it exists. It’s a small step from here to the idea of the extended mind – a mind that stretches out to network with other minds. From here he develops the notion of “idea spaces” where we see hubs or “hotspots” develop in the network. In other language these are like the “attractors” of complex systems, or like the websites which attract huge numbers of visitors and links. Out of these hotspots, tipping points occur (you’ll have come across this term as the title of Malcolm Gladwell’s book. Again in the language of complex systems these are “bifurcators” where the system undergoes a “phase transition” into a totally new and changed state.

He links these ideas to the human facility of imagination and makes the point that if we progress solely on the basis of existing knowledge then we can improve incrementally but we never achieve the big, significant, creative leaps. These latter require us to imagine what doesn’t exist and what might well not succeed, but we leap, and when it works, the world has changed.

He gives numerous examples of this but the one that caught my eye was the ipod. The ipod has changed the music world considerably but for it to be created a number of elements had to fall into place – Napster and its success in spreading the habit of downloading music, the MP3 file as a small enough sized music file to allow easy downloading, the minaturisation of hard disc drives, and Steve Jobs move from Pixar where he had gained the respect and confidence of media companies which allowed for their licensing of their music catalogues to Apple, and Steve and his team themselves for their imagination, design flair and ability to create a product unlike any other the world had seen before – one that looked good, was SO simple to use and just worked.

I like these ideas and I think its interesting to read an author who uses the analogy of networks and network science to advance them. They are entirely consistent with what we learn from the science of complex systems.

Oh, I’ve ordered a copy of the book from Amazon Marketplace and hopefully it’ll arrive shortly after I return home. Then I’ll take a bit more time with it and see what other thoughts it provokes!

I’m in Tokyo just now and this is such a fascinating city. It’s significantly different from not only Scotland but all the other places I’ve visited in the world. Firstly it’s vast. From my 18th floor hotel room I look out of mile after mile of skyscrapers and buildings. Each morning has been hazy outside but the weather forecast last night said a “typhoon was knocking at the door of Japan”, and although I’ve seen no sign of rain yet the wind had picked up a lot this morning. I love the cooling breeze when the temperature is 30 degrees plus and the humidity is around 80%! The winds have blown away the haze so much to my surprise I could clearly see the distant mountains way beyond Tokyo this morning (almost reminded me of home!)

The in-house hotel magazine is usually just glossy ads for expensive branded goods but this issue has an article about Tetsuya Chickushi promoting the idea of “Michikusa” (which roughly translated means “loitering on the way or taking a pause and looking round”). He promotes “Slow Life” and says he was inspired by the Italian “slow food” movement. He says michikusa is about stopping, allowing a little time to stray off the path and follow your curiosity and he mentions an activity of drawing up a michikusa map. What a wonderful idea!

Here’s his closing paragraph –

Traditionally, Japanese society has had a very strong homogenous nature, and the economic success of the modern age was attained as a result of everyone working together in the same direction without rest. And at very high speed, too. Even now, we continue to set our priority on speed, which is why we still tend to think about everything in a shallow, narrow and brief manner. But I believe that now is the right time for us to think pluralistically in a deep, broad and thorough manner. Perhaps, Japan is about to enter a phase when we should take a pause, sometimes even enjoying michikusa, and contemplate thoroughly on what true happiness is for us.