Problems Are Good

[Scott NC]

  What if everything were perfect and went as planned?  We would all be fat, lazy and crazy...

 "To let the brain work without sufficient material is like racing an engine. It racks itself to pieces."

- Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, 'The Devil’s Foot'.

[Anachronist58]

I am not too sure about that, Brother, but I may take up chanting, "problems are good, problems are gooood, problems are.....", when I am crawling around the yard...

[Scott NC]

  Ok.  Mind engaging, metalworking, fun problems are good.  I am on the fence about "If it doesn't kill you, it makes you stronger" side of things.  I like to believe it's so.  You may have missed Mr. Doyle's point.

[Irondragon Forge ClayWorks]

Problems have kept me on my toes for around 79 years now. If everything went according to plan life would be pretty boring. It's nice to have something work as planned once in a while though.

[Frosty]

5 hours ago, Nodebt said:

"If it doesn't kill you, it makes you stronger"

That aphorism is only appropriate in Nietzsche markets.

Life without challenge is just processing food and air and what's anybody get out of that?

Frosty The Lucky.

[Anachronist58]

6 hours ago, Nodebt said:

You may have missed Mr. Doyle's point.

Yes, I did, but as my esteemed Grand Mother in Law, Henrietta Hooser used to say, "Enough is enough, and to much is nasty"...

Robert Taylor

[rockstar.esq]

Nodebt,

I can see yours and Doyle's point in terms of personal growth, or deriving meaning from a struggle.

I can also see how dealing problems can range from difficult-but-possible, all the way to a lightning strike to the noggin where participation doesn't require cooperation.

This conversation comes at an interesting time for me.  I've got a lot of people in my surroundings that are really good at process oriented thinking, but they struggle to see how systems or relationships affect the outcome of their process.

At the individual level, they're struggling with the old fight or flight decision.  Once they commit to a choice, they neglect the effect that inertia that can have on their subsequent decisions.

For example, let's say they're trying to obtain approval to move forward in some obviously bureaucratic but largely undefined process.  They decide they're afraid of delays or rejection, so they decide to comply with easily identified processes that don't appear to lead where they want to go.

Once they're in flight mode, they seldom want to break stride to reconsider whether the next layer of process is worth resisting.  Again, nothing about the process appears to lead where they want to go.  However they're now deep into the whole "sunk cost" fallacy where they figure they've invested so much time already that they'll just sink a bit more to see it through.

Time passes and they finally arrive at the end point, only to be told they started in the wrong line.

The go to a different line, and repeat the entire performance.  Maybe they get what they need, but often they "learn" that there are at least two paths to failure.  Rinse and repeat.

Meanwhile, there are people who sail through the same bureaucracy because they had; the temerity to question process, the resolve to do good work, and the willingness to map out what matters to who, and why.

So while I generally agree that one can benefit greatly from exercising their abilities to problem solve, I think there are a lot of people whose biggest problem is getting overwhelmed with routine tasks.  "Solving" such a problem only increases the threshold of their capacity, with no corresponding gain in knowledge, pride, or earnings.  It's sad to put it this way, but a lot of people know they're getting paid to grind along.  Picking up the pace doesn't savor of personal growth.

 

In Doyle's books Sherlock annoyed plenty of his contemporaries by being curious about something that seemed to be unrelated minutia.  Almost all of his weird tangents were critical to solving the mystery. 

This is because he used inductive reasoning, rather than the more popular deductive reasoning.  Deductive starts with a theory, and develops hypotheses to support it, then seeks evidence to prove the hypothesis.  TL/DR: The deductive process seeks evidence to prove the hunch.

Inductive starts with empirical observation in search of patterns, then develops theories supported by the patterns.  The inductive process uses evidence to test the theories.  Whatever is left, no matter how improbable, is what the evidence proves.  Inductive is often frustrating because many to most of our organizational constructs empirically operate at cross purposes.  We waste enormous amounts of human potential creating noise, and barriers to our stated goals.

At the same time, we willingly undertake tremendous efforts to be capable of replicating something that our predecessors likely considered drudgery.  Consider a 1900's knife maker banging out a gross of blades every working day at a factory against the hobbyists in our knife section.  It's rewarding to build those skills so long as you don't have to make production doing it for the rest of your life.

[Scott NC]

  Rockstar, I've tried dealing with problems with both fight and flight mode and had both blow up in my face.  Or gotten led into a quagmire where it seems you can't quit digging because "in for a penny, in for a pound".  What if there is no "end point"?  Flight is often the easiest path to take and fight seems the hardest.  The older I get, the tireder (word?) I get of banging my head against the wall.

  I just moved across country and it wasn't the greatest or easiest thing I have done, I understand about getting overwelmed by routine day to day tasks.  It makes it very hard to tackle the big, meaningful problems when you have been feeling overwhelmed by the small stuff.  Somedays it never ends, as well.  And woe be it to the poor soul (your knife maker?), toiling away at ungratifying work just to exist on top of it all.  Or not having anything to toil away at, at all.... can't pay the bills that way.  

   Sorry, It's really hard to respond to long posts on this junk phone.  My camera just broke and now the keyboard I peck away at is locking up.  I think I got my value out of it.....

  Sometimes, I have ideas and thoughts that I post, somehow thinking the reader will see all the unspoken details and meaning I see in my head.  I don't look at it from others perspective and I think that's what happens here.  I spoke of problems being good, I mean't things that are enjoyable to figure out and riddles to unravel that actually take us away from those scary, insufferable big problems that haunt us all.

  I'm off to wallyworld for a new cheapo phone (should be a small trouble free, mundane fix).

 

[JHCC]

16 hours ago, rockstar.esq said:

Inductive starts with empirical observation in search of patterns, then develops theories supported by the patterns.  The inductive process uses evidence to test the theories.  Whatever is left, no matter how improbable, is what the evidence proves.

Not quite. Inductive reasoning generates the theory; deductive reasoning tests the theory. Inductive reasoning can take an existing theory and refine it to account for additional evidence, but that's not quite the same as proof.

The Sherlock Holmes stories are fun, and Holmes does indeed demonstrate inductive reasoning in generating his theories (although he confusingly calls it deduction, as in the episode where he contrasts observation and deduction by discussing Watson's recent visit to Wigmore Street -- although even here he is actually using induction to produce two theories of different levels of complexity). However, his conclusions are usually presented as almost invariably accurate, and their "proof" almost always relies on external verification -- in other words, Holmes observes, generates his theory, presents it to his audience, and someone else confirms its truth, often by confessing. There are certainly occasions where Holmes does indeed test theories by making further empirical observations, as in "The Adventure of the Lion's Mane" and "The Adventure of the Yellow Face" (the theory in the first is proven true; in the second, false). Indeed, the latter case highlights the central flaw of Holmes's method, that the power of induction is limited by the evidence available and that when critical evidence is missing, the theory arrived at by induction will inevitably be flawed. 

[ThomasPowers]

And ACD  was nice about including times when Holms was wrong too.

[Scott NC]

What is ACD Thomas?

[ThomasPowers]

Arthur Conan Doyle

[Glenn]

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle is best known for his Sherlock Holmes stories.

[Scott NC]

  Sorry for asking the obvious Thomas.  Glenn, he also was a fantastic science fiction writer.

[JHCC]

Not to be confused with OCD, of course, or even AC/DC.

[TWISTEDWILLOW]

 

I thought it stood for adult concentration disorder 

[JHCC]

I occasionally suffer from Adult Deficit Disorder.

[ThomasPowers]

For me it's more like: *constantly*!

[TWISTEDWILLOW]

Squirrel!!!!! 

Sorry… now what we’re y’all saying again? 

[rockstar.esq]

On 3/11/2022 at 9:49 AM, JHCC said:

Not quite. Inductive reasoning generates the theory; deductive reasoning tests the theory. Inductive reasoning can take an existing theory and refine it to account for additional evidence, but that's not quite the same as proof.

JHCC,

It's entirely possible to come to incorrect conclusions using either method, and you're correct that Holmes used both.  I was careful to quote textbook descriptions and they generally agree that deductive starts with a theory, whereas Inductive reasoning starts with observations before working toward theory.  A simpler way to put this is deductive is top to bottom reasoning, whereas inductive is bottom to top reasoning.

Nodebt,

I appreciate your effort to elaborate on your struggles and I wish you well with them.  

[Scott NC]

  Thanks Rockstar.  I struggle just like everybody else.  I wasn't trying to highlight my troubles, but I was trying to relate to what you said, in my own way.