Improving Personal Control

1
Improving Personal Control

• Synthesizing cybernetic control and Apostel's
  worldview construction kit into a practical
  framework for increasing our ability to control

2
Introduction

• Two Goals today
• Convince us all to work on this very, very
  important item an operational framework for
  improving personal control abilities
• Propose a first version and get feedback
• Not really exposed to others yet
• Probably lots of room for improvement
• Some parts further developed than others
• Beta version, perhaps even Alpha -)
• Apologies if not clear/coherent enough yet

3
Outline

• Pitch
• Building blocks overview
• Creating a Practical framework
• Filling in Understanding the World
• Filling in Setting the Direction/Goal
  (embryonic)
• Filling in Decision Making (embryonic)
• Conclusion lets work together

4
1 Pitch
5
Situation

• Feeling in control is very satisfying
• Happiness research personal control is a major
  contributor to life satisfaction
• Feeling not in control creates stress, anxiety,
  fear, insecurity, distrust
• Rate of change steadily increasing since 1980s
  with ITC and globalization as drivers
• About what futurist Alvin Toffler described
• Future Shock, 1970 what happens to people
  overwhelmed by change
• The 3rd Wave, 1980 high speed transition from
  industrial to information society

6
Csikszentmihalyi's Flow explains
When difficulty or challenge exceeds skills,
anxiety results
Copied from Characteristics and Problems of the
Gifted, Heylighen 2007
7
Problem

• Ever faster changing and more complex
  world/environment
• Control abilities have to increase at least as
  fast as environment changes and becomes more
  complex
• Else increasing gap difficulty-ability, thus
  ever greater anxiety/stress (todays society)
• Thus, increasing personal control becomes ever
  more important and urgent over time
• Great project to work on, great contribution

8
Impact/Benefits

• A greater ability to control will improve
• coping with change and complexity
• understanding the world, seeing ways forward
• anxiety/stress levels
• self-confidence
• At the societal level
• Last decennia progress in numerous life
  satisfaction areas
• Yet societies no significant life satisfaction
  gains
• Lack of control ability is key reason?!

9
Current popular strategies overview

• Medication coping with symptoms
• Legislation government must regulate
• Less work, early retirement means less stress
  and more time to unwind
• Change life-style move to south
• Religion a compass in turbulent times, even
  complete worldview with all answers
• Self-improvement theories/books/courses promise
  more control (Stephen Covey, Anthony Robbins,
  Paul Scheele)

10
Proposed solution

• Most current strategies are curative/reactive,
  focusing on coping with symptoms like anxiety,
  stress
• None are truly science-based
• Better way preventive/proactive strategy that
  builds lasting control capacity/skills
• Need science-based operational framework for
  increasing personal control

11
Criteria

• Preventive capacity building
• Science-based sound
• Operational clear, practical, able to being used
  in daily practice
• Effective at improving the feeling/perception of
  being in control needs
• real-world testing
• feedback

12
Approach

• 1)Use building blocks
• Cybernetic control model
• Apostel worldview construction kit
• Heylighen PCP worldview/control synthesis
• 2)Try to synthesize and translate theoretical
  building blocks into a practical framework for
  daily operational use
• 3)Fill in parts/steps of framework with practical
  tips, how-tos

13
Cognitive fitness?

• Cognitive fitness ability to control, to steer
• Proactive set and achieve goals
• Reactive counteract perturbations of environment
• Have used it for years in my own notes
• Has become second nature for me
• Meaning very clear for me but for others?
• Fitness, Competence, Abilities?
• Control often negative connotation gt personal
  governance?
• Your feedback? Better terms?

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2 Building Blocks Overview
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Cybernetic control model
Copied from Cybernetics and Second-Order
Cybernetics, Heylighen Joslyn, 2001
16
Apostel worldview construction kit
Adopted from A Minimal Philosophical Agenda,
Vidal 2007, plus WikiPedia worldview page
17
Heylighen control/worldview hybrid
Copied from PCP web page What is a world view,
Heylighen 1996-2000
18
3 Creating a Practical Framework
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Operationalizing building blocks

• Use terms already in peoples heads (cf. memes)
• Do NOT use philosophical domain terms most
  people have no clue
• Control terms are already better, yet
• Replace control terms by well-known task-oriented
  terms
• Perhaps/probably better to use framework
  instead of worldview
• Simplify
• Make everything as simple as possible, but not
  simpler -- Einstein
• Compress 4 steps into 1 explanation/past,
  model/present, futurology/future, knowledge
  acquisition
• Framework parts/steps then become
• Understanding the world
• Setting the direction
• Making decisions
• Easier to grasp and use
• Less steps/parts
• Terms meaning is clear
• Remaining 3 steps all within the agent i.e. I
  can control them

20
Practical framework
21
4 Filling in Understanding the World
22
Why my focus here

• Focus of this presentation is on this part other
  2 parts contain just embryonic pointers
• Arguably most important part
• No effective actions without good representation
• Rubbish in, rubbish out
• Most radical departure from building blocks,
  having compressed 4 steps (explanation, model,
  futurology knowledge acquisition) into 1
• My core competence
• Draft model for other 2 steps

23
Overview

• Better perception using media better
• Media today main source for perception
• Apply source critique
• Better understanding using 3 evolutionary
  perspectives
• Time
• Past-present-future evolution
• Trends-events-issues evolution
• Place/space global, worldwide, planetary
• People
• Human needs hierarchy
• Moral development phases
• Individual societal/cultural

24
Perception media do most of it

• Lion share of most peoples representation
  building happens via popular media
• True for what happens further away than our own
  direct sensory input
• Indirect experiences by proxy or vicarious
  through media
• Frontline perception effectively delegated to the
  media

25
Perception media hurdles

• Journalists are just people with a worldview
• First hurdle input selection
• Always too much material gt editors must select
• Unconscious selective input what confirms held
  beliefs is brought, what contradicts them is cut
  out
• Risk of audience groupthink as result
• Possibly even conscious massaging of agenda
• Second hurdle evenhandedness
• Do the different sides of the argument get even
  treatment?
• Do you get fact-based reporting or opinions?

26
Perception negative news overload

• Negative news bias we are biologically
  programmed to pay more attention to negative news
  or threats than opportunities
• Negative news more newsworthy progress and
  good things happen slowly while bad things tend
  to happen suddenly
• Negative news oversupply today negative news can
  be harvested on a global scale as technological
  progress allowed to harvest it from further and
  further away
• man (village)
• horse (local region)
• train-telegraph (nation)
• telephone-Internet (whole world)
• gt Negative news overload

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Perception source critique basics

• Be aware
• That you have delegated perception to the media
  outlet you are watching/reading
• That you are behind a filter what you are told
  happening in the world today is not necessarily
  the whole picture of what you wanted to know
• Of negative news bias and even overload
• Be critical of how the story is handled
• Are both perspectives/sides of the story sought?
• Do they get about equal time to be expressed?
• Do you hear the parties tell their perspective or
  do you hear a journalist telling you what they
  said?
• Are you getting facts or journalist opinions?

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Perception source critique advanced

• Monitor different media with different
  perspectives to get fuller picture
• Instead of watching evening news twice from same
  perspective, watch it on different broadcasters,
  e.g.
• 2 local ones with different worldviews
• 1 local and 1 global
• RSS readers allows to scan and only read whats
  of real interest
• Mail alerts allow to not miss whats really
  important to you
• If something happens, deliberately lookup and
  read/view story covered from different
  perspectives

29
Time Past-present-future

• Past-present-future as 1 continuous flow/stream,
  not 3 separate parts
• Future has still multiple possibilities,
  continuously collapsing into present, past
• Cf. spinning multiple fine threads gradually
  coming closer and forming 1 big thread
• Present just a point on time axis, a snapshot
  like you can take snapshots in the past too
• History-journalism-futurology at heart very
  similar disciplines

30
Time Trends-events-issues

• Trends gt events gt issues
• Trends in early stages not always clear, not on
  radar screen yet
• Trends produce events
• Events in turn produce issues that have to be
  dealt with
• Series of events with drip-drip effect
• Major event
• The lower the human need threatened, the more
  urgent/important the issue will be felt
• Cf. life satisfaction process model, where
• step 2 is Events
• step 3 is Experiences events trigger positive or
  negative experiences gt becomes an issue
  requiring attention

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Example from US perspective

• Trend Islamic fundamentalism
• Becoming increasingly popular since 1950s
• Alternative to pan-Arab nationalism after defeat
  in 1967 Israeli-Arab war
• Events
• 1979 Iranian revolution, US hostages at US
  embassy
• 1983 241 US military killed in Beirut barracks
  bombing
• 1983-1984 US embassies in Kuwait and Beirut
  bombed
• 1993 World Trade Center New York bombed
• 1995 US military headquarters in Riyadh,
  Saudi-Arabia bombed
• 1998 US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania bombed
• 2000 USS Cole ship bombed in Yemeni port
• 2001 9/11
• Issue major national security threat overseas
  threat to mainland
• First time in 2 centuries since war with British
  that US mainland was attacked (Japanese Pearl
  Harbor attack was on Hawaii, not mainland)
• Biggest terrorist attack on the globe ever
• Americans physical security need threatened,
  major chock
• Overwhelming national call/support for going to
  war against perpetrators

32
Time understanding trends

• Futurists use 5 categories STEEP
• Societal
• Technological
• Economic
• Environmental
• Political
• Not simple projection of current trends into
  future!
• Need to know the variables involved and their
  dynamics (cf. cybernetic control!)

33
Example of oil reserves

• Fact demand rising faster than anticipated
  (China, India)
• Conclusion these finite oil reserves must be
  depleted sooner than we thought
• Reality depletion timeframe constantly pushed
  further out as reserves increase at about same
  rate as demand
• Reason ever faster improving technologies,
  helped by higher prices
• Better exploration techniques produce constantly
  new finds
• Innovative sucking technologies can harvest
  fields in environmentally sensitive areas
• Better utilization technology squeeze more oil
  out of existing field, some old depleted fields
  yielding again
• Hitherto too costly oil fields suddenly
  exploitable
• Other oil sources suddenly exploitable Canada
  started producing oil from its huge oil sands
  deposits reserves comparable Saudi-Arabia
• Historically increasing geopolitical stability
  and less conflicts in world bring new places
  online from Russia and ex-satellites like
  Kazakhstan to Libya (end of isolation), Angola
  (end of civil war) and other African countries
• Doomsday predictions have very bad historical
  record (cf. in 70s Club of Rome predicted end of
  oil by 2000 Internet predicted to implode by
  2000, then 2006, etc) negative news bias bad
  trend forecasting

34
Place/space global perspective

• Simply a must in todays globalized world for
  anyone wanting to understand international
  events, let alone be an effective actor
• As complexity increases ever greater agent
  interaction and interdependency necessitates
  awareness and knowledge of other agents
  perspectives

35
Global perspective tips

• Follow at least once a day news coverage by a
  global broadcaster (CNN, BBC World)
• Explore world geography Google Earth, Microsoft
  Virtual Earth, NASA World Wind
• Explore country statistics nationmaster.com
• Get world map on wall or PC political,
  geographical, day/night, from space
• Traveling fine, but be aware of personal
  experiences only being limited ad-hoc samples
  dont draw conclusions too hastily

36
People 2 human evolutionary axes

• Human needs hierarchy (Maslow)
• Moral development phases (Kohlberg)
• True for individuals and societies/cultures
• Enable to see that, at the same point in time,
  different places can be on different points of
  human development axes
• Not seeing this human evolutionary axes often
  brings major errors
• Marshall plan worked better in further developed
  societies than less developed, like in Greece
• Iraq society still largely clan based low
  moral development gt authority still needed
  major initial errors of abolishing army, allowing
  militias, imposing democracy

37
People understanding mindsets

• If you dont understand how someone looks at an
  issue you care about, i.e.
• General worldview/mindset
• Where on needs axis
• Where on moral development axis
• Specific representation on issue at hand
• Then chances are slim you will be effective in
  influencing his actions
• Many simple but popular labels to better grasp
  existing worldviews or mindsets (next slides)

38
People political left-right categorization

• Dates from French revolution, based on where
  representatives sat in assembly
• Today less and less clear-cut differences
• People/parties can be left on issue X and right
  on issue Y
• Left-right axis has different calibrations in
  different places/cultures
• E.g. Belgian political party VLD/MR
• Left on ethical matters like euthanasia, but
  right on economy
• Considered centre-right party on Belgian
  political axis, but would be slightly to the left
  of New Labour on British axis!
• gt Many feel left-right to be outdated framework
  for understanding - but no commonly accepted
  alternative (yet)

39
People cybernetic control based labels

• Reactive-Proactive
• Reacting to events vs. taking charge, making
  things happen
• Cf. historically Latin/catholic vs. protestant
  cultures
• Stasis-Dynamism
• Seeing change/innovation as threat vs. as
  opportunity
• Proposed by Virginia Postrel in The Future and
  its Enemies, an exploration of how societies
  learn, how progress occurs not conformity to 1
  vision but creativity and decentralized,
  open-ended trial and error
• Fixed-Growth
• Proposed by Carrol Dweck in Mindset The New
  Psychology of Success
• See clarifying diagram on next slide

40
Fixed vs. Growth mindsets diagram
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5 Filling in Setting the Direction/Goal
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Vision gt Strategy

• Vision
• A picture of an attractive future
• Able to motivate and mobilize people
• Becomes overarching über-goal
• Strategy
• How to get to that attractive future
• A big picture roadmap agenda, priorities
• Becomes list of goals
• Each goal its control cycle

43
Example maximizing life satisfaction

• Vision Lets improve lives as much as possible,
  for as many as possible, as soon as possible
• Strategy
• Set priorities, agenda i.e. find variables with
  best social return on investment (SROI) (nr of
  people affected x life satisfaction correlation x
  deficit) / (investment needed x time needed)
• Find best practices out there and adapt them if
  none found come up with suitable actions
• Apply using control cycle
• Monitor results and improve apply control cycle

44
6 Filling in Making Decisions
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Making decisions pointers

• Use Herbert Simons work!
• Cybernetic control itself core of action theory?
• GTD as action theory?
• Other building blocks?
• Simple but effective tools like decision table!

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7 Conclusion
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Lets work together on this opportunity

• Its within our grasp to build an operational
  framework that can be used in daily practice
• Very important work lack of control abilities
  possibly most important problem holding us back
  from realizing potential, both as individual and
  as society
• Make a contribution to people and society by
  using our abilities and PCP/CLEA/ECCO expertise
• Unique contribution because of broadness/diversity
  spanning multiple disciplines and perspectives
• Lets work together on this opportunity!

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The End

• Thats all folks!