Project Self: Monkeys Discovering Tools

Yep. It was funny, but the other day, I had one of those "aha!" moments where some insight kicks in. But, not really. Here's the backstory. I'm helping DE move into his new place across town. He had bought a couch and a queen-sized bed from one of the PhD students who was graduating and moving away. So, we got everything packed up and drove over to his place. The couch was a little heavy, but no problem getting it up to the third floor. Ditto for the mattress, since we could bend it around corners in the stairwell. Where I knew that we were going to have problems was with the box-spring. We tried a couple different ways, bending and rotating the box-spring about different orientations. Nothing worked. At one point, we had the thing wedged into the stairwell (which turns back 180 degrees halfway between floors) so well that I was convinced that we wouldn't be able to get it out. So, we joked about just leaving it there for the neighbors.

But, alas, that was not an option. So we kicked, pulled, and otherwise cajoled the box-spring out of the stairwell, and brought it back outside. Now, having felt how sturdy the box-spring was, I figured that we'd have to take it apart. Now, I didn't know how a box-spring was put together. After all, who really knows how this stuff works, until you have a good reason to? So, we got at it. We tore off the fabric on the bottom of the box-spring, seeing if it gave any structure to the box-spring. Nope. So, then we tried tearing off the fabric on top of the box-spring. Still no additional bend (though we did try to see if the springs would give enough in certain spots to let us turn the corner in the stairwell - no go). So, I look at what we had - a wooden frame that had a number of horizontal pieces where the spring attached, and then four cross-supports that ran the length of the bed. I decided that we would need to knock out the cross-supports, so then everything could just bend around the corners. I was hoping that we could get away with just 2 of the supports, the that wasn't happening.

Anyway, I'm outside of the apartment, hammering away at the wooden frame for a good 15 minutes. And of course, the neighbors have to come out to see what the story is, since it was like 7:30 in the evening. Normally, it would be cool to meet the neighbors. Only this time, they were an elderly couple. And, I kid you not, the husband was blind. See you later? Nevermind. Anyway, they were nice after we charmed them a bit. And we finally are able to get the box spring up to the third floor, albeit in one large piece, and 4 separate cross-supports. So, we lay the cross-supports on the bed frame, and then just put the remainder of the box spring on top. Slap on a bedskirt, put on the mattress, and no one is the wiser. Amazing.

The point of the story was to bring up an interesting point. Now, most problem solving researchers would assert that you can't solve a new problem until you have that serendipitous, "aha!" moment that is often called restructuring, where you see the problem in a new way, perhaps by relaxing problem constraints or just hitting a moment of insight. These folks would likely say that you can't ever learn to restructure, and that it just happens. But, for me this time, it was a little different. I've moved big objects around corners of stairwells before. And I had a general idea of how a box-spring worked. But, I had never tried to move a queen-sized box-spring into tight spaces before. So, it would seem to fit the story that I had my restructuring, and had a moment where I relaxed some problem constraints.

My moment was a little different. I didn't know how, but I had my engineering training tell me that if you take it back far enough, you can get to something more manageable. I had no idea what it was going to entail. And, really, it was a bit of a process. I just started taking stuff apart, deciding whether something that came off was needed or not, and repeated the process until it got to the point where we could get everything essential upstairs. Now, I had never done this before. I didn't know what a box-spring was made of. But I had a few things going for me. 1) I was confident that we were going to get this to work. 2) I knew that we could reverse-engineer, if needed, so breaking down to core components was okay. 3) We were only looking for functionality, not aesthetics.

Examining this problem, it seems that we had very few problem constraints, other than DE needed a bed to sleep on. I think that confidence in problem solving has to be beneficial (assuming that you have the ability to solve a problem - confidence w/out ability would seem to have disastrous consequences). And I think that the idea of breaking things down into core components (structural knowledge, is the term) is a powerful one. How much of physics at the macro level is described by a few core laws (i.e. first principles)? I think that if you can see what the first principles of a problem, then you are able to manipulate that problem much more easily.

So what does this have to do with anything? I don't think that society takes a first principles approach nearly enough. I think that a lot of people today live at a very surface level, dealing with immediate surroundings, using conveniently available measures, and otherwise not addressing truly core issues. I had a conversation with a friend last weekend about race. I'm not big on race. She was. Of course, she was white, and she was wanting to better understand the world around her, which is to be applauded. However, it's my position that race is surface knowledge (as opposed to structural knowledge). I don't think that it tells you much about an individual, once you get past the color of someone's skin. I think that it helps you find common ground or topics of conversation. But no more so than any number of things. I try to remind myself of what MLK had to say... not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character. If I have to talk about race, I would prefer to have a conversation with someone about what their ethnicity means to them and how it has affected them (i.e. understanding their view of the construct, rather using a construct to define them).

Of course, this posting isn't about race. I think that the same critique applies to those who would simply try to justify a belief with a simply a quote from the Bible with no context (or even less valid grounds). The question of what is at the core of a belief system is a crucial one. Much more so than that is on the surface of that belief system. I have a hard time taking people seriously who have deeply ingrained beliefs on anything that are grounded on surface knowledge. And what's bothersome is that I've seen it from all sorts of people on all sorts of issues, including homosexuality, abortion, the Middle East, social justice, and wealth distribution. And this comes from all sorts of people with different backgrounds, careers, etc. I have a suspicion that many folks have discovered that it's easier (and often safer) to take something that you heard somewhere and just regurgitate it, whether or not it's insightful.

At the core of it, we're all just figuring out what it is that we want to do when we grow up. But I'm more interested about why we want to do what it is that we want to do and how we're going to do it.

-Chairman