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drwex
The five words meme. Since nobody reads LJ over the weekend I'll try to unload the backlog over this week.lens, presumably as in camera. I like taking pictures - of people, mostly. I'm often seen in social situations behind the lens and much less often in front of it. Make of that what you will. The process of taking and then editing pictures makes me keenly aware of just how much what we see with our eyes is a highly edited version of what we might see. I wouldn't call either one "reality" - both are composed out of the same set of photons, but carried through very different processes. It's wrong to say that a lens is (only) something that brings things into focus; it's also something that blurs and distorts.
expert: Prentiss Riddle - someone I've read online for a couple decades - uses the tag line "aprendiz de todo, maestro de nada". I've always thought that was an interesting way to approach life. I've never been expert at much, but I strive to be knowledgeable and pretty good at what I do. Expertise interests me. Marvin Minsky once postulated the difference between an expert in an area and a novice was that the expert knows about 10,000 things the novice does not. That's actually a remarkably small number for one area but it helps me understand why so few people can be experts in more than one area. In fact, this doesn't generalize well to non-knowledge-based areas, where sheer repetitive practice has been show to be a decisive factor. I'm sort of amused by the idea that anyone would consider me an expert in anything because I have such a persistent case of Impostor Syndrome in most cases and in the few areas I do think I know something about I tend to know people who are WAY more expert than I. Probably the only thing I'm truly an expert at is being me. And that's OK.
rapt: I always associate rapt with attention. Focus. There's also an association with delight (rapture). I've been told more than once that I'm a very different person in a one-on-one situation than I am in a group. 1:1 I tend to focus my attention and sometimes intimidate the crap out of people who don't know me. Sorry? It is what it is.
invention: invention is associated with novelty. I'm currently reading the book "The Evolution of Useful Things" by Henry Petroski. In it, he argues that the phrase "necessity is the mother of invention" is wrong - what mothers invention is mostly frustration. We invent new things in response to perceptions of flaws in what's presently before us. I'm not at all sure how this applies to me - I think I'm a good problem solver but not necessarily inventive. Other opinions welcome.
model: models are necessary lies. Models simplify things in order to highlight certain things and every simplification leaves out true information. Working models, building models, and comparing models are all essential to cognitive function. It's interesting to me that in recent years we've begun to grant that other species may be intelligent because we can see how they build and use (mental and symbolic) models in far more complex ways than we had thought they might. One of the hardest things for me to deal with is discovering my models are fundamentally wrong. Changing them is hard. I think I'm somewhat more aware of the models I'm operating with than many of the people I deal with.
You know the game: leave a note and I'll try to come up with five words about you.
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no subject
Date: 2009-06-29 06:30 pm (UTC)No fair
Date: 2009-06-29 07:19 pm (UTC)I've reconsidered
Date: 2009-06-30 01:22 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-06-30 02:47 pm (UTC)I highly recommend Barbara Sher's book Refuse to Choose! (http://www.amazon.com/Refuse-Choose-Interests-Passions-Hobbies/dp/1594866260) and Margaret Lobenstine's The Renaissance Soul (http://www.amazon.com/Renaissance-Soul-Design-People-Passions/dp/0767920880).
Thatnks for the rec's
Date: 2009-06-30 02:52 pm (UTC)