(Today I Learn) - Standard Oil , GM, Firestone suburban conspiracy
([ I read about it (book learning) - not performance to do (practical learning) ])
What is a conspiracy theory? To “conspire” means literally “to breathe together,” like to whisper. A conspiracy is for a group to plot in secret. A conspiracy theory is the belief that something we see has a hidden truth behind it—that’s it’s a plot and a lie.
CONSPIRE
Etymology
From Middle English conspiren, from Old French conspirer, from Latin conspirare, conspīrō, from con- (combining form of cum (“with”)) + spīrō (“breathe”)
CONSPIRE
Etymology
From Middle English conspiren, from Old French conspirer, from Latin conspirare, conspīrō, from con- (combining form of cum (“with”)) + spīrō (“breathe”)
Standard Oil (gasoline), GM (cars), and Firestone (tire) successful conspire to create the suburb (an outlying district of a city, especially a residential one.). ([ some truth, not completely true ])
How GM, Firestone, and Standard Oil joined in TRUST to destroy the Electric Trolly Cars. ([ in my opinion, this is true. ])
“The rail passenger operations of Pacific Electric became obsolete, and economically there was no justification for their perpetuation. As a result, like the horse and buggy, they dropped from the scene.”
([ Pacific Electric wants to generate greater revenue, Electric Trolly uses electricity ])
There’s no doubt that General Motors and many other automotive-centric companies bought up trolley services all over America. According to United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit in 1951, “Pacific City Lines was organized for the purpose of acquiring local transit companies on the Pacific Coast and commenced doing business in January 1938,” with the backing of investors like Firestone, Standard Oil of California, Phillips Petroleum, General Motors, Mack Trucks and the Federal Engineering Corporation.
In 1949, Firestone Tire, Standard Oil of California, Phillips Petroleum, GM and Mack Trucks were convicted of conspiring to monopolize the sale of buses and related products to local transit companies controlled by NCL and other companies. However, they were acquitted of conspiring to monopolize the ownership of these companies. The verdicts were upheld on appeal in 1951.
In 1915, streetcars were cheaper than buses to operate, according to Slater, but just a few short years later, as soldiers returned home from World War I, that wasn’t necessarily the case. The capital cost of maintaining railways exploded, versus the road maintenance for buses, which was essentially subsidized by road construction specifically for automobiles that were becoming vastly more popular in the 1920s.
source:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_streetcar_conspiracy
https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2003-mar-23-me-then23-story.html
https://www.reddit.com/r/conspiracy/comments/lnv9c/how_gm_firestone_and_standard_oil_joined_in_trust/
https://autos.yahoo.com/news/killed-public-transportation-los-angeles-160042233.html
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Noam Chomsky - conspiracy theories
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JirrKIQfOmk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JirrKIQfOmk
9:27
Chomsky philosophy
May 8, 2016
when we look at the underlying structure - looking for the hidden hand that is controlling everything - what we find out about most conspiracy theories are the normal working of institutional structure.
The question then becomes, do the people simply tolerate it (the normal working of institutional structure behaving like conspiracy).
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5. General Motors led a coalition of companies hell-bent on killing electric streetcars in the 1940s
The theory: GM, Firestone, Mack Trucks, Phillips Petroleum, and Standard Oil each had a vested interest in seeing streetcars die off. Of course, their move was to invest heavily. Collectively, they bought the majority of streetcar operations in the United States...then killed them off. If you remember Judge Doom’s crazy plan in “Roger Rabbit” to kill the Red Cars in favor of gas stations, tire salons and car dealerships alongside freeways, that’s exactly what this is.
The facts: The companies were taken to court on charges arising from antitrust legislation and convicted of conspiracy to form a monopoly for buses, and to manipulate the economy for things buses tend to need, like gasoline and tires. Much debate has waged over the years as to whether those actions actually impacted the country, or if the streetcars would have died out anyway as the country evolved. This really happened. It wasn't some nefarious plot, however; it’s just business.
7. GM hired prostitutes to discredit Ralph Nader
The theory: After Nader publicly slammed GM's safety and engineering with regard to the Corvair in his book Unsafe at Any Speed, GM would stop at nothing to get him to shut up. It went so far as to hire private investigators to follow his every move, and even sent in prostitutes to get pictures of him in compromising situations.
The facts: Nader took GM to court, ultimately settling for the 2015 equivalent of just over $3,000,000 after some legal wrangling meant he could go after the company for “overzealous" surveillance. The girls that were sent over? Yeah, that happened, too.
source:
https://www.thrillist.com/cars/the-craziest-automotive-conspiracy-theories-of-all-time
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This is why we can't have nice things
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j5v8D-alAKE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j5v8D-alAKE
17:28
veritasium
Mar 26, 2021
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Jon Gertner book, The idea factory: bell labs and the great age of innovation, 2012
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Idea_Factory
([ This talk @ microsoft research is quiet good, the actual talk itself is short, end at 32:13, and if you skip the author (Jon Gertner) intro, you get a real feel for how long it takes to bring a thing like a solid-state transistor - it replaced the vacuum tube - intomarket [production], and how early in the beginning of the transistor development, it was unreliable (an ugly baby). Jon Gertner also mentioned, how important it was to innovation to have real problems to solve (this is known as applied research). ])
([ In the microsoft research talk about Bell Lab, (Jon Gertner) mentioned a guy, name Davidsonor [of] sort[s], I probably have his name wrong, and the spelling is wrong, too; I am going call him, Davidson (not the name, not the spelling), Davidson is constantly sick, or often sick, Davidson would be in his apartment, not at work, in his bath robe, writing down equations, the head of Bell Lab knows this because he would check in on Davidson when he did not come in; so when the head of Bell Lab had problems, would send the person with the problems to Davidson; Davidson does not solve the problems; however, what Davidson would do is explain to the person (the guy) who had the problems, this is what is going on; that is it, no solution, no answer; Davidson would provide explaination and understanding to what is going on with the situation; the person with the problems would come back, and then be able to make progress with the problems; ... ])
The idea factory: bell labs and the great age of innovation
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OJsKgiGGzzs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OJsKgiGGzzs
microsoft research
Sept 5, 2016
53:56
32:13 the talk ends, Q&A after this
____________________________________
cc - Clayton Christensen
theory is a statement of causality
it's a statement of what causes what and why
3:25
and when you think about in those terms,
...
because every time you take an action
it's predicated upon a belief that, if you do this,
you'll get the result that you want.
And every time you put a plan into place,
it's predicated upon a set of theories, which tells you,
if you do these things, you'll be successful.
But most of the people aren't even aware of the theories
that they use
5:31
if somebody can come to us with a problem,
rather than giving them my opinion about how to solve the problem, instead what we're able to do is say
well if that's the problem, you know, then we have a theory on the shelf called
the theory of disruption
and I bet you that if we put that theory on like a set of lenses and examine this problem, we might be able to undertand what's going on.
and so that's what I want to do is explain to you
a set of problems for which good theories might help you
23:44
there is a job I need to know, given the situation that I am in
the story about hiring a milkshake to do a job
23:56
because the situation that I am in has a huge impact on the nature of the job
1:19:09
what we intend to do and how we spend our time and our lives
source: youtube.com
Where does growth come from? | Clayton Christensen | talk at Google
published on Aug 8, 2016
____________________________________
James Gleick., The information : a history, a theory, a flood, 2011
pp.332-333
This is what science always seeks: a simple theory that accounts for a large set of facts and allows for prediction of events still to come.
(The information : a history, a theory, a flood / James Gleick., 1. information science--history., 2. information society., Z665.G547 2011, 020.9--dc22, 2011, )
____________________________________
pp.31-32
Models and Truth
Have you ever wondered why Einstein's Theory of Relativity is called a "theory" rather than fact? Are scientists in doubt about it? Are they waiting until they've proved it beyond a shadow of a doubt beore they remove the "theory" label and promote it to the ranks of accepted knowledge? Actually, no. As I write this, scientists are fairly happy at least with what Einstein called his "special" theory of relativity--a theory about the way things behave when they move around relative to each other--a theory which, incidentally, contradicts the theory of Sir Isaac Newton . . .
The reason these scientific ideas are called theories, not facts, is because in science, the only facts are the observed results of experiments. Anything that does a good job of explaining results and predicting the results of new experiments is called a theory or model. Observations are facts; explaination are theories.
. . . As far as we know, Einstein's theory is true, although it has yet to be fully integrated with quantum mechanics. . . .
(Getting past OK : a straightforward goals to having a fanfastic life, Richard Brodie, © 1993, pp.31-32)
____________________________________
pp.149-150
To make the transition to Einstein's universe, the whole conceptual web whose strands are space, time, matter, force, and so on, had to be shifted and laid down again on nature whole. Only men who had together undergone or failed to undergo that transformation would be able to discover precisely what they agreed or disagreed about. Communication across the revolutionary divide is inevitably partial. Consider, for another example, the men who called Copernicus mad because he proclaimed that the earth moved. They were not either just wrong or quite wrong. Part of what they meant by 'earth' was fixed position. Their earth, at least, could not be moved. Correspondingly, Copernicus's innovation was not simply to move the earth. Rather, it was a whole new way of regarding the problems of physics and astronomy, one that necessarily changed the meaning of both 'earth' and 'motion.' 4 Without those changes the concept of a moving earth was mad. On the other hand, once they had been made and understood, both Descartes and Huyghens could realize that the earth's motion was a question with no content for science. 5
These examples point to the third and most fundamental aspect of the incommensurability of competing paradigms. In a sense that I am unable to explicate further, the proponents of competing paradigms practice their trades in different worlds. One contains constrained bodies that fall slowly, the other pendulums that repeat their motions again and again. In one, solutions are compounds, in other mixtures. One is embedded in a flat, other in a curved, matrix of space. Practicing in different worlds, the two groups of scientists see different things when they look from the same point in the same direction. Again, that is not to say they can see anything they please. But in some areas they see different things, and they see them in different relations one to the other. That is why a law that cannot even be demonstrated to one group of scientists may occasionally seem intuitively obvious to another. Equally, it is why, before they can hope to communicate fully, one group or the other must experience the conversion that we have been calling a paradigm shift. Just because it is a transition between incommensurables, the transition between competing paradigms cannot be made a step at a time, forced by logic and neutral experience. Like the gestalt switch, it must occur all at once (though not necessarily in an instant) or not at all.
(Kuhn, Thomas S., 'The structure of scientific revolution')
(The structure of scientific revolution / Thomas S. Kuhn. --3rd ed., copyright © 1962, 1970, 1996, 1. science--philosophy, 2. science--history, pp.149-150)
____________________________________
pp.3—4
What is the true lesson of the Copernican revolution? Why did Copernicus exchange his actual terrestrial station for an imaginary solar standpoint? The only justification for this lay in the greater intellectual satisfaction he derived from the celestial panorama as seen from the sun instead of the earth. Copernicus gave preference to man's delight in abstract theory, at the price of rejecting the evidence of our senses, which present us with the irresistible fact of the sun, the moon, and the stars rising daily in the east to travel across the sky towards their setting in the west. In a literal sense, therefore, the new Copernican system was as anthropocentric as the Ptolemaic view, the difference being merely that it preferred to satisfy a different human affection.
anthropocentrism - interpret with human value & experience
It becomes legitimate to regard the Copernican system as more objective than the Ptolemaic only if we accept this very shift in the nature of intellectual satisfaction as the criterion of greater objectivity. This would imply that, of two forms of knowledge, we should consider as more objective that which relies to a greater measure on theory rather than on more immediate sensory experience. So that, the theory being placed like a screen between our senses and the things of which our senses otherwise would have gained a more immediate impression, we would rely increasingly on theoretical guidance for the interpretation of our experience, and would correspondingly reduce the status of our raw impressions to that of dubious and possibly misleading appearances.
(Polanyi, Michael. 1958, Personal knowledge, Q175.P82)
(Personal knowledge : toward a post-critical philosophy, by Michael Polanyi, copyright © 1958, pp.3—4)
<---------------------------------------------------------------------------->
Ikujiro Nonaka makes the following comparison.
Tacit knowledge has been described as “know-how” - as opposed to
“know-what” (facts),
“know-why” (science), or
“know-who” (networking, relationship),
with examples of tacit knowledge (know-how, performance, experience), i.e. riding a bike; playing the piano; driving a car; taking the bus, the subway and the train; walking; hitting a nail with a hammer.
( https://www.presencing.com/presencing/dol/Nonaka-1996.shtml#three )
( access 10/16/2014 )
<---------------------------------------------------------------------------->
a theory is 'a way of seeing'
in the simple est of term, a theory is 'a way of seeing', it is a bit more than that, because a good theory let you make prediction, given that you have the right information that apply to the situation to do that; all theories - that has been passed on down to us (humans) or pass up from below (standing on the shoulders of giants) - has been developed, evolved, and reiterated over a long timeline of human development, over many generations, across more than one culture and more than one human language; a theory is 'a way of seeing', and it helps us explain nature (the natural environment and ecology), reality (what is going on, what is happening, what can I expect to happen next, how does this effect me), and why we see what we see.
theory versus practical
theory and practical
theory <==> practical
practical (praxis) <==> theory
theory help you to look at things inside a framework
theory help you to look at things inside a framework
theory help you to look at things inside a set of rules
theory help you to look at things inside a subset of rules
theory help you to look at things inside a superset of rules
theory enable you to look at thing inside a set of rules
theory enable you to look at thing inside a subset of rules
theory enable you to look at thing inside a superset of rules
<---------------------------------------------------------------------------->
Russell Ackoff (1919-2009) once said, and you can look for his talk on youtube.com: other necessary condition (the environment); the environment (full), in contrast with environment (free); all explanations now requires an environment; every law is constrained by the environment by which it applies; there is no such things as a universal law; they are all environmentally relative.;
<---------------------------------------------------------------------------->
pp.299-300
... Margaret Masterman--whom I'd never met, but of whom I'd heard, and what I'd heard about her was not altogether good, and it was largely that she was a madwomen. She got up at the back of the room in the discussion, strode toward the podium, turned to face the audience, put her hands in her pockets and proceeded to say, "In my sciences, in the social sciences" (she was running something called the Cambridge Language Lab), "everybody is talking about paradigms That's the word." And she said, "I was recently in hospital and I went through the book and I think I found twenty-one," twenty-three(23), whatever, "different uses of it." And, you know, they are there. But she went on to say, and this is the thing that people don't know, although it's more or less in her article, "And I think I know what a paradigm is." And she proceeded to list four or five characteristics of a paradigm. And I sat there, I said, my God, if I had talked for an hour and a half I might have gotten these all in, or I might not have. But she's got it right! And the thing I particular remember, and I can't make it work quite but it's very deeply to the point: a paradigm is what you use when the theory isn't there. ...
(Kuhn, Thomas S., The road since structure : philosophical essays, 1970-1993, with an autobiographical interview / Thomas S. Kuhn ; edited by James Conant and John Haugeland.)
(The road since structure / Thomas S. Kuhn ; edited by James Conant and John Haugeland., copyright © 2000, pp.299-300)
24. M. Masterman, "The Nature of a Paradigm," in Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge: Proceeding of the International Colloquium in the Philosophy of Science, London 1965, vol. 4, ed. I. Lakatos and A. Musgrave (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970), pp. 59-89.
The Nature of a Paradigm
Margaret Masterman
2. the paradigm is something which can function when the theory is not there.
3. a puzzle-solving device; not a metaphysical world-view.
4. A paradigm has got to be a concrete 'picture' used analogically; because it has got to be a 'a way of seeing'.
<---------------------------------------------------------------------------->
veritasium
Mar 26, 2021
____________________________________
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Jon Gertner book, The idea factory: bell labs and the great age of innovation, 2012
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Idea_Factory
([ This talk @ microsoft research is quiet good, the actual talk itself is short, end at 32:13, and if you skip the author (Jon Gertner) intro, you get a real feel for how long it takes to bring a thing like a solid-state transistor - it replaced the vacuum tube - into
([ In the microsoft research talk about Bell Lab, (Jon Gertner) mentioned a guy, name Davidson
The idea factory: bell labs and the great age of innovation
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OJsKgiGGzzs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OJsKgiGGzzs
microsoft research
Sept 5, 2016
53:56
32:13 the talk ends, Q&A after this
____________________________________
cc - Clayton Christensen
theory is a statement of causality
it's a statement of what causes what and why
3:25
and when you think about in those terms,
...
because every time you take an action
it's predicated upon a belief that, if you do this,
you'll get the result that you want.
And every time you put a plan into place,
it's predicated upon a set of theories, which tells you,
if you do these things, you'll be successful.
But most of the people aren't even aware of the theories
that they use
5:31
if somebody can come to us with a problem,
rather than giving them my opinion about how to solve the problem, instead what we're able to do is say
well if that's the problem, you know, then we have a theory on the shelf called
the theory of disruption
and I bet you that if we put that theory on like a set of lenses and examine this problem, we might be able to undertand what's going on.
and so that's what I want to do is explain to you
a set of problems for which good theories might help you
23:44
there is a job I need to know, given the situation that I am in
the story about hiring a milkshake to do a job
23:56
because the situation that I am in has a huge impact on the nature of the job
1:19:09
what we intend to do and how we spend our time and our lives
source: youtube.com
Where does growth come from? | Clayton Christensen | talk at Google
published on Aug 8, 2016
____________________________________
James Gleick., The information : a history, a theory, a flood, 2011
pp.332-333
This is what science always seeks: a simple theory that accounts for a large set of facts and allows for prediction of events still to come.
(The information : a history, a theory, a flood / James Gleick., 1. information science--history., 2. information society., Z665.G547 2011, 020.9--dc22, 2011, )
____________________________________
pp.31-32
Models and Truth
Have you ever wondered why Einstein's Theory of Relativity is called a "theory" rather than fact? Are scientists in doubt about it? Are they waiting until they've proved it beyond a shadow of a doubt beore they remove the "theory" label and promote it to the ranks of accepted knowledge? Actually, no. As I write this, scientists are fairly happy at least with what Einstein called his "special" theory of relativity--a theory about the way things behave when they move around relative to each other--a theory which, incidentally, contradicts the theory of Sir Isaac Newton . . .
The reason these scientific ideas are called theories, not facts, is because in science, the only facts are the observed results of experiments. Anything that does a good job of explaining results and predicting the results of new experiments is called a theory or model. Observations are facts; explaination are theories.
. . . As far as we know, Einstein's theory is true, although it has yet to be fully integrated with quantum mechanics. . . .
(Getting past OK : a straightforward goals to having a fanfastic life, Richard Brodie, © 1993, pp.31-32)
____________________________________
pp.149-150
To make the transition to Einstein's universe, the whole conceptual web whose strands are space, time, matter, force, and so on, had to be shifted and laid down again on nature whole. Only men who had together undergone or failed to undergo that transformation would be able to discover precisely what they agreed or disagreed about. Communication across the revolutionary divide is inevitably partial. Consider, for another example, the men who called Copernicus mad because he proclaimed that the earth moved. They were not either just wrong or quite wrong. Part of what they meant by 'earth' was fixed position. Their earth, at least, could not be moved. Correspondingly, Copernicus's innovation was not simply to move the earth. Rather, it was a whole new way of regarding the problems of physics and astronomy, one that necessarily changed the meaning of both 'earth' and 'motion.' 4 Without those changes the concept of a moving earth was mad. On the other hand, once they had been made and understood, both Descartes and Huyghens could realize that the earth's motion was a question with no content for science. 5
These examples point to the third and most fundamental aspect of the incommensurability of competing paradigms. In a sense that I am unable to explicate further, the proponents of competing paradigms practice their trades in different worlds. One contains constrained bodies that fall slowly, the other pendulums that repeat their motions again and again. In one, solutions are compounds, in other mixtures. One is embedded in a flat, other in a curved, matrix of space. Practicing in different worlds, the two groups of scientists see different things when they look from the same point in the same direction. Again, that is not to say they can see anything they please. But in some areas they see different things, and they see them in different relations one to the other. That is why a law that cannot even be demonstrated to one group of scientists may occasionally seem intuitively obvious to another. Equally, it is why, before they can hope to communicate fully, one group or the other must experience the conversion that we have been calling a paradigm shift. Just because it is a transition between incommensurables, the transition between competing paradigms cannot be made a step at a time, forced by logic and neutral experience. Like the gestalt switch, it must occur all at once (though not necessarily in an instant) or not at all.
(Kuhn, Thomas S., 'The structure of scientific revolution')
(The structure of scientific revolution / Thomas S. Kuhn. --3rd ed., copyright © 1962, 1970, 1996, 1. science--philosophy, 2. science--history, pp.149-150)
____________________________________
pp.3—4
What is the true lesson of the Copernican revolution? Why did Copernicus exchange his actual terrestrial station for an imaginary solar standpoint? The only justification for this lay in the greater intellectual satisfaction he derived from the celestial panorama as seen from the sun instead of the earth. Copernicus gave preference to man's delight in abstract theory, at the price of rejecting the evidence of our senses, which present us with the irresistible fact of the sun, the moon, and the stars rising daily in the east to travel across the sky towards their setting in the west. In a literal sense, therefore, the new Copernican system was as anthropocentric as the Ptolemaic view, the difference being merely that it preferred to satisfy a different human affection.
anthropocentrism - interpret with human value & experience
It becomes legitimate to regard the Copernican system as more objective than the Ptolemaic only if we accept this very shift in the nature of intellectual satisfaction as the criterion of greater objectivity. This would imply that, of two forms of knowledge, we should consider as more objective that which relies to a greater measure on theory rather than on more immediate sensory experience. So that, the theory being placed like a screen between our senses and the things of which our senses otherwise would have gained a more immediate impression, we would rely increasingly on theoretical guidance for the interpretation of our experience, and would correspondingly reduce the status of our raw impressions to that of dubious and possibly misleading appearances.
(Polanyi, Michael. 1958, Personal knowledge, Q175.P82)
(Personal knowledge : toward a post-critical philosophy, by Michael Polanyi, copyright © 1958, pp.3—4)
<---------------------------------------------------------------------------->
Ikujiro Nonaka makes the following comparison.
Tacit knowledge has been described as “know-how” - as opposed to
“know-what” (facts),
“know-why” (science), or
“know-who” (networking, relationship),
with examples of tacit knowledge (know-how, performance, experience), i.e. riding a bike; playing the piano; driving a car; taking the bus, the subway and the train; walking; hitting a nail with a hammer.
( https://www.presencing.com/presencing/dol/Nonaka-1996.shtml#three )
( access 10/16/2014 )
<---------------------------------------------------------------------------->
a theory is 'a way of seeing'
in the simple est of term, a theory is 'a way of seeing', it is a bit more than that, because a good theory let you make prediction, given that you have the right information that apply to the situation to do that; all theories - that has been passed on down to us (humans) or pass up from below (standing on the shoulders of giants) - has been developed, evolved, and reiterated over a long timeline of human development, over many generations, across more than one culture and more than one human language; a theory is 'a way of seeing', and it helps us explain nature (the natural environment and ecology), reality (what is going on, what is happening, what can I expect to happen next, how does this effect me), and why we see what we see.
theory versus practical
theory and practical
theory <==> practical
practical (praxis) <==> theory
theory help you to look at things inside a framework
theory help you to look at things inside a framework
theory help you to look at things inside a set of rules
theory help you to look at things inside a subset of rules
theory help you to look at things inside a superset of rules
theory enable you to look at thing inside a set of rules
theory enable you to look at thing inside a subset of rules
theory enable you to look at thing inside a superset of rules
<---------------------------------------------------------------------------->
Russell Ackoff (1919-2009) once said, and you can look for his talk on youtube.com: other necessary condition (the environment); the environment (full), in contrast with environment (free); all explanations now requires an environment; every law is constrained by the environment by which it applies; there is no such things as a universal law; they are all environmentally relative.;
<---------------------------------------------------------------------------->
pp.299-300
... Margaret Masterman--whom I'd never met, but of whom I'd heard, and what I'd heard about her was not altogether good, and it was largely that she was a madwomen. She got up at the back of the room in the discussion, strode toward the podium, turned to face the audience, put her hands in her pockets and proceeded to say, "In my sciences, in the social sciences" (she was running something called the Cambridge Language Lab), "everybody is talking about paradigms That's the word." And she said, "I was recently in hospital and I went through the book and I think I found twenty-one," twenty-three(23), whatever, "different uses of it." And, you know, they are there. But she went on to say, and this is the thing that people don't know, although it's more or less in her article, "And I think I know what a paradigm is." And she proceeded to list four or five characteristics of a paradigm. And I sat there, I said, my God, if I had talked for an hour and a half I might have gotten these all in, or I might not have. But she's got it right! And the thing I particular remember, and I can't make it work quite but it's very deeply to the point: a paradigm is what you use when the theory isn't there. ...
(Kuhn, Thomas S., The road since structure : philosophical essays, 1970-1993, with an autobiographical interview / Thomas S. Kuhn ; edited by James Conant and John Haugeland.)
(The road since structure / Thomas S. Kuhn ; edited by James Conant and John Haugeland., copyright © 2000, pp.299-300)
24. M. Masterman, "The Nature of a Paradigm," in Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge: Proceeding of the International Colloquium in the Philosophy of Science, London 1965, vol. 4, ed. I. Lakatos and A. Musgrave (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970), pp. 59-89.
The Nature of a Paradigm
Margaret Masterman
2. the paradigm is something which can function when the theory is not there.
3. a puzzle-solving device; not a metaphysical world-view.
4. A paradigm has got to be a concrete 'picture' used analogically; because it has got to be a 'a way of seeing'.
<---------------------------------------------------------------------------->
Einstein once commented that "It is the theory which decides what we can observe".
source:
http://cogweb.ucla.edu/ep/EP-primer.html
Evolutionary Psychology: A Primer
by Leda Cosmides & John Tooby
The goal of research in evolutionary psychology is to discover and understand the design of the human mind. Evolutionary psychology is an approach to psychology, in which knowledge and principles from evolutionary biology are put to use in research on the structure of the human mind. It is not an area of study, like vision, reasoning, or social behavior. It is a way of thinking about psychology that can be applied to any topic within it.
In this view, the mind is a set of information-processing machines that were designed by natural selection to solve adaptive problems faced by our hunter-gatherer ancestors. This way of thinking about the brain, mind, and behavior is changing how scientists approach old topics, and opening up new ones.
An evolutionary approach provides powerful lenses that correct for instinct blindness. It allows one to recognize what natural competences exist, it indicates that the mind is a heterogeneous collection of these competences and, most importantly, it provides positive theories of their designs.
Einstein once commented that "It is the theory which decides what we can observe".
source:
http://cogweb.ucla.edu/ep/EP-primer.html
Evolutionary Psychology: A Primer
by Leda Cosmides & John Tooby
The goal of research in evolutionary psychology is to discover and understand the design of the human mind. Evolutionary psychology is an approach to psychology, in which knowledge and principles from evolutionary biology are put to use in research on the structure of the human mind. It is not an area of study, like vision, reasoning, or social behavior. It is a way of thinking about psychology that can be applied to any topic within it.
In this view, the mind is a set of information-processing machines that were designed by natural selection to solve adaptive problems faced by our hunter-gatherer ancestors. This way of thinking about the brain, mind, and behavior is changing how scientists approach old topics, and opening up new ones.
An evolutionary approach provides powerful lenses that correct for instinct blindness. It allows one to recognize what natural competences exist, it indicates that the mind is a heterogeneous collection of these competences and, most importantly, it provides positive theories of their designs.
Einstein once commented that "It is the theory which decides what we can observe".
An evolutionary focus is valuable for psychologists, who are studying a biological system of fantastic complexity, because it can make the intricate outlines of the mind's design stand out in sharp relief.
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Managing yourself
How Will You Measure Your Life?
Don’t reserve your best business thinking for your career.
by
Clayton M. Christensen (April 6, 1952 – January 23, 2020)
From the Magazine (July–August 2010) · Long read
Summary.
Harvard Business School’s Christensen teaches aspiring MBAs how to apply management and innovation theories to build stronger companies. But he also believes that these models can help people lead better lives. In this article, he explains how, exploring questions everyone needs to ask: How can I be happy in my career? How can I be sure that my relationship with my family is an enduring source of happiness? And how can I live my life with integrity?
The answer to the first question comes from Frederick Herzberg’s assertion that the most powerful motivator isn’t money; it’s the opportunity to learn, grow in responsibilities, contribute, and be recognized. That’s why management, if practiced well, can be the noblest of occupations; no others offer as many ways to help people find those opportunities. It isn’t about buying, selling, and investing in companies, as many think.
The principles of resource allocation can help people attain happiness at home. If not managed masterfully, what emerges from a firm’s resource allocation process can be very different from the strategy management intended to follow. That’s true in life too: If you’re not guided by a clear sense of purpose, you’re likely to fritter away your time and energy on obtaining the most tangible, short-term signs of achievement, not what’s really important to you.
And just as a focus on marginal costs can cause bad corporate decisions, it can lead people astray. The marginal cost of doing something wrong “just this once” always seems alluringly low. You don’t see the end result to which that path leads. The key is to define what you stand for and draw the line in a safe place.
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Before I published The Innovatorʼs Dilemma, I got a call from Andrew Grove, then the chairman of Intel. He had read one of my early papers about disruptive technology, and he asked if I could talk to his direct reports and explain my research and what it implied for Intel. Excited, I flew to Silicon Valley and showed up at the appointed time, only to have Grove say, “Look, stuff has happened. We have only 10 minutes for you. Tell us what your model of disruption means for Intel.” I said that I couldn't — that I needed a full 30 minutes to explain the model, because only with it as context would any comments about Intel make sense. Ten minutes into my explanation, Grove interrupted: “Look, Iʼve got your model. Just tell us what it means for Intel.”
I insisted that I needed 10 more minutes to describe how the process of disruption had worked its way through a very different industry, steel, so that he and his team could understand how disruption worked. I told the story of how Nucor and other steel minimills had begun by attacking the lowest end of the market—steel reinforcing bars, or rebar—and later moved up toward the high end, undercutting the traditional steel mills.
When I finished the minimill story, Grove said, “OK, I get it. What it means for Intel is...,” and then went on to articulate what would become the companyʼs strategy for going to the bottom of the market to launch the Celeron processor.
I've thought about that a million times since. If I had been suckered into telling Andy Grove what he should think about the microprocessor business, Iʼd have been killed. But instead of telling him what to think, I taught him how to think—and then he reached what I felt was the correct decision on his own.
That experience had a profound influence on me. When people ask what I think they should do, I rarely answer their question directly. Instead, I run the question aloud through one of my models. Iʼll describe how the process in the model worked its way through an industry quite different from their own. And then, more often than not, theyʼll say, “OK, I get it.” And theyʼll answer their own question more insightfully than I could have.
My class at HBS is structured to help my students understand what good management theory is and how it is built. To that backbone I attach different models or theories that help students think about the various dimensions of a general managerʼs job in stimulating innovation and growth. In each session we look at one company through the lenses of those theories—using them to explain how the company got into its situation and to examine what managerial actions will yield the needed results.
On the last day of class, I ask my students to turn those theoretical lenses on themselves, to find cogent answers to three questions:
First, how can I be sure that Iʼll be happy in my career?
Second, how can I be sure that my relationships with my spouse and my family become an enduring source of happiness?
Third, how can I be sure Iʼll stay out of jail?
Though the last question sounds lighthearted, itʼs not. Two of the 32 people in my Rhodes scholar class spent time in jail. Jeff Skilling of Enron fame was a classmate of mine at HBS. These were good guys—but something in their lives sent them off in the wrong direction.
.... ... ....
source:
https://hbr.org/2010/07/how-will-you-measure-your-life
http://hbr.org/2010/07/how-will-you-measure-your-life/ar/pr
https://www.textise.net/showText.aspx?strURL=https://hbr.org/2010/07/how-will-you-measure-your-life
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Charles I. Gragg sagely noted, "We cannot effectively use the insight of others; it must be our knowledge and insight that we use."
"We cannot effectively use the insight of others; it must be our knowledge and insight that we use."
http://www.hbs.edu/teaching/inside-hbs/
Inside the Case Method
The development of judgment and leadership, based on sound analysis rooted in facts, is a core objective of the educational process at HBS.
The case method is rooted in Harvard Business School's original vision. Edwin Gay, first Dean of HBS, called it the "problem method" and foresaw its value in creating leaders able to adjust as necessary to ever-changing business climates. From its inception a century ago, the School established two important pedagogical principles. First, it would use cases as teaching vehicles and not rely on lectures and readings. Second, it would engage the students in the learning process by getting them to teach themselves and each other. Today, although we also make use of lectures, simulations, fieldwork, and other forms of teaching as appropriate, more than 80 percent of HBS classes are built on the case method.
Judgment, based on sound analysis rooted in facts, is what our students need to absorb from their education. But, as the late HBS professor Charles I. Gragg sagely noted, "We cannot effectively use the insight of others; it must be our knowledge and insight that we use." By applying the case method to business education, we break the boundaries of passive learning to encourage students to become active participants in their own progress. With each case, students empathize with a decision maker ("the protagonist"), analyze varied and frequently ambiguous data, and assume responsibility for an action plan that effectively resolves the case's business challenge.
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