Hack the human mind to solve complex problems.
A colleague told me: "You're really good at presenting ideas and driving to an answer. How did you learn to do it?"
The ultimate answer is simplify, simplify, simplify...
No better reference can be found than Strunk & White's Elements of Style:
- representation of the problem (for humans)
- state the problem
- state hard constraints & state degrees of freedom
- Kaizen - Deming Circles - Continual Improvement - Determined Practice
41 years of trying to model the encountered world for myself, I understood my limitations and found ways to overcome them. Most people share limitations... the tricks to hacking fthem:
1) Reduce cognitive load
Clutter & complexity block solutions and cover the true issue in extraneous information.
What is the least amount of signal (information) needed to represent the problem, context and goal.
E=MC² Einstein used 5 characters to relate mass and energy, transforming the perception of the universe.
"Written carefully they are so compact and simple, a little squiggle on the paper, but they are a treasure trove of information."
The art of simplification is mastering complexity by understanding how humans process information. Understand the difference between precognitive and cognitive processing -- i.e. things that must be thought about vs things that the subconscious perceives. Cognitive processing can take a long time (seconds or much longer), while precognition is 300ms or less (perceptually instantaneous).
Simple problem: Count all the number of 3's and 4's in the following:
From left to right A -> D, the reduction in noise and emphasis on the target ease the solution and ultimately, the last perspective (number = count), reveals an underlying pattern. (count = 2 x #, i.e. 1 is seen twice, 2 is seen 4 times, 3 = 6, 4 = 8).
To achieve optimal results, understand how the human mind, visual system work -- how the eye-visual system processes and encodes information. Use the precognitive processing to reduce cognitive load.
- Gestalt Principles
- Leverage the brain's precognitive information processing
- Understand how to reduce cognitive load
Solutions present in the absence of noise and with focused emphasis.
2. Simply state the problem statement
I often over simplify the problem statement to move the group in the right direction and then, once the a proximal solution has been found, revise the problem statement with the complexities in order to refine the solution. Get close then hone in.
Often groups consider edge cases prematurely and progress is stymied. Don't let the perfect be an obstacle to progress. (Corollary: don't let settle.. but do progress). Kaizen -- drive towards continual improvement but don't stall.
3. State hard constraints and degrees of freedom
What cannot be changed cannot be changed. What can be changed can. Make these distinctions clear.
Amplify signal and remove noise (cognitive biases)
Humans have biases that can be helpful but also misleading. Understand, leverage and parry them.
Borrow from every field
As stated earlier, I borrow heavily from Strunk & White's elements of style... and too graphic art, and there is no better guide than Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art.
And Stephen Few on Dashboard and data design.
Master tools
Excel: Heat Maps, Graphs...
Being a computer scientist... I leverage and recommend many languages to achieve the goal.
I think one of the things that really separates us from the high primates is that we’re tool builders. I read a study that measured the efficiency of locomotion for various species on the planet. The condor used the least energy to move a kilometer. And, humans came in with a rather unimpressive showing, about a third of the way down the list. It was not too proud a showing for the crown of creation. So, that didn’t look so good. But, then somebody at Scientific American had the insight to test the efficiency of locomotion for a man on a bicycle. And, a man on a bicycle, a human on a bicycle, blew the condor away, completely off the top of the charts.
And that’s what a computer is to me. What a computer is to me is it’s the most remarkable tool that we’ve ever come up with, and it’s the equivalent of a bicycle for our minds.” ~ Steve Jobs
Solutions come from perspective
Time and effort finding helpful perspective is well spent...
A change in perspective is worth 80 IQ points. Alan Kay
A mathematician won the Fields Medal by mapping complex problems to solving a Rubik's Cube.
The End
Very rarely have problems once thought impossible actually been so.
- Beating the 4 minute mile
- Free divers: Herbert Nitsch dove 214 meters without gear
- Memorizing numbers: Rajveer Meena remembered 70,000
How? Perspective & determined practice. They understood the goal, the constraints and the degrees of freedom -- how the human machine worked and how to hack it.
