Paving the road to learning, codification and reification

"To comprehend and cope with our environment we develop mental patterns or concepts of meaning," John Boyd, Destruction and Creation. This post looks at two important aspects about those "patterns or concepts of meaning." Their codification and reification.

Setting order.

In the United 232 post I made the argument that decision strategies, concept formation and use, can be directed forward or backward in time. The crew employed both while the NTSB used the later. When looking backward a decision strategy often results in the form of a standard operating procedure. In short a codified plan of action.

"Codification is a set of rules, principles or laws (especially written ones)". In the United 232 case the NTSB clearly works with a tightly codified methodology. On board the plane the crew also followed SOP's, up to the explosion. That's when they realized that those descriptive SOP's were of little use. While their previous experience and training were invaluable they were literally relearning while flying by the seat of their pants. They were creating and codifying a new set of behaviors in the heat of the moment.

In the LIDA model we see that there are two types of cognitive processes, serial and parallel. Codifying involves serial processing which is at the heart of rational thought. We know it as the voice inside our head and as actions in the world. It allows for the construction of timelines, cause and effect modeling and walking. You cannot have a coherent conversation or pick up a glass of water without it. It gives conceptual models their order.

When doctrine becomes dogma.

But as soon as the crew began using their new working model reification started to set in. "Reification is a complex idea for when you treat something immaterial — like happiness, fear, or evil — as a material thing. This can be a way of making something concrete and easier to understand." Their modeling began to acquire "thingness" as in using the engines to steer was 'the right thing to do'. Reification provides a literal base for the concept of "grasp," when you fully understand something. In that sense reification is useful.

But a reified model is a double edged sword. While it does make life easier it is also a fallacy. As long as you are aware of that limitation and take it into account you increase your chances of survival. Keeping mental concepts what they are, immaterial and ephemeral, allows for an easier process of destruction and creation. You can build snowmobiles faster when the original models aren't hardened. This is what the crew of United 232 did.

When hardened reified models gets scaled out to industrial size they cause big problems. They've become an unchallenged belief system. They become the echo chamber of unquestioning obedience. This happens in education when a school district buys a curriculum from a commercial vendor. In order to get their monies worth and validate their decision administrators make sure that practitioners stick to it even when they know it's not working. The higher up you go on the belief scale the harder it is to let go. In soccer one of the Holy Grail's of belief systems is the Technical model. Scaled out they have become full blown hardened curriculum's. 

Technical curriculum's suffer a massive reification problem. They represent a codified way of doing things that limits organizational and individual flexibility. They are a process that ignores the material coming into it, the practitioners implementing it and yet remain unaccountable for the end product. If the kids come out fine the system gets credit. If the kids fail the local practitioners get the blame.

With technical curriculum's what's important is completing the process itself. That's success. The assumption is that its correct application insures learning. This rational approach leaves much to be desired:

• Technical models are descriptive with a small world view. They ignore chance which inhibits creativity. Carpe diem, grab a learning moment and change the plan is not allowed.
• They fail the Law of Requisite Variety. You cannot train for every possible scenario.
• They are non-adversarial so no meaningful measure can be made.“No battle plan survives contact with the enemy” Moltke.
• They are an idealized view which only exists in theory. Friction alone negates their self serving function.
• They are based on a system of non-human technology. People are generic cogs engaged in meaningless activities. They lead to "alienation" for everyone involved.

But the most striking failure of Technical models is their disconnect from complete learning and human beings. This is illustrated by the Mary Argument, from Wiki:

"Mary's Room is a thought experiment that attempts to establish that there are non-physical properties and attainable knowledge that can be discovered only through conscious experience. It attempts to refute the theory that all knowledge is physical knowledge...

Mary is a brilliant scientist who is, for whatever reason, forced to investigate the world from a black and white room via a black and white television monitor. She specializes in the neurophysiology of vision and acquires... all the physical information there is to obtain about what goes on when we see ripe tomatoes, or the sky, and use terms like ‘red’, ‘blue’, and so on... What will happen when Mary is released from her black and white room or is given a color television monitor? Will she learn anything or not?

In other words... Mary is a scientist who knows everything there is to know about the science of color, but has never experienced color. The question... is: once she experiences color, does she learn anything new?"

Mary is one of the few who have completed the course, reached the Elite level and is fully prepared to meet any challenge. And there lies the problem. Being prepared is not the same as being ready. Without the actual experience learning will never be complete.

The debate between the technical camp and the human (decision) camp is laid out in the embedded presentation. The side-by-side comparison will help to illustrate where many of the problems lay in youth coaching. They're in the curriculum itself.