musings on interesting ideas

Practically every language in the world (all as far as I know) is built on the idea of nouns and verbs:

• Nouns are things which are acted upon.
• Verbs act on nouns.

Is this the only way that a language could work? Could you imagine or even develop a language that did not have nouns and verbs?

Nouns and verbs (and our language generally) have a strong effect on how we perceive and explain the world. If we could change our language then we could change our thinking.

An interesting question is whether language creates the way we think or whether the way we think has created a language to suit it?

Our imagination does not stretch very far in this area. In Star Trek most languages including the Klingon language is still based on Nouns and verbs.

How would changing our language effect out thinking?

A large amount of western thinking, and in particular scientific thinking, is based on the concept of cause and effect. It appears, to our minds, to be how the world works. A cause creates an effect. If there is an effect therefore there must be a cause. If a cause exists then there must be an effect.

This has been an incredibly useful way of thinking and has had a large impact on creating our civilisation, science and technology. But is it the only way of looking at the world? In Physics this idea has been largely dropped in the newer fields such as quantum mechanics. Biologists are now starting to discard some of their ideas about “Stimulus/Response”.

How often does the “cause/effect” way of thinking affect our thinking? How could we change this?

A classic optical illusion is the rotating snakes:

This is not an animated graphic - it is a still picture.

The snakes appear to be moving because of the way our eyes view images and the rate at which the visual centres of your brain can process the information. If you focus your eyes on one spot of the image it appears to be stationary. If you look normally at the picture your eyes are continually scanning the picture, the amount of data your brain is receiving is too much for it and the snakes appear to rotate.

I find this a particularly interesting illusion because it raises the question of “how much can we trust what we think we are seeing”.

Searching for default alternatives I came across the idea of having salt on the table.

Most restaurants have salt easily available on the table:

It is therefore very easy to add salt to your food.

My son noticed that we as a family rarely have salt on the table. Many years ago we decided to leave the salt in the cupboard in the kitchen and not get it out at mealtimes. You can still have salt but you need to get up off your seat, walk two feet and get it. This has dramatically lowered the amount of salt that we consume. What we had done (without realising it) is to make the default alternative “no salt”.

If you have any other examples of default alternatives please send them to: blog@treepax.com

Maybe we don’t need as much information as we think to make meaning of things:

“BAD SPEELING I cdnuolt blveiee taht I cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd waht I was rdanieg. The phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid! Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn’t mttaer inwaht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoatn”

It is great to see that people are reading this blog!!!

Just received a quote which I liked from an old acquaintance:

“The trouble with people these days is that they make far too many sweeping generalisations”.

I am just about to put this into my quotes section on the main website. If you have any suggestions for additions to any of the sections on the website please do email me at blog@treepax.com

This way I can build an even bigger resource for everyone to use.

Malcolm Gladwell (Author of “The Tipping Point”) in his recent book Blink examines various ways that it seems that we “think without thinking” i.e. how other, and not always correct, types of thinking can lead us to come to conclusions much faster than conscious thought.

One of the bits of research he discusses in the book are the IAT tests (Implicit Association Tests) developed at Harvard.

These tests measure what you really think about such issues as weight, sex, race etc.

I found these tests really disturbing and also very enlightening. Our conscious minds do not tell us the truth about how we really think about certain things.

If you would like to try the tests for yourself click here and follow the instructions.

I have just added a new section on “Provocations” in the Toolkit on the main website.

To go directly to the provocations section: click here.

If you have any suggestions for more provocations (or anything else in the toolkit section for that matter please do email: toolkit@treepax.com

I was at a conference a few weeks ago and one of the other presenters was talking in his presentation about “the default alternative”.

The idea is that when we are presented with two or more alternatives usually one of these alternatives is the default one - the one most people are most likely to take.

It might be the default because of cost, convenience, attractiveness etc.

This got me thinking about how many of our day to day actions are so strongly influenced by default alternatives and how, if we always follow the default, we are effectively not using any free will. I feel that this idea also has very strong implications about the way we think about things, how we get stuck in our thinking and how we miss opportunities.

The example the presenter used was escalators.

So the default alternative here seems to be the escalator even though people are having to queue for it and the stairs are much bigger. I guess most of us have a tendency to minimise physical effort and so the default alternative is the escalator.

In the next picture:

I guess there is not much of an alternative at all as the stairs seem like a daunting prospect.

In the next picture:

There is no alternative at all - you have to take the escalator even though it is only about ten steps.

My point is that sometimes our choices are limited because our environment puts constraints on us (the last two pictures) but even when we do have alternatives the vast majority will select the default alternative without even thinking about it. So in reality we are not exercising choice at all.

If we could look for the default alternatives in our lives then we could spot where we are missing opportunities.

I think this principle might apply in all areas of our lives both personal and work.

If you have any other examples of default alternatives please send them to: blog@treepax.com

I came across these light bulbs on a business trip to the Netherlands. They were in a funky restaurant we went too. When you switch on the light by the dangling light switch the light bulb appears as if by magic. It is not really there and you can put your hand into it. I don’t thing these are actually holograms but an example of but the effect is similar.

The light bulb:

The light bulbs above the urinals: