Closing the Mind Gap

Ted Cadsby

Description

We have always struggled, as human beings. But our struggle today is exacerbated by a gap between the increasingly complicated world we have created and the default ways we think about it. Twenty-first-century challenges are qualitatively different from the ones that generations of our ancestors faced, yet our thinking has not evolved to keep pace.

We need to catch up. To make smarter decisions -- as governments, organizations, families and individuals -- we need more sophisticated mental strategies for interpreting and responding to today's complexity.

Best-selling author and business leader Ted Cadsby explores the insights of cognitive psychology, anthropology, biology, neuroscience, physics, and philosophy to reveal the gap between how we typically tackle complex problems and what complexity actually requires of us. In an accessible and engaging style, he outlines ways to close the gap -- the strategic mental shifts that increase decision-making effectiveness.

The bottom line? We need greater complexity in our thinking to match the increasing complexity in our world, and Cadsby shows us how.

Sujets

• Science
• Leadership
• Mental
• Anthropology
• Cognitive science
• Cognitive psychology
• Complexity
• Psychology
• Technology
• Decision making
• Accessibility
• Philosophy of mind
• Biology
• Philosophy

Informations

• Publié par: BPS Books
• Date de parution: 24 mars 2014
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781927483800
• Langue: English

Extrait

Closing
the       
Mind Gap
Closing
the      
Mind Gap
Making Smarter Decsions in a Hypercomplex World
Ted Cadsby
Foreword by Don Tapscott

Toronto and New York
Copyright © 2014 by Ted Cadsby
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
Published in 2014 by
BPS Books
Toronto and New York
www.bpsbooks.com
A division of Bastian Publishing Services Ltd.
ISBN 978-1-927483-78-7 (paperback)
ISBN 978-1-927483-79-4 (ePDF)
ISBN 978-1-927483-80-0 (ePUB)
Cataloguing-in-Publication Data available from Library and Archives Canada.
Cover: Gnibel
Text design and typesetting: Daniel Crack, KD Books, www.kdbooks.ca
Index: Isabel Steurer
For Jodie and Mackenzie, inheritors of many choices in an increasingly complex world
Contents
 
FOREWORD
by Don Tapscott
PREFACE
INTRODUCTION
The Mind Gap
An overview of the book and the main argument .
 
PART I BRAINS COMING INTO THE WORLD
How Smart Are We Anyway?
1 Brain Evolution
Two Big Bangs
The circuitous journey from the first animal brains to human brains .
2 Bounded Brain
The Cognitive Trade-Off
Of the many constraints on our thinking, the most prominent is the trade-off between speed and accuracy .
 
PART II BRAINS SORTING OUT THE WORLD
Construction Zone A Head
3 To Know Is to Construct
Building a World
Naïve realism is a useful operating assumption in the limiting case of straightforward challenges, but not in the case of complex problems .
4 To Know Is to Simplify
Reducing Reality
A bounded brain interprets the world by simplifying it via three cognitive shortcuts .
5 When Simplifying Meets Complexity
Greedy Reductionism
Simplifying shortcuts work up to the point where we are too greedy in reducing reality .
6 To Know Is to Satisfice
Rushing to Certainty
We are addicted to certainty, courtesy of our physiology, so we rush to conclude by satisficing .
7 When Satisficing Meets Complexity
Missing Alternatives
Satisficing works only for problems that our intuitions are attuned to .
 
PART III THE BRAIN–WORLD PROBLEM
When Intuition Meets Complexity
8 Intuition as Expertise
Ten Years of Quality Practice
Expertise is impossible when we cannot accumulate practice with reliable cues and consistent feedback from which to learn .
9 A Tale of Two Worlds
Living in Complexity
We live in two worlds. World #2 consists of complex systems that lie between the simple systems of World #1 and complete randomness .
10 The Intuition–Complexity Gap
The Brain That Did Not Change Itself Fast Enough
The brain–world gap arises when we are overconfident in oversimplified interpretations. Complexity and cognitive sciences are the antidotes .
 
PART IV THE BRAIN–WORLD SOLUTION
Complex Thinking
11 Two Types of Thinking
Automatic and Effortful
Complex thinking begins with an understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of our two types of thinking .
12 Climbing the Cognitive Hierarchy
Dual Thinking for Dual Worlds
World #2 requires a higher degree of Type 2 thinking: both more sophisticated modelling and more metacognitive intervention .
13 Rethinking Causality
Systems Theory Reveals “It’s Not So Simple”
Systems theory seeks to uncover the interactions among multiple causal factors, which are easy to miss and misinterpret .
14 Strategies for Complex Systems
The Hunt for Signals
Specific strategies for assessing problems in World #2 originate from the insights of systems theory .
15 Rethinking Truth
Provisional Truth Reveals “It’s Not So Certain”
Provisional truth is the foundation of drawing conclusions in World #2, because it orients us toward probabilistic thinking .
16 Strategies for Provisional Truth
Dogma Is for Dogs
Specific strategies for invoking higher forms of metacognitive thinking originate from the implications of truth as provisional .
 
PART V BRAINS AND PEOPLE
Human Complexity
17 The Complexity of Self
The Depths of Our Hypocrisy
Each of us is a compilation of multiple selves, which puts bounds on our individual rationality, willpower and consistency .
18 The Complexity of Others
Our Social Shortcuts
In assessing and interacting with others, we take shortcuts to reduce their complexity, usually in favour of preserving our own .
19 The Complexity of Being Human
Coping With the Paradoxes
A complex brain gives rise to complex struggles .
 
EPILOGUE
Two Games for Two Worlds
Two contrasting versions of the game of life .
 
APPENDIX 1
Sizing Up the Gap
A chart summarizing the cognitive strategies that suit each world .
 
APPENDIX 2
Humans Versus Other Animals: A Dialogue
A conversation highlighting the difference .
 
Endnotes
Index
FOREWORD
T he first time Ted Cadsby told me about his book project, it was over coffee at the Café Doria in Toronto. He opened with a startling statement: “Two centuries ago most of us were farmers. Since then the world has changed profoundly, but our brains have not kept up. We have to acknowledge this brain–world gap if we are going to think more productively about our new world.”
Flash forward two years and he has produced a fascinating tome that will disarm and enlighten many people. The book argues that the current human brain is struggling to deal with the hypercomplexity of modern society, and that the solution is to increase the complexity of our thinking.
True enough, if you go back a few hundred years, life was simple indeed. It was the agrarian age, and under feudalism — the economic and political system that surrounded most of the world — knowledge was concentrated in tiny oligopolies of the church and state. There was no concept of progress. You were born, you lived and you died.
But when Johannes Gutenberg introduced the printing press, parts of society began to acquire knowledge. New institutions emerged, and feudalism started to appear inadequate. It didn’t make sense anymore, for example, for the church to be responsible for medicine. The new tool for disseminating information precipitated profound changes. It fuelled the growth of universities, new organizations, science, the Industrial Revolution, the nation state and capitalism. It advanced our productive forces and our standard of living. It also eventually introduced mass media, mass production, mass marketing, mass education and mass democracy, not to mention the rise of knowledge work and industrial-age models of management.
Now, once again, another paradigm is emerging, and another technological genie is out of the bottle. This time it’s the Internet and the digital revolution — but with an impact that is very different from that of the printing press. The printing press gave access to recorded knowledge. The Internet offers access to the intelligence contained in the brains of people around the world.
As I see it, we are not in an “information age.” We are in the age of “networked intelligence.” Rather than an economy based on brawn, we have one based on brains, characterized by collaboration and participation, and it offers huge promises and opportunities. As Cadsby writes, we are at an unprecedented point in our history, one in which we can respond stupidly or smartly.
These changes are leading to a much less ordered and therefore more complex world. In yesterday’s corporation, information flowed vertically. People were separated into two groups: the governors and the governed. Most employees of large, vertically integrated companies contributed physical strength, not intelligence. Management invested in big factories with production processes and machinery that required little decision-making or operator skill. Employees were extensions of the machine. They were expected to follow orders and not to take much initiative — if any. Management was based on mistrust and command and control, and decision processes were totally opaque to employees.
And things weren’t much better in the white-collar world. The goal was to climb the ladder and acquire more direct reports. The work goals were established higher up. This was the world of the “organization man.” When a decision was required, a meeting or teleconference was convened. Each participant knew something about the problem at hand but shared only some information, not all of it. Each made assumptions about what everyone at the table should know, but these assumptions were often flawed. While it was convenient to make a decision by consensus, such decisions rarely tackled the toughest problems. It was a recipe for mediocrity.
It was fifty years ago that the management thinker Peter Drucker predicted the emerging force of the knowledge worker. He was the first to identify that the economy was moving from brawn to brain, a profound change that would enhance productivity. But productive work doesn