Little Moe inside my Head, Sphere of Direct Influence

I was thinking about:

I will work towards _short term victory condition_ with Grace and Intention, both in Action and Thought, with Gratitude for my circumstance and the Positive Expectation that this will take me towards my long term goals and highest aspirations.

Has it, in fact, been a big bucket of awesome? Well, not quite. Then I was thinking about:

Viktor Frankl's distinction between Liberty and Freedom. Liberty is a description of the external environment, Freedom is a description of the ability to choose how to respond, instead of simply reacting.

Where it hasn't been a big bucket of awesome, I really felt the lack of Liberty, and, so, needed to strive for Freedom. Why am I now tying it all together with:

The "Extension Spring" connections between the Sphere of Direct Influence, the Sphere of Responsibility, and the Sphere of Concern.

Why? Well, because of challenges. I am feeling my depression strongly the last few days. I know that depression is a "heavy" word, and I know to break down the depression I feel into the exact components, because there are specific techniques for countering each component. I am feeling:

• Fatigue, resting in a napping pose is so delicious, as a way to make it all go away
• Irritation coming easily and creating pain
• confusion from overwhelm
• loss of hope from overwhelm
• strong, steady stream of impulses to manage mood
• strong, steady stream of impulses to distract self with time wasters

OK, I have some challenges here. So it all goes back to the Spheres of Direct Influence, Responsibility, and Concern. I will put the whole of the solution inside my sphere of responsibility, and use that to grow the size of my sphere of direct influence. It really does feel like a little Moe inside my head, who has a limited sphere of direct influence, against the issues listed above.

Said Goodbye, Goodluck to Sumiracle

Off Sumiracle goes to Germany then Scotland then England, he promised to post his public Google Calendar with dates of performances. We talked about a lot of stuff. Wanted to blog the best stuff before I lose it. "With Grace" - Short term intention anchored to food or drink:

• Before eating or drinking (or smoking, in Sumiracle's case), use the opportunity to anchor, to contemplate short term goals, form pure intention, have the intention to the goal, not the method, and strive to do it "with grace".
• I think I will go so far as to press palms together, head down, in prayerful state.

Creating, Trying, Testing, Choosing Rituals

• Religion has ritual. If you don't prescribe to a religious affiliation, you can make your own rituals.
• Again, this is about intention, and anchoring the physical self to higher goals, spirituality, gratitude, positive expectation.

Scientifically studying my "Falling in the river" I have the definite frustrating feeling of "falling in the river".

• I see a short term goal ahead of me, I see the path to it, the path runs by a river.
• I am walking along the path...
• the next time I am in full possession of consciousness and awareness, I feel "I fell into the river, and tumbled and washed far downstream", away from my goal.

I feel that I fell back into managing my mood, placating myself with distractions, yielded to mere base coping. Now I am further from my goal, and I am demoralized.

• "Falling into the river" was due to a lapse of concentration.
• "Falling into the river" was the result of yielding to old harmful impulses.

Sumiracle suggested viewing the whole situation as "magic" and scientifically probing the "magical" aspects of it.

• "I suddenly lose concentration" -> "Why and How did you lose concentration?" "What circumstances make it more or less likely to lose concentration?"
• "I drift downstream" -> "How far downstream?" "How fast?"
• "Demoralize" -> "How great the demoralization?" "Quantify it."
• "The river is close to the path" -> "How close?" "How far?" "Is there another path?"
• and so on...

I can clearly picture this scene of Path, and River, and Challenge, and Loss. So, this scene has "magical" aspects, the power of me is quite "magical". OK, probe. Study this "magic" with cold precision. And in this way, cause it to vanish into predictability, or at least minimize its power. Meditation, for short time, to bring specific emotion into reality Sumiracle said he had success with brief mediation, 5 minutes or so, to recall a specific emotion. He began with happiness. He experimented with the idea that he could, through force of will and intention, recalled a time of happiness, and guarantee that for 5 minutes every week, he could feel the emotion of happiness. He also tried anger. He got a grip of the tail of anger, based on his ability to call it into existence by meditation and recalling a time of anger. I believe that covers it. I can sleep now.

Plomin et al's Heritable IQ Study

From Bryan Caplan EconLog "How Family Environment Works"

If the only result from this study had been the "IQ is heritable," it would have been just another study. But its special methodology - studying adoptee's development from birth to adulthood - confirmed a shocking finding: As children grow up, the heritability of IQ rises, and the influence of family environment on IQ literally vanishes. ... ... We naturally think about the effects of family as cumulative: The longer you're in a family, the deeper the impression. At least for IQ, though, this "natural" thought turns out to be wrong. Family affects the very young, then fades out.

Commenter "eric":

That study was featured prominently in Judith Rich Harris's book, the Nurture Assumption.

Commenter "Tim Lundeen":

Re: Why does the coefficient rise with age for the control group?

Because the controls are more similar genetically to their parents than the adoptees, and there is a genetic component to IQ. Cognitive ability develops in fits and starts (just as physical ability does); a child may be ahead or behind of the curve at younger ages, so has lower correlation at younger ages.

I am trying to make sense of heritable IQ. How do we model this?

Is heritable IQ best modeled as a:

• _necessary_ to act at a certain level of effectiveness

• a _multiplier_ that increases or decreases effectiveness

• a factor that is best teased out by a _feed-back loop_, where successes are built upon towards larger successes, ad infinitum, and failures lead to larger failures, ad infinitum, based on higher or lower heritable IQ

• is it even clear that heritable IQ is _sufficient_ for a certain level of effectiveness?

What model can explain some of the confounding problems of IQ, like that IQ scores have risen from generation to generation?

Commenter "Chuck":

It would be intersting to know if, as IQ migrates to a heriditary value from the family value, is it predominantly increasing or decreasing.

To put it another way, does the family environment cause IQ to predominanty deviate lower or higher than the nominal hereditary value.

I would guess that family environment has a bias to suppress hereditary IQ. My hypothesis is that stress interferes with learning, and that most parents are 'mean' authoritarians. (As a point of distinguishment*, there is a differece between authoritarian and disciplinarian.)

So, the idea is that in the authoritarian home, our IQ is suppressed until we finally leave it, at which time it rises to it's inherited normal value.

I would be surprised to find that it was elevated in childhood and then dropped.

* I'm not positive I invented that word, the preznit might have beat me to it.

Karl Smith via commenter "TGGP":

...I am sticking a flag in the sand and declaring my hypothesis that the genetic component of intelligence is preference. That is, smart people are people who like intellectually stimulating experiences. My guess is that they are more sensitive to the pleasure chemical released when successfully solving a hard problem. Thus they solve more hard problems. ... For those who have trouble seeing how this might work consider this: Obesity has a strong genetic component. Obesity like IQ has been rising over time. However, does anyone believe that obesity is not completely determined by your food consumption and exercise patterns? Genes can modify that function, in particular they can modify your equilibrium levels of food consumption but they cannot act outside of the environmental regime.

tolerance of catastrophic failure, when groups of people work on complex problems

Comment on Arnold Kling's blog Econlog: "My Ideas on Health Care Delivery"

> The autonomous, self-directed doctors produced by our medical schools are not suited to treating complex patients. Instead, what we need are team players, implementing consistent corporate policies.

This is a _hard_ problem. I am management for a engineering design and manufacturing company. Even with the authority to fire for insubordination, people enjoy being "autonomous, self-directed", and do so against rational self-interest.

Complexity, handled by groups of people, is regularly punctuated with catastrophic failure. Catastrophic failure is only avoided by systematically eliminating _EVERY_ excuse for _ANY_ failure (to the extent you can). This kind of discipline is in very short supply, because it is not usually rewarded in human society.

Human being are _very_ tolerant of catastrophic failure, when it happens to others. And it usually happens to others, and, so, they are usually _very_ tolerant.

Heckman on Inequality

via Arnold Kling "econlog" - _Heckman on Inequality_

Schools, Skills, and Synapses - James J. Heckman - May 2008

http://ftp.iza.org/dp3515.pdf

Heckman:

"...interventions early in the life cycle of disadvantaged children have much higher economic returns than later interventions such as reduced pupil-teacher ratios, public job training, convict rehabilitation programs, adult literacy programs, tuition subsidies or expenditure on police."

Kling interpreting Heckman:

"An important inference to draw from the paper is that trying to reduce economic inequality by, say, subsidizing more young people to go to college, is likely to be very ineffective. Even interventions at the primary school level are mostly too late." "One of Heckman's themes is that while IQ is difficult to change with intervention, it is possible to affect what he calls socio-emotional skills, and those in turn will affect performance on test scores and overall achievement."

Heckman:

"Programs that target the early years seem to have the greatest promise... Programs with home visits affect the lives of the parents and create a permanent change in the home environment that supports the child after center-based interventions end. Programs that build character and motivation that do not focus exclusively on cognition appear to be the most effective."

Kling discussing Heckman:

"In the conclusion to his paper, Heckman stresses making sure that these early interventions "respect the sanctity of early family life and...cultural diversity." It is not clear that the basis for this concern is practical, or whether it is because Heckman is experiencing queasiness over promoting state intervention into family life. I can appreciate a libertarian concern with having the state take a large role in child-rearing. I am less persuaded if the concern is one of political correctness, where you want the state to intervene but then fret about the self-esteem of the families or groups where the intervention is undertaken."

My aside: Kling has a readership obsessed with _The Bell Curve_. _The Bell Curve_ is a dead end, if you are interested in the genetic component of life success.

Compensation, Management, Motivation (Again)

You are Paid, Managed, Motivated by:

• Results
• Future Results

Obviously, nobody has a perfect handle on future results. Mistakes will be made. The principal is:

• Salary
• Other forms of compensation and motivation - all you have is Trust and Commitment - the watchwords are "Avoid Violating Trust and Commitment" - so under-promise and over-deliver.

If you risk losing people because you under-promise, then raise the salary, or raise the committed monies to make sure the commitment is delivered. Because if you have a Violation of Trust and Commitment, then you wipe away all the good will built up before, and you will have to deliver double in the future to get half of the good will. People are very slow to forget a Violation of Trust and Commitment. OK, lets go over this list again - these are the components of Compensation, Management, and Motivation:

1. Results - Historical evidence of meeting objectives: like bookings of a salesman
2. Data on activities that have a "causal" relationship to the desired objectives: like number of meetings and follow-up activities with decision makers
3. Data on activities that have a presumed, perhaps tenuous causal relationship to the desired objectives: like hours spent researching a possible new product offering. There is a significant chance of complete failure with a new product offering - that is why the causal relationship to the desired objectives is tenuous.
4. "Positive" human factors: I sometimes eat at a cafeteria salad restaurant. The cafeteria trays are handed out by a handicapped man. Part of his salary is due to the restaurant living its stated values. (But it isn't all "altruism", he brings value, he is the voice of the restaurant's handicapped patrons). Note - What isn't a "positive" human factor - keeping someone in a job because you feel sorry for them is not a "positive" human factor - it has everything to do with a manager who finds it easy to be generous with other peoples' money, who cannot deal with the anxiety of terminating someone for cause, and who would not hesitate to terminate that person during an economic downturn, which is the exact time they would find it hardest to find a new job.
5. "Negative" human factors: the percentage of salary that is based on kissing up, is another example.
6. Market Forces: if the work is directly or closely aligned with pricing in an economic market, a component of compensation/management should be based on the market price: like a "free-agent" in baseball, or upper management in a publicly traded company, some component of compensation/management has to be based on the market price
7. Relevant Sub-Categories of Market: "inter-market based compensation" - If the whole market sub-category goes down, but inside that sub-category, market share and profitability goes up, the compensation should reflect that. You will be in a good position when the sub-category reverses the downward turn, compensation, today, should reflect that, or you risk losing good people.

Pownce is still still down

OK, time for bed also, thinking about overwhelm, I problem I have what if you imagine winning the lottery, and a team of personal assistants helicopter in, as well pick a time in the future, where you minimize the things you need to do to a single post-it note, without the need for a second not too close in the future, or the post-it note will be blank not too far out in the future, or it all will not fit on a post-it note basically, pick your unit of zero overwhelm (comfort zone) and imagine a perfect solution helicoptering in, so you don't have anything besides the unit of zero overwhelm begin the "Getting Things Done" exercise, but put everything else in a much lower category

Pownce is still down

Today was rough, domain controller bit the dust it really only took down DHCP, no biggie, somewhere along the way it looks like we had a redundant DNS i have half a mind not to use the Microsoft DHCP, it is stupid but maybe don't really have a choice

Pownce is down

So I type here! Was reminding myself, that things I learn, I am just not ready to apply it all right away. I am coming back to "Getting Things Done" David Allen talks about "Mind like Water": water reacts perfectly in proportion to the stimulus, no over-reaction, no under-reaction.

The Basic Limited Resources of Humans

• short term health
• long term health
• memory (short term, long term, random access (readily accessible), serial access (accessible in proper / specific context)
• emotion
• ability to give love
• ability to withstand stress
• ability to withstand uncertainty/confusion
• ability to withstand complexity
• capacity for linear / rational thought
• capacity for contemplate large amounts of data
• time
• attention
• focus
• energy
• self-control
• ability to ignore impulses
• action - physical
• action - mental
• ability to withstand ethical violations
• ability to withstand violations of personal value
• ability to withstand violations of fundamental understanding
• ability to withstand loss
• ability to withstand violations of hope