Level quotes

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Christopher_Wolfgang_Alexander

Complexity

“Today more and more design problems are reaching insoluble levels of complexity... In spite of their superficial simplicity, even these problems have a background of needs and activities which is becoming too complex to grasp intuitively.”

Mihaly_Csikszentmihalyi

Flow

“In our studies, we found that every flow activity, whether it involved competition, chance, or any other dimension of experience, had this in common: It provided a sense of discovery, a creative feeling of transporting the person into a new reality. It pushed the person to higher levels of performance, and led to previously undreamed-of states of consciousness. In short, it transformed the self by making it more complex. In this growth of the self lies the key to flow activities.”
  • Source: Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi in the book “Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience“, chapter “Flow Activities”, page 74. Original content published by Harper Perennial Modern Classics in 1990. Kindle edition published by Harper Collins in 2008. ISBN: 978-0061876721.

Peter_Drucker

Mistakes

“The better a man is, the more mistakes will he make - for the more new things he will try. I would never promote a man into a top level job who had not made mistakes, and big ones at that. Otherwise he is sure to be mediocre.”
  • Source: Peter Drucker, The Practice of Management New York,: Harper, 1st ed. 1954 ; Routledge, 2012, p. 147.

Donald_Hoffman

AI Computation

“If we look at an LLM [Large Language Model] or a future AI [Artificial Intelligence], it's going to be some kind of computational system. And computational systems have their limits. We have Gödel who said that at a minimum. I'm betting that you and I are avatars of an infinite intelligence that's the true source of all creativity and that Einstein or any scientist taps into when they come up with their truly original ideas. The first step would be to say, if it's just a computational bias, then it doesn't transcend. It doesn't get to this true originality. But then there's a deeper level... These are just avatars in a particular headset. So why can't we create a new avatar in our headset that looks like a computer that is actually an avatar of the deep intelligence? If we are only going to stick with the computational thing... But somehow the [human] avatar is a portal into the infinite consciousness... And we know one way of creating new portals into this infinite consciousness, and that is having kids. So that is one technology that allows us to do that. Once we understand spacetime as a headset, and we understand the headset and at least some layers of its relationship to the infinite reality, that's the source of true insight and true originality and creativity, could we figure out new ways to open up genuine new portals, and might that look like AI… The jury is out.”
  • Source: Donald Hoffman, in the YouTube video entitled “Donald Hoffman's New Approach To Consciousness” channel “Dr Brian Keating”. Online at <https://youtu.be/mU_WBela71Y?si=fNfLLsOsUDRDC1XD> posted 2024-08, retrieved 2024-08. In video at 1:14:40.

Douglas_Hofstadter

Strange Consciousness

“My belief is that the explanations of emergent phenomena in our brains — for instance, ideas, hopes, images, analogies, and finally consciousness and free will — are based on a kind of Strange Loop, an interaction between levels in which the top loop reaches back down towards the bottom level and influences it, while at the same time being itself determined by the bottom level. In other words, a self-reinforcing resonance between different levels.”
  • Source: Hofstadter, Douglas R. (1979). Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid. Written by Douglas R. Hofstadter. Basic Books, New York, NY. ISBN 13: 978-046502656-2. ISBN 10: 046502656-7. Chapter 20. Page 709.

Thinking At A Different Level

“It is when something goes wrong that it is important to be able to think on different levels.”
  • Source: Hofstadter, Douglas R. (1979). Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid. Written by Douglas R. Hofstadter. Basic Books, New York, NY. ISBN 13: 978-046502656-2. ISBN 10: 046502656-7. Chapter 10. Page 294.

Artificial Intelligence Art Problems

“Artificial Intelligence, when it reaches the level of human intelligence — or even if it surpasses it — will still be plagued by the problems of art, beauty, and simplicity, and will run up against these things constantly in its own search for knowledge and understanding.”
  • Source: Hofstadter, Douglas R. (1979). Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid. Written by Douglas R. Hofstadter. Basic Books, New York, NY. ISBN 13: 978-046502656-2. ISBN 10: 046502656-7. Chapter 20. Page 695.

Gerald_Holton

Speculation

“...guided at that moment by a speculation below the level of consciousness, a result of an intimate knowledge... built up during his years of intense study, discussions, and experimentation.”
  • Note: The article is discussing Enrico Fermi's process to solve a physics experimentation problem that came to be known as the “Miricle of the Two Tables”.

Carl_Jung

Insoluble Problems

“I always worked with the temperamental conviction that fundamentally there are no insoluble problems, and experience justified me in so far as I have often seen individuals simply outgrow a problem which had destroyed others. This ‘outgrowing’, as I formerly called it, on further experience was seen to consist in a new level of consciousness. Some higher or wider interest arose on the person's horizon, and through this widening of his view the insoluble problem lost its urgency. It was not solved logically in its own terms, but faded out when confronted with a new and stronger life-tendency. It was not repressed and made unconscious, but merely appeared in a different light, and so did indeed become different. What, on a lower level, had led to the wildest conflicts and to panicky outbursts of emotion, viewed from the higher level of the personality, now seemed like a storm in the valley seen from a high mountain-top. This does not mean that the thunderstorm is robbed of its reality, but instead of being in it, one is now above it. However, since we are both valley and mountain with respect to the psyche, it might seem a vain illusion to feel oneself beyond what is human. One certainly does feel the affect and is shaken and tormented by it, yet at the same time one is aware of a higher consciousness, which prevents one from becoming identical with the affect, a consciousness which takes the affect objectively, and can say, Ί know that I suffer'.”

Unknown Potential

“Here and there it happened in my practice that a patient grew beyond himself because of unknown potentialities, and this became an experience of prime importance to me. I had learned in the meanwhile that the greatest and most important problems of life are all in a certain sense insoluble. They must be so because they express the necessary polarity inherent in every self-regulating system. They can never be solved, but only outgrown. I therefore asked myself whether this possibility of outgrowing, that is, further psychic development, was not the normal thing, and therefore remaining stuck in a conflict was what was pathological. Everyone must possess that higher level, at least in embryonic form, and in favorable circumstances must be able to develop this possibility.”

Alister_McGrath

Why is the Kettle Boiling?

“The distinguished geologist Frank Rhodes made this point back in 1965, using the analogy of a boiling kettle. So why is the kettle boiling? Rhodes notes that two types of explanation might be given. At the scientific level, energy is being supplied, which raises the temperature of the water to its boiling point. Yet another answer can be given. 'The kettle is boiling because I put it on to make a cup of tea.' Rhodes makes a point which some of you may find predictable, but is none the less important. Here is what he says: 'Now these are different answers. But both are true, both are complementary and not competitive. One answer is appropriate within a particular frame of reference, the other within another frame of reference. There is a sense in which each is incomplete without the other.”
  • Note: Frank Rhodes gave credit for the kettle analogy to Dr. Douglas Spanner.

George_Miller

Magic Seven

“What about the magical number seven? What about the seven wonders of the world, the seven seas, the seven deadly sins, the seven daughters of Atlas in the Pleiades, the seven ages of man, the seven levels of hell, the seven primary colors, the seven notes of the musical scale, and the seven days of the week? What about the seven-point rating scale, the seven categories for absolute judgment, the seven objects in the span of attention, and the seven digits in the span of immediate memory? ... Perhaps there is something deep and profound behind all these sevens, something just calling out for us to discover it.”
  • Source: George A. Miller in the article ‘The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two: Some Limits on our Capacity for Processing Information’. Psychological Review, 63, 81-97. Also online at https://psychclassics.yorku.ca/Miller/ .

Pearl_and_Mackenzie

Three Levels of Causation

“A causal learner must master at least three distinct levels of cognitive ability: seeing, doing, and imagining.”
  • Source: Judea Pearl and Dana Mackenzie in “The Book of Why: The New Science of Cause and Effect”. Published by Basic Books of New York, NY in 2018. Chapter 1, page 27. ISBN 978-0465097616 (ebook).

Alan_Perlis

Human Communication Limits

“A man can communicate with about five colleagues on a software project without too much difficulty. Likewise he can supervise about five people and know pretty well what they are doing. One would structure 120 people in three levels, in which no man is talking to more than about eight people, both across his level and up and down”

Steven_Pinker

Computational Mind Probabilistic

“The computational theory thus embraces an alternative kind of computer with many elements that are active to a degree corresponding to the probability that some statement is true or false, and in which the activity levels change smoothly to register new and roughly accurate probabilities. (As we shall see, that may be the way the brain works.) The key idea is that the answer to the question 'What makes a system smart?' is not the kind of stuff it is made of or the kind of energy flowing through it, but what the parts of the machine stand for and how the patterns of changes inside it are designed to mirror truth-preserving relationships (including probabilistic and fuzzy truths).”
  • Source: Steven Pinker (1997). How the Mind Works. New York, NY: W. W. Norton. ISBN 978-0-393-06973-0; eISBN 978-0-393-06973-0. Chapter 2 Section: The search for Intelligent Life in the Universe.

Bertrand_Russell

Science Ideal

“Science, in its ultimate ideal, consists of a set of propositions arranged in a hierarchy, the lowest level of the hierarchy being concerned with particular facts, and the highest with some general law, governing everything in the universe. The various levels in the hierarchy have a two-fold logical connection, traveling one up, one down; the upward connection proceeds by induction, the downward by deduction.”
  • Source: Bertrand Russell, In The Scientific Outlook (1931, 2009), 38.

Franz_Selig

Specification Feedback

“External specifications at any level describe the software product in terms of the items controlled by and available to the user. The internal design describes the software product in terms of the program structures which realize the external specifications. It has to be understood that feedback between the design of the external and internal specifications is an essential part of a realistic and effective implementation process. Furthermore, this interaction must begin at the earliest stage of establishing the objectives, and continue until completion of the product.”

Herbert_Simon

Psychology of Choice

“Research findings on the psychology of choice, indicate some properties a thermometer of satisfaction should have. First, unlike the utility function, it is not limited to positive values, but has a zero point (of minimal contentment). Above zero, various degrees of satisfaction are experienced, and below zero, various degrees of dissatisfaction. Second, if periodic readings are taken of people in relatively stable life circumstances, we only occasionally find temperatures very far from zero in either direction, and the divergent measurements tend to regress over time back toward the zero mark. Most people consistently register either slightly below zero (mild discontent) or a little above (moderate satisfaction). To deal with these phenomena, psychology employs the concept of aspiration level... Aspiration levels provide a computational mechanism for satisficing.”

Computer Programming as Data Structures

“When we write a computer program in any language except machine language, we are really not writing down processes but data structures. These data structures are then interpreted or compiled into processes, that is, into machine-language instructions that the computer can understand and execute. Nevertheless, for most purposes, it is convenient for us simply to ignore the translation step and to treat the computer programs in higher-level languages as representing processes.”

Gerald_Weinberg

Programming Not Individual

“But there is much evidence, as we shall see presently, to argue that the proper study of programming is done at the level of the programming social unit. Not that the individual level is unimportant, but we might start by asking why, if the average programmer spends two-thirds of his time working with other people rather than working alone (yes, it's true!), that 99 percent of the studies have been on individual programmers.”
  • Source: Chapter 3. Weinberg, G. M. (2011). The Psychology of Computer Programming (Silver anniversary edition) | 1971. Weinberg & Weinberg.

Management Deskilling

“Even though the nth-level manager may have originally been a programmer, which is rare enough, he has almost certainly lost any programming ability by the time he reaches these heights. Given the rapid change of programming techniques and hardware, the higher-level manager becomes obsolete even if he retains the skills he originally had and keeps them sharply honed, for those languages and those machines are no longer in use. In a small survey of working programmers, only 15 percent of the first-line managers were thought to be as skillful as the programmers themselves, and none of the higher-level managers.”
  • Source: Chapter 6. Weinberg, G. M. (2011). The Psychology of Computer Programming (Silver anniversary edition) | 1971. Weinberg & Weinberg.

Stephen_Wolfram

Quantum Computing

“The basic idea of quantum computing... is to do different computations in parallel along different possible threads of history. But the key issue is then how to corral those threads of history together to figure out a definite answer for the computation... The preliminary indication is that at least at a formal level, quantum computers aren’t going to come out ahead.”

Simple Purpose

“Whenever there’s computational irreducibility we can think of it as exerting a powerful force towards unpredictability and randomness... So for a system to achieve an overall “computationally simple purpose” this computational irreducibility must in some sense be tamed, or at least contained. And in fact it’s an inevitable feature of computational irreducibility that within it there must be “pockets of computational reducibility” where simpler behavior occurs. And at some level the way computationally simple purposes must be achieved is by tapping into those pockets of reducibility. When there’s computational irreducibility it means that there’s no simple narrative one can expect to give of how a system behaves, and no overall “mechanism” one can expect to identify for it. But one can think of pockets of computational reducibility as corresponding to at least small-scale “identifiable mechanisms”... When there’s a “simple overall purpose” being achieved these mechanisms tend to become more manifest.”

Edward_Yourdon

Design Analysis Strategy

“There is more to be gained from attention to design, analysis, and business strategy issues than from attention to programming-level issues.”
  • Source: Edward Yourdon in the book “Decline and Fall of the American Programmer”. Published in 1992 by Prentice Hall. ISBN: 0-13-203670-3. Chapter 2, section 2.1, page 27.

Shoshana_Zuboff

Share the Fruits

“Taylor believed it was necessary to share the fruits of such productivity increases and saw the differential piece-rate system, a central tenet of scientific management, as a method of uniting workers and managers in a bond of common interest. But incentive wages are devilishly hard to administer, and all too often, managers attracted to differential wage schemes succumbed to shortcuts that promised fast gains. Managers would frequently change piece rates as workers learned to meet the standards. This led to the complaints of overwork with which unions relentlessly dogged proponents of Taylorism. Scientific management frequently meant not only that individual effort was simplified (either because of labor-saving equipment or new organizational methods that fragmented tasks into their simplest components), but also that the pace of effort was intensified, thus raising the level of fatigue and stress.”
  • Source: Zuboff, S. (1988). In The Age Of The Smart Machine: The Future Of Work And Power. New York, NY: Basic Books, p. 45. ISBN:0465032125.

Information and Automating

“To the extent that technology is used only to intensify the automaticity of work, it can reduce skill levels and dampen the urge toward more participatory and decentralized forms of management... However, this approach cannot exploit the unique power of an informating technology. In contrast, an approach to technology deployment that emphasizes its informating capacity uses technology to do far more than routinize, fragment, or eliminate jobs. It uses the new technology to increase the intellectual content of work at virtually every organizational level, as the ability to decipher explicit information and make decisions informed by that understanding becomes broadly distributed among organizational members.”
  • Source: Zuboff, S. (1988). In The Age Of The Smart Machine: The Future Of Work And Power. New York, NY: Basic Books, p. 243. ISBN:0465032125.

Manager Panic

“People at every organizational level -- managers, engineers, and operators -- each spent a good deal of time speculating on the sources of this dynamic and its ultimate consequences. One top manager maintained that the core of the problem was the lack of an alternative to the traditional managerial function. ‘The problem is that managers don't have skills and knowledge or a vision of their new role. They are asking, What is going to happen to me? And so they are in a panic.'”
  • Source: Zuboff, S. (1988). In The Age Of The Smart Machine: The Future Of Work And Power. New York, NY: Basic Books, p. 251. ISBN:0465032125.

Panopticon Surveillance

“At each level of these organizations, people searched for ways to adapt to the intense illumination of the information panopticon. There was less room for interpersonal ploys or negotiated solutions and fewer hidden corners in which to enjoy anonymous repose or indulge in overtly negative behavior. To some, it seemed that only the human heart retained its privacy, out of reach and recalcitrant.”
  • Source: Zuboff, S. (1988). In The Age Of The Smart Machine: The Future Of Work And Power. New York, NY: Basic Books, p. 342. ISBN:0465032125.

Technology Change

“To fully grasp the way in which a major new technology can change the world... it is necessary to consider both the manner in which it creates intrinsically new qualities of experience and the way in which new possibilities are engaged by the often-conflicting demands of social, political, and economic interests in order to produce a 'choice.' To concentrate only on intrinsic change and the texture of an emergent mentality is to ignore the real weight of history and the diversity of interests that pervade collective behavior. However, to narrow all discussion of technological change to the play of these interests overlooks the essential power of technology to reorder the rules of the game and thus our experience as players. Moreover, these two dimensions of technological change, the intrinsic and the contingent, need to be understood, not separately, but in relation to one another. The same innovation that abstracts work and increases its intellectual content, thus enhancing the learning of lower level employees... can also, within the context of the choices by which it is adapted, be experienced as a new source of divisiveness and control.”
  • Source: Zuboff, S. (1988). In The Age Of The Smart Machine: The Future Of Work And Power. New York, NY: Basic Books, p. 389. ISBN:0465032125.