#WorkingOutLoud - How Formal Systems Fail
Without apology, another early stage #WorkingOutLoud post today as i work to complete the paper i’m writing on ‘Black Swans and the Limits of Hierarchy’ for a conference later this year. Early stage because, having set the foundations, i’m trying to move into the ‘what we do about it’ part of the paper! The premise is this: we operate in Known Frames, utilising the power of Known Scripts, under the authority of Formal power. Black Swan type events operate in Unknown Frames by Unknown Scripts. Category errors cause us to misconstrue the ‘unknown’ as ‘known’, hence deluding ourselves that things are under control until sudden failure occurs. That’s what this illustration seeks to capture:
As we operate within a Known Frame, Unknown Scripts slowly infiltrate. Our native, trained, conditioned responses allow us to (or trap us into) adopting a Known Frame and recognising (miscategorising) Known Scripts, whilst actually we are drifting ever further from the Known.
At some point, a fracture occurs when the credibility of the Known Scripts is broken: this is the failure point, where the system is adrift. Typical kinetic responses to reimpose Known Scripts and Known Frames can fail if we don’t truly understand where the power now lies.
Central to this challenge is the way that Scripts are not just descriptive categories narrating observed action, they are powerful in themselves. Scripts define and power action, not just observe it.
So when we are trapped in a Known Frame, our own Known Scripts can lose power, and we find we cannot control (or even recognise) Unknown Scripts (because we are operating outside of Known Frames).
Later, i will explore how we can use narrative approaches to work around this challenge. For now, i’m trying to clarify and illustrate the core challenge.
UX Researcher in UK public sector
8 年Well I think it would go down well at MeCCSA - in that case as you were ??
Author, Researcher, Artist, Explorer
8 年That's alright Andy: i'm definitely finding it hard to find both the framework and voice on this - largely, as you identify, because it's a paper for an academic conference! I'm going to try to complete the journey through this, with a few more 'foundation' pieces, then try to stitch it together into a paper, probably later this week. Thanks for feedback - appreciated - this one is definitely a little in the dark... best wishes, Julian
UX Researcher in UK public sector
8 年I think you are making this interesting idea harder to understand through the use of the scripts/frame language. Sorry if that's harsh! It's a bit academic and I've always liked your clarity ??
Learning & Development Expert. Strategist, Author & Speaker. Architect of the People Alchemy Learning Workflow Platform. Helping L&D Professionals Make a Difference.
8 年Hi Julian, This reminds me of the approach that NLP takes where it talks about the generalisations people make. What they mean by this is the scripts people develop in order to deal with things without having to rethink them every time they are encountered. There is a story of an experiment that was done, it may be apocryphal, where a swing door was fitted with a handle on the hinge side. Most people who approached the door grabbed the handle, found the door wouldn’t move, assumed it was locked, and walked away. They were running their script about doors. Only in this case their script failed because the door didn’t match their expectations in terms of their map of how they thought reality worked. In this case, reality threw them a curve ball, and their script failed. The story goes that there were also children in the group of people who had access to the door. Their script about doors was not so fixed, and many of them pushed the door in a couple of other ways rather than give up with one touch of the handle, and consequently noticed that the door swung open easily if was pushed on the other side opposite the handle. It is a real challenge to understand when our scripts are not working, because the scripts themselves insulate us from the extant reality. In effect they hide what is really going on from us. Our scripts trump reality, that is, we believe our scripts rather than what our senses observe. And without a lot of conscious effort, we are no more aware of our scripts than a fish is of the water that surrounds it. Keep thinking :-) Cheers, Paul