Week of 2022-04-18
Life of a solution
Looking at the framework in the previous piece, I am noticing that the components of the tripartite loop (aka the solution loop, apologies for naming it earlier) form an interesting causal relationship. Check it out. Imagine that for every problem, there’s this process of understanding, or a repeated cycling through the loop. As this cycling goes on, the causality manifests itself.
Rising flux leads to rising solution diversity. This makes sense, right? More interesting updates to the model will provide a larger space for possible predictions. Rising solution diversity leads to rising effectiveness, since more predictions create more opportunities for finding a solution that results in the intended outcome. Finally, rising effectiveness leads to falling flux — the more effective the solution, the fewer interesting updates to the model we are likely to see. Once flux subsides past a certain point, we attest that the process of problem understanding has run its course. We now have a model of the phenomenon, ourselves, and our intention that is sufficiently representative to generate a reliably effective solution. We understood the problem.
I am realizing that I can capture this progression in roughly four stages. At the first stage, the effectiveness is low and diversity is low, with flux rapidly rising. This is the typical “oh crap” moment we all experience when experiencing a novel phenomenon that is misaligned with our intention. Let’s call this stage “novel,” and assign it the oh-so-appropriate virus emoji.
Rising flux pushes us forward to the next stage that I will call “divergent”. Here, our model of the problem is growing in complexity, incorporating the various updates brought in by flux. This stage is less chaotic than the one before, but it’s usually even more uncomfortable. We are putting in a lot of effort, but the mental models remain squishy and there are few well-known facts. Nearing the end of the stage, there’s a sense of cautious excitement in the air. While the effectiveness of our solutions is still pretty low, we are starting to see a bit of a lift: all of that model enrichment is beginning to produce intended outcomes. Soon after, the next stage kicks in.
The convergent stage sees continued, steady rise of effectiveness. Correspondingly, flux starts to ease off, indicating that we have the model figured out, and now we’re just looking for the most effective solution. This stage feels great for us engineering folks. Constraints appear to have settled in their final resting places. We just need to figure out the right path through the labyrinth. Or the right pieces of the puzzle. Or the right algorithm. We’ve got it.
After a bit more cycling of the loop, we finally arrive at the routine stage, the much desired steady state of understanding the problem well enough for it to become routine, where solving a problem is more of a habit rather than a bout of strenuous mental gymnastics. The problem has become boring.
The progression from novel to routine is something that every problem strives to go through. Sometimes it plays out in seconds. Sometimes it takes much longer. However, my guess is that this process isn’t something that we can avoid when presented with problems. It appears to be a general sequence that falls out of how our minds work. I want to call the pressure that animates this sequence the force of homeostasis. This force propels us inexorably toward the “routine” stage of the process, where the ongoing investment of effort is at its lowest value. Our bodies and our minds are constantly seeking to reach that state of homeostasis as quickly as possible, and this search is what powers this progression.
🔗 https://glazkov.com/2022/04/19/life-of-a-solution/
Change
So far, I carefully avoided the topic of change, presenting my problem-solving realm in a delightfully modernist manner. “See phenomenon? Make a model of it! Bam! Now we’re cooking with gas.”
Alas, despite its wholesome appeal, this picture is incomplete. Change is ever-present. As the movie title says, everything, everywhere, all at once – is changing, always. Some things change incomprehensibly quickly and some change so slowly that we don’t even notice the change. At least, at first. And this ever-changing nature of the environment around us presents itself as its own kind of force.
While the force of homeostasis is pushing us toward routine, the force of change is constantly trying to upend it. As a result of these forces dancing around each other, our problems tend to walk the awkward gait of punctuated equilibrium: an effective solution appears to have settled down, then after a while, a change unmoors it and the understanding process repeats. The punctuated equilibrium pattern appears practically everywhere, indicating that this might be another general pattern that falls out of the underlying processes of mental modeling.
Throughout this repeating sequence, the flux and effectiveness components wobble up and down, just like we expect them to. However, something interesting happens with the model diversity: it continues to grow in a stair-step pattern.
If you’ve read my stories before, you may recognize the familiar stair-step shape from my ongoing fascination, the adult development theory (ADT). It seems to rhyme, doesn’t it? I wonder if the theory itself is a story that is imposed upon a larger, much more fractally manifesting process of mental modeling. The ADT stages might be a just slice of it, discerned by a couple of very wise folks and put into a captivating narrative.
Every revolution of the process of understanding adds to our model, making us more capable of facing the next round of change. Sometimes this process is just refining the model. Sometimes it’s a transformational reorganization of it. This is how we learn.
Moreover, this might be how we are. This story of learning is such a part of our being that it is deeply embedded into culture and even has a name: the hero’s journey. The call to the adventure, the reluctance, the tribulations, and facing the demons to finally reveal the boon and bring it back to my people is a deeply emotional description of the process of understanding. And often, it has the wishful “happily ever after” bookend — because this would be the last change ever, right? It’s another paradox. It seems that we know full well that change is ever-present, yet we yearn for stability.
For me, this rhymes with the notion of Damasio’s homeostasis. Unlike the common belief that homeostasis is about equilibrium, in Strange order of Things, he talks how, from our perspective, homeostasis is indeed about reaching a stable state… and then leaning a bit forward to ensure flourishing. It’s like our embodied intuition accepts the notion of change and prepares us for it, despite our minds continuing to weave stories of eternal bliss.