Health Homework (3.3) H.O.T.* Brain Candy, Conceptual Expansion w D.Snowden 2016, 2021
*Higher Order Thinking to be sure, with some practical applications if you look for them. Do you notice anything disconnected, misordered, or potentially risky?
Let’s use these four presentations provided below as exercises to push our brains to stretch and grow even more so that we can create more capacity for new ideas that will come in the future.
During my last year of medical school, our top-ranked University began a new program which they called “H.O.T.” which represented their advocacy of a new concept formally titled Higher Order Thinking. Probably the most useful components of this new program were the acronym and the title itself, and I was left to marvel at the irony of this initiative on a campus that appeared to me to function at the level of a Neanderthal commune (at least, as best I could imagine, with no offense intended to Neanderthals by comparing their communities with our PhD-awarding biomedical schools and health science research center).
“For a tree to become tall and great, it must twine hard roots around hard rocks.”
Thus Spoke Zarathustra [free PDF book included in HealthHomework3.1]
Now that everyone has completed Health Homework (3.1) FEED yourself some BRAIN CANDY [books, audiobooks] and Health Homework (3.2) GIFT yourself this BRAIN CANDY VIDEO: War on Sense-making, Schmachtenberger 2019 let’s use these four presentations provided below as exercises to push our brains to stretch and grow even more so that we can create more space for new ideas that will come in the future.
If you want to have a sharp mind and useful insight at the moment of need, then you must train your brain ahead of time.
I’m actually still in the process of taking and making my own notes on these larger two videos by Dave Snowden. I’ll preview them here in the sequence provided:
Cynefin intro: I’ve provided the shortest of these as the first video in the following list of three videos, but actually that one in particular probably has the least value—I included it mostly for the sake of convenience for people who want to take a quick bite without committing to the bigger works. This video provides the image and vocabulary of his “Cynefin” tool that he mentions in his other two larger monologues.
Complexity, citizen engagement in a Post-Social Media time (TEDx, 2018): Excellent introduction to some of the ideas (and jokes) in video #4.
Sensemaking and complexity (2021): This presentation is quite excellent, and yet impressed me with some limits, which is why I initially titled my summary of his conversation as “Appreciating the limits of high level conceptualization when it’s divorced from practical knowledge.” What is good and useful among the ideas presented, and what (if any*) is misguided, misconnected and potentially dangerous? *Hint—related to his comments about COVID19.
How leaders change culture through small actions (2016): Really good information here—have to take notes, watch it twice, and probably both.
“…seduction by grammatical construction…”
Nietzsche’s preface to Beyond Good and Evil
REMINDER: When we are hearing words that are eloquent and seductive, we have to be on our guard for errors that might slip past us even as we dine on the sweetness of language and ideas. Remember that simply because something is eloquent and sounds great and pulls on our heartstrings and reinforces our biases, this does not mean that it’s accurate or that we should follow its suggestion.
