Profession

When finding what you like the most is also what you are the best at.

My first sketch on love

Love is not simple. It’s painfully messy and yet as addictive as a drug. Now I get this. It is messy so it’s not lineal, from a system’s point of view. Things happens that makes other things happens that affects the first things. In a simple way love starts at a sight, whether love happens or not, a sight leads to an emotion. That simple emotion can be good or bad… that would be the stock of the system. Sometimes it fills with “good” emotions untill it reaches love, or it drains with “bad” emotions. When emotions reaches a certain point, let’s call it “interest” it’s expected to be an encounter… maybe even a digital encounter such as a web broadcast. That encounter generates some appealing that feedback the emotion itself. Now there’s an undeveloped subsystem that I call “Past History”. Past History would be some sort of stock by itself. It feeds with good and bad encounters that provoke certain perception, a multiplying factor that either maximize or minimize the emotion. Now the tricky thing is that there’s the same thing for the other person (OP). Some in that cybernetic world with feedback and control (those loops below) there’s the subject itself. In a system matter, that’s called cybernetics of second order or “cybernetics of cybernetics”: the study of a system controlled by feedbacks and feedforwards in which the subject is immerse.

Of course this is just a sketch. Love, again, is not that simple.

Love in Loops

Edit (29/12/11): Note that polarity is intentionally unclear.

 

Beginning

For where I stand, I knew my purpose of living when I was 16. We had to do social work in our school in order to graduate. My school was a catholic school from the Dominics Order. The Order had a nursery outside the city, and students must have done their social work there working with elder people. Except for those 10 students who achieved more academic success, for they were elected to conduct classes to cleaning personnel for a near mall. Mid-40’s people who never graduate from school. I taught english. And in those adults, eager for knowledge with immense gratitude for our work, I learned that I wanted to be a teacher.

And then I was 19, a failed undergrad student of Industrial Engineering. Failed at math and physics. But not because of stupidity nor lack of understanding, but because of complete lack of interest. I have met the joys of social life and studying was not my resolution. However this failure of student came to his third year with deep regret of what he had become for it costed his relationships. And in that regret and as a gift of life, I received a course in Operations Research, and when I understood the magnitude, the art and the joy to model I wanted to cry for wasting those math classes and those physics classes and then I engaged with full commitment to my study. And I rocked it. I was good, I was excellent at it. I realised that I was meant to be an architect, a modeller, a teacher yes! To teach modelling.

Is it wrong that me, who failed once in his academic life, wants to teach? I got better, things got better. I really rocked OR, and Systems Thinking, and Stochastic Processes and System Dynamics… I was really good, more than good. But am I wrong? My fear is not to fail again, but the ghost of it hunts me every time.

But that aside, I start a project today. A modelling project in System Dynamics. My intentions will be later revealed, but for now I leave this post with a text that went through my chest. I felt the author, a man I admire and hope to ever know. This text offers a glimpse of the importance of Policy Design in System Dynamics  and it is magnificent well explained.

From John Sterman in his lecture for his well achieved Jay Wright Forrester Prize in 2002: “All models are wrong: reflections on becoming a systems scientist”

John D. Sterman

While it’s hard to define what system dynamics is, I don’t have any trouble answering why it is valuable. As the world changes ever faster, thoughtful leaders increasingly recognize that we are not only failing to solve the persistent problems we face, but are in fact causing them. All too often, well-intentioned efforts to solve pressing problems create unanticipated ‘‘side effects.’’ Our decisions provoke reactions we did not foresee. Today’s solutions become tomorrow’s problems. The result is policy resistance, the tendency for interventions to be defeated by the response of the system to the intervention itself. From California’s failed electricity reforms, to road building programs that create suburban sprawl and actually increase traffic congestion, to pathogens that evolve resistance to antibiotics, our best efforts to solve problems often make them worse.

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At the root of this phenomenon lies the narrow, event-oriented, reductionist worldview most people live by. We have been trained to see the world as a series of events, to view our situation as the result of forces outside ourselves, forces largely unpredictable and uncontrollable. The concept of unanticipated events and ‘‘side effects’’ I just mentioned provides a good illustration. People frequently talk about unexpected surprises and side effects as if they were a feature of reality. A doctor may say, ‘‘The patient was responding well to treatment, but died from unanticipated side effects.’’ Our political leaders blame recession on unanticipated shocks such as corporate fraud or terrorism.

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Managers blame any difficulty on events outside their firms and (they want us to believe) outside their control, as for example when Cisco Systems blamed their record $2.2 billion inventory writeoff and massive layoffs on ‘‘reduced capital spending and the global macroeconomic environment, which resulted in the reduction in our workforce and inventory charges we announced.’’ (Cisco Systems 2001 Annual Report). In fact, there is compelling evidence that, like other firms in the high-tech/telecommunications sector, Cisco’s own policies—from the design of its supply chain to pricing, production planning, and even the credit terms it offered customers—were central to the inflation and implosion of the great demand bubble (Goncalves 2002; Shi 2002).

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There are no side effects—only effects. Those we thought of in advance, the ones we like, we call the main, or intended, effects, and take credit for them. The ones we didn’t anticipate, the ones that came around and bit us in the rear—those are the ‘‘side effects’’. When we point to outside shocks and side effects to excuse the failure of our policies, we think we are describing a capricious and unpredictable reality. In fact, we are highlighting the limitations of our mental models. System dynamics helps us expand the boundaries of our mental models so that we become aware of and take responsibility for the feedbacks created by our decisions.

Cheesy

So yeah… someday I think I want cheesy pink romance. To be an A-List kinda guy with a brain (probably holding a ph.d). For now I think I’m having a great time with my life. In this movie that’s my life, these are the boring scenes where the main character watches rain dropping outside the window while evolving. Peace non the less, it doesn’t hurt.

By the way I felt like sharing. Welcome to the box, first readers.

Legend

“Your paradigm is so intrinsic to your mental process that you are hardly aware of its existence, until you try to communicate with someone with a different paradigm.” D. Meadows.

There are a few people in the world I’d like to meet. There’s only one I can think of, I’m never going to. A pioneering scientist, thinker and teacher that never doubt to tell the truth.

I only know you for “Limits of growth”. But I know enough to think of you as a Legend.

Modelling with vensim 101: Basics

http://v.calameo.com/2.0/cviewer.swf?bkcode=0003772976fdace8c4f12&langid=es

This is a presentation I gave to my dearest teacher at some time in the University. The ppt version is complete with animations and well explained by me. Even though it lacks of text, the intention is clear. And aside some misspelling errors I enjoyed it deeply.

Saturation

I kind of like when in life colors and music takes over. Sadness comes with a scale of greys and a violin, while lust and pleasure saturates of red. Theres a kinesthetic learning in all of us… some of you might percieve it stronger and clearer. I don’t.

I do imagine life as a film. I’m the main character of course, but who isn’t in its own movie? Life plays a song that fits the moment everytime. The camera focus in what’s relevant to make it more dramatic. It’s all about drama. It saturates of color when there’s a strong feeling within, and I don’t see it because you see… I’m in it.

Even when one looks in the past, the image is as saturated as you want it to be. The time I told my mother the truth can look shiny and clear once every since… Of course it’s a lie. It wasn’t shiny because I coudn’t see well. It was distornioated, unfocused. There was no music that day, silence made it more shocking to the audience. The lips of us moved a couple of times but you couldn’t hear anything. How else do you place a vicious atmosphere in a flick. The camera focused in her most of the time as she cried out her deception. It only shot me once while I look down and said the words.

I don’t regret though. I can feel something will eventually change. I believe in it. That’s why I keep rolling the camera.

As I carry with that scene one year later, the movie keeps playing in the same scale of gray… sometimes it gets a little blue. I’d love to ask the writers for a new direction. What if we achieve drama trough romance? It’d be lovely to see some brighter colors around.

I guess… in those rough times one could only hope to be de director of its own film. I’ll tell you later how the movie goes on.

How to shut your mind up (2)

“am I one or two? If I cannot live with myself, there must be two of me: the ‘I’ and the ‘self’ that ‘I’ cannot live with” – Eckhart Tolle

This dissertation is because of Tolle. He made me think. I woke up today, went to the bathroom and got into the shower. Something weird happen. Before I hit the water, I was… I don’t know, a little asleep I guess. I don’t remember what I was thinking, I do remember however to have stopped.

I have never been most amazed. It shocked me. The quiet, the peace of not thinking…. I just realize how noisy and annoying it was.

There’s one true thing about the mind: that over thinking of things distracts you from the present. The present is probably the only thing that you have. It’s, at least, everything that’s worth a try, for everything that happens, everything that you do occurs now. As the past was once and the future will be the present, one should look after it.

Tolle says the Ego, that “I” that is not exactly “me” is tied in past and future. It needs the past to remember who he is, why he is; and the future to look after survival. One should think it makes sense, but this guy (Tolle) assures it only makes sense because you think you are the ego. But you don’t need the ego, because it’s not you, it’s just who you are identified with.

Seems like every thought that this “ego” have is either focused on the past or the future. How many times do you actually think in the now? Not as much as you think in what’s have been or will be. Every thought you have (And think of how many things you think) can be attached to a feeling. An emotion. These emotions are either good, in a sense that it pleasures you, or bad as it makes you suffer. It seems however, that one is constantly being pulled into rushes of suffering and pleasure.

What brings joy or angry?

Every emotional pain that you have is being left behind in your mind.

It seems that you look for drama when you are too “good”. You look for happiness when you are “bad”. Can you ever decide?  Be comfortable? Be… just being you… what does it mean to just “to be”?

One judges, one define, one stereotype, one relates these constructs to reality.

Do you interfere with your perceived realty?

How to shut your mind up

Have you ever noticed how hard it is to stop that voice in your head? Not a crazy voice, just the voice of your mind. That whom you’re always talking to, in permanent dialogue. “I have to go to the bank – Why is that guy looking at me? – I’d like chicken for dinner… bla bla bla”. It’s no exhausting until you realise it is. I mean, you’re used to it, you think it’s normal, you think it’s ok and good. But not until you notice that that voice in your head is not really you.

I mean you can talk to it, and hear it, fight it and go with it but how can you do all those stuffs if that’s really you? Some call it “the ego”, I just call it my mind. It’s my mind but it’s not really me, because I am more than my mind. I am body and soul as well. And my mind cannot live without me, but I can, at some point, not to depend on her. Really, just try not to think!

You bearly do it for a moment, but then you couldn’t. Funny thing is that some people can. Through yoga, meditation, illumination or whatever! In fact you’ve probably done it. When you are so immersed into a game or a sport you’re not really hearing your mind. You are conscious and you’re thinking and reasoning but you’re not really hearing it, are you? That voice…

It’s annoying because once you try, you feel helpless because it’s so hard! So exhausting! And yet I want to shut it up! Because at some point, when you’re aware of the voice (your thoughts) and you know that you could stop it, you really want to stop at least those negative helpless thoughts. What’s good in thinking negative? What’s good on stressing yourself by your very own thoughts? I mean one thing is to be realistic but another one is to get worried and be preocuppied for things that are not worth it. Face it, most of the times it was futile to think about that thing and believe you could have not to and get the same results but actually better since you didn’t stress or anything.
That voice in my head is not me because I am aware of it. There’s me who talks in my head and myself who’s aware of it. Illumination would be good.

What the box is about or why am I fat?

My box is my very own paradigms. My goal is to understand them, to break them. Make no mistake, it’s not about bad or good paradigms, it’s about trying. Becasue sometimes you don’t try enough because of them. Sometimes you lose yourself in your deepest beliefs and thoughts.

My paradigm is my very own vision of the world, and it’s tied with my convictions and beliefs. For example I think being fat is bad for me, not because of my health but my vanity. Yet I’m fat because I’m lazy. How wrong is that? I think is terrible, and I admit it because I don’t want to think like that.

In a systems view, being fat is far away from being the problem. It’s just a sign… a symptom. Then there’s a cause… eating in excess and no exercising. But they’re not the problem! The problem is that my health and my psyche are compromised and at some level is bad for me (me being the system). But my paradigm, or archetype is my very sickness: the procrastination.

When I feel I’m overweight I do two thing wrong. I want to eat less, but my pressure to be fit makes me anxious and hungry,… so I eat more. And worst, Everytime I want to to exercise, I get lazy and don’t do it.

This blog is my weltanschauung. And my way to understand myself.