http://www.celestialfamily.org Making our way back home Fri, 30 Jul 2010 11:00:28 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.2 en hourly 1 http://freephilosophicaldiscussions.blogspot.com/2010/02/puzzles.html http://freephilosophicaldiscussions.blogspot.com/2010/02/puzzles.html#comments Wed, 10 Feb 2010 21:53:00 +0000 Michael tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28750528.post-844975338267034544
It’s been a few years since I’ve done a jigsaw puzzle. But last month my youngest asked me to sit down with her and work on a small one that she got for Christmas.

This puzzle was of a horse wearing a Native American blanket. We went through all of the standard techniques for building a puzzle. First I propped up the box lid so we could see the picture that it was supposed to look like when it was finished. Then we proceeded to flip all of the pieces so that the picture side is up and the raw cardboard side was down. Next I started sorting out all of the pieces that had a flat side, assuming that these would be the border pieces. Ideally, in the process we’d find the four corner pieces. Then the two of us started sorting the pieces by color, trying to group the pieces into smaller groups to work on separately; horse, sky, grass, blanket, etc.

Next came the process of assembly. Each of us would pick up a piece and try to see how it fit into other sections that we’d already assembled. I started by looking at the picture and trying to establish the border. I don’t always start with the border but it seemed to work for this puzzle. Sometimes it’s easier to start with a predominant color and try to get it together first and then work in the border later. I don’t really have a preference as to which method I choose. It just depends on the puzzle.

Eventually you’ll end up with a few sections assembled but not linked together. At this point you start looking for pieces that have a little bit of two different things on it, pieces that could conceivably go into more than one pile. The pieces with a little grass and a little bit of horse help tie those together and the pieces with the grass and sky help defiant he horizon. The “ah ha” moments of most puzzles come when you can link two large parts together with just a few small pieces or sometimes with just one. The best pieces are the ones that help tie three different chunks together. Once you’ve linked them you start looking for support pieces that also connect those chucks. Those help reinforce that your linking pieces are correct. Sometimes they disconfirm and force you to look for new ways to link the puzzle together.

At some point it seems you are always stuck with a bunch of pieces of relatively the same color and your only clue as to how they need to be assembled is to look at the shape of the pieces themselves and try to make them work.

Using these methods we were able to assemble this 200 piece puzzle in about 15 or 20 minutes. It struck me that in order to assemble it we had to make several assumptions about the puzzle.

1. The picture on the puzzle is the same as the picture on the box. I’ve put puzzles together without the box just to see how much longer it would take. If I had to guess it’d take at least twice as long. I’ve also participated in a team building exercise where the puzzle was put into the wrong box with a similar but just different enough image n the outside.

2. The pieces only have images on one side and raw cardboard on the other. I have actually done a puzzle that had images on both sides, but the stamping process made for edges that were easy to determine which side of the piece was for image one and which was for image two.

3. Flat edges are for the border. It’d be really sneaky to see a puzzle that had a jagged edge to the image and flat pieces that but up together inside the body of the puzzle.

4. The completed puzzle has no missing pieces in the body. We’ve all been in the situation where we’ve lost one piece and we just don’t feel like we’ve finished it.

5. All of the pieces have to be used. Want to really throw your head for a loop? Throw in a few pieces from another puzzle just to spice things up. I remember doing a puzzle and my grandmother’s house and having exactly that problem. She’d found a few pieces on the floor and just threw them into the first box she found.

I can think of several more assumptions that we make when we try to make sense of the scrambled pieces in front of us. But this will do to start out with.

Lately I've been working on a puzzle that seems to violate all of these assumptions.
No picture on the outside of the box. No raw side to the puzzle and no obvious way to tell one side from the other. Flat edges in the middle and bumpy edges on the edges. A few holes in the main body. A few extra pieces from other puzzles.
And the coup de gras of the whole puzzle is that I have a few large chunks of the puzzle that don’t even attach to each other.

Anyway, that’s my little analogy for today. I think I stopped talking about jigsaw puzzles a few paragraphs ago.

]]> http://freephilosophicaldiscussions.blogspot.com/feeds/844975338267034544/comments/default 0 http://freephilosophicaldiscussions.blogspot.com/2010/01/for.html http://freephilosophicaldiscussions.blogspot.com/2010/01/for.html#comments Tue, 26 Jan 2010 18:09:00 +0000 Michael tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28750528.post-6633014792103461679 Point of Inquiry. DJ Grothe has great guests and he does a great job of showing multiple different approaches to rational thinking. So it was with mixed emotions that I heard the news that DJ would now be President of the James Randi Education Foundation. I suspected that this would mean fewer episodes of Point of Inquiry.
Well I was pleasantly surprised to see DJ is hosting a new podcast for the JREF called For Good Reason. Check it out. I just finished listening to it and I enjoyed it. This episode had an interview with James Randi about the future of his organization as well as some information about some scams that have hit the news lately. I don’t know if DJ will be able to continue to be able to host both podcasts but I look forward to future episodes.
One small disappointment: In the intro to the podcast there is a segment by Jamie Ian Swiss. It’s brilliant but has a few not safe for work words. I loved the podcast but would have loved it more if I could have been able to recommend to my kids and family members without having to give this caveat. I think many podcasts in this genre disqualify themselves from a large audience, school children, by not exercising a little restraint when it comes to their language.

]]> http://freephilosophicaldiscussions.blogspot.com/feeds/6633014792103461679/comments/default 0 http://freephilosophicaldiscussions.blogspot.com/2009/08/rational-quote-of-day.html http://freephilosophicaldiscussions.blogspot.com/2009/08/rational-quote-of-day.html#comments Fri, 28 Aug 2009 12:22:00 +0000 Michael tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28750528.post-4522126790353368828 "To find real answers we need to understand the real problems, not sensationalized caricatures of the problems spread on the internet."
Brian Dunning

Brian was specifcally speaking about the internet myth that there is a large island of floating trash in the middle of the Pacific. However I find this advice applies to just about any issue lately. Obama's death panels, global climate change, torture, etc. etc.

]]> http://www.celestialfamily.org/rational-quote-of-the-day/feed 0 http://freephilosophicaldiscussions.blogspot.com/2009/08/more-on-confirmation-bias.html http://freephilosophicaldiscussions.blogspot.com/2009/08/more-on-confirmation-bias.html#comments Thu, 27 Aug 2009 22:00:00 +0000 Michael tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28750528.post-8822273375329721720
Tuesday I had something to do after work and I didn’t want to show up in my AT&T uniform so I wore a nicer shirt and some different shoes. As I walked to the scale I realized that the results may not be accurate. I didn’t know if my outfit was heavier or lighter than what I usually wear. Just before I stepped on the scale I recognized that I was about to fall victim to my own confirmation bias. If the scale had read a little lighter than the day before I was ready to accept that as evidence of my diet and exercise was working. However, I was also fully ready to accept that if I was a little heavier that it was not my fault, it’s the differences in my wardrobe. As soon as I realized this I refused to step on the scale.

I bring this up again because lately I’ve seen far too many examples of people accepting information that supports their opinions and then wholesale rejecting any evidence that goes against it. Comments on blogs that accuse the blogger of a political bias while ignoring posts on the same blog that are highly critical of the same party. Family members who accept that a quack treatment works based on one example while ignoring the multiple times the same treatment did not make them feel better. Church friends using archaeological evidence to support their belief in the Book of Mormon but refusing to even read counter evidence.

It’s natural to cling to what makes us comfortable. Unfortunately it may not be the best thing to do. You’re not going to get accurate results if you can’t accept all of the evidence. If that’s the attitude that you have when you approach an issue just do as I did. Don’t even step on the scale. Same holds true on any other issue. Be aware of your biases and do your best to make sure they don’t influence your decisions.

]]> http://www.celestialfamily.org/more-on-confirmation-bias/feed 0 http://freephilosophicaldiscussions.blogspot.com/2009/06/miller-gets-it-rgiht-again.html http://freephilosophicaldiscussions.blogspot.com/2009/06/miller-gets-it-rgiht-again.html#comments Thu, 11 Jun 2009 11:45:00 +0000 Michael tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28750528.post-3985723678141938698

]]> http://www.celestialfamily.org/miller-gets-it-right-again/feed 0 http://freephilosophicaldiscussions.blogspot.com/2009/05/more-on-internal-consistency.html http://freephilosophicaldiscussions.blogspot.com/2009/05/more-on-internal-consistency.html#comments Mon, 04 May 2009 16:41:00 +0000 Michael tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28750528.post-5530258394933279568
I had a similar internal consistency issue with a lesson that we had in church last week. All the adults and youth over 12 were called together for a special meeting to discuss internet pornography. I have some issues with the format that was used but none the less I admit it’s an issue that needs to be discussed. Most of the presentation was in the form of an audio file over a PowerPoint presentation. Both were a companion file to a book. The author of the book gives several statistics and then goes into the neuroscience of why teenagers are more prone to have negative effects from pornography. He makes the claim that there are fewer connections in teenage brain between the logical section and the emotional section. Without these connections it’s harder for teenagers to gauge risk and to respond logically to situations. Using neuroscience he very effectively showed how teenage brains can be more adversely affected by pornography than more mature brains.

Up until now his argument has been consistent and rather well thought out. However later on in the presentation he cautions adults from viewing this material too. For the record I don’t condone it either, but this is where his logic goes south and become internally inconsistent. He asked the rhetorically questions, “Why do you think you are any stronger than those teenagers? Do you think your brain is better equipped to handle those images?” To answer his question, I don’t think that. But he does. He effectively explained an hour earlier how a teenage brain is more fragile. By also explaining how the connections between the logic centers and emotional centers are more developed in an adult he made a strong case against his own point that adults should stay away from these images too. He should have just left off the rhetorical challenge and his arguments would have been much stronger. I wish he had gone with a “lead by example” analogy rather than defeat the initial point. I think that this author just knew his audience and felt that most would take any argument against pornography as valid and was counting on them not connecting the dots to see if the arguments were consistent. For the most part I’m sure that is exactly what happened. But he’d have gained more points with at least one audience member if his arguments had all been internally consistent.

Note:

As always when I criticize someone’s logic I run the risk of coming across as a supporter of what they were arguing against. Nothing in this post should be construed as condoning the viewing of pornography in any form by adults or teenagers.

]]> http://www.celestialfamily.org/more-on-internal-consistency/feed 0 http://freephilosophicaldiscussions.blogspot.com/2009/03/why-we-make-mistakes.html http://freephilosophicaldiscussions.blogspot.com/2009/03/why-we-make-mistakes.html#comments Fri, 27 Mar 2009 17:33:00 +0000 Michael tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28750528.post-526719656619565143 For years I've been fascinated with the concept of human decision making. I've enjoyed reading books that explore this concept. I'm also intrigued about the strategies that people use to justify their mistakes and the cognitive dissonance required to make your actual decisions jive with what you know is right.
Why We Make Mistakes: How We Look Without Seeing, Forget Things in Seconds, and Are All Pretty Sure We Are Way Above Average by Joseph Hallinan is my latest read on this subject. In the opening chapter of the book Hallinan describes a commercial airliner simply flying into the ground because they got too hung up on a small light that was burned out ans ignored the fact that the plane was slowly loosing altitude. I felt that this one simple metaphor described the rest of the book. We do lose focus of the things that are truly important. And all too frequently our focus was shifted by relatively trivial details.
Hallinan skillfully points out how uncommon common sense really is. But rather than just blame the decision maker he talks about how we can put ourselves into positions that will help to make better decisions. sometimes it takes a design difference so that, for instance, clockwise is off on all the knobs. Things like always putting the hot on the left and the cold on the right, etc. Sure it sounds like a simple design issue but he gave some frightening mortality statistic from an anesthesia machine that was clockwise for off on on drug and counter-clockwise for another.
Hallinan compared the airline industry to operating room. In the past few decades accident rates in the airline industry have dramatically dropped and there has been an increase in the operating rooms. Hallinan points to the main cause of this as the changes that have been made to the authority system in on and not in the other.
In the airline industry anybody the cockpit is virtually free of authority struggles. Many decisions are not based on rank or position. A 20 year old air traffic controller tells the pilot where to land and the pilot obeys and doesn't pretend that he knows better just because she's been doing flying since the controller was a kid. In the cockpit as well the co-pilot and even attendants are valuable resources and their input is encouraged.
Conversely, this authority system seems to be trending the other direction in the operating room. Doctors all too frequently are seen as unquestionable. Even in situations where nurses have spoken up to prevent the error Hallinan sights instances of flipped x-rays and the wrong limb being removed.
A few years ago my youngest daughter had to have a tooth pulled. We went to see the specialist with the x-ray from our dentist. She'd taken a fall on the driveway and one of her teeth was a starting to go gray. The x-ray seemed to confirm that the root on the graying tooth was dying. When we went to get her tooth pulled the nurse questioned the x-rays. She thought we we looking at it backwards. The dentist did not question her and called to have another x-ray taken just to be sure. She was absolutely right. In spite of the fact that one tooth was starting to turn gray it was the tooth on the other side that had the dead root. The dentist went ahead and pulled the dying tooth and the gray tooth eventually regained its color. Had that nurse not spoken up and, more importantly, had the dentist not accepted her advice Eve would have had to go back and have the correct tooth pulled later and they'd have had a very upset father on their hands. I'm very grateful to have had a dentist who was willing to admit that he could make mistakes and ultimate prevent them.
I enjoyed this book and would recommend it to anybody who is aware that they can make mistakes. I also think it should be force feed to anybody who thinks that they can't.

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