Dr. Joseph James Geertz came to my attention a long time ago. I didn't notice until recently that he'd posted comments on TheFutureOf blog and yes, I know I need to get back there and finish what I started. Recently Dr. Geertz and I have been corresponding about my work and the various writings I and NextStage have published. He took particular delight in my exchange with Christopher Berry (see links below) and I asked his permission to reference one such exchange in this post.
He agreed, and my thanks to him for doing so. Here are his thoughts on my attempts at humor ala Responding to Christopher Berry's "A Vexing Problem, Part 4" Post, Part 1...
The alt/titles were sillier than the article, self-heckling to a degree, but something tells me I could have tossed 8-10 images at you and you could have incorporated each of them into the article similarly. The article really didn't have a reference to an ape, a cat, Einstein, a temporal cue related to the time of the four men in hats photo, etc. If people don't find the eggs, they'll be confused and distracted (I don't mean for this to be a harsh criticism, it is a blog and you should have fun with it). The first 3-4 images worked, then the photos rambled off topic more than the images. Also, the last image looks badly scanned and, since it is related to your product offering, I'd revise it to be crisp and clear.Note first that The Good Dr. Geertz saw Einstein. Second, how many folks noticed the alt/titles to the images in the post? Dr. Geertz went on to write
I think most people will find it quite lucid. I kept waiting, as I was reading, for the next sentence to be some over-the-top humor. But I would bet this post used smaller words than those you generally prefer.
It read as a fairly smooth rant against those who will not appreciate the thoughtfulness of your science.
This surprised me greatly. I don't think of myself as someone who "rants" and have written as much in Thoughts on Blogging. I asked Dr. Geertz to explain.
It started with the human mind isn't constructed to appreciate science, preferring anecdotal evidence. Then it moved to companies don't care about the data of their R&D, just the results. Then it was the RWB that exemplified not appreciating data with a cat shooting Mr. RWB. Then you moved to why company A is going down the tubes for imitating company B over careful consideration of its own position (preferring anecdotal information and references to science). Anecdotal thinking is irrational and illogical. Finally, anecdotal thinkers get fooled by magicians and hustlers.
I explained that I was pretty much paraphrasing (more like synthesizing) various things I'd read in a number of science journals, explaining that most often anecdotal thinking is irrational and illogical.
Fortunately for most of humankind's history we maintained our status in relatively small social groups so anecdotal thinking was acceptable. The larger the social frame the less acceptable its lack of logic and rationality becomes.
This, by the way, is a problem with social media; the social frame is too large for anecdotal thinking to be the mainstay yet that's the wiring that's being used. Not a good combination.
Dr. Geertz did agree that my position had lots of support in the literature. We then got to wondering why anecdotal thinking is so de reguerre in so many circles and came up with these examples.
"I had a great time at (some restaurant). Let's go again" is anecdotal thinking. One event doesn't make a scientific argument (unless you're counting inductive reasoning as the argument).
Scientific thinking would be "Every time we've gone to (some restaurant) the food has been excellent and the service wonderful. Therefore historically the food has been excellent and the service wonderful. Statistically there's a better than even chance that the food will be excellent and the service wonderful if we go again."
This is really not what one wants to hear when one asks "Where do you want to go for dinner?"
Most people want to hear (and will respond more favorably to) an anecdotal response such as "I've always had good luck at (some restaurant). Let's go there."
It was about here that I realized that blogs really aren't designed for this kind of exchange of thoughts and ideas. These types of conversation require a kind of intellectual intimacy amongst participants to be truly viable cognitively. As Dr. Geertz had stated earlier that he thought the post used smaller words than I was use to I asked "Enough big words there, bucko?" and he replied
That was fabulous.
Please contact NextStage for information regarding presentations and trainings on this and other topics.
Links for this post:
- Canadian Based Business Differences -- Responding to June Li, Christopher Berry and Jacques Warren
- Responding to Christopher Berry's Vexing Problem, Part 3 post
- The Language of Web Analytics - The Hard(er) Sell in Canada
- Responding to Christopher Berry's "A Vexing Problem, Part 4" Post, Part 1
- Responding to Christopher Berry's "A Vexing Problem, Part 4" Post, Part 2
- Communicating Science to Business and Vice Versa
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