Tuesday, November 29, 2022
5:45 a.m. Guys, I find a request for comment that I don’t remember putting to you. It actually goes back to August 10, an email from Laura Francis to the Voyagers Mailing List. I was gong to summarize it, but I see you want me to quote it in full.
August 10, 2022, 10:07 a.m.
[Vml on behalf of Laura Francis]
Insanity? Or just ignorance?
Hello folks,
I’ve been thinking about something lately that I thought I would share.
I keep hearing the popular saying, “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.” I have trouble with this saying, because things are always changing. If you are doing the same thing over and over, each repetition would be happening in a (maybe only slightly) different environment – it’s a different time, certainly, but also many other changing factors align differently every time. At some point those factors could align to give you a different result, which is why, I think, people might do the same thing over and over again in an effort to produce a particular result.
One way this seems to manifest in my work is when project managers ask me for a deliverable. My process takes, let’s say, 8 steps, and step 8 is the deliverable. I can’t produce that deliverable until steps 1-7 are done. I know the due date of the deliverable and work backwards to plan my work accordingly. If the project manager asks for the deliverable when I’m on step 1 or 5 or 7, they won’t get it because I won’t have it until step 8. But they are looking at the project from a different perspective and they ask for the deliverable, over and over, and keep getting the same result: “Nope, it’s not ready yet”. But then one day they ask for it and they get it, because I’ve finished my process by then. It seems to me that their repeatedly asking me for something and not getting it is not insanity, but mostly just ignorance of my process (and yes, I do try to educate them about my process and provide progress reports along the way).
Wouldn’t that often be the case in anything? There could be underlying processes that we’re not aware of, the state of which could affect our results with the very same actions that repeatedly produced different results before. Or there may not. Maybe that action will never produce different results. But we don’t necessarily know.
Now, I’m all for learning at any opportunity, and the more we can understand those hidden underlying processes, the more we can tailor our actions (and our expectations) to produce appropriate results at the appropriate time. But ignorance of those underlying processes, and a habit of just trying again to see if we can get it to work this time, doesn’t equate to insanity, in my opinion.
Some of the same people who like to quote this saying also like to talk about perseverance and the story of the crew drilling for some precious commodity (I can’t remember if it was oil, gold, diamonds, or what) and finally gave up after expending a lot of time, money, and energy and finding nothing. Later it was found that where they stopped was just 3 feet from what they were seeking. This story is usually used to encourage continued or repeated effort and to me, completely contradicts the first saying. The desired result could be hidden and may require repeated tries or continued effort with no results in order to finally unearth it. Or it may not be there at all and your repeated efforts really are wasted. But even if your efforts ultimately don’t produce the desired result, it is not an example of insanity, just ignorance.
The hidden treasure or underlying process we are ignorant of may be occurring other than in 3D (in case you were wondering how this relates to VML), in which case I would not expect the majority of people to necessarily be aware of it. So, a perfectly natural ignorance, in my opinion, not insanity.
Maybe The Guys would have something to say about this?
Laura
[TGU] We had you quote it because this is an example of good thinking that may put together for people things they hadn’t thought to connect. Laura
- noted the saying (two sayings, in fact),
- thought about their application using her life experience as example,
- changed viewpoint as she considered the example (that is, she considered how it appeared to others, not only to herself), then
- generalized – applied the 3D example to circumstances not necessarily confined to 3D.
She is quite right: Circumstances alter cases, and everybody knows it in principle, but everybody tends to forget it, in practice.
We have often cited the saying that no one can step twice into the same river. This is for two reasons: The river is never the same, and nor is the person. That being so, the premise of the definition of insanity falls to the ground. There is no insanity involved in different people trying the same technique on a moving target. But of course no saying becomes a saying without encompassing a grain of truth, and your life experience will remind you that – in the sense the saying means – repetitive action may in fact be a form of futility, if not necessarily insanity.
Oh, I hear the implied difference. Doing the same thing consciously may or may not work out, and may or may not be reasonable (it may be just stubbornness, say), but doing the same thing again and again because you are unconscious is, in fact, close to insanity. It is to be functioning from a place other than the here/now, and it is to be unable to change anything because you are acting out of unconscious compulsion.
What you say is true enough, only be a little chary of throwing around that word “insanity.” It is a word often used merely to mean “Something I don’t understand that somehow frightens me a little.”
Yes, I see that.
This is enough for the moment. Laura Francis did your work and our work for us, you see!
😊 Very efficient of me to find that paper, I’d say, if it hadn’t been lost for three and a half months. But better late than never.
Do you suppose the timing today is – What do you call it? – accidental?
Very funny. “Insanity” as a theme?
Perhaps “Revisiting the river.”
I’ll see when I transcribe. Thanks for this.