Change from the Bottom Up LO5193

Andrew Moreno (amoreno@broken.ranch.org)
Mon, 29 Jan 1996 00:35:26 -0800 (PST)

Replying to LO5174 --

On Sat, 27 Jan 1996, John Zavacki wrote:

> In the same way, I teach statistics to people with no college and very
> little formal training in math. They need to understand the concepts, not
> the derivations of the formulae or their relationships to insolubilia. Is
> this watered down?

Thank you for wanting to clarify my definition of "watered down." I made
this statement off the cuff because I'm not really sure myself about what
my definition of "watered down" is. I only know the bottom line - that I
can only go so far in discussing Argyris' or Bateson's or even Warfield's
work with other people.

If my hunches are correct, the work you see outlined in John Warfield's
books or the other ones I mentioned are probably at maximum 10% of what
the authors _could_ apply and do know.

Their readers can be lulled into a false sense of security thinking that
when they read these works, they will know the extent of the the author's
knowledge and abilities but that isn't the case. This easily applies to
Bateson or Argyris. I think it actually applies to any process oriented
discipline.

_____________

I think there is a limit to the extent that some people can apply certain
patterns across contexts. Your examples highlight shifts in abstraction -
this is the the same pattern that Stephen Wehrenberg wrote a message about
before on big picture to details orientation. You've given ONE set of
contexts that that pattern applies in - teaching statistics - but it could
easily apply to INFINITE contexts.

I think what I mean by "watered down" is that it's necessary to tailor
what patterns are presented according to predictions made beforehand on
how people apply would those patterns across multiple contexts based on
the roles they play, values, mental models, etc.

It's sort of a double bind because the ability to predict and highlight
those mental models is usually based on a set of patterns - so before a
person can predict other people's mental models, they'd have to be able to
get out of their own mental models but their own mental models limit their
ability to predict.

Andrew Moreno

--
Andrew Moreno <amoreno@broken.ranch.org>