Perhaps I can just offer that, an awful lot of mediocre people are very happy and secure relying on the approved system and not only wouldn’t think they required feedback but would actively avoid it in case they had to alter and modify their workings.
Indeed, it's a big problem! I wish we could normalize feedback more from an earlier age. I have a lovely ritual with my son every night in which we give each other feedback. Even when there's nothing much to talk about, it's just a nice time, and on the occasions when there is something critical to be said, there's already a natural place to say it!
And now I have existential angst, because almost NONE of my Introductory Psychology students in two large lecture courses each semester ever come in to review their tests and identify what they don't know. I guess they are just being "wicked" to themselves... Sigh...
Mark, this is an interesting and important point. Years ago I interviewed (several times) a Dutch researcher named Marije Elferink-Gemser, who studied "self-regulated learning." (Basically reflecting on your own learning and taking responsibility for your own learning.) She was studying both athletes and students, and a common thread was that those who improved the most were hungry not just for feedback, but for quick feedback. So she said that for the really motivated self-regulatory learners, taking a test and then getting the results back two weeks later wasn't so great. She advocated making attempts to provide immediate feedback at least some of the time. It made me think that sometimes tests should actually be in class going over answers in real time. I wonder if this is part of the reason that Eric Mazur's work on peer instruction with clickers that provide some instant feedback has looked so good in studies (and in practice, I think). All that said, I think you may be getting at something much deeper, which is whether students are actually trying really hard to learn, rather than just to do well on the test. Those aren't mutually exclusive, but they aren't the same either. If they knew that they would learn a lot more by critically reviewing those tests, do you think many would do it?
Thanks, David, for your reply. Some thoughts... By means of using a tool called Gradescope, I'm actually able to post scores on the same day that students take the test. Alas, probably 10-12 students out of more than 700 ever come in to office hours to review their tests with me. So, quick feedback is supplied, but there seems to be little demand for it, for whatever reason. Students in my course also get immediate feedback via in-class iClicker questions (modeled on real test questions), as well as via adaptive quizzing functionality in a product from Macmillan Publishers known as LearningCurve. Those quizzes generate a study plan that specifies areas of strengths and weaknesses in a give chapter. Thus, there is LOTS of opportunity for immediate, timely feedback for my students.
I think your comment about "actually trying to learn" vs "just do well on the test" hits the nail on the head. I offer SO many opportunities to students to get feedback and guidance and depressingly few of them ever take advantage of those opportunities. I suspect that it's a function of numerous variables, including the fact that most of my students are freshmen (or first-year students, so I don't get myself in trouble), many students in college today take a VERY transactional approach to their studies (i.e., they are here to purchase, over time, a college degree that they will then exchange for a higher-paying job), and, sadly, many people are just really not that curious about the world around them.
I am glad that there are people like you who are bright, curious, and generous, so that the intellectually engaged in the world have somewhere to go to get their fill. Thanks for what you do!
Dang, this is a great comment. I love the comments section here. I get that about freshmen (er, first-years). That was the year when I started becoming a determined learner, and only then with thanks to an upperclassman (track team training partner) who challenged me intellectually, and a professor who did the same. They really helped, but I honestly have a hard time understanding what exactly kick-started this transition for me from not caring at all if I retained information after a test to be so voraciously curious that I'm constantly annoyed by how much stuff I'll never be able to learn. I think it's still accelerating, in any case. (A few years ago I got to do a Q&A with that professor: https://www.college.columbia.edu/cct/issue/spring20/article/%E2%80%9Crange%E2%80%9D-and-higher-education) ...Regarding the transactional approach, for a year early in my career I was a higher ed reporter, and I remember a lot of signs that this was gathering steam. I wonder how much of it is similar to what we see with any organization that is always under the gun for next-quarter numbers, and unable to think long-term. With the rising price of college, I can understand the focus on short-term ROI for many students. I don't think it's a good thing for those students in the long-term, nor for society, but I wonder if that's an important driver. I really don't know, but I'm hoping college at some point becomes a lifetime subscription model, because I would love to take a bunch of intro courses! I wonder if there's some truth to the idea that college is wasted on the young. I don't actually believe that at all, but I also think I could make even better use of it in many ways now. Do you think it would make any difference if more people worked a bit between high school and college? My brother worked for a while between college and law school, and unlike a lot of students who sort of sleepwalk into law school because they aren't sure what to do, I think his work experience made him really motivated to learn about the law, and he worked his tail off when he got there. Not sure if I've said a single coherent thing here, but I like to think out loud in this space, and you obviously left a generative comment!
Great article on the importance of having a feedback loop available. However, while feedback can improve results in a wicked learning environment, might it provide misleading results? One of the basis of a wicked learning environment is that results are often misleading due to changing rules, complex relationships, high randomness, etc. Therefore, I think one of the key aspects would be to include a section to discuss why the results are inconsistent over time.
Absolutely! In some of his work Hogarth actually looked at instances where success will reinforce exactly the wrong lesson. (One famous case he mentioned involved a physician who was famous for accurately diagnosing patients before they showed typhoid symptoms, but it turned out that's because the physician was accidentally giving them typhoid during examination.) I think the troubling side is that even the best system will be imperfect in a truly wicked learning environment. The optimistic part of me says: well, then even doing slightly better than relying entirely on pure intuition will get some benefit.
Im reading your book Range these days and it inspired me to start writing about what I care about most (in my work life) here; to rethink how we can become better in the housing industry - it’s really a very wicked industry with low or no repeation and I think we can learn so much from inviting non-industry people into the improvement discussion. So thank you David. If you want to check out my latest post, it’s here and you are mentioned :) Cheers, Torstein 🫡 https://open.substack.com/pub/theindustrymachine/p/diagnostic-report-02-why-cant-the?r=5hj0wj&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=false
Torstein, I love it when people take ideas I'm interested in an apply them to areas I'm less familiar with. It's great learning for me! I really appreciated this post, and it reminded me a lot of some of the research I was doing on NASA for Range. NASA had two major disasters, and they were both so culturally similar that the agency was deemed "not a learning organization." That led to the creation of a "chief knowledge officer" position whose role was to ensure that lessons from failure did not just disappear into the ether. Maybe we need more of those people in other industries.
Thanks, David, that means a lot coming from you. The NASA example is spot on. We face our own "shuttle disasters" all the time, not as dramatic, but costly, repeated and quietly accepted. The idea of a Knowledge Officer really resonates, and we need a profession or system that actively gathers, connects and applies learning across our fragmented industry and ecosystem. I will take note of your concept and include it later when I'm planning to propose changes and recommendations. I think that "just" fixing the learning problem in the construction and housing industry is a huge challenge, one of many we have, but there is not much research on the cause and effect of it. Thanks again for the inspiration and for modelling the curiosity that crosses domains. Cheers from Perth, Torstein 🫡
As I clinical psychologist, I read your post with lots of personal skin in the game. And I have so many thoughts about the whole complex issue that you addressed. First, a personal reaction. - When I first entered the field, I did bring an intensity and excitement and energy to my work which probably was energizing to my clients at the time. I also had much supervision and consultation which gave feedback that was honest and sometimes difficult.
But, all through my career there has been a reality check - clients either stay and do the work or they leave. If you're not getting to the heart of what they came in to work on, they don't stay. And you do know if things are getting better or not - anxiety calms, sleep improves, relationships develop, change happens sometimes subtly, insights emerge, responsibility for self increases, and I could go on - but the point is that there is lots of feedback both positive and negative.
So I don't see doing therapy as a not getting feedback situation. There is way more feedback than not - both positive and negative- but you're right about not learning from it. I also think that being a therapist involves learning about yourself and your blocks to the feedback loop. I've always enjoyed the work mostly because of that intersection, however complicated and difficult. .
Margit, thanks so much for this comment! Especially since I'm treading on turf here I don't really understand, so I'm eager to hear thoughts like this. I'd be interested to hear you elaborate a bit on learning about "blocks to the feedback loop." Also, that idea of being a therapist involving learning yourself, do you think that's a typical orientation for therapists?
Very glad to elaborate a bit on the thread, but I'm also happy to talk via other avenues if you'd like. My style and training in psychotherapy is psychodynamic. It involves looking at conscious and unconscious processes which inform our actiona and reactions particularly in relationships (work, intimate, parenting, friendships etc.)
This style of therapy is particularly interested in what gets reenacted over and over again in terms of expectations and triggers - usually early or later traumatic experiences, unrealistic expectations, - the list is long. Therapists also have their own triggers and misperceptions based on their own past experiences. This can obviously interfere with their perspective and relationship with their clients. Many psychodynamic therapists have done a lot of work on themselves in their own therapies and also get consultation especially with difficult situations - I have found it very helpful to be open to what's being presented - be it positive or negative feedback. A quick anecdote - I had really blown a situation - I was seeing a child and her mother yanked her our of treatment for good reason which I won't go into here, but I was clueless about. My consultant helped me understand what I hadn't done and then she said "THAT'S WHY WE CALL IT A PRACTICE". That normalized the learning for me, and I was able to realize that I had too much skin in the game which sort of blinded me to an obvious situation. I do know that many of the therapists I know operate In this way, but we're from old school training and methodology which has worked well, but does take longer than some of the newer theoretical frameworks. I can only talk to your question from this perspective.
Wow this is great, thanks for sharing. I would be interested to hear more offline, but just to clarify: I often encourage people to leave thoughts here because I know there is a small-but-dedicated subset of subscribers who read a lot of the comments. So I'm curious for my own edification, but also see it as part of my role here to encourage quality comments like this so others can read them too.
I'm also curious as to how it works in other fields - especially teaching and health care. There is lots of feedback to be had, but also lots of blocks to feedback internally. I don't think that it's so much a "Wicked learning environment" as much as it is sometimes folks don't want to hear "wicked feedback" for many good and not so good reasons.
My instinctive thought is that, yes, there's a ton of feedback if you're willing to pay attention to it: clients stay or they don't, they improve or they don't, etc. But the complex nature of therapy means that those outcomes are what they are for a hundred different reasons, so it's very easy for the clinician to fall pray to the fundamental attribution error (successes are on me, failures are on them).
And sometimes it really IS that the client just isn't that engaged or has other stuff going on or whatever else! We see the results, but the causes that led to those results can be pretty tricky to sort out. This is a major contribution to the wickedness of the environment (that I wish I'd emphasized a bit more): even if you're very open to feedback and have a system for learning from it, it's a bit difficult to work out the lessons you should be learning.
I also wonder about the differences in this regard between long-term private practice work and the 8-10 week CBT-heavy courses that are typically studied.
Hey David 👋 loved this quote near the end, such a lovely way to distil a lot of wisdom into a short sentence. I really need to start putting this stuff into practice! "We learn who we are in practice not in theory" unfortunately I do most of my self learning in theory! But one little rabbit hole comes to mind from this quote, we often hear people in sports and in life speaking about how we should focus on the process and performance rather than the outcome (which I agree with to an extent as luck is often overlooked in outcomes) but is there any subtle method for factoring in luck/variance when evaluating one's own process in order to take the 'right' lessons? For example if we do everything right and the result doesn't end up as we hoped for, how do we know when to retain the good things we did instead of changing course due to an outcome? You've helped me push 'The Myth of Experience' up my to read list! Apologies, probably an overcomplicated question! Ps I'd love to hear a 'progress report' on your new book 📖?
William, always a pleasure to see you here. And first I want to share a general point I got from an online course I took with Oliver Burkeman (author of Four Thousand Weeks, which I love). Oliver talked about the terrible feeling of not being able to read everything you want and not even remembering that which you do read. The former is a good sign about one's curiosity, and in the latter case he noted that you should just trust that — even if you can't explicitly remember much — the reading changes your sensibility, and that's more important that being able to regurgitate the specific facts. I think he's right about that. And I feel the same way about experiments. He mentioned in the course that he was just going to toss out a bunch of things, and if one or two sounded right to you, give them a try, and ignore the rest. Anyway, point being I always suffer from feeling I haven't put enough into practice, but I guess I'm a bit more at peace with that lately. I do put some things I learn into practice, but I also keep a bookmarks folder on my browser where i put really interesting looking things that I know I'll never read. Somehow having bookmarked them allows my brain to move on, and if I really hunger for them, I trust I'll find them again. ....Anyway, your question is a devilish one! I don't mean to add to your reading pile here, but Michael Mauboussin wrote an interesting book called The Success Equation in which he characterizes the degree of luck and skill in various activities based on the rates of regression to the mean. But I actually think there's evidence that mixing both outcome and process accountability is the way to go. (There was some really interesting research on nurses I'm reminded of that showed you really don't want to abandon outcome accountability altogether.) I may have to mull this a bit more, but I certainly don't think there's a perfect answer. We can follow Hogarth's suggestion and try to experiment in a directed way and then evaluate, and I think that improves the likelihood of a true conclusion, but certainly doesn't guarantee it as life isn't a randomized trial. But that's what I like to do, set out an experiment prospectively, and also to mix both process and outcome accountability, and of course see what I can learn from the experiences of others. But I think you're asking after one of the really fundamental challenges of being alive here, and the only things I can muster are approaches for tipping the scales a little bit toward improvement. With all that said, I think just about everyone undervalues luck...and unfortunately, I recall a study about how people like a speaker less if they attribute success to luck, as demonstrated in an experiment that altered the wording of a MIchael Lewis graduation speech. Now I'm curious to find that to see if I'm remembering it correctly! I may report back...
Wow great memory! 👏 that is interesting and kinda crazy ha. Thanks so much for your considered reply here! I actually have 'The Success Equation' and had started it (and liked it but like I often do I've neglected it for a while) so I'll definitely move back to that to follow up. For what it's worth, from the outside it really seems that you are incredibly disciplined with study/reading/research and putting them all into practice in one way or another so I think it's just unconquerable limits of time that you struggle with! For me because sometimes it's just laziness or lack of ability to concentrate it does get me down at times but against that sometimes I just accept that I was happy to go to the gym/pool area and chill out even if I could be more productive. I definitely need to improve the balance and start implementing some more self experimentation though! I love how some familiar Range themes like this pop up here but in a new format or context. I actually read 4000 weeks and loved it too! And love this tidbit about sensitivities as its something you've mentioned before that resonated with me (plus can just make us feel better about forgetting stuff I guess). Ps any update on the new book project that you're working on? Thanks again and keep up the great work 🙌
Just to note, I don't finish most of the books I read, and not because I get bored, but because I think it's totally fine to get something from one and move to another as new questions dictate. I tremendously value many books I've only partly read. And sometimes I read the same part of a book three times and never the rest! And I suppose I probably do put things into a practice a bit more than most people, in part because I have this "book of small experiments" habit I've had for years now. I need to do a short post on that since I frequently mention it in comments. ... As far as the new book: I'm right now doing citations (fun at first, like a scrapbook of the entire project, less fun after a few chapters of it), and fact-checking. I hired a fact-checker (which only means that mistakes will be decreased, not eliminated), and I'm daily dreading getting messages from her because it's never to tell me I got something just right;) So I'm pouncing on those and making lots of small change, and going back and verifying things where there are questions. Even so, it looks like it won't be published until next spring. But I'm actually eager for a little break, so the long timeline is fine with me.
That's cool and also takes away the sunk cost idea of continuing to read even if you feel like you've gotten what you wanted or answered a particular question/itch. I'm actually amazed at how many good books are out there, I often think I couldn't really be interested in getting another book but then something new comes up through a podcast (I listen to Second Captains which is where I was introduced to your work actually!) or some other medium and the book sounds so well researched that I think I have to get it. But a part of me likes having a never ending supply of reading that I know I can some day enjoy if I choose ha.. re the book.. big congratulations 🎊 👏 that's huge! The book is pretty much written so.. wow.. I'm very excited for that, next Spring won't be long coming round! and I can totally understand that you'd feel like a break! I can only imagine the launching and interviews/promotions is really hard work and you're probably sick of thinking about it in a weird way so a break between completion and launch is probably ideal! Regardless, well done, best of luck with completing the citations and hopefully you don't get too many notifications from your fact checker 🤞 thanks as always for your considered replies to comments. It's a real bonus and greatly appreciated.
Hey man, love your writing. We’ve interacted a few times on here, mostly over a shared appreciation for perhaps modern society’s greatest epic novel and new myth, ONE PIECE, but I’m desperate to break into the journalism world and have no credentials beyond actually being an excellent writer haha can you send Bill Simmons an email and ask someone at The Ringer to interview me lmaoooo
otherwise, you do awesome work that is great because of its PRACTICALITY. A lot of people solely use science to investigate abstract theories that don’t help the general individual grow and understand themselves on a deeper level. Your writing obviously comes from your own desire to make sense of this thing we call a life and how it fits within this thing we call a society. so, thanks for being curious and for sharing your discoveries!
Hyellow! Indeed I enjoy our shared appreciation...Borges (who I'm obsessed with) would be so thrilled by this return of the "mythic method," I think. I actually haven't had contact with the Ringer folks for some years now, as I've drifted further and further from my life as a traditional journalist. I don't actually know the best way to catch on these days; for me, it was a series of unenviable jobs....Starting at midnight covering homicides for a tabloid; joining a startup that didn't have an office; moving on short notice to take a job as a temp fact-checker. Definitely not glamorous stuff, but great for learning, and also at least there was some clarity about how to pursue those things. I don't think there's much fact-checking anymore, save at a few magazines, and for books, so that route may not exist. Assuming you're thinking about sports journalism in general, I'll ask a friend who's more looped in what his advice would be for breaking in today.
"n a SASER device, a source (e.g., an electric field as a pump) produces sound waves (lattice vibrations, phonons) that travel through an active medium. In this active medium, a stimulated emission of phonons leads to amplification of the sound waves, resulting in a sound beam coming out of the device."
Isn't the heart an electric field as a pump? Doesn't it produce sound waves? Isn't the body, the blood, an active medium? MY GOD I WANT TO RESEARCH THIS NEW WAY OF LOOKING AT THE BODY HAHAHA i
Thank you so much for writing Range bro. You were part of my journey on this... and you're so correct. How people with knowledge of different subjects and curiosity, not bound by forced information silos because of early specialization, can make connections between disciplines and possibly come up with paradigm shifting discovery. Thank you , thank you, thank you
sorry, I’m doing more research now and this is crazy lol. So basically the body uses SASER (Sound amplification by stimulated emission of radiation) Read the AI overview from Google when prompted by “amplification of sound waves at extreme frequencies”
“Amplifying sound waves at extreme frequencies (like in the gigahertz range) is achieved through the Sound Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation (SASER) process, analogous to how lasers amplify light. A semiconductor nanostructure is used, where an electric current flowing through it interacts with the sound waves, causing amplification.
Elaboration:
SASER involves a semiconductor active medium where a sound wave stimulates electrons to transition between energy states, increasing the sound wave's intensity.
Interaction:
In this process, an electric current is passed through a semiconductor, and the sound waves interact with the current, leading to the amplification of the sound.
This method is particularly effective for amplifying sound waves at extremely high frequencies, like those in the gigahertz (GHz) range,
Such high-frequency sound waves can be used for applications like medical imaging with improved spatial resolution, enabling imaging of objects at the nanoscale.
the body is an instrument it seems lol like literally an instrument . I won’t get too woo woo but lololol puts a lot of things in perspective when you think of it that way… the body an instrument and the flow state the harmony we’re supposed to play when we cocreate with life in the present moment
I really appreciate you taking the time to read and respond.
I am trying to get into sports journalism, but really I just want a job where I can get paid to learn and to talk and to write haha.
I know you moved into science journalism, so actually it would be a WAY greater help if you know any neuroscientists who can validate my theory about the physiology of flow states, which I will share below....
THEORY ON THE PHYSIOLOGY OF FLOW STATES
Summary: Curious about flow states, while researching, I learned that advanced meditators (as defined in “The Science of Meditation”) show consistent gamma wave brain states and even amateurs can reach gamma wave synchronization from meditation.
Knowing that meditation slows your breath and heart rate, which typically align with your brain wave frequencies, this piqued my interest. Why would these people who have slower breath and heart rates, consistently show the fastest frequency of brain waves that science has measured? And now I have a theory about how this happens.
Because the brain waves are faster but breath rates and heart rates slower, there must be some specific alignment of the nervous system that allows for this phenomena. We know that brain waves are measured in frequencies, as are soundwaves. So if specific heart rates create specific energy levels in the body, these energy levels are the result of specific frequencies put off by the heart.
So there are certain heart rhythms which allow for flow states/gamma wave brain states, and these heart rhythms must recruit energy in order to do this, because the heartbeat’s frequency is much slower. Energy is recruited from elsewhere in the body and from outside the body.
Certain breathing rhythms create certain heart rhythms, and not only is energy recruited from inside the body, but from outside the body in the form of air. Air has an electrical charge and affects the energetic balance of the body. Flow states allow for optimal energy efficiency, so it makes sense the body makes use of what it has stored and what it intakes during respiration.
These specific, slower breath and heart rhythms use less energy to breathe and less energy to pump blood, yet in meditators, exhibit higher frequency waves in the brain (gamma). Thus, the state of flow has to be based on internal harmonies of energy in the body and there is a particular phenomenon observed in sound waves that explains this.
Remember, each heartBEAT creates a sound wave, as well as pumping blood through the body. Sound energy has physical properties and can be seen moving physical matter. So the sound wave the heart creates is part of what helps blood travel through the body.
Here is the energetic phenomena observed in sound waves that explains the physiology and biology of flow states
“The sound wave excites electrons traveling at a speed higher than the speed of sound to go from a state of high energy to a state of lower energy, thereby making the sound wave stronger. In order to obtain a net gain, it is necessary that there are more electrons in the state of high energy than in the lower energy.” from website article titled “amplification of sound waves at extreme frequencies”
doesn’t the nervous system and whole body send messages using electricity? Doesn’t electricity move faster than the speed of sound? Doesn’t relaxing mean eliminating unnecessary muscular tension and returning that energy back to the nervous system in the form of electrical potential? So the more you relax, as these meditators were doing, or had mastered over time, the more “electrons in the state of high energy than in the lower energy” we witness in the body, thus the greater chance of the soundwave created by your heartbeat being able to excite said electrons and you reach flow states or gamma wave brain states.
So can a heartbeat thus increase its strength by exciting electrons found in the the electrical signal of the nervous system, or the cells in general, in order to increase its strength. This amplifies the wave of blood propelled through the body with each heartbeat, therefore easing the heart’s energy expenditure without actually increasing the heart's physical fitness or strength through exercise?
When I think of how states of consciousness are based off energetic frequencies in the body, and how you could consider the spine a carbon resistor running an alternating current through it, I believe the harmonizing of the body’s frequencies is what allows for more efficient energy use, which means more accurate and powerful energy use, as well as more delicate and deft. Harmonizing the alternating currents the body exhibits when the mind is stressed is the process of relaxation, and it is the process of relaxation that harmonizes the body and mind and allows for slower, less energy using heart and breath rates, while also allowing for more energy to remain in the brain and nervous system, which means greater control over muscle fibers because energy is not wasted having to deal with the toxins of stress and the excess muscle tension stress creates. Stress uses energy inefficiently outside the acute activation of energy reserves. After the reserves are activated, you can use this energy better if your body relaxes. Probably why in a lot of life or death situations, people’s brain just turn off because if they were trying to consciously think of a solution, they wouldn’t be able to relax and would make decisions less likely to help them survive.
So basically flow states allow for the body to exhibit positive feedback loops which increase the body’s energy efficiency. And energy efficiency in the ancient human’s calorie deficient environment would have been the goal of natural selection/evolution.
Great essay. The quicker you can get feedback on one’s work, the better. Of course - Goodhart’s Law can make things tricky depending on the situation.
With regards to therapist feedback - I have long been a fan of Dr. David Burns’ work with CBT. He recommends having clients fill out a “Brief Mood Survey” before and after each session. That way the therapist has immediate feedback about how the client is feeling. Burns has a great podcast (“Feeling Good”) and he often jokes about how bad therapists are at guessing if they were actually effective in a session. So why not just ask the client?
Link to his brief mood survey as well as his post-session-survey.
I love this David, particularly as it relates to rate of feedback, which appears to be the defining variable between how we learn in kind vs wicked learning environments (I've written about this here, as it relates to lessons from sports and business: https://www.richardhughesjones.com/business-leadership-lessons-sport/)
As an executive coach I'm also fascinated by the therapist studies (which I've come across before through Scott Miller's work). Does anyone know if this work has been repeated for the coaching profession?
Great reading once again. I spent more time reading comments than the article, as there are so many great points made.
For myself. I am participating on a Patient and family advisory council for Stanford Hospital transplant clinic.
I am an active participant of the feedback loop that interacts with hospital staff to improve patient care and experience. This includes clinic procedures, education of medical procedures, and even website content.
In a constantly changing environment and world this is essential.
I now need to propagate this process review and feedback mechanism to my day job of software engineering.
Unsurprisingly, I already do this regularly as part of my running ,and training .
Hope your running is going well and you find time between family and work!
Unrelated, but I thought you might find David Graeber's "The Dawn of Everything" interesting, which claims that the Enlightenment has its roots in 17th century Native American critiques of European society. Its an interesting counterpoint to the studies of Uzbek villagers that you write about in Range.
David, thank you for yet another insightful post that, while seemingly straightforward, resonates with profound depth. Your discussion of "wicked learning environments" immediately struck a chord with my own experiences in navigating the vast landscape of reading and information assimilation. It often feels like operating in such an environment where immediate, clear feedback is scarce.
For a long time, one of the primary ways I sought feedback on my understanding and reflections was by commenting on posts. Initially, this felt surprisingly vulnerable, a fear of judgment lingering, especially in public forums. It took conscious effort to overcome this, guided by the realization that without external input, the information I consumed often remained undigested and lacked structure. I had to build my own feedback mechanism.
More recently, I've discovered a powerful new approach: engaging with large language models. After delving into a topic, I interact with a Gen AI, assigning it the role of a questioning partner to probe my comprehension and challenge my responses. This exercise leaves me with a significantly clearer grasp of the core concepts. To borrow your phrase, "When feedback isn't automatic, it should be built." For me, Gen AI has proven to be remarkably effective in transforming this wicked learning environment into something much kinder. This crucial cycle of hypothesis (understanding), testing (questioning), reflection, and revision that you describe is now a visible and concrete process, thanks to this approach.
Thank you again for shedding light on this crucial aspect of learning and improvement.
Thank you for another interesting and enlightening article, David. Like Professor Laumakis, I am an educator (English professor-turned-chancellor), and I don’t doubt that many students fail to take advantage of this learning method—but then neither do most of us. Even scientists, I suspect, do not apply the same experimental rigor to their personal lives. That would be a bit much, I suppose, but I think we all could benefit from adding some reflection to our personal and professional lives. Even a few minutes of debriefing a meeting or a conversation could go a long way, compared with running on autopilot.
Thank you!
Perhaps I can just offer that, an awful lot of mediocre people are very happy and secure relying on the approved system and not only wouldn’t think they required feedback but would actively avoid it in case they had to alter and modify their workings.
Indeed, it's a big problem! I wish we could normalize feedback more from an earlier age. I have a lovely ritual with my son every night in which we give each other feedback. Even when there's nothing much to talk about, it's just a nice time, and on the occasions when there is something critical to be said, there's already a natural place to say it!
(Liked).
Love the ritual with your son - how civilised!
I think too many folk are used to the top-down, one-way only system, which is seldom useful and usually a wasted opportunity.
Wishing you and your family well.
And now I have existential angst, because almost NONE of my Introductory Psychology students in two large lecture courses each semester ever come in to review their tests and identify what they don't know. I guess they are just being "wicked" to themselves... Sigh...
Mark, this is an interesting and important point. Years ago I interviewed (several times) a Dutch researcher named Marije Elferink-Gemser, who studied "self-regulated learning." (Basically reflecting on your own learning and taking responsibility for your own learning.) She was studying both athletes and students, and a common thread was that those who improved the most were hungry not just for feedback, but for quick feedback. So she said that for the really motivated self-regulatory learners, taking a test and then getting the results back two weeks later wasn't so great. She advocated making attempts to provide immediate feedback at least some of the time. It made me think that sometimes tests should actually be in class going over answers in real time. I wonder if this is part of the reason that Eric Mazur's work on peer instruction with clickers that provide some instant feedback has looked so good in studies (and in practice, I think). All that said, I think you may be getting at something much deeper, which is whether students are actually trying really hard to learn, rather than just to do well on the test. Those aren't mutually exclusive, but they aren't the same either. If they knew that they would learn a lot more by critically reviewing those tests, do you think many would do it?
Thanks, David, for your reply. Some thoughts... By means of using a tool called Gradescope, I'm actually able to post scores on the same day that students take the test. Alas, probably 10-12 students out of more than 700 ever come in to office hours to review their tests with me. So, quick feedback is supplied, but there seems to be little demand for it, for whatever reason. Students in my course also get immediate feedback via in-class iClicker questions (modeled on real test questions), as well as via adaptive quizzing functionality in a product from Macmillan Publishers known as LearningCurve. Those quizzes generate a study plan that specifies areas of strengths and weaknesses in a give chapter. Thus, there is LOTS of opportunity for immediate, timely feedback for my students.
I think your comment about "actually trying to learn" vs "just do well on the test" hits the nail on the head. I offer SO many opportunities to students to get feedback and guidance and depressingly few of them ever take advantage of those opportunities. I suspect that it's a function of numerous variables, including the fact that most of my students are freshmen (or first-year students, so I don't get myself in trouble), many students in college today take a VERY transactional approach to their studies (i.e., they are here to purchase, over time, a college degree that they will then exchange for a higher-paying job), and, sadly, many people are just really not that curious about the world around them.
I am glad that there are people like you who are bright, curious, and generous, so that the intellectually engaged in the world have somewhere to go to get their fill. Thanks for what you do!
Dang, this is a great comment. I love the comments section here. I get that about freshmen (er, first-years). That was the year when I started becoming a determined learner, and only then with thanks to an upperclassman (track team training partner) who challenged me intellectually, and a professor who did the same. They really helped, but I honestly have a hard time understanding what exactly kick-started this transition for me from not caring at all if I retained information after a test to be so voraciously curious that I'm constantly annoyed by how much stuff I'll never be able to learn. I think it's still accelerating, in any case. (A few years ago I got to do a Q&A with that professor: https://www.college.columbia.edu/cct/issue/spring20/article/%E2%80%9Crange%E2%80%9D-and-higher-education) ...Regarding the transactional approach, for a year early in my career I was a higher ed reporter, and I remember a lot of signs that this was gathering steam. I wonder how much of it is similar to what we see with any organization that is always under the gun for next-quarter numbers, and unable to think long-term. With the rising price of college, I can understand the focus on short-term ROI for many students. I don't think it's a good thing for those students in the long-term, nor for society, but I wonder if that's an important driver. I really don't know, but I'm hoping college at some point becomes a lifetime subscription model, because I would love to take a bunch of intro courses! I wonder if there's some truth to the idea that college is wasted on the young. I don't actually believe that at all, but I also think I could make even better use of it in many ways now. Do you think it would make any difference if more people worked a bit between high school and college? My brother worked for a while between college and law school, and unlike a lot of students who sort of sleepwalk into law school because they aren't sure what to do, I think his work experience made him really motivated to learn about the law, and he worked his tail off when he got there. Not sure if I've said a single coherent thing here, but I like to think out loud in this space, and you obviously left a generative comment!
Great article on the importance of having a feedback loop available. However, while feedback can improve results in a wicked learning environment, might it provide misleading results? One of the basis of a wicked learning environment is that results are often misleading due to changing rules, complex relationships, high randomness, etc. Therefore, I think one of the key aspects would be to include a section to discuss why the results are inconsistent over time.
Absolutely! In some of his work Hogarth actually looked at instances where success will reinforce exactly the wrong lesson. (One famous case he mentioned involved a physician who was famous for accurately diagnosing patients before they showed typhoid symptoms, but it turned out that's because the physician was accidentally giving them typhoid during examination.) I think the troubling side is that even the best system will be imperfect in a truly wicked learning environment. The optimistic part of me says: well, then even doing slightly better than relying entirely on pure intuition will get some benefit.
Excellent bit! Should be required reading for every highly trained professional!
So kind of you to say, Mark, really appreciate you reading.
Im reading your book Range these days and it inspired me to start writing about what I care about most (in my work life) here; to rethink how we can become better in the housing industry - it’s really a very wicked industry with low or no repeation and I think we can learn so much from inviting non-industry people into the improvement discussion. So thank you David. If you want to check out my latest post, it’s here and you are mentioned :) Cheers, Torstein 🫡 https://open.substack.com/pub/theindustrymachine/p/diagnostic-report-02-why-cant-the?r=5hj0wj&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=false
Torstein, I love it when people take ideas I'm interested in an apply them to areas I'm less familiar with. It's great learning for me! I really appreciated this post, and it reminded me a lot of some of the research I was doing on NASA for Range. NASA had two major disasters, and they were both so culturally similar that the agency was deemed "not a learning organization." That led to the creation of a "chief knowledge officer" position whose role was to ensure that lessons from failure did not just disappear into the ether. Maybe we need more of those people in other industries.
Thanks, David, that means a lot coming from you. The NASA example is spot on. We face our own "shuttle disasters" all the time, not as dramatic, but costly, repeated and quietly accepted. The idea of a Knowledge Officer really resonates, and we need a profession or system that actively gathers, connects and applies learning across our fragmented industry and ecosystem. I will take note of your concept and include it later when I'm planning to propose changes and recommendations. I think that "just" fixing the learning problem in the construction and housing industry is a huge challenge, one of many we have, but there is not much research on the cause and effect of it. Thanks again for the inspiration and for modelling the curiosity that crosses domains. Cheers from Perth, Torstein 🫡
Hi David,
As I clinical psychologist, I read your post with lots of personal skin in the game. And I have so many thoughts about the whole complex issue that you addressed. First, a personal reaction. - When I first entered the field, I did bring an intensity and excitement and energy to my work which probably was energizing to my clients at the time. I also had much supervision and consultation which gave feedback that was honest and sometimes difficult.
But, all through my career there has been a reality check - clients either stay and do the work or they leave. If you're not getting to the heart of what they came in to work on, they don't stay. And you do know if things are getting better or not - anxiety calms, sleep improves, relationships develop, change happens sometimes subtly, insights emerge, responsibility for self increases, and I could go on - but the point is that there is lots of feedback both positive and negative.
So I don't see doing therapy as a not getting feedback situation. There is way more feedback than not - both positive and negative- but you're right about not learning from it. I also think that being a therapist involves learning about yourself and your blocks to the feedback loop. I've always enjoyed the work mostly because of that intersection, however complicated and difficult. .
Thanks for the very relevant post. Margit
Margit, thanks so much for this comment! Especially since I'm treading on turf here I don't really understand, so I'm eager to hear thoughts like this. I'd be interested to hear you elaborate a bit on learning about "blocks to the feedback loop." Also, that idea of being a therapist involving learning yourself, do you think that's a typical orientation for therapists?
Hi David,
Very glad to elaborate a bit on the thread, but I'm also happy to talk via other avenues if you'd like. My style and training in psychotherapy is psychodynamic. It involves looking at conscious and unconscious processes which inform our actiona and reactions particularly in relationships (work, intimate, parenting, friendships etc.)
This style of therapy is particularly interested in what gets reenacted over and over again in terms of expectations and triggers - usually early or later traumatic experiences, unrealistic expectations, - the list is long. Therapists also have their own triggers and misperceptions based on their own past experiences. This can obviously interfere with their perspective and relationship with their clients. Many psychodynamic therapists have done a lot of work on themselves in their own therapies and also get consultation especially with difficult situations - I have found it very helpful to be open to what's being presented - be it positive or negative feedback. A quick anecdote - I had really blown a situation - I was seeing a child and her mother yanked her our of treatment for good reason which I won't go into here, but I was clueless about. My consultant helped me understand what I hadn't done and then she said "THAT'S WHY WE CALL IT A PRACTICE". That normalized the learning for me, and I was able to realize that I had too much skin in the game which sort of blinded me to an obvious situation. I do know that many of the therapists I know operate In this way, but we're from old school training and methodology which has worked well, but does take longer than some of the newer theoretical frameworks. I can only talk to your question from this perspective.
Wow this is great, thanks for sharing. I would be interested to hear more offline, but just to clarify: I often encourage people to leave thoughts here because I know there is a small-but-dedicated subset of subscribers who read a lot of the comments. So I'm curious for my own edification, but also see it as part of my role here to encourage quality comments like this so others can read them too.
Thanks David,
I'm also curious as to how it works in other fields - especially teaching and health care. There is lots of feedback to be had, but also lots of blocks to feedback internally. I don't think that it's so much a "Wicked learning environment" as much as it is sometimes folks don't want to hear "wicked feedback" for many good and not so good reasons.
This was a great interaction to eavesdrop on.
My instinctive thought is that, yes, there's a ton of feedback if you're willing to pay attention to it: clients stay or they don't, they improve or they don't, etc. But the complex nature of therapy means that those outcomes are what they are for a hundred different reasons, so it's very easy for the clinician to fall pray to the fundamental attribution error (successes are on me, failures are on them).
And sometimes it really IS that the client just isn't that engaged or has other stuff going on or whatever else! We see the results, but the causes that led to those results can be pretty tricky to sort out. This is a major contribution to the wickedness of the environment (that I wish I'd emphasized a bit more): even if you're very open to feedback and have a system for learning from it, it's a bit difficult to work out the lessons you should be learning.
I also wonder about the differences in this regard between long-term private practice work and the 8-10 week CBT-heavy courses that are typically studied.
Hey David 👋 loved this quote near the end, such a lovely way to distil a lot of wisdom into a short sentence. I really need to start putting this stuff into practice! "We learn who we are in practice not in theory" unfortunately I do most of my self learning in theory! But one little rabbit hole comes to mind from this quote, we often hear people in sports and in life speaking about how we should focus on the process and performance rather than the outcome (which I agree with to an extent as luck is often overlooked in outcomes) but is there any subtle method for factoring in luck/variance when evaluating one's own process in order to take the 'right' lessons? For example if we do everything right and the result doesn't end up as we hoped for, how do we know when to retain the good things we did instead of changing course due to an outcome? You've helped me push 'The Myth of Experience' up my to read list! Apologies, probably an overcomplicated question! Ps I'd love to hear a 'progress report' on your new book 📖?
William, always a pleasure to see you here. And first I want to share a general point I got from an online course I took with Oliver Burkeman (author of Four Thousand Weeks, which I love). Oliver talked about the terrible feeling of not being able to read everything you want and not even remembering that which you do read. The former is a good sign about one's curiosity, and in the latter case he noted that you should just trust that — even if you can't explicitly remember much — the reading changes your sensibility, and that's more important that being able to regurgitate the specific facts. I think he's right about that. And I feel the same way about experiments. He mentioned in the course that he was just going to toss out a bunch of things, and if one or two sounded right to you, give them a try, and ignore the rest. Anyway, point being I always suffer from feeling I haven't put enough into practice, but I guess I'm a bit more at peace with that lately. I do put some things I learn into practice, but I also keep a bookmarks folder on my browser where i put really interesting looking things that I know I'll never read. Somehow having bookmarked them allows my brain to move on, and if I really hunger for them, I trust I'll find them again. ....Anyway, your question is a devilish one! I don't mean to add to your reading pile here, but Michael Mauboussin wrote an interesting book called The Success Equation in which he characterizes the degree of luck and skill in various activities based on the rates of regression to the mean. But I actually think there's evidence that mixing both outcome and process accountability is the way to go. (There was some really interesting research on nurses I'm reminded of that showed you really don't want to abandon outcome accountability altogether.) I may have to mull this a bit more, but I certainly don't think there's a perfect answer. We can follow Hogarth's suggestion and try to experiment in a directed way and then evaluate, and I think that improves the likelihood of a true conclusion, but certainly doesn't guarantee it as life isn't a randomized trial. But that's what I like to do, set out an experiment prospectively, and also to mix both process and outcome accountability, and of course see what I can learn from the experiences of others. But I think you're asking after one of the really fundamental challenges of being alive here, and the only things I can muster are approaches for tipping the scales a little bit toward improvement. With all that said, I think just about everyone undervalues luck...and unfortunately, I recall a study about how people like a speaker less if they attribute success to luck, as demonstrated in an experiment that altered the wording of a MIchael Lewis graduation speech. Now I'm curious to find that to see if I'm remembering it correctly! I may report back...
Update: here it is...listeners rated the speaker less favorably when he attributed success to luck https://labs.psych.ucsb.edu/sherman/david/sites/labs.psych.ucsb.edu.sherman.david/files/pubs/gromet_hartson_sherman_2015.pdf
Wow great memory! 👏 that is interesting and kinda crazy ha. Thanks so much for your considered reply here! I actually have 'The Success Equation' and had started it (and liked it but like I often do I've neglected it for a while) so I'll definitely move back to that to follow up. For what it's worth, from the outside it really seems that you are incredibly disciplined with study/reading/research and putting them all into practice in one way or another so I think it's just unconquerable limits of time that you struggle with! For me because sometimes it's just laziness or lack of ability to concentrate it does get me down at times but against that sometimes I just accept that I was happy to go to the gym/pool area and chill out even if I could be more productive. I definitely need to improve the balance and start implementing some more self experimentation though! I love how some familiar Range themes like this pop up here but in a new format or context. I actually read 4000 weeks and loved it too! And love this tidbit about sensitivities as its something you've mentioned before that resonated with me (plus can just make us feel better about forgetting stuff I guess). Ps any update on the new book project that you're working on? Thanks again and keep up the great work 🙌
Just to note, I don't finish most of the books I read, and not because I get bored, but because I think it's totally fine to get something from one and move to another as new questions dictate. I tremendously value many books I've only partly read. And sometimes I read the same part of a book three times and never the rest! And I suppose I probably do put things into a practice a bit more than most people, in part because I have this "book of small experiments" habit I've had for years now. I need to do a short post on that since I frequently mention it in comments. ... As far as the new book: I'm right now doing citations (fun at first, like a scrapbook of the entire project, less fun after a few chapters of it), and fact-checking. I hired a fact-checker (which only means that mistakes will be decreased, not eliminated), and I'm daily dreading getting messages from her because it's never to tell me I got something just right;) So I'm pouncing on those and making lots of small change, and going back and verifying things where there are questions. Even so, it looks like it won't be published until next spring. But I'm actually eager for a little break, so the long timeline is fine with me.
That's cool and also takes away the sunk cost idea of continuing to read even if you feel like you've gotten what you wanted or answered a particular question/itch. I'm actually amazed at how many good books are out there, I often think I couldn't really be interested in getting another book but then something new comes up through a podcast (I listen to Second Captains which is where I was introduced to your work actually!) or some other medium and the book sounds so well researched that I think I have to get it. But a part of me likes having a never ending supply of reading that I know I can some day enjoy if I choose ha.. re the book.. big congratulations 🎊 👏 that's huge! The book is pretty much written so.. wow.. I'm very excited for that, next Spring won't be long coming round! and I can totally understand that you'd feel like a break! I can only imagine the launching and interviews/promotions is really hard work and you're probably sick of thinking about it in a weird way so a break between completion and launch is probably ideal! Regardless, well done, best of luck with completing the citations and hopefully you don't get too many notifications from your fact checker 🤞 thanks as always for your considered replies to comments. It's a real bonus and greatly appreciated.
Hey man, love your writing. We’ve interacted a few times on here, mostly over a shared appreciation for perhaps modern society’s greatest epic novel and new myth, ONE PIECE, but I’m desperate to break into the journalism world and have no credentials beyond actually being an excellent writer haha can you send Bill Simmons an email and ask someone at The Ringer to interview me lmaoooo
otherwise, you do awesome work that is great because of its PRACTICALITY. A lot of people solely use science to investigate abstract theories that don’t help the general individual grow and understand themselves on a deeper level. Your writing obviously comes from your own desire to make sense of this thing we call a life and how it fits within this thing we call a society. so, thanks for being curious and for sharing your discoveries!
Hyellow! Indeed I enjoy our shared appreciation...Borges (who I'm obsessed with) would be so thrilled by this return of the "mythic method," I think. I actually haven't had contact with the Ringer folks for some years now, as I've drifted further and further from my life as a traditional journalist. I don't actually know the best way to catch on these days; for me, it was a series of unenviable jobs....Starting at midnight covering homicides for a tabloid; joining a startup that didn't have an office; moving on short notice to take a job as a temp fact-checker. Definitely not glamorous stuff, but great for learning, and also at least there was some clarity about how to pursue those things. I don't think there's much fact-checking anymore, save at a few magazines, and for books, so that route may not exist. Assuming you're thinking about sports journalism in general, I'll ask a friend who's more looped in what his advice would be for breaking in today.
"n a SASER device, a source (e.g., an electric field as a pump) produces sound waves (lattice vibrations, phonons) that travel through an active medium. In this active medium, a stimulated emission of phonons leads to amplification of the sound waves, resulting in a sound beam coming out of the device."
Isn't the heart an electric field as a pump? Doesn't it produce sound waves? Isn't the body, the blood, an active medium? MY GOD I WANT TO RESEARCH THIS NEW WAY OF LOOKING AT THE BODY HAHAHA i
Thank you so much for writing Range bro. You were part of my journey on this... and you're so correct. How people with knowledge of different subjects and curiosity, not bound by forced information silos because of early specialization, can make connections between disciplines and possibly come up with paradigm shifting discovery. Thank you , thank you, thank you
sorry, I’m doing more research now and this is crazy lol. So basically the body uses SASER (Sound amplification by stimulated emission of radiation) Read the AI overview from Google when prompted by “amplification of sound waves at extreme frequencies”
“Amplifying sound waves at extreme frequencies (like in the gigahertz range) is achieved through the Sound Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation (SASER) process, analogous to how lasers amplify light. A semiconductor nanostructure is used, where an electric current flowing through it interacts with the sound waves, causing amplification.
Elaboration:
SASER involves a semiconductor active medium where a sound wave stimulates electrons to transition between energy states, increasing the sound wave's intensity.
Interaction:
In this process, an electric current is passed through a semiconductor, and the sound waves interact with the current, leading to the amplification of the sound.
This method is particularly effective for amplifying sound waves at extremely high frequencies, like those in the gigahertz (GHz) range,
Such high-frequency sound waves can be used for applications like medical imaging with improved spatial resolution, enabling imaging of objects at the nanoscale.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3728977/#s3 my theory addresses the phenomenon they couldn’t explain in this paper.
In the Results, I quote “It has been reported that low frequency (LF) and/or HF power in the HRV power spectrum can increase during meditation (Phongsuphap et al., https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3728977/#B43; Wu and Lo, https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3728977/#B58, https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3728977/#B59). A HF power increase, indicative of parasympathetic activity, has been understood as a relaxation effect of meditation; however, a LF power increase has not been well explained. It seems confusing that LF power, representing sympathetic activity, can increase during meditation.”
the body is an instrument it seems lol like literally an instrument . I won’t get too woo woo but lololol puts a lot of things in perspective when you think of it that way… the body an instrument and the flow state the harmony we’re supposed to play when we cocreate with life in the present moment
I really appreciate you taking the time to read and respond.
I am trying to get into sports journalism, but really I just want a job where I can get paid to learn and to talk and to write haha.
I know you moved into science journalism, so actually it would be a WAY greater help if you know any neuroscientists who can validate my theory about the physiology of flow states, which I will share below....
THEORY ON THE PHYSIOLOGY OF FLOW STATES
Summary: Curious about flow states, while researching, I learned that advanced meditators (as defined in “The Science of Meditation”) show consistent gamma wave brain states and even amateurs can reach gamma wave synchronization from meditation.
Knowing that meditation slows your breath and heart rate, which typically align with your brain wave frequencies, this piqued my interest. Why would these people who have slower breath and heart rates, consistently show the fastest frequency of brain waves that science has measured? And now I have a theory about how this happens.
Because the brain waves are faster but breath rates and heart rates slower, there must be some specific alignment of the nervous system that allows for this phenomena. We know that brain waves are measured in frequencies, as are soundwaves. So if specific heart rates create specific energy levels in the body, these energy levels are the result of specific frequencies put off by the heart.
So there are certain heart rhythms which allow for flow states/gamma wave brain states, and these heart rhythms must recruit energy in order to do this, because the heartbeat’s frequency is much slower. Energy is recruited from elsewhere in the body and from outside the body.
Certain breathing rhythms create certain heart rhythms, and not only is energy recruited from inside the body, but from outside the body in the form of air. Air has an electrical charge and affects the energetic balance of the body. Flow states allow for optimal energy efficiency, so it makes sense the body makes use of what it has stored and what it intakes during respiration.
These specific, slower breath and heart rhythms use less energy to breathe and less energy to pump blood, yet in meditators, exhibit higher frequency waves in the brain (gamma). Thus, the state of flow has to be based on internal harmonies of energy in the body and there is a particular phenomenon observed in sound waves that explains this.
Remember, each heartBEAT creates a sound wave, as well as pumping blood through the body. Sound energy has physical properties and can be seen moving physical matter. So the sound wave the heart creates is part of what helps blood travel through the body.
Here is the energetic phenomena observed in sound waves that explains the physiology and biology of flow states
“The sound wave excites electrons traveling at a speed higher than the speed of sound to go from a state of high energy to a state of lower energy, thereby making the sound wave stronger. In order to obtain a net gain, it is necessary that there are more electrons in the state of high energy than in the lower energy.” from website article titled “amplification of sound waves at extreme frequencies”
doesn’t the nervous system and whole body send messages using electricity? Doesn’t electricity move faster than the speed of sound? Doesn’t relaxing mean eliminating unnecessary muscular tension and returning that energy back to the nervous system in the form of electrical potential? So the more you relax, as these meditators were doing, or had mastered over time, the more “electrons in the state of high energy than in the lower energy” we witness in the body, thus the greater chance of the soundwave created by your heartbeat being able to excite said electrons and you reach flow states or gamma wave brain states.
So can a heartbeat thus increase its strength by exciting electrons found in the the electrical signal of the nervous system, or the cells in general, in order to increase its strength. This amplifies the wave of blood propelled through the body with each heartbeat, therefore easing the heart’s energy expenditure without actually increasing the heart's physical fitness or strength through exercise?
When I think of how states of consciousness are based off energetic frequencies in the body, and how you could consider the spine a carbon resistor running an alternating current through it, I believe the harmonizing of the body’s frequencies is what allows for more efficient energy use, which means more accurate and powerful energy use, as well as more delicate and deft. Harmonizing the alternating currents the body exhibits when the mind is stressed is the process of relaxation, and it is the process of relaxation that harmonizes the body and mind and allows for slower, less energy using heart and breath rates, while also allowing for more energy to remain in the brain and nervous system, which means greater control over muscle fibers because energy is not wasted having to deal with the toxins of stress and the excess muscle tension stress creates. Stress uses energy inefficiently outside the acute activation of energy reserves. After the reserves are activated, you can use this energy better if your body relaxes. Probably why in a lot of life or death situations, people’s brain just turn off because if they were trying to consciously think of a solution, they wouldn’t be able to relax and would make decisions less likely to help them survive.
So basically flow states allow for the body to exhibit positive feedback loops which increase the body’s energy efficiency. And energy efficiency in the ancient human’s calorie deficient environment would have been the goal of natural selection/evolution.
Hope its not a bother but also sharing this for a friend. http://spot.fund/2f8c9f6cs
Great essay. The quicker you can get feedback on one’s work, the better. Of course - Goodhart’s Law can make things tricky depending on the situation.
With regards to therapist feedback - I have long been a fan of Dr. David Burns’ work with CBT. He recommends having clients fill out a “Brief Mood Survey” before and after each session. That way the therapist has immediate feedback about how the client is feeling. Burns has a great podcast (“Feeling Good”) and he often jokes about how bad therapists are at guessing if they were actually effective in a session. So why not just ask the client?
Link to his brief mood survey as well as his post-session-survey.
https://feelinggood.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/418f4-rhons-bms-v2.pdf
I love this David, particularly as it relates to rate of feedback, which appears to be the defining variable between how we learn in kind vs wicked learning environments (I've written about this here, as it relates to lessons from sports and business: https://www.richardhughesjones.com/business-leadership-lessons-sport/)
As an executive coach I'm also fascinated by the therapist studies (which I've come across before through Scott Miller's work). Does anyone know if this work has been repeated for the coaching profession?
Hi David,
Great reading once again. I spent more time reading comments than the article, as there are so many great points made.
For myself. I am participating on a Patient and family advisory council for Stanford Hospital transplant clinic.
I am an active participant of the feedback loop that interacts with hospital staff to improve patient care and experience. This includes clinic procedures, education of medical procedures, and even website content.
In a constantly changing environment and world this is essential.
I now need to propagate this process review and feedback mechanism to my day job of software engineering.
Unsurprisingly, I already do this regularly as part of my running ,and training .
Hope your running is going well and you find time between family and work!
Unrelated, but I thought you might find David Graeber's "The Dawn of Everything" interesting, which claims that the Enlightenment has its roots in 17th century Native American critiques of European society. Its an interesting counterpoint to the studies of Uzbek villagers that you write about in Range.
https://pluralistic.net/2022/03/08/three-freedoms/#anti-fatalism
Loved talking with you David, and learned so much from reading Range - on my very, very short list of favorites.
Forrest, the pleasure was all mine! I enjoyed both the form and content of our chat;)
Remind me to tell you sometime about my experience with the early 90s form of something like iClicker - technology getting out over its skis...
Ok that is a good teaser...
David, thank you for yet another insightful post that, while seemingly straightforward, resonates with profound depth. Your discussion of "wicked learning environments" immediately struck a chord with my own experiences in navigating the vast landscape of reading and information assimilation. It often feels like operating in such an environment where immediate, clear feedback is scarce.
For a long time, one of the primary ways I sought feedback on my understanding and reflections was by commenting on posts. Initially, this felt surprisingly vulnerable, a fear of judgment lingering, especially in public forums. It took conscious effort to overcome this, guided by the realization that without external input, the information I consumed often remained undigested and lacked structure. I had to build my own feedback mechanism.
More recently, I've discovered a powerful new approach: engaging with large language models. After delving into a topic, I interact with a Gen AI, assigning it the role of a questioning partner to probe my comprehension and challenge my responses. This exercise leaves me with a significantly clearer grasp of the core concepts. To borrow your phrase, "When feedback isn't automatic, it should be built." For me, Gen AI has proven to be remarkably effective in transforming this wicked learning environment into something much kinder. This crucial cycle of hypothesis (understanding), testing (questioning), reflection, and revision that you describe is now a visible and concrete process, thanks to this approach.
Thank you again for shedding light on this crucial aspect of learning and improvement.
Thank you for another interesting and enlightening article, David. Like Professor Laumakis, I am an educator (English professor-turned-chancellor), and I don’t doubt that many students fail to take advantage of this learning method—but then neither do most of us. Even scientists, I suspect, do not apply the same experimental rigor to their personal lives. That would be a bit much, I suppose, but I think we all could benefit from adding some reflection to our personal and professional lives. Even a few minutes of debriefing a meeting or a conversation could go a long way, compared with running on autopilot.