Liminal Thinking

So about a year and a half ago, Harold Jarche introduced me to Dave Gray, whom he met at a conference. Dave was writing a book about agility; Harold told him about my work; Dave wanted to talk. He was interviewing lots of people for his book. I said yes, and thus began a fascinating discussion about agility, evolution, complexity, uncertainty, change, trickster figures, and stories. Later I enjoyed the privilege of being among those who commented on the book manuscript, and now the book is set to launch.

The concept of liminality, which has to do with in-between thresholds, is well known in anthropological research, where it refers mainly to rites of passage such as marriage, birth, and death. Dave has expanded his phrase "liminal thinking" into what Victor Turner called "liminoid" (that is, liminal-like) experiences --  those that do not involve traditional rites of passage but that have an in-betweening quality to them all the same. Such liminoid activities are typically pursued as a form of playing purposefully with possibility. (Does that sound familiar?) In his book, Dave takes the idea of such playful liminality and blends it with several related ideas (double-loop learning, Zen practices, brainstorming, story sharing) to produce a clear, concise, witty, and enjoyable refresher course in opening your mind to possibility.

I've read so many books about dealing with complexity. Most of them tell us that we can go on doing things the way we've always done them as long as we carry around some totemic words like "fractal" and "strange attractor" and "emergent." Liminal Thinking is different. It may be the first book I've read that challenges its readers to live more effectively in a world that seems (but isn't) newly complex (and complicated).

I wrote a blurb for Dave, and I'm not sure if he ended up using it, so I'll throw it in here.

Ever since I found out about Liminal Thinking, I keep thinking of it at strange times, in-between times, surprising times. I keep thinking, wouldn't it be great if this person was exposed to Dave's book, or, here's what I'd like to say right now, it's right here in Dave's book, or, I feel a need to reread this part of Dave's book. I take these messages as signs that Dave's book is a book we all need, even if we don't all know it yet. I can't wait for everyone to discover it.

I can't wait to get my copy so I can read it all over again. Here are links to get a look at the book and support its launch.

Getting to priceless

I'd like to start this post by owning up to a mistake. When John Caddell published his excellent book The Mistake Bank a few months back, I promised him I would post a comprehensive review here and on amazon.com. But my level of frustration at my own book being really and truly nearly done led me to put off keeping my promise. So this week I took myself in hand. I barred myself from working on my own book until I had finished and posted my review of John's book.

Having now done this, I can see that it was a mistake to put off doing the review. The promise nagged at me for months, and it wasn't as difficult as I thought it would be (it's easy to review a great book), and I learned a lot by doing it. In fact, I think my own book will be improved by having read and reflected on John's book before I finished it.

Now, being a person who overdoes everything, I didn't want to post the usual brief "I know John and he's a good guy" review. I wanted to read the book in detail and comment on every part of it in a way that would help prospective buyers decide what the book had in it and whether it was for them. (That's one reason it took so long to get the review written!)

So here's my review. The indented parts won't go into my amazon.com review because nobody there will have any idea what I'm talking about.

Chapter One: Bouncing Back

This chapter is all about what you need to do to benefit from mistakes. I found all of the advice here sound, logical, and perfectly impossible to follow. I myself rarely own my mistakes (until much later), let everyone know there has been a problem ("quiet fixer" should probably be my middle name), or reflect on the problem (I'm better at sweeping things under rugs). I finished this chapter understanding mainly my own incompetence at learning from my mistakes. That's positive in itself, because I hadn't realized just how bad I was at it.

Chapter Two: How to Learn from Mistakes

Chapter two is about, guess what, everything I needed when I finished chapter one. It's about strategies to do what chapter one says you should do. The main thing I took away from this chapter was the value of time. I tend to have strong, fast, emotional reactions to mistakes, and to feedback on mistakes, especially from people who either know what buttons to push or blunder onto them. But if I can wait a little while, take a walk, have a meal, sleep on it, I feel differently. Everybody's heard of "count to ten" but I've never thought about it with regard to mistakes before. As I put myself into the shoes of the people in the stories in this chapter, I see how I could take more time to allow myself to learn, like they did.

Chapter Three: Where Mistakes Come From - Recognizing Patterns

Chapter three is about what to do about mistakes after you have calmed down enough to fully admit them to yourself. It's about recognizing patterns that cover multiple mistakes and doing something to fix them. Here the common problems of over-commitment and work pressure spoke to me. I always take on more than I can do, and I'm always twice as productive when I'm not trying to do twice as much work. These are the sorts of mistake engines that churn out one mistake after another, and that's true not only for myself but for a lot of people I know.

My favorite part of this chapter is where John recommends picking out one simple change that can make a long-term difference in the quantity and severity of mistakes. I like that idea: nothing overwhelming, nothing that creates more pressure, just one change, one tweak to the mistake engine that helps it run at a lower speed.

This chapter came to me serendipitously just after a ... discussion ... with my husband about my work practices. The problem is, when I do projects for people, they tend to be meeting corporate schedules, and they need everything done yesterday. So I don't feel like I have a lot of power to "push back" on the amount of time I need to get my work done. I typically tell people a catalysis report will take two weeks to produce, even though I know most projects only get done in that time because I work some 12 hour days, including weekend days, to meet the deadline. I always hope that won't happen, but it always happens. I know why it happens, too. The projects I do now are more ambitious than the projects I did ten years ago, and I haven't scaled my time estimations up enough to reflect that. The end result is a lot of stress for myself and my family.

Recently I was negotiating with an editor to layout and index my books, and she said matter-of-factly that it would take her one month to do the layout and one month to do the index. I didn't balk at that. I didn't try to pressure her. I just accepted her expert estimate of the time she would need to do a quality job. So why can't I do that? Why do I tell people I can do something in less time than I will almost certainly need? Because I'm afraid to lose the work, of course. I keep saying, "Maybe this project will take less time." But the fact is, every single project I've ever done has run over its appointed time in a new and unique way. There will never be a simple narrative project. There's no such thing. It would be better to lose some projects than to keep creating these stress bombs for myself and my family. That's "one simple thing" I can change. It's not an easy thing to change, but it could make a world of difference to the enjoyability and quality of my work.

Chapter Four: Creating the Culture

This chapter is all about dealing with mistakes in groups, communities and organizations. I found it a bit weaker than the chapters before it, but maybe that's because I've already read a lot about organizational culture. I don't think this book would be the right one to read if you only want to think about mistakes in groups; but that's not what it says it's about.

The part of the chapter that resonated with me most was the part about leadership. It seems to me that with mistakes, far more than with anything else, what happens up top trickles down. The boss who bites off heads when people make mistakes, or doesn't let people make mistakes in the first place, impacts the way everyone works. I've definitely seen a lot of that in my work.

Still, I would have liked to read about dealing with mistakes of interaction, such as mistakenly not letting people make their own mistakes. Recovering from interaction mistakes seems harder than recovering from mistakes related to schedules or processes. Some tips on that sort of mistake would be welcome. Okay, so maybe I've made a lot of that sort of mistake, but probably lots of other people have too.

Chapter Five: Mistakes as Opportunities

This chapter is about recognizing and making the most of new opportunities that come up as a result of mistakes. The opportunity I found most useful in these pages was the third one mentioned, "Make Smart Mistakes." Essentially, this is about taking risks in a careful way so that the mistakes you do make don't bankrupt you. This is a very hard thing to do! In some parts of this chapter I found myself feeling the same way I did in the first chapter, that it all sounds great in theory but in practice I often find myself "up against a wall" and out of options. This chapter is useful in that it reminds me that those walls may sometimes be imaginary or further off than they appear. That's worth thinking about.

The section of this chapter on "Deliberate Mistakes" is refreshing. Although I've certainly heard the term elsewhere, I liked how the chapter gave me ideas on how using deliberate mistakes can be kept useful and not damaging. I used to make a lot of deliberate mistakes when I was younger and had nothing to lose, but with parenthood comes responsibility, and the perceived ability to make deliberate mistakes goes down. I can see on reading this chapter some ways in which I could increase my ability to make deliberate mistakes without going back to the heedlessness of youth.

Another part of this chapter I liked was: Let Mistakes Take You to New Places. I wouldn't write this on amazon.com, but this blog and my books grew out of a mistake. When I started working at IBM, I entered into a career that relied heavily on frequent travel. I didn't think this was a limitation; I just did what came along and didn't think about the future. However, the moment my son was born I knew I would not want to travel for many years to come. What can a consultant do who rarely leaves home? Write books, of course. I can't say the "new place" my travel-requirement mistake took me to has been a great success - it certainly hasn't been monetarily - but I'm happy to have been able to write my books, which I couldn't have done if I had kept traveling.

Chapter Six: Time

This chapter is all about the influence of time on our processing of mistakes. What I found useful here was a sort of permission to take time after a mistake. I've always beat myself up about not getting over mistakes sooner. I should get some nerve and move on! Why dwell on things so much!

But what John is saying here is that there is a sort of process of grief in dealing with mistakes, and like all grief processes it has its rhythms. Real grief comes in waves, as anybody knows who has lost anybody. Some days you can handle it and some days it washes over you and drowns out everything else. Processing mistakes is like that too. Even what John said about it being normal and healthy to "oscillate" between reflecting on the mistake and stepping back from it seems parallel to the waves of grief, the troughs of which give you time to recover and renew your energy. I found it useful to learn that this oscillating process is normal and natural, just as I have learned the same thing about grief. Maybe I should have known all this, and maybe I did know it, but reading about it in this book has helped me to understand it better.

I'll give an example of a mistake that took the perspective of time to even notice, let alone fix. I woke up the other morning with the abrupt realization that chapters one and two in Working with Stories were stupidly, embarrassingly, reversed. The first chapter, which should have been all about the reader, was mostly about me explaining why I wrote the book and why I should be listened to, because I'm great and so on. It was only in the second chapter that I explained to the reader why the book might be useful to them. Later that day, I went right to work and fixed the problem. It took me years to recognize that mistake, but thanks to John I won't be beating myself up about it this time.

Conclusion

I'd like to go back to a sentence I wrote at the first part of this review: "I myself rarely own my mistakes (until much later), let everyone know there has been a problem ("quiet fixer" should probably be my middle name), or reflect on the problem (I'm better at sweeping things under rugs)."

I wrote that sentence just after I read the first chapter of The Mistake Bank, so it is really how I felt then. Having now read the entire book, I can now say that owning mistakes "much later" is perfectly okay, as long as it does happen; that letting everyone know there is a problem can be done quietly and carefully, and maybe it doesn't have to be "everyone" every time; and that reflecting on the problem can be done in stages and spurts, in between which one can rest. So my incompetences in learning from mistakes may be less disastrous than I thought and at the same time more amenable to improvement.

One of my favorite things about this book is its inclusion of something like fifty true stories from people who have made mistakes and learned from them. And these aren't little forgot-my-keys mistakes; they're the kind of mistakes that take years or decades to learn from. The stories both exemplified and authenticated the lessons in the text. The funny illustrations kept the book moving along well too.

The only thing I'd like to have that this book didn't give me is more depth (in a few areas I mentioned and also in general). I hope John has a sequel in mind, because I'd like to read more, especially in the way he's laid it out here.

In this review I picked out of The Mistake Bank the lessons I felt were most useful to me, but I haven't mentioned lots of other parts that didn't speak to me in particular but might speak to others.  This is a short book, but it provides plenty of food for thought. It's the kind of book you come back to and read over and over, because it will surely mean something new each time you read it.

WEIRD research on WEIRD people

To start, you might want to look at the interesting article by James Surowiecki in this week's New Yorker on procrastination. Which brings me to my resolution: I am going to try to finish the rewrite of Working with Stories this month. My favorite part from Surowiecki's article is this part:

Instead [of fighting with ourselves], we should rely on what Joseph Heath and Joel Anderson, in their essay in [a book named] "The Thief of Time," call "the extended will"—external tools and techniques to help the parts of our selves that want to work. A classic illustration of the extended will at work is Ulysses' decision to have his men bind him to the mast of his ship. Ulysses knows that when he hears the Sirens he will be too weak to resist steering the ship onto the rocks in pursuit of them, so he has his men bind him, thereby forcing him to adhere to his long-term aims. 

So I have created an "extended will" of (a) publically saying I will do this, and (b) limiting myself to microscopic blog posts for the remainder of the month. Yes, it's bread and water for you folks this month. Here is this week's meagre fare.

WEIRD people and the researchers who love them

I've been having a wonderful time traipsing through this review paper. It's by Joseph Henrich, Steven J. Heine and Ara Norenzayan, and it explains how much of psychological and sociological research is biased by its exclusive attention to WEIRD people: that is, people from Western, educated, industrial, rich, democratic societies. Here are some of my favorite excerpts.

In the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, the premier journal in social psychology—the sub‐discipline of psychology that should (arguably) be the most attentive to questions about the subjects’ backgrounds—67% of the American samples (and 80% of the samples from other countries) were composed solely of undergraduates in psychology courses (Arnett, 2008). In other words, a randomly selected American undergraduate is more than 4000 times more likely to be a research participant than is a randomly selected person from outside of the West.

That's perfectly spectacular bias, isn't it? Worse, the idea that American undergraduate students might not be representative of the species is rarely mentioned:

Leading scientific journals and university textbooks routinely publish research findings claiming to generalize to "humans" or "people" based on research done entirely with WEIRD undergraduates. In top journals such as Nature and Science researchers frequently extend their findings from undergraduates to the species—often declaring this generalization in their titles. These contributions typically lack even a cautionary footnote about these inferential extensions.

The authors review worldwide differences in visual perception, spatial cognition, cooperation, independence, choice, views of self, conformity, reasoning styles, and moral reasoning. Across all these areas the human ranges are wide, but the research selections and conclusions are narrow.

Carpentered minds

I found plenty of surprises here. For example, did you know that not everyone sees these lines as having different lengths? This is the famous Mueller-Lyer illusion, but apparently the San foragers of the Kalahari, among others, are "unaffected by the so-called 'illusion'."

The authors mentioned that this issue was previously discussed by Segall, so here I am looking up the referenced book (The Influence of Culture on Visual Perception) and assuming it has just come out, and I find out it was published in ... 1966. And it's out of print. What I end up wondering is why, 44 years later, nobody knows about this (unless I'm the only one surprised, which I doubt). I wonder what that says about science and culture. Did we not want to know that?

Henrich et al. say:

As discussed by Segall et. al., these findings suggest that visual exposure during ontogeny to factors such as the "carpentered corners" of modern environments may favor certain optical calibrations and visual habits that create and perpetuate this illusion. That is, the visual system ontogenetically adapts to the presence of recurrent features in the local visual environment. Since elements such as carpentered corners are products of particular cultural evolutionary trajectories, and were not part of most environments for most of human history, the Mueller‐Lyer illusion is a kind of culturally‐evolved byproduct....

Non-carpentered house

It certainly makes me look at my house differently, I'll tell you that. I have seen some designs of clay houses where a sharp corner cannot be found, and I wonder what it might be like to have the gift of not having grown up "cornered." What might my mind be like? What might I be capable of? What sorts of sensemaking frameworks might I come up with? What sorts of stories might I tell? What sorts of software might I design? And what would an internet designed by non-cornered minds look like? Maybe we should find out.

Nice bird

I will allow myself just one more excerpt (I told you it would be meagre), this one about "folkbiological reasoning." I like this one particularly because it intersects with something I've mentioned on this blog a few times. My hobby is reading old novels, and I've repeatedly been struck by how people spoke so casually then of skills we cannot fathom today, like starting a cake recipe by grinding the flour and solidifying the butter. And how our perceptions of everyday life have moved on a gradient from creating to consuming in many overlapping ways.

This part of the study matches that observation:

[There are] three robust findings from urban children: (1) inferential projections of properties from humans are stronger than projections from other living kinds, (2) inferences from humans to mammals emerge as stronger than inferences from mammals to humans, and (3) children’s inferences violate their own similarity judgments by, for example, providing stronger inference from humans to bugs than from bugs to bees....

However, when the folkbiological reasoning of children in rural Native American communities ... was investigated ... none of these three empirical patterns emerged.... In rural environments both exposure to, and interest in, the natural world is commonplace, unavoidable, and an inevitable part of the enculturation process. This suggests that the anthropocentric patterns seen in U.S. urban children results from insufficient cultural input and a lack of exposure to the natural world. The only real animal that most urban children know much about is Homo sapiens, so it is not surprising that this species dominates their inferential patterns.... Indeed, studying the cognitive development of folkbiology in urban children would seem the equivalent of studying "normal" physical growth in malnourished children.

So not only is cake made of things from the refrigerator and cabinet instead of the field and barn; animals and plants are things in zoos and parks instead of in woods and streams. And fridges and cabinets and zoos and parks are the things we come to know the most about (and assume everybody else knows about too). This statement also resonated with me:

This deficiency of input likely underpins the fact that the basic level folkbiological categories for WEIRD adults are life‐form categories (e.g., bird, fish, and mammal) and these are also the first categories learned by children: e.g., If you say "what’s that" (pointing at a maple tree), the common answer is "tree". However, in all small‐scale societies studied, the generic species (e.g., maple, trout, and fox) are the basic level category and the first learned by children....

I'm not a naturalist by any stretch, but I've been confused by an increasing tendency for people to think my minuscule ability to distinguish a few local species of trees, birds, flowers and herbs is more amazing than it is. When I was a young biologist, the number of birds and trees and things I knew was embarrassing, and still is among real naturalists. But among people who don't consider themselves biologists I've noticed a change over the decades. Today I almost feel a pressure to hide knowledge about species when I talk to people, as though they feel my saying "wow, did you hear that thrush singing" instead of "nice bird" is an insult. They want the larger categories. In my rural childhood we did learn the specific names for things first (many of our names were wrong, but that's beside the point: they were precise if not accurate). I've met many people since who were raised in urban environments and who habitually refer to "that flower" or "that bird" as though there were no sub-categories beneath the general class. I'm not saying there is anything wrong with that, but it does make me wonder what effect on general thinking about things it might have when your taxonomies stop halfway down. How does that impact the things people build? How should people design for people who have had different experiences than they have had? How should I design for urbanites, and how should urbanites design for me?

I can't help mentioning my Gogol mountain ash story again (sorry to those who have heard it already). I was reading Dead Souls, and I came across this bit:

At one particular spot the steep flank of the mountain range is covered with billowy verdure of denser growth than the rest; and here the aid of skilful planting, added to the shelter afforded by a rugged ravine, has enabled the flora of north and south so to be brought together that, twined about with sinuous hop-tendrils, the oak, the spruce fir, the wild pear, the maple, the cherry, the thorn, and the mountain ash either assist or check one another's growth, and everywhere cover the declivity with their straggling profusion.

It just so happened that on the day before I read this, I had been trying to figure out what a young tree growing in my yard was, and I fell into the "mountain ash" section of the field guide, never having heard of one before. What made me laugh that day was that evidently Gogol felt he could build a narrative metaphor through reference to the relationships among particular species of trees. It apparently never occurred to Gogol to think that he needed to explain to his readers how these species interact, because of course everybody would know those things. Mountain ash is an understory shrub that (at least in my yard) is tolerated to live beneath the larger oaks and maples which check its growth. People reading Dead Souls when it was written would have had a precise image of the relationships to which Gogol was referring, but we struggle to grasp them, even if we have mountain ash trees growing in our yards.

In every age and place we assume some knowledge is universal, and we are always wrong. Otherwise I wouldn't have two bookmarks in every old book I read -- one in the book proper, and one in the notes that explain all the things the author thought didn't need explaining when they wrote the book. We do the same thing as Gogol: we say "I got my email" expecting our readers to know that involves turning on a computer and using an email program. (Which will probably be a footnote two hundred years from now.) This sort of we-are-the-world thinking is interesting and fun when novelists do it. I love figuring out what authors are talking about and learning what people used to think everybody knew. But it's dangerous when scientists do it.

Henrich et al. conclude:

Journal editors and reviewers should press authors to both explicitly discuss and defend the generalizability of their findings..... The widespread practice of subtly implying universality by using statements like "people’s reasoning is biased..." should be avoided. "Which people?" should be a primary question asked by reviewers.... The sample of contemporary Western undergraduates that so overwhelms our database is not just an extraordinarily restricted sample of humanity; it is frequently a distinct outlier vis‐à‐vis other global samples. It may represent the worst population on which to base our understanding of Homo sapiens.

My suggestion is that the import of papers like these (this is not the first) goes further than even the authors state. Biased-sampling science over-generalizes explanation, but it also over-generalizes expectation. Studied things are important things, and people pay attention to research results.

One of the papers that had a big impact on me back when I was reading mostly about animal behavior was a study done on birds where the researchers used colored bands to distinguished their bird subjects. They had to halt the study because they discovered that the male birds with the red bands were receiving disproportionate attention from the female birds. In other words, the experimental design altered the phenomenon being studied. I remember another study on naked mole rats where the researchers observed a curious phenomenon that seemed to indicate a novel circadian rhythm, until they realized the activity rhythm coincided with the rhythm of ventilation noises in the building. If you are studying rocks you can probably choose any sample and say it is representative without the rocks responding, but with anything else responses to experimental manipulation might extend beyond what you thought you were experimenting with. Experiments that produce broad claims from tiny slices of humanity are conducting a wider experiment than they imagine.

Here's hoping attention to WEIRD research has an impact on the way people study people.

Gems: Studying Those Who Study Us

Here I begin another series of blog posts, this time on resources I've found (mainly books) that have been so useful to my understanding of organizational and community narrative as to call them "gems." As usual it's far too long, and again I beg your tolerance.

Cases and stories

When people start exploring what has been said and done in the area of stories and organizations, the field of case-based reasoning usually comes up. Case-based reasoning, or CBR, is an offshoot of cognitive science and artificial intelligence having to do with making decisions using cases, or stories about previous events. CBR is similar to organizational narrative in that bodies of stories are used to help people make decisions and share knowledge. However, CBR databases are very different from what I will call "story collections" in these ways:

1. CBR databases, as expert systems, are compiled only from interviews with experts in an area, whereas story collections include storytellers with a wide range of expertise and experience, and even deliberately juxtapose different and sometimes competing perspectives.
2. CBR databases are compiled from interviews in which only the most knowledgeable experts are asked to talk specifically and directly about knowledge, with the view of passing on how things are done. By contrast, story collections ask people to tell stories about their work (or any topic) as a whole. Story collections treat as valuable the most personal, emotional, and idiosyncratic aspects of the story -- pride, disappointment, pain, joy, confusion -- whatever resonates deeply with the storytellers. Questions are aimed obliquely and ambiguously in order to reveal not only how things are done but also how things may not be done, what things are like, how they got to be that way, and what it all means.
3. CBR databases are indexed by cognitive elements such as topic, task, goal, plan, lesson learned, and so on. Indexing is typically done by experts in the CBR field. Story collections are not indexed but interpreted for meaning and emotional content by the storytellers themselves.
4. CBR databases are used by indexing critical elements of the situation at hand, zeroing in on the relevant cases, and offering up solutions to fit needs. Story collections are sometimes used to find solutions to problems, but they are more often used when people don't know what they need to know - when they need to uncover biases, reveal trends, hear voices, discover paradoxes, improve self-awareness, and ask new questions.

Case-based reasoning works by what I call the "noun way" of getting an answer: the answer you get is the answer you need. Zeroing in, closing down and narrowing the field of possible answers are required for this process. In contrast, sory collections work by the "verb way" of getting an answer: the answer you get is not the answer you need, it is what triggers what goes on in your mind to get you closer to the answer you need. For this purpose, broadening things out and shaking things up are what is required.

The point I want to make in this essay, and the point of the "gem" I want to tell you about, is that CBR and other systems of knowlege representation are excellent tools for collecting and organizing how-to manuals for simple and complicated situations, such as repairing engines or designing load-bearing structures. But story collections are the tool of choice when your aims and issues are complex. And surprisingly little of human knowledge is not complex, even if it seems simple.

What is common sense?

To illustrate the differences in ways of looking at knowledge among the different fields concerned with it, let us consider the concept of common sense. Reading about common sense has always confused me, because people in different academic traditions use it in different ways (and with great confidence in their local meanings). As far as I can make it out, the term can mean any of six different things.

First, as it was used in antiquity, common sense referred to a fusion of the inputs coming from the five senses. To say "use your common sense" meant "use all of your powers of observation." That use has been pretty much abandoned, so I will also set it aside.

Later, the "common" in "common sense" changed to refer to what is common among a group of people instead of within one person. After that it splintered into five possible meanings. I list them here moving from least to most complex.

1. Common sense is what a system moving and working in 3D space needs to know. In this sense, the phrase refers to the body of knowledge limited to statements like "things that are let go of in space fall towards the earth" and "objects that are piled up sometimes fall down again." Those who speak of common sense in this way tend to be designing autonomous robots that need to move around and manipulate objects.
2. Common sense is what the common people believe to be true. This meaning is similar to "naïve physics" or "folk knowledge." It refers to what people know about something when they have no specialized knowledge about it -- what a banker knows about making shoes, what a shoemaker knows about banking. This sense of the term is more exclusive than inclusive, since it defines people more by what they don't belong to (the ranks of those with specialized knowlege, which is often synonymous with the ranks of power and prestige) than by what they belong to. This use of the term is similar to the use of "common" to mean "commoner," or not of noble birth. People who use this sense of the term tend to be writing about psychology and studying how people think and reason.
3. Common sense is what every human being believes to be true. This sense of the term is used primarily by people who work in the area of knowledge representation and build common-sense knowledge bases.  Major projects in this area include Cyc, the Open Mind Common Sense project (OMCS) and MindPixel. These projects claim to represent the knowledge every human being uses in daily life. The Wikipedia page on the OMCS project gives example statements that include "A coat is used for keeping warm," "The sun is very hot" and "The last thing you do when you cook dinner is wash your dishes."
4. Common sense is what a society believes to be true. This is the sense in which most anthropologists and sociologists use the term. In the anthropologist R.M. Keesing's famous statement, culture is "...not all of what an individual knows and think and feels about his world. It is his theory of what his fellows know, believe and mean, his theory of the code being followed, the game being played, in the society into which he was born." In this sense common sense is contextual, situated, idiosyncratic, and subject to change over time. Dictionaries and thesauri, though they do build knowledge bases, tend to see knowlege as more culturally situated and subject to change than do projects more closely aligned with the artificial intelligence field.
5. Common sense is what our society should believe to be true. This is the sense politicians and activists use when they talk about "common sense" as a call to political (or literal) arms. The message of such uses is "if you are with us, you will believe this." Thomas Paine's pamphlet Common Sense is a famous example of this use. Says Paine: "Perhaps the sentiments contained in the following pages are not yet sufficiently fashionable to procure them general favor; a long habit of not thinking a thing wrong, gives it a superficial appearance of being right, and raises at first a formidable outcry in defence of custom." Paine later asks of his reader "that he will put on, or rather that he will not put off the true character of a man, and generously enlarge his views beyond the present day." Note the terms used here: fashionable, favor, habit, appearance, outcry, custom, and the most obvious nod to identity politics, "true character of a man."

If you look at who uses each sense of the term "common sense," a pattern emerges: builders of simple "mindless" robots at the simplest level, then cognitive scientists interested in artificial intelligence, followed by anthropologists, and at the apex of complexity, politicians and activists. Also notice that as complexity increases, breadth of coverage decreases: from anything capable of moving about, to the uninformed, to people in general, to those in one society's culture, to those in one political party. (Why do I place "the uninformed" as more broad than "people in general?" Because from what I've seen, and as I'll explain, the view of "people in general" embedded in most "universal" knowledge bases is far from universal.)

Definitions of common sense 

These meanings of the term are not easily separated. Dictionary definitions often lump two or more meanings together without distinction. WordNet (which has mixed aspirations as both a knowledge base and a dictionary/thesaurus) defines common sense simply as "sound practical judgment" (my sense three above). Dictionary.com calls it "sound practical judgment that is independent of specialized knowledge, training, or the like; normal native intelligence" (my senses two and three above). The Merriam-Webster online dictionary says it is "sound and prudent judgment based on a simple perception of the situation or facts" (senses two and three). Microsoft's Encarta dictionary calls it "sound practical judgment derived from experience rather than study" (more two than three). 

The definition on allwords.com is the most interesting of all:

Common sense. Ordinary good consciousness, awareness or understanding of something, arrived at though taking in account recent events and thoughts of others involved, used for the greater good of all involved.

This combines senses two (ordinary), three (good), four (others) and five (greater good). Add in gravity and you have the whole mix.

Wikipedia does the best job of giving a nuanced definition of the mixed meanings in the term (my additions show the senses referred to):

Common sense (or, when used attributively as an adjective, commonsense, common-sense, or commonsensical), based on a strict construction of the term, consists of what people in common would agree on: that which they "sense" as their common [three, four] natural [three] understanding. Some people (such as the authors of Merriam-Webster Online) use the phrase to refer to beliefs or propositions that — in their opinion — most people would consider prudent and of sound judgment [three], without reliance on esoteric knowledge or study or research [two], but based upon what they see as knowledge held by people "in common" [four]. Thus "common sense" (in this view) equates to the knowledge and experience which most people allegedly [four] have, or which the person using the term believes [four] that they do or should [five] have.

Some "definitions" of common sense clearly reference particular meanings, often the fifth, aspirational meaning alone. From a blog post with a list of postmodern definitions as "a useful gauge to see how academics construct their sentences" (which may or may not be satirical):

COMMON SENSE: In postmodernism in general, common sense is considered a fiction created by those in power to convince the oppressed that ideology is simply the way things really are. See ideological effect, myth.

Here is a hilarious (and again, possibly satirical and possibly straight-faced) definition of common sense from jurisdictionary.com, a site that sells legal advice:

Common Sense. The presence of mind and general caution and concern that the law imputes to all persons, i.e., sense everyone should have. Everyone owes a duty to use common sense. The breach of this duty may give rise to a cause of action.

And one from a religious web site:

The term refers to that KNOWING which is within all of us, as a characteristic of the mature human mind, which does have access to any and all KNOWING of the dimensions of consciousness beyond the self. Although anyone can certainly have an instance or episode of such common sense, such KNOWING, unfortunately if one is "lost" to the negativity of Satan's influences upon humanity, even then, that person's maturity of mind is being blocked by the Veil of Unknowing and their consequently immature mind (of whatever age) does not have this attribute of common sense.

One pattern I've noticed is that the attempts to build universal human common-sense databases (such as Cyc, WordNet, and so on) tend to speak only of senses one, two and three (the least complex and cultural). It is surprising that WordNet, for example, lists only one sense for the term "common sense" even though it lists no fewer than nine senses for the adjective "common" (and they cover all five meanings listed here). Could this be a blind spot in such knowledge bases, something they prefer not to admit about their own definitions of what they are doing and what they represent?

The gem

With that preparation, the gem to which I would like to introduce you is Diana Forsythe's 2001 book Studying Those Who Study Us: An Anthropologist in the World of Artificial Intelligence. Tragically, publication of this work was posthumous, as this groundbreaking researcher died in 1997 in a rafting accident. This audacious work, in which Forsythe reports on observations made during years of participant observation with working cognitive scientists, is a fascinating journey through the minds of people who think they know what we know. The researchers Forsythe studied are the "knowledge engineers" who create common-sense knowledge bases and talk about common sense in the all-human-beings-know-this sense (third in the list above).

According to Forsythe's field work, knowledge engineers operate on the basis of three essential assumptions that influence their work. She contrasts these assumptions with those made by social scientists, who primarily use the cultural definition of common sense (fourth in the list above).

1. Knowledge engineers believe that knowledge is a structured, static thing that can be extracted, acquired, cloned, and stored. It is something that experts have and novices don’t. These engineers call the elicitation of knowledge a bottleneck, express frustration that it is inefficient, and hope that someday it can be automated. Experts who are offended at the idea that their knowledge can be so easily transmitted are termed "prima donnas" and "cantankerous" and are avoided. In this view knowledge is also seen as individually held, having no social dimension. In contrast, social scientists see the extraction of knowledge as impossible, since it is a dynamic and contextually situated phenomenon of shared construction. They also believe that the expert-novice distinction is relative, not absolute: every human being is an expert in some things and a novice in others, depending on the context.
2. Knowledge engineers see knowledge as entirely conscious. Thus they believe that experts can fully articulate their knowledge and that there are no differences between what people say they do and what they do. They see no reason to visit an expert in their workplace or to observe the expert doing normal work tasks; they believe that asking the expert what they know, straight out, is sufficient. Social scientists, on the other hand, believe that a large portion of knowledge is tacit and not easily surfaced, and that the relation between self-representation and observed action is tenuous.
3. Knowledge engineers see knowledge as universal and absolute. Thus they "prefer if possible to use themselves as experts," since anyone can capture "the world’s knowledge" simply by introspection. (Says Forsythe: "I have come to think of this style of thought as 'I am the world' reasoning.") Social scientists believe that knowledge is inherently contextual and relative, and cannot be transplanted from one brain to another. Forsythe noted, for example, that nearly every AI researcher she studied was a white Western male, and that they were perfectly comfortable assuming that whatever they knew was what every human being needed to know. 

Again according to Forsythe, these beliefs create three characteristics of knowledge bases created by knowledge engineers.

1. Knowledge bases depend on a non-representative sample of experts or even introspection as their sole source of information, and thus are narrow in scope. No evidence of conflict or diversity of thought is permitted, and the knowledge codified within them contains no negotiated, contextual, or organizational elements. Also, because of the belief that knowledge can be extracted, experts tend to be interviewed out of the context of their expertise, so the knowledge they are able to articulate is only a portion of mature thought in the field. For example, Forsythe recalls how an expert system built to support worldwide geological exploration failed when it went into production because the expert interviewed had only local knowledge of one geographical area.
2. Because the organization of knowledge bases is set in advance, they are brittle and cannot easily adapt to new uses. Expert system builders claim that indexing mechanisms should be based on first principles about how people think about narrative and experience. However, because of the belief that knowledge is universal, most of the indexing mechanisms used have been based on introspection, not on empirical evidence – thus they correlate more with the way researchers believe they themselves think than with the way people actually think. Also, because of the belief that knowledge has no social dimension, indexing is thought of entirely within one mind. The idea that there might be socially relevant indexes does not appear. 
3. Because knowledge bases are set up to store knowledge as a thing, they are static. They are like vaults in which information is locked up, never again to enjoy a life of discourse with the world. Such systems quickly become out of date or even nonsensical as the world around them changes.

 Forsythe ultimately warns that:

Those whose ways of knowing and doing are classified as "knowledge" and "expertise" by the builders of expert systems will find their view of the world reinforced and empowered by this powerful emerging technology. Those whose perspectives and practice are not so classified are likely to find their voices muted still further as the world increasingly relies upon intelligent machines.

Obviously I wouldn't be suggesting this book as a "gem" if I didn't agree with Forsythe's conclusions. Reading Forsythe's book (alongside cognitive science books and papers) had a large influence on my research on building story collections. That doesn't mean I think case-based reasoning is not useful. For some domains it is undeniably useful and appropriate. Narrow, brittle and static knowledge bases are just the thing when you need to look up engineering specifications and automate factory production. What concerns me is when I see case-based reasoning applied to complex areas such as education, medical diagnosis and decision support. That's where the gem shows its real value.

Why is an umbrella?

There's a little game I play when looking at books and papers about knowledge representation. I find an example about how computers need to be told things about "everyday" life and "universal human" knowledge, and then peel away the layers of assumptions about culture and context inherent in the statement.

One of the canonical examples that often comes up in the knowledge representation and CBR literature is this one:

"If it is raining, carry an umbrella."

The first time I encountered this statement -- which is rendered in so many places and with such confidence that it sounds like "the night is dark" in its universality -- I was taken aback. I'm not much of an umbrella user myself. If I'm caught in the rain I run or walk. On a very rainy day I might put on a raincoat, but as often as not I don't mind getting wet. Besides, umbrellas are awkward and sharp when you are walking with a small child (you might put somebody's eye out!). One thing I've learned living in the forest is that during that wonderful/awful time of the year when everything is blooming and growing, and the blood-sucking blackflies are out in full force, rain is your best friend. Blackflies hide in the rain, so we take full advantage of every rainy day and soak ourselves in it. (In mosquito season the rules reverse and rain requires a retreat to safety.)

There have been times in my life when umbrellas were important, but it was never because of anything as simple as rain. When I used to go to New York city all the time, I carried an umbrella for protection. After I hurt my back, I supported myself for a while with a long, cane-like umbrella because it didn't look as much like a cane as a cane would. Long ago when I went through an all-black-clothing period (don't ask) I used an ancient umbrella to heighten the sense of mystery and interesting alienation.

Once I was in New York city on my way to a workshop, and the sky opened up and simply dumped rain on the streets. I had no umbrella, or raincoat either, so I ran between awnings. Sometimes I tried to sneak under the huge, elaborate, expensive umbrellas some well-dressed people were carrying. The looks I got made it clear that walking in that part of town without an umbrella was a clear sign that I was of a different category of people, a category unfit to share an umbrella with a holder of a huge, elaborate, expensive umbrella.

I've always found that canonical statement about umbrellas to be strangely sterile and foreign to the world I live in. I seem to have been born to attest to the reality of alternative perspectives, being a "few out of the few" in several dimensions (to choose one: left-handed and ambidextrous). I take this as a message from [insert your belief system here] to act as a social gadfly and say "that's not the only way to see it" whenever possible. Which explains some of my attraction to story listening.

So lately I've been reading about umbrellas and their history and uses, just to see if I could find more inside the canonical umbrella statement to peel away. (There are many other such statements in the knowledge representation literature, but the umbrella one is used so often that it simply begs to be challenged.)

A brief history of the not-so-humble umbrella 

It is unclear whether the Chinese or the Egyptians first came up with the idea of the umbrella, and whether protection from sun or rain was the purpose. But umbrellas were never only about protection, at least not of the physical kind. As with many human solutions, the history of umbrellas is soaked with references to status, power and class. The earliest umbrellas were so large and heavy that they were owned only by the wealthy (or gods) and carried only by slaves or servants. Says the Wikipedia page on umbrellas:

In Persia the parasol is repeatedly found in the carved work of Persepolis, and Sir John Malcolm has an article on the subject in his 1815 "History of Persia." In some sculptures, the figure of a king appears attended by a servant, who carries over his head an umbrella, with stretchers and runner complete. In other sculptures on the rock at Takht-i-Bostan, supposed to be not less than twelve centuries old, a deer-hunt is represented, at which a king looks on, seated on a horse, and having an umbrella borne over his head by an attendant.

Umbrellas were used as signals to broadcast authority and to maintain control in uncertain social situations. This history of umbrellas at the "big site of amazing facts" says:

In the fifteenth century, Portuguese seamen bound for the East Indies brought along umbrellas as fit gifts for native royalty. Upon landing on a strange island, the seamen immediately opened an umbrella over their captain’s head, to demonstrate his authority.

Did indigenous people use umbrellas? Do they now? It seems that people do use leaves, whether singly if they are large or woven into mats, to shield their heads from both sun and rain, and have for many years. But when I find umbrellas mentioned with respect to indigenous tribes the uses are symbolic and social. This article on umbrellas made from Pandanus (poro) leaves in the Solomon Islands says that "Pandanus leaves are woven into hoods by women, who wear them when a taboo relative is present or during special occasions." The "Asante umbrella" is, again, used for symbolic meaning: according to this article, an early explorer who met with the Asante said that the "umbrella is the outward and visible sign of the dignity and importance of its possessor" and that "the glory and social prestige imparted by an umbrella varies with its size." (This is also true in certain parts of New York city.)

Umbrellas have at times been taboo. In the Middle Ages, Europeans considered umbrella use heretical, possibly because their use was confined to ceremonial religious processions. Later, only women used them; a man using an umbrella was considered effeminate. According to William Sangster's fascinating Umbrellas and Their History (ca. 1871), Jonas Hanway was the first Englishman "who ventured to dare public reproach and ridicule by carrying an Umbrella." (He was excused, to some extent, on account of having picked up bad habits in his travels to Persia and because of his ill health.) After Hanway's death in 1786, after he had carried an umbrella in public for some thirty years, men began to carry what they called "Hanways" and the umbrella grew in popularity among British men as well as women.

Umbrellas today 

Enough history; let's consider umbrella use today. First, let's look at some advertisements, which offer no end of amusement. Here's a little quiz for you. Is this advertisement intended to entice you to buy (a) a man's umbrella, (b) a woman's, or (c) a child's?

There’s nothing like a prop to bring out [your] inner diva. Whether vamping it up with a feather boa or flirting coyly with a painted fan, a [person] becomes positively magnetic with the addition of just the right accessory. Though a bouquet is a [person’s] traditional best friend, daring [people] are reaching for parasols and umbrellas to best set off their ... charms.

How about this one?

Rugged design features titanium reinforced ribs that provide strength and durability while still being lightweight and portable. Automatic Open and Close mechanism opens and closes the umbrella at the push of a button. Measures 11 in. collapsed and opens to a full 40 in. diameter umbrella canopy.

 Or this?

This cute ... umbrella features a see through water-proof cover for extra rain protection, pinch-proof runner and covered safety tips, fun tinted bubble style with matching color handle. Because the canopy is see through, [the owners] will be able to see where they are going and see traffic while using this umbrella, which is a great safety feature.

Are you laughing? Do I even need to tell you the answers to this quiz? And do umbrellas still seem perfectly utilitarian after reading these?

Now, how would you say the targeted buyers of this umbrella see themselves?

Humor and surprise are two of [a designer's] hallmarks, as witnessed by this [design]. [This] witty umbrella ... is known and enjoyed throughout the world. Designed by [a company] for [a museum] with [a] design by [an artist], the collapsible umbrella has an automatic open-close mechanism. Made for [the museum] with nylon exterior and lining. Size: 38" span. Proceeds from the sale of these products are used to support [the museum's] programs.

Or this one?

How can [a company] offer such decadent and sexy fabrics for their umbrellas? Well, we choose only sumptuous fabrics, and unsual prints for our umbrellas. Then, we have the fabric commercially treated for water repellency. We are also importing small quantities of truly unique umbrella fabrics from Milan. That's why a [brand name] makes a statement. Dare to be different! We're not for everyone! Are we for you?

How about this?

Whacks just as strong as a steel pipe but it weighs only 1 lb. and 11 oz. (775 g).... Our Unbreakable Umbrella has no unusual parts, no more metal than an average umbrella, it does not arouse suspicion, can be carried legally everywhere where any weapons are prohibited, unlike a walking stick it does not cause strange looks if carried by an able-bodied person, and it does protect from rain. Anyone who can use a stick for defense can use this umbrella.

So, are umbrellas for keeping off the rain? It's becoming increasingly complex, isn't it?

Umbrellas and social norms

How do people feel about umbrellas today? Is using an umbrella more commonsensical than other approaches to dealing with rain? What do people tell each other about umbrellas and rain? To look at this question it is easy: just type in "If it is raining, carry an umbrella" into Google. Evidently this is an issue about which people have questions, because there are "should I use an umbrella" and "do you use an umbrella" questions all over the web.

For example:

When it rains, do you use an umbrella? Or, like me, do you just get wet because it's too much hassle? I just get wet but is not because of the hassle. It is because I love rain and the way it feels when raindrops crash on your skin. The sensation is just amazing, beyond words.

Do you use an umbrella when it rains? There are times, when I do use an umbrella. But there are times, when I don't, for whatever reason. I think that it just depends on the mood that I am in, on that specific day, and such.

Reading through these comments, there is an unmistakable scent of authority and social norming to umbrella carrying. Clearly some people avoid umbrellas to challenge authority, to assert their individuality, and to thumb their nose at the way things are supposed to be done. Here's a quote from a randomly accessed blog:

I have a disdain for umbrellas... You see, I have my own unique way of dealing with what Mother Nature threw at me.

Not carrying an umbrella is associated not only with uniqueness, but with freedom, with the carefree life of childhood. From another blog:

At one point in our lives, we all wanted to play in the rain again. Getting wet, run and splatter each other with those colds drops of water is truly an enjoyable experience. It makes us forget all our problems; all our worries in life; and every inch of the negative emotions inside us are miraculously washed away – even just for a mere period of time.

And another blog post called "Utopia is being able to act like a kid":

All of a sudden, the rain poured and I ran to avoid it. Soon, I stopped, realizing I haven’t been in the rain in a long, long time. Being an adult doesn't mean I need to avoid being wet with a rainfall. I decided to get drenched. A few of my friends and I decided to play soccer in the rain. Although hard-hit by the icy cold rain, I happened to have, for the first time in a long time, one of those times when you feel simply wonderful. Getting lost in a 'mature' world we don’t realize that we are missing the best days of our lives.

At an online poll called "Do you always carry an umbrella?" the results (I get to see them because I voted) are roughly equally distributed between "Yes", "Sometimes," and "No, I always forget." (Note that the "no" vote has a bit of social obligation clinging to it.)

Some people carry umbrellas in a bid to succeed, to do things the right way, to conform, to prove they are "one of us." Their statements, often given as advice, usually include references to authority, conformity and the "proper" way of doing things. The best way to find conforming umbrella statements is to search not for "do you use an umbrella" but "should you use an umbrella" and "how to use an umbrella." When you do that, you find statements like this, from How to Choose An Umbrella at eHow.com:

Everyone needs an umbrella! Whether you're searching for a basic, collapsible rain umbrella or an umbrella with artistic flair, read on to make an educated purchase.

One difficulty is that many of the sites offering authoritative advice on umbrella use sell umbrellas (reference my earlier post on "I am the answer").

Other useful search terms to combine with "umbrella" are "idiot" and "stupid" and "clueless." There's a funny and widely traded picture of former US President George Bush being outsmarted by an umbrella in windy weather that is really cruel in its unfairness. Or, in a random personal blog you find:

I join two fellow ... travelers beneath a tree. The difference between them and me is an umbrella; they've each got one and I don't. I stupidly attempt to shield myself from the rain beneath the tree as the wind shakes more dew upon me than necessary. Really, tree? ... And the bus must be chugging slowly slowly slowly because it's past its prime functioning hours. But it arrives. I probably look like a wet umbrella-less idiot, standing there beneath the tree. My co-travelers must be judging me. I would, even if the situation is comical. 

There are even regional differences in cultural patterns of umbrella use. This article goes into great detail on the myth that people who live in Seattle don't use umbrellas in order to look "in the know." A blog post called "Should guys carry an umbrella" goes into detail on umbrella-related social norms in five cities. (This also points out that the effeminate charge has not disappeared.)

It also turns out there is a lot to know about how to use an umbrella. Believe it or not, "umbrella etiquette" is a term in use. This advanced etiquette web site has a full page on how to use an umbrella in public. Evidently umbrella owners must "learn the dance of the umbrella" -- meaning, don't poke people in the head with your umbrella or drip water onto them. This is evidently very important for short people who are more likely to have problems with umbrella heights and head heights. This funny blog post on "that famous Vancouver rain" says it well:

[L]earn how to use your freaking umbrella. I’ve got news for you…it’s wider than your head, dumbass. Don’t swing the shit around and don’t force people to dodge the stines. And to all you little 4 foot 10 ladies… most everyone on the street is taller than you! Your stupid umbrella is eye level people, and when you swing and bob it around you run the risk of poking some poor sap in the eyeball. Not me, cuz I wear glasses, but someone else. Have a thought for the people around you, please.

If you are not completely sick of umbrellas by now, here and here are two more blog posts that link to new ideas in umbrella design, including: an inflatable model with cloud-shaped bubbles; a hands-free model (not for the claustrophobe); an umbrella that covers sixteen people ("receptions were varied"); one that incorporates a squirt gun for fun or defense; one that lights up and says "don't forget" when you put it on a table; one that locks onto a pole so you can't lose it ("Do not lose your key."); one that incorporates a paintbrush for whimsical mud paintings; one painted like a GPS location dot ("...as if it is saying: 'Hey, I’m right here!'"); the "unbrella," which converts any sheet of flat material, such as a newspaper, to an umbrella-like object; and finally, one that exists only of a sheet of forced air that propels raindrops away from the head (and onto other heads?). Clearly the gargantuan imaginative force of our collective social genius is readily apparent in the world of rain and umbrellas.

Why is rain?  

Now, let's peel off the final layer. What is rain anyway, and what does rain mean, and what does getting wet mean? Does every human being consider keeping dry in the rain a high priority? Is keeping dry in the rain "common sense"? Is it a universal human trait? Does it enter into every village in every corner of every place on earth? This article, on how different cultures view rain, says:

For many in the Western World, rain is viewed as a negative thing. Children's rhymes like Rain Rain Go Away present the depressing rain as a stark contrast to the bright, happy, warming sun. But this way of thinking is not [the] norm for the Eastern World, such as Africa and the Middle East. Due to the agricultural nature of their society, rain is viewed as a soothing, joyful, sometimes beautiful gift. In fact, in drought-ridden Botswana, the word for rain, "pula" is also the name of the currency, which helps to solidify the position of importance rain holds in this agricultural region. 

Judeo-Christians look to the story of Noah to base their beliefs of the negativity of rain. In the story of Noah, God was angry and brought his anger down in the form of forty days and nights of unceasing rain, choosing only to spare the favored family of Noah. The tradition was picked up in Shakespearean literature. For example, the rainstorm in King Lear marked the high point of Lear's madness. Throughout the whole of The Tempest, rain is seen as a negative thing, a sign of trouble. Even in modern weather reports, the negative connotations of rain holds firm. When a storm is on the way, weather reporters sound almost apologetic when bringing this news to us. To be "in the eye of the storm" is to put oneself in great danger. To experience "the calm before the storm" is to know that danger is coming.

Native American culture, again a largely agricultural society, views rain differently. To the Anasazi tribe, rain is a sacred gift from the Rain God. Artwork from the tribe shows the Rain God as a benevolent figure who lovingly bestows rain on his loyal followers.

And so on. One cultural change is that as fewer and fewer people are involved in agriculture, societies view rain as a more negative thing than previously. While the term "rainmaker" retains its positive meaning, it has shifted to refer not to physical rain but to currency (as has "as right as rain"). I've noticed this negativity surrounding rain myself and found it disconcerting. In everyday conversation, people talk about rain as though it is some kind of scourge. But I view rain as a blessing, both because my soil is sandy and drains quickly and because I live in a forest, where the greatest danger is drought and the spectre of forest fire.

All right, all right, I'm done with rain and umbrellas. But as you can see, it's a fascinating exercise to compare these contemporary social negotiations about rain and umbrellas with the audacity of Jonas Hanway "who ventured to dare public reproach and ridicule." What was sensible is now heretical and what was heretical is now sensible. Common sense and heresy have changed places, as they have always done and will continue to do as long as there are people. Will there be umbrellas on the moon? Who knows?

The official story on umbrellas 

Now, here is our final test. After all of that messy, vibrant, funny, very human exploration, here is the entry for "umbrella" in the OpenCyc "common sense" knowledge base:

A mechanical device used for protection against certain elements of nature.

And here are the top three most populous statements in the Open Mind Common Sense database about umbrellas:

1. an umbrella is for protection from the rain
2. an umbrella is for keeping the sun off you
3. an umbrella is a device to protect something 

In comparison to what we've been pondering -- and I'm sure we've only scratched the surface of the place where people and rain and umbrellas come together -- these statements seem like nothing but crude caricatures, jokes, even insults to the immense complexity of human common sense. Well, a joke is one thing, and an insult can be ignored, but I'm afraid things have gone further than that. A mother I know told me that her child "failed" an assessment test for placement in some kind of official educational setting. Can you guess at one of the most critical questions on the test that determined this child's inadequacy? You can see it coming, right? The question was what do you do in the rain. The child's answer? Run. Wrong. Fail. Out of the group.

What I worry about is that Diana Forsythe's warning that "those whose perspectives and practice are not so classified are likely to find their voices muted" is already happening. Attempts to capture human knowledge as a static, narrow, brittle thing are already having an impact on social norms. The saddest thing about that placement test story is that the child did show common sense. Many people do run when it rains. The child's mother does. I do. (I asked my son the same question, out of the blue one day just to see, and his answer was the same.) But the child's response did not match the narrow, brittle, static caricature of common sense that the test makers had entered into the acceptable responses to the question. That's scary.

One of my favorites of Dave Snowden's many metaphors for the complicated-complex distinction is that of a mechanic walking up to an airplane with a toolbox. The complicated airplane doesn't react to the toolbox, no matter how large or authoritative it is. But people do. By the time the mechanic has arrived the human airplane is a whole different machine. It's like we are conducting a giant Heisenberg experiment with human knowledge, and the electrons aren't where they were before. One of the places where this shift in authority is most dangerous is in the area of storytelling. When the official stories become the only stories, our capacity to innovate, our collective imagination, our resilience in the face of change, is reduced. That's what worries me.

In practice

When I write I always imagine a canonical reader who has been collecting or listening to stories and using them to help an organization or community. This reader is not only friendly and approachable (otherwise I couldn't write) but also amazingly tolerant of abundant detail (otherwise I couldn't write). When I say "bear with me" they always respond "No, no -- go on! I'm fascinated!" But my canonical reader does insist on relevance. They want to know how what I am showing them can help them in their pursuit of effective story listening, and they do not tolerate off-topic diversions that never come round to anything in the end. They say things like "What do I care if you are left-handed?" and so on. This section is for you, dear on-topic reader.

Why should you care about case-based reasoning, and knowledge representation, and the aims of people who build robots? For two reasons. First, be aware that formal knowledge representation systems are creeping into all aspects of our lives, with effects both good and ill.

Second, when you collect stories, be aware that you are guaranteed to be attracted to the sweet fruits of simplicity, and that simplistic knowledge representations are among those fruits. Beware of strangers selling simple narrative solutions that reduce stories to lists of goal statements and facts. Reducing stories to one perspective, throwing away messiness and artificially resolving conflicts and paradoxes leads you down the scale of meanings of "common sense" into "I am the world" thinking. A while back I wrote about ways people sabotage their own narrative projects in order to avoid confronting uncomfortable truths. This is one of the ways in which they do it. Sliding down the complexity scale can be as simple as paying more attention to the factual elements of stories, such as location and official roles and subject matter, and less to things like emotion and conflict and confusion. It's also easy to slide down into "just the facts" without meaning to, which is why having an outside eye look over your questions can be helpful.

As I've said above, bridge engineers should be dealing with simplicity and order. But most people who collect stories do so because they need to grapple with complex, messy, social, cultural, emotional and sometimes painful issues. That's what people use stories for. It's where they belong. Moving down the scale of cultural complexity is calm, safe, controlled. It's like using an umbrella in the rain. But if you need to know anything about human beings, you can't find out what you need to know if you aren't willing to get wet.