Unpredictable Patterns is a newsletter on thinking, technology and philosophy. It is published somewhat regularly, to a closed circle of subscribers. If you know someone who would be interested in receiving it - do not hesitate to contact nicklas.berildlundblad@gmail.com.
On observation as a thinking pattern
When did you last look carefully at the problems in front of you? Look at them in a structured and thoughtful way? Spend time not trying to solve them, but really just look at them?
Maria Konnikova writes about this in her excellent book on Sherlock Holmes, Mastermind. She notes that one of the things that really sets Sherlock Holmes apart is his ability to really observe things. The canonical quote that brings this home is Holmes terse reply to Watson after having asked him how many steps there are up to their lodgings, Watson first:
”When I hear you give your reasons,” I remarked, ”the thing always appears to me to be so ridiculously simple that I could easily do it myself, though at each successive instance of your reasoning, I am baffled until you explain your process. And yet I believe that my eyes are as good as yours.”
”Quite so,” he answered, lighting a cigarette, and throwing himself down into an armchair. ”You see, but you do not observe. The distinction is clear. For example, you have frequently seen the steps which lead up from the hall to this room.”
”Frequently.”
”How often?”
”Well, some hundreds of times.”
”Then how many are there?”
”How many? I don’t know.”
”Quite so! You have not observed. And yet you have seen. That is just my point. Now, I know that there are seventeen steps, because I have both seen and observed.”
This, to both see and observe, is hard. And it requires conscious attention as well as engagement in the issues we care about. Konnikova notes:
”It’s not just about the passive process of letting objects enter into your visual field. It is about knowing what and how to observe and directing your attention accordingly: what details do you focus on? What details do you omit?”
It also has to do with time. In Slow Looking, researcher Shari Tishman, notes that observation is not just seeing, but taking time to look and to integrate the looking with learning. Tishman comes to the issue of observation through art, but her conclusions are much more general than that. She notes:
”The definition of slow looking is straightforward. It simply means taking the time to carefully observe more than meets the eye at first glance. It is happening in each of these vignettes, and it happens anywhere people take a generous amount of time to observe the world closely—in classrooms, in art galleries, in laboratories, online, in backyard gardens, and on neighborhood walks.”
Tishman notes that slow looking and Kahneman’s slow thinking are related, and that just as we often default to Kahneman’s fast thinking we also revert to fast seeing when we should be slow looking.
So how do we do it? How do we become better at observation? Tishman suggests a number of strategies, and notes that the most common is to look for categories:
”The categories we use to focus our attention profoundly shape what we see. They also shape what we think. Consider the categories that the museum guide chose. Color, shape, and line are certain formal elements of a painting.”
In addition to developing categories to see through (what a wonderfully Kantian notion, right?) we also need to make some room for observations that fit no category but that of the curious. Tishman relates the experiences of the natural scientist Joseph Grinnell, a natural museum director, who built a strict categorical system for observations - and ensured it was rich enough to be really interesting:
”Following the note-taking conventions of the time, his notes consisted of lengthy lists that recorded the names of species and number of birds seen, but not much else. Though this was standard practice in the field, Grinnell came to realize that limiting the scope of his field notes to two categories—species and number—discouraged observers from paying close attention to other important features, such as weather and habitat. So Grinnell developed a more rigorous system that required note taking in numerous categories. The system, which he required his assistants to use scrupulously, encouraged the collection of much richer environmental data than had been previously collected, and his method is often credited with fueling the huge growth of environmental field research in the United States in the early twentieth century. More than a century later, the “Grinnellian Method” is still standard practice for many naturalists today.”
Tisman also notes that Grinnell slowly realized that he needed to be aware of what did not fit into the categories:
”Though he always required his assistants to adhere strictly to the note-taking system he developed, in later years he expanded the system to require extra notebook pages for capturing seemingly unimportant observations. In other words, his technique was this: use a set of categories to look thoroughly for certain kinds of things; then, write down everything else you see, just in case. He had good foresight: today, scientists are examining the notes of Grinnell and his associates for clues about contemporary climate change—something Grinnell could not have anticipated.”
So building a set of categories you observe with is like building a fine tuned instrument for thinking - and for noticing the world more in detail. Beyond categorization, Tishman also notes that scale and scope as well as juxtaposition are important observational methods. The microscope and telescope as well as the comparative anatomical tables come to mind.
Tishman concludes:
”Slow looking is an important and unique way of gaining knowledge about the world. It is important because it helps us to uncover complexities that can’t be grasped in a quick glance. It is unique because it involves patterns of thinking that have a different center of gravity than those involved in critical thinking, and different as well than those involved in creativity, though it shares many cognitive capacities with both these areas. Almost anyone at any age can learn to slow down and observe the world more closely, and doing so brings tremendous rewards, both in the knowledge gained and the pleasures offered.”
This is key — slow looking is a thinking pattern that is different from critical thinking and creativity, a complementary perspective, well worth understanding in depth.
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So, what does this an application of this look like for someone interested in tech policy? Take something like the ”tech-lash”. What is it? What does it look like? What categories can we use to observe it? One simple categorization is to differentiate between the ways technology, technology industry and individual companies are described in the public debate - is there a difference?
Is the emergence of the idea of ”Big Tech” interesting to understand as a phenomenon, rather than assume that all the criticism is the same? Can a single company counter the tech lash when the focus is on a cluster of companies? What other examples of clustered concepts like this exist and what can they teach us? Big Tobacco? Big Oil? Big Banks?
Or let’s change the scale and scope, and move from categories. Let us zoom out. What does it look like when an industry is criticized by policy makers but still loved by its customers? What are the tensions there and do they matter? If we zoom out even further - are there aspects about the economy at large that matter here? Like inequality or the perception of power asymmetries?
Or look at juxtaposition - are there industries and companies that are truly loved? Or is the reference class just companies that are tolerated? Where the political heat has been contained in compliance checklists on investor relations pages?
Really spending time just observing the tech lash, looking at it slowly, is probably an underestimated way of finding options and ideas.
Or, let’s take the evaluation of the new proposed European Digital Service Act and Digital Market Act.
Let’s look at categories first - how many rules are about substance and how many about process? What is the emerging picture of the European Commission as a regulator here and what can we learn from that? If we read the DSA / DMA not as a proposal for regulating platforms and gatekeepers, but as a description of a new regulator - what do we learn then? How many articles are about substance, and how many about process? How many of the preamble points relate to substance and process?
Next, turn to scale and scope - what do we see if we zoom out? Where does the DSA / DMA fit into the European framework of regulation started with the Bangemann report and then built through e-Europe and i2010? Does it not look like a culmination point? What else can be done after this? And what does it mean that this may be the last big regulatory package possible for tech?
And then, juxtaposition, what does this look like compared to finance, energy, telecoms, broadcasting? Where does it fit in and how should we understand it? What components are similar and where are there great differences?
By just engaging in that unique pattern of thinking that is slow looking we can start observing, not just seeing.
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There is much more to be said about observation, I think. The study of notebooks is an excellent way to expand what we have been doing here, and the examples are rich: think about Da Vinci’s or Darwins notebooks. The genius of these men (and this is true of many women as well, of course) has often been described as intellectual or creative, but what if the roots of genius lie not in intellect or creativity but in - observation?
This strikes me as a curiously liberating insight . Want to do better? Well, banish the anxiety about being smart or creative enough and just look, slowly and deeply.
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Further reading:
Tishman, S Slow Looking: The Art And Practice of Learning Through Observation
Konnikova, M Mastermind: How To Think Like Sherlock Holmes