Randall Munroe has this wonderful way of stating depth. (via his wonderful xkcd)
It's been fashionable to talk about information overload for some time, but the amount of information we and our machines make is almost infinitesimally small next to the amount information in the natural world. We don't directly experience the world. Rather we rely on heavily filtered senses to feed models our mind creates. Even the stand types of information we rely on - images and sound - represent only a tiny bit of what's out there.
We've become adept in building models to understand what's going on. In the late 19th century a few physicists developed statistical mechanics - a mathematical construction that allows you to consider enormous numbers of objects (say the air molecules in a room) and be able to accurately describe what's going on as well as well as what will happen. It was an enormous leap in thought that directly led to the development of quantum mechanics a few decades later. Here's one of the best introductions to a field I've seen in a textbook: from States of Matter - a sophomore/junior level text by David Goodstein. (image grabbed from the ebook)
Science has given us tools and techniques to extend our vision beyond our senses. The development of lenses for microscopes and telescopes, judged by the avalanche of knowledge they led to, may be the most important invention of the past millennia.
We have a difficult time sorting out information we and other people produce. Generally we use a combination of active and passive filters. These filters change with both experience and technology. We often find ourselves cutting out more than we should. We often live and work in 'echo chambers', surrounding ourselves with information from similars. Some sociologists refer to this as cocooning, a term I prefer. Machine learning produced cocooning is very real and an active area of study.
A trick is to create active filters that provide breadth. The one I practice is regularly read and talk to interesting people outside my area. There are a lot of smart people out there who are willing to share, but there are a couple of tricks. First you need to describe what you do in a manner that they can get a good-enough understanding. They have to do the same. This can be very difficult - it's like teaching an introductory course or writing a book and often, as a by-product, sharpens your understanding of what you do. Second you need to develop a working understanding. I find offering whatever I can bring to work on their problem to be both fascinating and useful. It's one of the main reasons why I tithe my time to 'help' others. In fact it's a type of homemade university I've created.
These conversations or library ramblings sometimes break down. The secret weapon, should you be lucky enough to know one, is a human impedance match.1 The rare ability to ensure a good-enough two way information transfer. I know of two (there may be more) on this list and feel lucky to know them.
Sometimes you can put together a serendipity machine. I've been around two - possibly three - so far. A small group of people with a very wide range of backgrounds who know, understand and respect each other and their differences. Put them in a comfortable place - face to face is important as a good deal of out of channel communication goes on - and let them range. The topics may be concerned with an engineering issue, but somehow jump to 13th century Sicily and that jump, realized a few months later, was the productive insight. That group was in the spirit of Ted Lasso's Diamond Dogs, although it usually met on Friday afternoons with meetings the ran from four to ten hours. It isn't terribly efficient, but can be fun and produce very interesting ideas and understandings.
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Finally Pip talked about the need to communicate something positive as a counterpoint to the negative news and social media message we usually get. So here goes - a short story of great fun and imagination. Chivalry by Neil Gaiman. It must be listened to rather than read from the page. Only a half hour, the performance I recommend is from the Selected Shorts series with Christina Pickles doing the honors. Simply wonderful! About $3 at the Apple Bookstore and probably the same at Amazon.
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1 I first came across electronic impedance matches as a teenage amateur radio builder and operator. Without going into detail, a signal in the form of an alternating current usually has different values in different "boxes". If a signal goes from one box to another of differing impedance, there is a loss of signal. An impedance match minimizes the loss of signal. The example I fought as a kid was making sure the impedance of my transmitter matched that of my antenna. (the same analogy works for power transmission)
A human impedance match often probes the two people figuring out what questions to ask and clarifications to add to increase the level of understanding on both ends. It's a skill I work on, but still lack after all these years.
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