omenti

choking under pressure

There's this story of a student, having just given his thesis defense talk, freezes at the first question with his chalk describing an arc as he faints.  The same story with different details has been told and retold since the 50s.  But there is real pressure.  It's rare, but some students fail their dissertation defense.   Just last week a friend told me about a failure at the University of Michigan. 

 

Temporary choking is much more common.  I've seen it in at least a third of the defenses I've been to.  Usually it's minor and people recognize it happens.  Questions are rephrased or breaks take place and things come back to normal.  It's just part of a rite of passage for many.

 

Choking is more recognized in sport. People talk about choking and 'the yips' - I'll stick with choking here was it's more common and easier to deal with.¹ I've seen it in several events at the Olympic and National and World Championship levels when a lot is on the line. Recent work published in Neuron shines some light on a neurological basis.  The experimenters monitored the motor cortex in the frontal lobe and watched a simple task requiring manual dexterity when the stakes were low, medium and high.   What they found was a big drop in activity as the stakes went up - the subjects suffered a big performance hit.  The effect was non-linear..  subjects didn't perform well at low reward levels - there was a sweet spot.  It's part of becoming an elite athlete to learn how to deal with the pressure, but it still happens on a regular basis. 

 

I've been interested in what the dynamics are in a team sport - specifically the simplest example with only two  athletes on a team.  Beach volleyball is a textbook example as there isn't a lot of overlap in responsibilities and players need to trust each other.  Over time - say an Olympic run - the best teams tend to have stable partnerships. When one player begins to crumble, it's up to the other to shoulder the load somehow and communicate - often with a few words or a bit of body language like a glance. It's an impressive skill to pick up on this in a couple of seconds in the middle of a point and figure out how to deal with it.   Interestingly there's evidence of sexual dimorphism in both style and success dealing with choking.  Sarah summed it up: men fight to bond, women bond to fight.  On average women may be more effective team players.²  Casual observation tells me this applies outside of sport. 

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¹ Some use the terms interchangeable, but differ in severity and treatment. Choking often occurs when an athlete over focuses on mechanics under pressure and lose the fluidity, grace, ability to analyze etc, that  they've spent their career building. Their effective skill level falls dramatically.   The yips, on the other hand, take place when anxiety is so high that it becomes difficult to execute even simple actions.  It can be chronic requiring help from specialists.

² For this reason I tend to prefer women's team sports to men's.  Men's sports are more athletic, but the women often show superior team tactics and strategies. 

 

 

the passing of a star

I first ran into Dewayne at a wireless community conference in Taos in 1994.  We hit it off and became good friends, sometimes conspiring on odd projects.  His mother is 103, sharp as a tack,  and something of an icon.  One of the first African Americans to integrate a section of Detroit after WWII.  We all figured Dewayne had at least three more decades. Dewayne built on that.  I've never met anyone with a deeper understanding of radio - something he combined with a deep social commitment. 

 

About a month ago he called from a hospital room in Detroit.  Jaundice - the doctors were trying to figure it out.  The next day there was an emergency operation to deal with a blocked bile duct.  Then it was discovered he had stage 4 cancer.  He flew to California for better medical treatment and passed yesterday. The various communities he touched are in shock.  I won't list his remarkable accomplishments other than a Wired article from 2002 (he's done a lot since) and noting he had a large impact on the technical side of the FCC.  He was a great friend.  The last conversation I had was last Monday.  He ended it as he always did when he wanted to make a point - a quote from Battlestar Galactica:  So say we all!

The Wired piece

 

 

 

 

(way) beyond black swans

a mnipost

 

Fundamental change comes from discovery - something that science is wired to do.  The process of science is admittedly messy and a bit inefficient, but it works and has vastly expanded our understanding in so many areas. There's this myth about how it works -  the scientific method kids had to memorize in school is a not very accurate model of how things really operated - at least the areas I know. All of the pieces are there, but they're generally non-linear and can spread out over long periods of time.   What drives people are the rare magical moments.  For most of us they're rather small, but the pleasure in discovery is enormous.  It's very hard work as it's so easy to fool yourself.  Some of the most dramatic discoveries come when you're looking for something else - if you're careful enough to recognize them. 

 

One of my favorite examples is a 24 year old astronomy grad student who fundamentally put a dent in astronomy and physics.  Her discovery involved a huge amount of careful work.  Her advisor was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics while she got nothing -after all - she was a woman and a student in the 60s.  I've been lucky enough to have had dinner with her - she sees her lack of the Nobel underscoring how sexist science and the Nobel committee are.  

 

The interview is excellent and something to show to kids for inspiration as well as dealing with the imposter syndrome.  She's done so much for women in science.

 

airship quadball

a minipost

Every field has its special teachers - those who have figured out how to inspire and raise the level of the students. About five years ago I wrote about Woodie Flowers and his passion for teaching.  One of the most playful and play inspiring teachers I know about (the video on the page is a good intro).  

 

Woodie had a famous course for engineering undergrads.  I know of a few other similar, but different flavored, courses - mostly in mechanical engineering.  ME72 a Caltech is one of these focused play classes and the final exam is a competition.  The most recent exam was Airship Quadball.  Here's a description with a cute linked video.

Some schools set up cross departmental collaborations. One physics dept I know matches physics students with creative writing students and art majors to create science fiction graphic novels.  When it works you need students who have an interest in the other two areas.  The original spark was producing physics students who could communicate more clearly, but it turned out to be fun and educational for each group.

 

 

 

creativity in film and beyond

Unburdened by the plastic wrap so common to art books, it was sitting  in the bookstore and was reminded how much I wanted it.  A copy of The Art of WolfWalkers. Ten minutes of delight, but it was too spendy for this trip.  

 

 WolfWalkers is the third in a set devoted to Irish myth from Cartoon Salon - a tiny studio in Kilkenny, Ireland that has won respect from Pixar, Disney Animation and Studio Ghibli.  It's on Apple TV+ if you like amazing animation. 

 

Animation studios and art schools are amazing places.  Years ago they seemed like black boxes that took stories and turned them into animation.  More recently I've been involved with one and am wobbled by the amount of creativity and work play that goes into the most simple moments.  It's always a team effort spread among disciplines and years.  

 

After a few months I finally bought the book. Just wow!   Here's a video of a roundtable the before the film was released.  It was my introduction to the film (although not to the myth or its historical offshoot as Kilkenny is an ancestral home). 

 

It's worth writing about as (a) some of you may enjoy and even love it and, (b) creativity in the era of generative AI  is something I've been spending time on this past year an animation studio and two universities.  Signals have emerged. 

 

The New Yorker published a must-read piece on AI and Art by Ted Chiang.  Given my experience with animation studios, a music conservatory and physics and math, I'm in conditional agreement.  I do see a place as a tool, even in the creative arts, but more as a tool to relieve drudgery rather than become 'thought'.  I use it to organize references in papers as well as to create simple programs that involve freshman level programming for simple but time-consuming tasks.  I stay far away when precision and accuracy are needed and I don't see the creative spark. 

 

Film studios, musicians, and artists worry about wholesale theft of their work in the short term and the potential, if these tools improve, that we'll see more 'art' of lower caliber largely because human-created art is too expensive.  I think the later isn't possible with generative AI - at least not for quality work.  That doesn't mean real art won't be forced out by economic pressures. 

 

As for schools I worry teenagers may take the easy way out in pursuit of easy grades and free time. They'll be cheating themselves.   The world has no need for more high school essays, but that isn't why they're assigned. On the other hand student can learn about tasks these tools can help them with.  That's going to be more important in college.  I've been on two task forces and some schools are developing solid measures as well as the ability to change with time.  The guiding light is "are you teaching them how to think?"  

 

Clearly we're in a fascinating time.  I think we'll see some real carnage in the industry and use cases before signals we probably haven't thought about emerge.  But in the meantime we have beautiful art.   If you haven't seen WolfWalkers, you're in for a treat!