Collected works and current thoughts
A stream of thoughts
I’m re-reading Are Your Lights On, Gause & Weinberg. The first time I read this book was around the turn of the century. I am a different person, both figuratively and literally, so while the book hasn’t changed, I’m seeing much more than I did the first time.
For example, this quote:
The really important thing in dealing with problems is to know that the question is never answered, but that it doesn’t matter, as long as you keep asking.
The first thing that came to my mind was “Perfection is a Journey, not a Destination.” That’s a motto I picked up in the early days of my yoga practice. I read this book before I started practicing yoga, so I would not have thought that the first time I read the book.
Another way to phrase that might be: Perfection is a process, not an event.
This seems to tie to some of my older opinions around Plato’s Theory of Formns, which I summarily reject. It seems if I reject Plato’s Theory of Forms, then I’d say that perfection as a thing also does not exist. Perfection is a perceived characteristic of something from an observer. So perfection is a relationship between things rather than a stand-along thing itself.
Next, I jumped over to Lean thinking. In Lean, Muda (waste) is everywhere. It’s safe to say that there’s always 90% Muda in every process you follow. Once you have removed 90% of that waste, 90% of what is left over remains waste. It’s waste all the way down, not turtles, as I was lead to believe.
So what’s the connection then?
- G & W suggest that you will never know that a question is answered, but keep asking, it’s a process, a journey, you really don’t know the actual destination, or if you ever reached it, but keep trying until the problem is no longer perceived as a problem.
- Perfection, in yoga, problem definition, or software, is a journey, not a destination. If you want even more, give Perfect Software, by Weinberg a read.
- Muda is the reflection of perfection. Since perfection is a journey, so too is muda. Additionally, much like you never know if the question is answered, you can also never remove all waste. Muda removal is a way of being, not a goal.
Finally, like quality, perfection is a relationship. What’s perfect for you, isn’t perfect for anybody else. In fact, how you define both the word, and any experience you’d state as perfect, is entirely personal. So, while you can say that you “know” I fully understand your problem, you cannot know what I understand, so you cannot in fact know you know I know your problem.
You could argue, but we can talk to confirm we have the same understanding…
Around 1991 I was taking a philosophy class where we analyzed Descartes’ “proof” of the existence of God. In my recollection, that argument hinges on something I flat out reject, “perfect” as a shard idea. The word is shared, but what any two people consider an example of it are probably different. Even if they appear to be the same, the interpretation of the relationship of perfection requires an understanding of the target of the relationship. The chance that the internal models of the target by two interpreters are in fact the same, is impossible to prove, and likely different in any case.
Note that for most interactions, subtle, and even large differences in internal mental models can manifest as equal, but when we try to extend different models to an absolute, such as perfection, even minor differences will show.
In a sense, the first time I read the book, my lights were off. Now that I’m reading the book again so many years later, are my lights finally on?
Nope. The idea that my lights are on is an example of journey, versus a destination. So, while my lights will never actually be on, I’m going to keep trying. I assume once I stop doing that, I start to die?
