The Natural

It’s that time of year again folks. Spring is in the air which means it is time for baseball season! Thus I do believe a baseball analogy is in order for today. I’m going to be comparing a couple of hall of fame residents, Babe Ruth and Ted Williams. The Babe was simply put, probably the greatest player of all time. He is well known for being a great hitter, someone whose home run numbers were unimaginable when they happened. But before becoming the Sultan of Swat, he was among the better pitchers in the game. He was twice a 20 game winner and was 3-0 in three World Series appearances. Ted Williams is considered to be the purest hitter to ever play. He managed to hit 521 career homeruns while missing 5 prime seasons serving his country in WWII and Korea. Both were great, but what made them great? With Ruth it appears to be a wealth of natural talent. He was a good pitcher and a legendary hitter. He just seemed to have it. He was gifted, he was The Natural. Ted Williams no doubt also had some talent. But his best asset was his ability to understand the art and science of hitting. He was a slow runner and a below average fielder but he brought everything he had to the plate. He broke it down and tried to understand everything. He would meticulously sand his bats to achieve the perfect balance and weight. He had his own personal pitcher for batting practice. He divided his strike zone up into different parcels and determined his batting average for each one. This way he knew not just to swing at strikes, but which strikes gave him the best opportunity to get a hit. Where his talent ended, his desire and commitment to understanding took over.

So think about the people you know. Are there some with a large amount of natural talent? Individuals who seem to pick things up without having to try. Then there are those who may not have quite the natural ability, but by understanding the forces at work are able to develop a high level of skill. In reality, there are very few if any naturals. There is the occasional savant but nobody calls them natural. Sooner or later everybody runs into their talent wall. If they wish to advance further they will need to develop their understanding. So what do you do well? What don’t you do so well? How far has your talent taken you? How far can your understanding take you?

What goes around

So there I was, having a conversation about how the consequences of actions can take time to occur. In other words, actions you take today may not have any appreciable results for some time. Two days later I'm stuck in the ditch between Edgemont and Hot Springs. A truck has stopped and the driver has some rope but no way to hook on to my car. Then I remember that just that morning I had decided to throw a 100 foot length of 1/4 inch rope into my bag. The driver of the truck used this to help hook up my car. With some assistance from a young air force cadet and his friend, we were able to get my car back on the road. Now this rope had been traveling with me for well over a year, ever since I had procurred it during grad school. I knew it could be useful but had no idea where or when.

A longer term of actions and results was on display though also. The people who helped get me out did it because that's the type of people they were. No specific action was taken in their youth so that they would help unfortunate motorists. It was more likely a continual environment of showing concern for others. Sometimes you are the right person at the right time and circumstances give you the opportunity to help. You don't need to go looking for it, it usually finds you. Looking ahead, what will be the consequences of their actions. Will I find myself to be the right person at the right time? Will the kindness shown to me by others help me recognize the same kind of opportunity when it presents itself? It's rather funny the way things tend to work out. As I continued on my way, wondering about circumstance and meaning versus dumb luck, I was passed by a vehicle with personalized plates that read "ITSFATE".

Into the Fire

Change, it is as inevitable as death and taxes. And like death and taxes, most people do their best to avoid it. Most people tend to have some things they want to change, but also a large amount they want to be stable, constant, reliable, absolute. It seems to be an integral part of being human in that the actions we partake in are the forces that create change, yet we try to avoid it, or control it at the least. We want what change there is to be slow, predictable, and manageable. This way, you can get locked in, find your groove as it were. But to me a groove almost sounds like a rut, and the only difference between a rut and a grave is the depth. But when change is slow, you can get in a groove and let life play out like a song.

Now fast change is almost universally avoided, mostly because it is very unpredictable. In most cases it is brought on by events and necessity rather than by conscious planning. This is not just on an individual level either. Politicians like to take advantage of crisis situations, and if there isn’t one they like to foster the sense that there is a crisis. This creates a sense of urgency. The situation isn’t even unique to humans. In nature, the fastest change happens during extreme events. Rivers that have been relatively stable for decades can erode and change course very quickly during one extreme event. The string of hurricanes in Florida last year caused such a turnover in beach material that a couple of class rings from the 1960’s were brought to the surface. These changes are brought about when stresses and forces that aren’t common are imparted on the systems.

But back to the individual and fast change within them. Change at a high rate is a result of a shift in thinking. It can be brought about by a traumatic situation. I’ve also been told that good therapy will cause changes in thinking at a very high rate that most people will never experience. Either way it seems to be caused by a confrontation with previously unacknowledged or unknown entities. A person who has lived an isolated life would very quickly change if they were dropped into a war. They would face things they had never thought of. It could very likely scar them and this is why change at a high rate can be dangerous. High speed fundamental change, where it feels like every cell in your body is being continually stripped down and rebuilt at so incredible a pace that you can sense it happening, this is a scary proposition. It almost sounds like a cancerous growth, where self evaluation becomes hyper intensive and there is little room to gain perspective.

But here’s a different view, some perspective if you will. A person who changes quickly and can feel that change within won’t necessarily look that much different on the outside. But their inner matter has been reshaped, the alignment of their thinking has been altered, possibly made better. High quality swords are made by taking the metal and forging it, then folding, and then continually repeating the process thousands of times over. In this way the matter is realigned until it is much stronger than it originally was, even though its appearance is still quite similar to what it was. Perhaps crisis and the fast change that accompanies it should be seen as a way of forging people. As the old Chinese proverb says, every crisis carries two elements, danger and opportunity.

Experience and Judgment

In many ways, hydrologic modeling is more an art than a science, and it is likely to remain so. Predictive hydrologic modeling is normally carried out on a given catchment using a specific model under the supervision of an individual hydrologist. The usefulness of the results depends in large measure on the talents and experience of the hydrologist and....understanding the mathematical nuances of the particular model and the hydrologic nuances of the particular catchment. It is unlikely that the results of an objective analysis of modeling methods ...can ever be substituted for the subjective talents of an experienced modeler. League & Freeze (1985)

There you have it, why experience and judgement tend to outweigh most other considerations when it comes to finding the right person for the job. Much like a watershed, a person can have many intangible quirks and qualities that in some cases make no difference and in other cases make all the difference. Experience and judgment are definitely qualities, but they are broad terms and it is tough to always pin down exactly what each is.

So what is experience and why is it important, can’t you intuitively figure anything out if you’re smart enough? Possibly, but the amount of time granted each of us is not infinite. Experience means you’re more likely to see what you’ve seen before. You’re more likely to recognize patterns, problems, and solutions. You’ll pick up on things more quickly, have a deeper understanding and know how to get things done in a timely fashion. You’ll also be more likely to know when something is beyond hope.

The weird thing with experience is the way in which people get it. Parents will expose their kids to certain things hoping for precise results and people will get involved with things looking for a certain outcome. More often than not though, events turn out differently. It can be to the point that the only way to guarantee an outcome won’t happen is to think about it happening. But, you usually do get something unexpected out of any experience and do learn something if you happen to pay attention. So therefore, the experience does help, just not in the way in which it was expected. It is always good to leave a little room open for the unexpected.

So what about judgment? Well, with a watershed there is literally an infinite amount of data that could be gathered and used to model it. Once again, the problem is time and resources. If both were infinite you could gather as much data as you wanted. But since this is reality, you need to make a judgment call on what data to get and then another judgment call on how to interpret that data. This holds true for anything. Every situation involves making a judgment call with the data available. Of course sometimes judgment tells you to get more data. But eventually you have to make a choice. So what is the best way to improve your judgment? With experience.

Given this, one can come to a conclusion and say, maybe I should just be looking for experiences and not planning any specific outcome. Try a variety of things. I can’t do the same thing over and over again and expect to get as much out of it. The law of diminishing returns will take effect. Challenge yourself, and see what there is to learn and how it can help in the future. So whether it’s a new career or a game of pool, bring it on.

Points of View

Can you read minds? No. Neither can I. Sometimes I wish I could. Maybe not so much read minds as see the world through someone else’s eyes. Point of view, perception, general take on the situation. Everybody has their own and it is built on years of experience. Since everybody’s experiences vary, it only makes sense that their perceptions vary. So why is it so damn frustrating when you can’t see things like somebody else or get someone else to see things like you do?

The old salesman has only the goal of changing your view for a long enough period to separate you and your money. A lot of people figure if they just say something with enough volume or conviction, they will be able to sway you. But those methods are only short term. The volume and conviction are more a method to just make you question yourself. Because once you start to ask questions, you start to look for answers. And then you can educate yourself and come to your own conclusion, whatever it may be. But information is required. You can explain to somebody how you see things but you need to be smart enough to realize that you don’t understand everything. So then maybe they can tell you how they see things and you can both start to see the world through a different set of eyes.