# Situations

*Published: February 24th, 2018*

*Edited and Re-published: June 24<sup>th</sup> 2019*

*Author: Christopher Matthew Cavanaugh*

## Topics to introduce.

Need to read more on Origin of the Species, and how he presented his materials.

Distrust for science.
Distrust for history.
Good story tellers.
Bad ones.
Courtroom Assumptions.
Distrust for biographies due to people's inability to avoid fabrications.
Memory over time.

Mind Analogies.


## Items to remember while writing this article.

* Start the conversation around Advice giving.
  * Advice, proctrastination, and "What do I do next?"
  * Context (the context is only provided by a quick and tacit knowledge of the situation that is gleaned only by a very brief expsosure to a new complex stimulus that doesn't necessarily relate directly, although it might relate analogically, to previous situations encountered).
  * Place in life, Age (Cannot know the mind of an older person, and the older person cannot differentiate the new mind from the old mind. In the data world, this would be equivalent to get back to an old database after many years of model changes and data additions and deletions. Can't do this without actually having the old data to begin with (which would make the task unnecessary). Can't keep track of brain states with versioning.
  * Mutual understanding, knowledge of another person's mind and needs.
  * Mystery of motivation
* Change the first section on procrastination to a discussion on problems of advice giving, with procrastination and motivation as an example.
* Tie new section on advice giving to communication failures, and limits of the interface.
* Connect this to the idea that communication is still effective, especially when there are shared mental models, Or models that have many properties and relations in common. 
* Continue the 

## <a name="contents">Contents</a>

* [Preface](#preface)
* [Situations](#situations)

## The Communication Interface

How is it possible that a speaker can communicate about a complex subject to an auditor with only a few sentences? What makes it possible for a listener to understand and build upon these sentences? 

It must be true that there are parallels between the speaker and the auditor that are provided to each in the course of everyday experience. It is difficult for some people to find others to be able to listen with such an understanding and so when a companion is found they are highly prized. While it is rare for one complex person to find another person complex enough to have all the mental models available to understand them, it does happpen—furthermore it happens without any prior exposure or relationship between the two. This lead to the conclustion that it is possible for people of different backgrounds to form mental models that are close enough to allow for analogical grasps. These grasps or apprehensions are instantaneous nearly, which makes it clear why people enjoy conversation between like-minded people as much as they do. What can be concluded from this is that culture and language provides enough to construct minds and mental models that are similar enough for people to come to understand each other with completely different backgrounds and very sophisticated experiences. Also, it is clear from this that one mind to another simply won't do. This is the reason why certain people tend to seek each other out and not merely try to talk to anyone they stumble upon. Also, they can tell when they've met someone who is unlikely to understand what they might say. And so they wait or search until they find someone who is like themself. When they find it it is striking and they don't want to give it up. It is too rare. From this it is certainly true that it is possible for pepole to develop the apparatus required for complex mutual understanding without shared exposure, or a prior relationship, and therefore people are constantantly building on models of the universe that are similar to one another, and while they are not extremely different from one another, they are different enough that people prefer to speak with others who have models of nearly the same complexity (at least within the domain of discourse).  


## <a name="note-to-readers"></a>

In keeping with my goal of making this blog eclectic in coverage, I will occasionally make shifts in the writing style presented. This article marks an interlude from the blog or magazine style format, that will be more usual here. While it may be less satisfying to some, it is in keeping with an academic style found in texts on philosophy and various sciences, and is much closer to my natural mode of thought and expression.

If this article is not of interest, I hope the reader is not turned off to visiting for new contents, that may be of more interest than philosophical discussions like this one. However, I think this topic is of great importance, so I invite the reader to spend some time with me here, if it is at all tolerable.

## <a name="preface">Preface</a>

There is a certain futility in attempts to impart wisdom. Advice giving isn't so effective as we would hope, and not everyone is very good at it. Many are only good at it for certain topics. Others who are considered very good advice givers often have qualities tending towards polymathy, or power of intuitive power and intelligence. 



Of all topics, people think they are prepared to advise regarding morality, but that is a terrible mistake. Morality is not a subject unto itself, to be taken separatly from life, a fact well known by religionists. It is all encompassing, and manifold, an "it" by a need for unity. It covers all disciplines, and it is about all people. The advice giver, the mentor, the moralist, the educator. Teachers must have something to teach, and must know about human nature, and a bit about the student, to tailor well. 

Is the difficulty of providing advice just a problem of knowledge? No it is not. It is a problem of habit and instinct, and of talent. Of matching like minded teachers with pupils. Of communication, disposition and DNA. Why did my son not take my advice? This is more challenging than knowing why he *did* take your advice. Why did you not take your own advice. Why did you procrastinate, and why were you not motivated to carry out your plan?

Bypassing the issue of defining morality here (I will do this in my book), I hope at least I have conveyed that it is more all encompassing than the reader may have assumed.

Why is it that not everyone is capable of giving advice? Why don't people take advice, when it is given?



This article intends to investigate some of the following types of quesions:

* The interrelationships between knowledge and truth.
* The possiblity of concillience, and relationships of mutual agreement. 
* How do mental/linguistic models, software/data models, and reality relate to each other?
* Why does language seem to communicate more than our speech-brain interface seems to allow, and also less than we hope?
* Why are we so poor at giving and taking advice?

These topics are not unrelated, and showing this will establish this articles thesis. Those who grasp the interconnectedness of these questions and topics will also have to make concessions about the thesis itself, about the centralish locus of siutational representations in our understanding of the world. This thesis is demonstrated reflexively.

The concept of "situation" is extremely abstract- (add footnote: I first came to realize this when I saw a major flaw in Kantian moral philsophy.) To my understanding, it is a central concept for understanding knowledge, truth, and 

These seemingly unrelated topics are bound together by the concept of situation, which is one of the most abstract concepts we have in language. Insights gained from an analysis of situations has implications for all disciplines, these topics just happen to connect to my interest in moral philosophy, and the art of giving and receiving advice.

## <a name="situations">Situations and Advice Giving</a>

Procrastination is a complex topic that deserves an approximately holistic treatment. Instead of providing narrow recommendations and tips to resolve specific problems in a disconnected fashion, this series strives to support most or all examples. Here a detailed description of the most important issues faced along with a strategic approach for addressing its complexity are provided. Since most people find themselves in dual positions of counselor and the counseled, each role is considered in depth. A framework is described that can be useful to anyone needing guidance with mentoring or self-help.

Procrastination affects everyone, including the highly motivated. We all experience it because it is basic to earthly biology, and it exists because of clear evolutionary advantages. The details of our energy economy have been worked out for us, by nature; motivation is connected with the general tendency to expend less energy and seek pleasurable paths, which is universal, desirable and necessary. Our goal is to mitigate the negative effects of uncontrolled pursual of pleasant paths, and to redirect our energies to useful activities, full of foresight and fruitfulness. Since this basic tendency cannot be eliminated, we need to learn to cope and manage—there is no nostrum, only adaptation. Healthy adjustment requires a shift in mentality, to self-understanding and acceptance. Later parts of the series cover mindfulness and stress management, and verbal antidotes to poisonous thought processes, like absolute self-devaluation. 

The main topic is procrastination, but the series is also an exposition of a philosophy about advice giving in complex circumstances—for collaboration or independent self-help. At several points the same approach is shown to apply to situations that are not related to procrastination, except that they involve analogically complex forms of advice giving and receiving.

The student experience is the primary example, since everyone has been a student and is likely to support a younger person later, either as a parent, teacher, counselor, or mentor. So this series is intended for everyone except those who refuse to improve themselves or support others. However, the primary example concerns the student who has motivational deficiencies, chronic delaying behavior, and little support from others. A student with very high global aptitude is assumed throughout, because that offers the most complex case of attention management. Application is not restricted to this useful example—it is assumed that everything in this series can be applied by most people at any stage of mature life, and that the student experience is merely a convenient example. 

This article is the first part of a multipart series covering the topic from surrounding angles and perspectives. This first part discusses a strategy for situational awareness, and an organizing principle for quickly finding and using the right tools and suggestions, along with the tools themselves. The second part provides an example autobiography, which is related to ideas developed in previous and subsequent parts. The third article describes an algorithm that can be used for self-guidance, and identification of obstacles calling for additional outside help. This series does not cover illnesses or disorders that block progress, but is very interested in determining how and when that is necessary. Medical or pharmacological advice is not given here. The fourth section provides psychological, philosophical, and religious perspectives that are useful for dealing with continued demotivation. This concerns acceptance of one's ongoing relationship with procrastination, and avoidance of illogical styles of thinking that can lead to extended depression or self-harm. We can go far beyond coping, however, and explore possibilities for partial self-actualization and life-long goal realization. The fifth article considers applications of the framework to a wide variety of cases and contexts, unrelated to the student experience, and provides suggestions for expanding the strategy to round-out the holistic approach. At this point, it is hoped, we will have achieved an approximately complete treatment.

For some, such as myself, procrastination has been a source of great torment and anguish; some of the worst periods of my life were when I was unable to find motivation to act in my own self-interest. Like others, I found there were no simple solutions, and constructive advice was hard to find. Procrastination is a much deeper topic than many people are willing to consider or accept; it is existential, and deeply technical. As a result, most parents and mentors are insufficiently prepared to provide the right encouragement when approached for help. This is expected due to the challenging nature of the task. Any advice given is often narrow or amiss. When I was in school, input from adults was rarely helpful or satisfying, and was sometimes more discouraging. Useful help was distant. I was alone to find answers on my own. Most students seem to be in the same position. Even today with plenty of resources online, good advice is hard to find.

The biggest challenge about procrastination is that it requires holistic treatment, but is affected by so many factors that holism is usually unreasonable. Even after much learning, one continually finds new causes that were previously hidden to consciousness. It is a stubborn issue; a single missed aspect can be the reason it persists. Procrastination is among the most complex things we can think about, although that is not apparent at the outset of investigation. Those who aren't experiencing it tend to be dismissive, and expect the depressed on inactive to simply "snap out of it." There is tremendous difference between observing it and experiencing it.

One begins an analysis of procrastination, by first completely underestimating its intricacies and difficulties. It is an ancient topic. It has never been considered completely, so we should not expect it to be quick and easy. The sciences we hope to provide answers are are too immature and separate to converge on finding answers. Another century or more is likely needed to reduce the phenomena to low-level physical science, and underlying principles of psychology and neurophysiology. Even if we stick to high level approaches like the one here, we find the task of creating an exhaustive list of contributing factors daunting (just creating a list of words!). It is truly a subject that challenges the wisdom and skill of any advice-giver.

Another major problem is that it appears to be a single issue when it arises in the mind of the procrastinator, who consequently forms leading and misdirecting questions—therefore starting out on the wrong path. With this beginning, inadequate advice is to be expected, and it cannot be corrected by continued reflection, if there is only one chance to provide assistance. This is common in the case of students requesting help, once desperate, when there is no time left to complete an assignment, or when poor reports are immanent. 

Let's consider a real example. What is needed, for example, to answer the following question effectively?:

"I'm smart and am frequently bored at school. Despite being capable, I'm having trouble staying motivated to complete my assignments, especially homework. What can I do to improve?" 

This is a paraphrase of a question I received recently online, from a high school student I did not know. I faced the same issue at the same age, and would have asked the same question in the same way. But the student's readiness to receive an answer, and the simplicity of the query, is a form of misdirection, encouraging a quick answer. I was tempted to answer immediately, but I realized I was unprepared—I needed more information. But *what* information exactly? I wasn't sure, although my instincts hinted that I needed "context". So I asked for additional details regarding whatever aspects I could think of at the moment, based on aspects of my history. These involved useful things to know, but my questions were not *strategic*—they were only intuitive. A strategy for becoming informed would have been better, and would have helped her as well, if only to self-explore and make sense of her circumstances. It was an unguided process for both participants. A professional would have a form to use, with all questions prepared in advance. I found this interesting, that despite the universality of this problem, there was no procedural solution people were aware of. People rely on their intuition to provide advice. There were no principles of informal advice giving and receiving ready at hand. 

She (I will use "she," but I am not aware of this student's gender) very quickly responded with clarifications, and these made me *feel* properly orientated. I had an increased readiness to provide direction. But as I prepared my response it became clear that I still did not have nearly enough information. But alas, advice is sought when action is needed, and there was no time before the answers were overdue. She would lose interest. I sent what I could, in several chunks over the course of a week, which is better than providing too much information at once. Extending the advising process is helpful for maintaining and renewing interest, to gain discovery opportunities, and get more time to prepare. It also provides the other person breaks between reading, and is less overwhelming (with no information, one would have to recommend books to cover the entire topic). I was confident my recommendations were useful generally, despite being diffuse. 

In this process I wondered what I was missing; what would I do the next time I received this question? What differentiated her situation from my own, that was of critical importance? Questions like these can be retained to see where information is missing, in future cases. Some questions I had were:  

* Did this person have any addictions or compulsions getting in the way?
* How is this person's family life in general? 
* Does she have problematic friends? 
* Are there too many distractions, or problems around the house?
* Is she excessively entertained?
* How much do her habits differ from the habits of a successful person, with roughly similar traits.
* How does she do in the classroom? 
* How are her social skills? 
* Does she skip school? 
* Is the best advice I can give to find guidance from someone else?  

As I thought about the true complexity of my own past situations, and my own solutions, I knew I had almost no knowledge about this person to work with, and that she needed highly personal advice, over a long period, that I could not give. Instead I had to provide as much detail as I could about my own history and situation, and many tips and tricks that worked for me, in a roughly singular act of assistance. With that, I hoped, she could pick what she needed and apply to her own life. The implicit strategy in this assumes she has sufficient awareness of her own situation, and analogical skill, to compare here situation with mine, and select the tools that are appropriate. This strategy means the student is burdened with the requirements of awareness, imagination, tool selection, and usage. In the case of youth, each of these are *lacking*, and cannot be supplied by providing yet more information. However, in the case of gifted students, or students that have high trustworthiness and aptitude (this student claimed giftedness), one can feel more confident that they will be able to make use of what is provided. With the right person this turns out to be a reasonable strategy, and is probably part of their plan when asking the question (one must consider the source of the question). In the mostly anonymous online exchange, however, this cannot be verified.

The personal history and tools I provided, were probably exactly what she was hoping for. The advice receiver does not expect the advice giver to have a full and intimate knowledge of their private struggles. Usually they do not want to disclose to make that level of assistance possible. They do hope for a degree of mind-reading; they want a discerning and non-judgmental person to see deeply, to be able to read between the lines, and provide tactful, powerful, and comprehensive advice, with limited information. 

There is a general problem of getting complete, accurate, and relevant data to assist another person. When truly in a position to help, there are opportunities to create a detailed case file, including all the relevant details of the person's history, region, culture, school, family, friends, usual places, and general environment. Getting this information is problematic, as any teacher, parent, or doctor laments. This issue is pressing with youths because they are not as aware or forthcoming with information of importance, and are likely to lie and conceal to avoid embarrassment. They do not have the skills to manage their embarrassment. So we rely on limited question-answer procedures, and hope for complete and truthful responses. Proximity doesn't always help either, since we all recall the limited information our family had about our lives. Counselors cannot do much better than rely on the self-report of the person counseled. We will postpone these issues for now, and simply recommend providing *many* tips and tools to draw from. This way the student does not need to reveal anything and can select those tools that turn out to apply to the situation.

Although there are difficulties to giving comprehensive support, I'm convinced they are not insurmountable for all occurrences. Advice regarding procrastination fits into a wider discipline around assisting others on complex matters. This series exhibits the use of a schematic approach that provides a sound *collaborative* strategy, that is treated more abstractly elsewhere ("Limits and Principles of Advising", to be published on this site soon). The reader is an individual participant in the overall process, and fills in specifics and gaps that could not have been provided for in advance by another person (This is not unusual, since the individual must fill in the gap, of actually carrying out the plan!). I provide an approach, of using a framework of strategies, that are both general and extensible, along with an example case history and example applications. The second part of this series will include my history, and the tools and tips are included here at the conclusion.

We will consider additional details of methodology, in depth, as we progress through later parts of the series (to be published soon). For now we will move to something immediately useful, and consider the first strategy.

We can see from the above, the first step is get a fairly well-processed mental-situation, that we could use to generate a detailed written *case study*. We need this before we can do anything else effectively. To process a situation for the correct data, we ask questions about the various dimensions situations have, and various factors, just like a scientist would when analyzing any phenomenon of interest. Some of these factors and dimensions are common to all situations, and some are specially relevant to procrastination. Ultimately we are talking about objects, properties, and relationships, but for now we are proceeding informally, so we will identify factors without jargon. If we can identify *most* of these, we will have made key first steps in strategic processing of our real-situation using plain language, which will assist with communication later.

The natural approach to this process is to simply brainstorm using keywords and associations we have about the topic. With popularization in social media everyone can recognize the effectiveness of tagging for loose categorization, and its importance for combining information and for searchability on the internet. After we have relevant keywords we can organize and reorganize them to more closely match the structure of the situation we perceive. We may create diagrams to represent the phenomena from several different perspectives. This extends our natural process of forming associations and using them to organize our understanding of phenomena.

Since we can create keywords without reference to any specific situation, we can get an idea of a prototypical procrastination. We can use this prototype as a schematic to use for understanding future instances. This is little more than learning patterns and applying them in the future. Recall that I did not do this when I was assisting the student, but I would have greatly benefited. Analysing a real-situation is much faster and more complete if we start with a list of all dimensions they typically contain, than to merely recall or reconstruct a situation from memory and intuition. So we will start with a kind of evolving paradigmatic skeleton of procrastination. We will have limitations due to generality to deal with, and our prototype could cause distortion unique instances. Thus we prune it and extend it as we apply it to new situations. We will see that relying on a list is an efficient way to quickly understand a situation in all its parts, and is a starting point for understanding its complexity. It is a great way to prime oneself on associations that one can use to quickly see many aspects of a situation, and to form new associations and find new revelations. 

With this we can present our first strategy. Success with procrastination is largely a matter of maximizing our abilities that relate to all factors defining the situation. It is little more than finding all the points of control, finding tools and tips for each point, and then becoming experienced controlling and manipulating them. This starts with an awareness of situation, and progresses with an awareness of factors. After awareness, one can learn to maximize power by quickly accessing the correct tools, and increasing abilities in each domain. The tips and tools below are a starting point for slowly building up strength in each area. By using this strategy, we can better understand our situations and tools that apply. Half of the task is identifying the tools we need to work with, and the skills we need to develop. 

Power over procrastination could be measured, in part, by the degree of our awareness of factors and our skill and speed at manipulating anything that can be controlled, without thinking hard about it.  With this we can see that the approach is not restricted to procrastination, but to any situation, particularly those that require complex consciousness and diverse controls. The goal, then, in situations like these, is to create a preponderance of resources, support structures, positive environments, habits, thoughts, and anything else that contributes to cases of success.

Factors, in this context, are kept to a personal level, and do not exactly match objects and variables we would choose for scientific investigation, although we could and would use associations like these to generate them. It is worthwhile to be rigorous in model development, but right now we are trying to be useful on a day to day basis, where no measurements are going to be taken. Basic language simply works best for our goals here. Factors should be easy to recall and make use of, in addition to providing an increasingly powerful mental image of the realities involved. Some aspects can be thought of as true dimensions, while others are keywords that relate to important factors or aspects of the situation. All of these are encompassed within the use of keywords. The desire to categorize and recategorize excessively should be avoided as a waste of time, and here we will prefer usefulness over a  well-formed scientific taxonomy, or data-model (although we will develop a starting data model later). 

Later we will also see how important lists like this are for research. Not only for identifying fields for gathering more information, but for having search terms to use in search engines.

Below is the initial list of factors. It is composed of keywords that I found *highly useful* in my own struggles. Feedback has taught me that others find them useful as well. It is meant to be tailored and extended for individual experience. 

#### Starter Keywords:

Variants of the keywords are included in parenthesis. Notice that these are little more than especially applicable words and synonyms.

* Attention (Focus, Noise-cancellation, Stimulus Filtration)
* Automaticity (Deep Habit, Unconscious Power, Effortlessness)
* Awareness (Consciousness, Vigilance)
* Communication (Talking, Revelation, Openness, Non-reticence)
* Economy (Simplicity, Thrift)
* Enjoyment (Fun, Comfort, Excitement, Relaxation)
* Energy (Fire, Non-fatigue, Intensity)
* Environment (Space, Locations, Surroundings)
* Experience (Expertise, Discernment, Prudence, Acuteness, Holistic Consideration)
* Fasting (Resignation, Mindfulness, Renunciation, Abstention, Rest-from)
* Honesty (Truth, Non-delusion, Non-concealment, Revelation, Precision)
* Imagination (Creativity, Open-mindedness, Thoughtfulness, Reflectiveness)
* Inspiration (Invigoration, Motivation) 
* Planning (Foresight, Preparation, Expectation, Anticipation)
* Punishment (Self-reproach, Correction, Penalization, Non-reward)
* Rejuvenation (Refuel, Re-fire, Replenish)
* Replacement (Substitution, Switching)
* Simplicity (Non-complexity, Essentialism, Reduction, Pruning)
* Socialization (Relationships)
* Timing (Immediacy, Opportunity, Scheduling, Coordination)
* Threats (Risks, Interruption, Obstruction, Manipulation, Derailment, Distraction, De-motivation)
* Trickery (how to trick yourself)
* Rewards (Celebration, Acknowledgement, Satisfaction, Recognition, Payment)
* Visualization (Presaging, Predicting, Forecasting, Forewarning)

There are more, but it would be boring to be too exhaustive here. This process would expand into a dictionary, if not controlled. Key useful factors are what interest us. An appendix will be provided with a cheat sheet, containing more examples, at a later time. The main point here is to recognize the many contributing aspects that can be controlled, and to have a finite list that is easy to understand and recall. If a word in the bulleted list doesn't work for you, perhaps you can substitute your own word or a word in parenthesis. Or, use the entire list if that is helpful. The reader should notice, that every bullet point here is clearly related to the experience of procrastination in several ways. This will be obvious as the tools are examined. If some point is not considered, a huge chunk of the strategy will be missing!  Since I am not omniscient, I believe other large chunks are missing as well, which means I am probably still being influenced by factors that I have not considered! This is to be expected, since we are so limited, and there is no apparent end to the self-mastery we can obtain, by careful observation and learning. There is more to learn and more to add, and it can be quite exciting to discover and apply something new. Procrastination need not be boring. It is an opportunity for self-discovery.
