Same Reason Our Schools Are Failing Our Students? Mismanaging Planet Kindergarten.

   (Commentary posted by Roger Erickson)

Eventually, knowing"WHY" to work/fight/learn ... (motivation) ... always trumps "HOW" to work/fight/learn.

Since motivation drives continued innovation.

The law of multi-level selection? Those who know why they work/fight/learn will always run circles around those who only know how?

If there is no consensus Desired Outcome, then aggregates display lagging orientation to why or how to accomplish ... what? The awesome return on net coordination is possible only when aggregates are working towards a consensus Desired Outcome.

Meanwhile, past history repeatedly shows that all individuals learn best & fastest via unbiased exposure to emerging context. So success tracks instilling optimal learning habits as a prerequisite, BEFORE setting off to master endless strings of emerging tasks.

That's why Froebel invented Kindergarten.

A similar lesson applies (on a different scale) for individual aggregates, not just the individual components of given aggregates.

Surely that reminds you of biology (including, eventually, the human species), which was left - initially unbiased - in a (relatively) safe environment (planet earth), where it could learn all on it's own - without outside bias or micromanagement?

Which sadsack ever said there was any conflict between religion & the scientific method?

For gods so loved the world ... that they didn't try to micromanage it's development? Hopefully.

Yes, everything we ever needed to know we're learning here, from one another. Only one question. Will humans ever stop fighting, and graduate from planet Kindergarten?

We're All Studying The Wrong Things

   (Commentary posted by Roger Erickson)



Or at least too much isolated detail, and too little context.

What'd Walter Shewhart say? "Data is meaningless without context."
Take our aggregate fiscal policy ... please!

The details in this essay by Bill Mitchell are depressingly astounding.

How Two Nations That Drove The Renaissance Eventually Joined At The Hip And Then Purposely Shot Both of Their Own Feet

I'll mention just one. "France was determined to stop Germany ever invading it again."

So, armed with that fixation, France ended up guaranteeing that German export industries would invade France, armed with THEIR fixation on a pegged Fx. And now they profess surprise.

Have A Steady Stream Of Changing Contexts

And Won't Explore Them Without Prejudice?*

Humans have been "Context Nomads" since before we were modern humans. Given that long habit, it is simply amazing that countries with such a history of brilliant physiologists, physicists and chemists can't figure out the rudimentary demands of the dynamic system we call a currency supply.

For heaven's sake! Amoebas figured this out a billion years ago! Even bacteria did. Just follow the damn operations, and keep them going, and evolving?

What should we be studying? How to systematically control the frictions that cause entire human cultures to take one giant step backward for every two aggregate steps forward.

Otherwise, how do we manufacture adaptive Public Purpose? Not just randomly diverted consent?


* We are Context Nomads: human nomads migrating through contexts with UNPREDICTABLE characteristics. Just explore without prejudice? Life is no more difficult than Kindergarten, where we first learn OBT&E. 

Three Quotes To Motivate Electorates To Explore Cultural Options At Breakneck Speed

Commentary by Roger Erickson

While, of course, accidentally reaping the payoff from such exploration.





1) military "Never tell people how to do things. [Tempt] them [with something worth achieving] and they will surprise you with their [collective] ingenuity." George S. Patton

(This highlights the issue of LETTING everyone orient - in their own way - to some desired outcome broad enough to encompass everyone's goals.
  Let's be pragmatic. Most people rarely need to know all the details of their own context, let alone much about everyone else's local milestone goals. Instead, we only need to know whether or not any action gets the group closer to the group goal - i.e., the desired outcome - which is a Big Tent big enough to encompass everyone's local goals. Sharing one desired, group outcome is exactly what greatly simplifies local selection tasks.)

2) software programming "For every intractable problem .. there is a solution, and that solution will involve yet another level of indirection."

(That's also a pretty good re-statement of the theory of evolution! And of Patton's message too.

  Example, when the front door is blocked, it may be faster to go around & use the side or back doors, or windows. Duh! So WHERE ARE THE PATHS TO CURRENTLY UNKNOWN SIDE & BACK DOORS? Just let people find them. Pronto! And then openly welcome whatever they find, no matter how unexpected. What's your greater interest, personally being right, or seeing national success?)

3) "All people learn best via unbiased experience with the context they must master, BEFORE ever prejudicing their perspective with prior instructions or information."

(Both premises 1 and 2, above, are subsumed in the original premise of early education, by Friedrich Frobel, the founder of Kindergarten. This is now known as OBT&E - or Outcomes-Based Education & Training.)

"Friedrich Fröbel's great insight was to recognize the importance of [operational] activity .. in [any sort of] learning."

That is, when you're trying new stuff, it never matters what "should" or "shouldn't" work, only what's openly observed to work. So avoid the talk, and just trick groups into innocently practicing something worth "doing". Then, as Patton advised, discuss any key details later, if at all. That general approach gets people past all ideology, indirectly. Generally, it is an admirably useful approach, but one used most often by rebel Majors & Colonels! :)

For those of you working in any particular discipline, if you can design some Workshop Exercises to trick [YOUR INDUSTRY] folks into thinking outside their prior-presumption-boxes without actually discussing fiat currency operations, then you'll have added a missing recruitment process to the MMT task - operationally-effective recruitment diversity. Plus, you'll have gained experience designing "Cognitive Illusions" that lead people by the nose, to the dissonance between their locally-unique, ideological-prejudice-traps and their ongoing Operational-Reality. That kind of practical experience is worth it's weight in ... well, something more valuable than gold! :)

Note: Much later, Frobel's outcomes-based, or immersion-training approach to all training eventually led to the awe-inspiring Prussian-Officer-Training-System (1809-1933; finally disbanded by the Nazis) & also to our necessarily recurring revolutions in Mil-Officer training.

"The fundamental principles of education, instruction and teaching, should be passive and protective, not directive and interfering." Friedrich Frobel
 [Whoa! A century later, Gen. Patton paraphrased a Kindergarten teacher nearly exactly!]

Sadly, the operational Kindergarten/Prussian educational approach never quite made it out of Kindergarten & Mil-Officer training, and into general Policy and Civics. :( And it's effectively banned from Religion and all Economics!

While operations-based analysis is paramount in Warren Mosler's work, MMT is not economics. Rather, it is pragmatic operations, which COULD be applied to fiscal and monetary policy, if there were even a few more pragmatic people left in the USA.