Series 2 Episode 07: Knowledge is Power

Knowledge, Learning and Better Choices was the title for this issue suggested by the AI elves.  Perhaps I should listen to then next time.

Making life better by design is about making choices and taking decisions. The more you know about a subject, the better your choices should be.

This episode looks in more depth at that premise and emphasises the benefits of involving both head and heart in the process.

Transcript

Speaker 0:04

Hello everyone, or indeed anyone, and welcome to another episode of Make Life Better by Design With me, Kevin Drayton. The premise of today's podcast is that the more you know about a subject, the better your choices and decisions will be. This is very much concerned with lifelong learning, which is a bit of a buzzword nowadays. But the fact is that we learn consciously or unconsciously from birth through to death. Meaning, unless you are unfortunate enough for bad health to intervene, it's almost impossible not to learn something every day right up to your last breath. And I believe that learning, although it is, how can I put it, part of being taught, it is actually better than being taught. Active involvement in the process produces better results more quickly. So learning or indeed being taught to perform a particular task is helpful, but learning about the principles, the laws, and the concepts that support a task, well, that allows us to engage with our imaginations and really supercharge things. The results can be, can be quite mind blowing, and thus does civilization develop. Nobody has yet reached the knowledge limit of the human brain. You can always learn more. The flip side of that is that you cannot learn less. You might forget something, but once it's in, it's in there for good. It's not to say it's always easy to retrieve, but once you've posed the question, the system will beaver away until perhaps a week later, when you're doing the laundry or something, the answer pops into your consciousness just like that. Now, that sort of knowledge retrieval is not much help in a pub quiz, admittedly. But you know, if it's a week, two weeks later and then it pops up in in the brain, I still get a little buzz about it. Indeed the more we can work with the brain or that crude, relatively recent spinoff computing power, then the less of that, well,"let's just try it and see what happens" activity we actually need to engage in. Uh, when you watch an old news reel of a brave inventor jumping off a cliff with homemade wings strapped to his arms, it does make me wonder just how much he or she really understood about flight before taking the decision that adding extra weight to his arms should improve his chances in a gamble with gravity. Playing"what if" can be a technique to advance human knowledge, but occasionally the only improved knowledge and understanding from the event goes to the medical teams clearing up the results. Whenever you are faced with the need to make a choice, or take a decision, uh, unless you are charged with defusing the bomb with only seconds left on the countdown, then the more knowledge about the subject or situation you can bring to the party, the better the likely result, and that takes time. Usually you need to educate yourself about the criteria important to you in making your choice or decision. Let's take an example. The washing machine has gone kaput and you've had it so long that repair is off the race card. A new it's got to be. The trouble is the last time you looked at washing machines, nylon shirts were still in vogue. But before you interrogate the interweb or your local white box warehouse, set down clearly what your requirements are. No, I'm not gonna list what they might be'cause I've got better things to do. Then, armed with your checklist, browse the machines on offer. Don't forget to take things like stock levels, delivery, and installation into consideration as well. You probably find you'll end up either with a, a complete, no-brainer decision. That's it. That's the one. Get it ordered, get it delivered, get it fitted, and get on with your life or more likely: hm, two or three possibilities. Now, this is where being human can throw a little spanner into the process. Okay? So option A machine A meets all your criteria, but so does option B. But machine option B it is a bit cheaper than machine option A. So why do you find yourself hesitating to seal the deal on machine B? Probably because for you A has a certain that once you've clocked it, you can't forget it. Don't ignore that feeling. That feeling is what makes you you and not just a walking algorithm. It's why you'll put up with the odd problem with machine A, whereas the dull efficiency of machine B just shows you it's got no soul. I am an education junkie. I love finding new things and finding out about things. I wouldn't dream of making an off the cuff decision about a purchase until I've waded through every source of information I can find. Until then, the matter's on hold. For too long in my life when people disagreed with me about things. I assumed that they knew more about the subject than I, therefore, I was plain wrong. My natural response was to defer to the other person and determine to find out what it was that gave them the superior knowledge. Well, what I learned eventually was that very often I was right and they were wrong. Which brings us to the subject of confidence. Confidence can come from knowing your'e right. If you've put in the necessary learning, you can stand firm. However, confidence has power that some people have realised can be used in place of knowledge. The confidence trickster can harness that power to devastating effect. Ever being conned, ever being tricked? It's not nice and it largely depends on you believing that the other person, the other party knows what they're talking about and you are just being suspicious. During my career, I laugh at that because, uh, I don't really understand what careers are. Uh, I heard some time ago the definition of a career as being a job that's just gone on for too long, and I do tend to believe in that. However, during my career, I've come across many people who used confidence as a substitute for knowledge without even realising it. But how to deal with that is a subject for a different podcast. There are people whose jobs require them to persuade you to buy something. Or sign up for some deal or make you believe that what you're being offered is the best thing since a slice of pre-divided Sandwich Loaf. That's their job, their skill, their talent, and they flit from sales office to sales office sometimes with only a cursory familiarity with a company's products. I remember overhearing a conversation once between, uh, a tall, very confident young man groomed to perfection and a middle aged, slightly overweight man with thinning hair. The older man was offering the younger one a round of golf. The older chap asked the younger what his handicap was, and his reply made me gag."Well, I play off X, but I'm a scratch salesman." Now, back we come to the power of the gut. We can feed data into the machine, the brain, the head, as long as we like. But until we consider what our heart's response to all this is, we are machines denying our humanity. Listening to yourself is vital because there are no absolute choices and decisions. Only your choices and decisions. Uh, this might be a good point perhaps to explain to you that I'm not trying to sell you anything. I may on occasion mention a product or service or book, and that'll be because of my belief in it, no one's paying me to do so. Which is a pity, really. Oh, well. However, if I were to tell you that Charles and Ray Eames, American designers, designed possibly the best office or desk chair presently available, I don't expect you to rush out and buy one without taking the time to look into the object in depth, compare it with others, available against your personal criteria, and then decide. I mean, if you are not in the market for an office chair, it's pointless anyway. Mind you, you'd have picked up a lot of useful knowledge in the process. Okay. It's time for me to crawl back into my mind palace, once again. I will leave you with the wish that in making your life better, you employ both head and heart in your choices and decision making. Thanks for listening and until we meet next time, goodbye.