NOTICE More RESPOND Differently VIA THEO PDF

NOTICE More
RESPOND
Differently
VIA THEORY POWER
FORMATTED FOR SMALL SCREENS
(A5 pages 13 pt. fonts)
More Theories, More Diverse Ones = BIGGER WORLD & LIFE:

By Richard Tabor We start life FILLED with Theories Put INTO US that BLIND Us,
Greene A FEW of Us Discover Them, Edit, & Replace THEM = Adulthood
Professor at KeioU, BeijingU,
TempleU, UChicago; PEOPLE HATE THEORY
“..I think I have THIS BOOK:
given this book Five theories that NOW expand
Democratized AI tech delivery it bores, it’s useless, weak academics make it
at 2 Japan, 2 EU, 3 USA firms; to everyone who- you and your world
BUT it determines noticings and responses lifelong.
Founded 3 Palo Alto AI ventures; PEOPLE THINK THEY MAKE THEIR OWN VIEWS
soever that I Turn inputs into Theories
SB in AI at MIT, but their unconscious view determines what they notice know...kids, Nine theories in causal model
Creative Writing at Wellesley, PEOPLE LOVE WHAT THEY ARE AND CAN DO spouse, friend, form and how they expand you
MA MA PHD at UMichigan; mastery of own routines gets mistaken for boss, colleagues, New theory basics--all aspects
Master of Innovation Sciences safety and effectiveness of them strangers in the of your ID shrink your world
at Detao MA in Shanghai; night..it HELPS” Learning expands capability,
won Deming Prize in Japan,
Baldrige Award in USA; THERE IS THIS LINK--the made-by-others you hits 20, finds others Educating expands your world
AUTHOR of 46 amazon books Detailed application of one
have better views/ways, begins 30+ year journey to find his/her
Kimono SportFormal Fashions theory--GIddens’delocalization
own self contents, cut the bad ones, replace with better, till around
From plural theories to plural
55 becomes “adult” a person totally beyond Initial Factory Settings,
models
a person who HAS what all others BE, who evolves what others DEFEND.
Checklist form of 20 creativity theories
“...this book is EVERYTHING really really foundational, vital in life-- Course in turning INPUTS into THEORIES
you bet my kids read it, and I reread it year after year, is SAVES lives.” into MODELS
“Someone should Jobs-Apple VOID MASTERS
make this first
thing freshman
year in every
college, grad
school, new
job, marriage;
it hits you up
front with with
5 theories of
self, adulthood,
educatedness,
self growth,
culture change,
all as INSIGHT”
AN EVERYONE EDITION
NOTICE More VIA

RESPOND THEORY POWER
Differently
Formatted for Small Screens on A5 with 13 pt. Fonts

NOTICE More VIA
Differently
CONTENTS:
page Table of Contents
4
page 5 Chapter 1--We are ALL Theorists--5 Theories
that will Expand Your Life NOW
page 100 Chapter 2--Where do Theories Come From--
Turn Inputs into Theories into Power
page 195 Chapter 3--9 Theory Example in Causal Form
that will also Expand Your Life NOW
page 436 Chapter 4--More Theory Basics--Each Part of
Your Identity SHRINKS You and Your
World
page 502 Chapter 5--One Theory Applied in Detail--
Giddens De-Localization Theory
page 605 Chapter 6--From Plural Theories to Plural
Models--escaping Rightnesses
page 672 Chapter 7--20 Models of Creativity, Each a
Distinct Theory of Creating in Table
form for Assessment
page 1264 References--500 of them
page 1098 Chapter 8--Theory to Models to Turning
Inputs of All Sorts into Theory-Models
page 1364 the author’s other 49 amazon.com books
page 1376 the comic back cover
The process in all of living that has the greatest power and payback
is always there; we fear and flee and avoid it, not because it is hard
or risky or scary, but because the degree of improvement and change
in who and what and how we are it offers overwhelms our imagina-
tion and threatens to dump in the dustbin of history our favorite parts
of our present selves. Stories of Herman Hesse
CHAPTER
1
Theory
Power
Theory Power
The Role of Theory Power in Life and
Work
Theory power is one of a number of philosophies and
theories that have influenced and continue to influ-
ence all forms of success but in a hidden way, so most
people, even ones with power and success, are
unclear what produced and, where it came from, how
to repeat or expand it. It is more important, than
many other such theories, however, because it is a
“theory about theories” and because, therefore, it
goes to the heart of what it means to be an educated,
effective, creative, “orthogonally competent” person-
-a person competent in several fields.
Furthermore, theory is full of contention in modern
society. There are huge sectors of the world thinking
they are not theorists, when really they are--it is just
that they daily bandy around theories operating inside
of themselves that they are completely unaware of.
It is just that they rule out every day tens of thou-
sands of alternatives they have never experienced or
imagined. They live and operate in tiny worlds, miss-
ing most of reality in every situation they face. They
lack to diversity of fameworks to spot and distinguish
most of the phenomena in what they see. There are
huge sectors of the world, primarily in academia,
thinking that they are theorists, and working with the-
ories that rarely if ever affect anything real in the
world. Many of these people in academia are content
to never affect anything--publishing where peers
praise them is all they need in professional life.
Eventually, however elite this starts, it ends being
narcissism. Theory is denied by most, and used as a
hiding place by some. There is a better way to use it.
You can be empowered greatly by theory, even so that
the more theories you know and use, the more power-
ful you become. This part of this book introduces the
power of theory to make people powerful, effective,
creative, and educated.
It is worth noting here that theory should be, in this

context, understood as opposed to “right” and “right-
ness”. Be “right”, it turns out, is a child’s view of the
world. Religions and social cliques, are often formed
for in-group out-group distinction purposes--the whole
point is to get together with people “like” me and feel
superior in some or many ways to people not like
“us”. Wars, bias, hatred and the like find this fertile
ground in which to grow. Has there ever been a reli-
gion or powerful belief that did not, along with its
own valid methods of living, add on a “feeling of supe-
riority to those poor pitiful outsiders, let’s create
some missionaries to ‘save’ them”. Can you have any
sort of group, or in-group, or powerful belief, or reli-
gion without a feeling of superiority and rightness tag-
ging along? It often seems that the entire point and
purpose of many groups is to feel superior to others,
to feel “righter” than others. Theory power begins
with admission that being “righter” than others is a
physical impossibility. Theory power shows that any
one group or person’s feeling of rightness is highly,
totally dependent on context, on what people see in a
situation and how they frame it, which together
determine in most cases how they react to it. Most of
us have such undiverse small repertoires of frames
(theories) for viewing situations that we all seem to
see the same things. However, when we run into
someone who sees entirely different things in the
same situation, it scares us into murdering the
stranger, the unusual person, the person with the
noticeable belief differences. We fear people able to
see what we cannot. However, as the world global-
izes, we are all slowly beginning to recognize that
everyone always sees things we do not see. Any
group of twelve, if you combine their individual notic-
ings, will as a group far surpass what any individual in
the group by himself “naturally” sees in a situation.
Being right depends on what frame is used, and that
depends in what frames you have and what frames you
do not know about. Theory power turns the blind
into those who see, by removing rightnesses and
replacing them with “from this theory’s standpoint I
notice x, y, and z, and therefore conclude that a is
right for this situation”. Given a different theory, a
different “right” would fit exactly the same situation.
Rightness is just adamant insistence on a theory that
is all you personally have for viewing some part of the
world. It is stubbornness in a word--refusal to use
many mutually incompatible frames. It is refusal to
see and to think.
The Basic Truth: Theory is Power
People who lack theories cannot see the world. That
is not entirely accurate. They can see a tiny part of
the world--the physical part. They miss more than
99% of what is there--all that stuff not physically visi-
ble--meanings, destinies, chances, flaws, profits, new
business opportunities, fatal problems. We have all
seen people with theory power. We and they partici-
pate in some situation but they see all kinds of prob-
lems, opportunities, feelings, resources, chances,
possible stumbling blocks that we do not see. It is as
if there are whole other worlds there, in the situation,
that are visible to them but invisible to us. As chil-
dren we feel this way quite a lot. Adults, to children,
are always reacting to aspects of situations that the
children cannot see or even, for that matter, imagine.
Theory is Constituted of Abstractions

Many of the most obvious and frequent concepts we
use daily are highly abstract ideas that originated in
theories hundreds of years ago. What a person is,
was invented in several different ways in several dif-
ferent cultures in several different eras. Much of the
anxiety and hatred and conflict in life comes from
imposing our own idea of “person” on others as if
what a person is has been agreed to by all people
everywhere in some sort of giant United Nations.
Businesses suffer from the practical implications of

different ideas of what a “person” is. They have
teams of people from several nations running major
I have re-expressed Kegan’s table, adding stages,
based on recent research, below.
Seven Stages in How People Think:

What is Subject in One Stage Becomes Object for Reflection
of Next Stages
Modified from Robert Kegan’s In Over Our Heads, Harvard Univ. Press, 1994.
Name/Objects Cans/Persons Cannots/Self

OBJECT Can recognize Cannot distinguish own
THOUGHT objects and per- perception of object
Object permanence sons exist indepen- from actual properties
of independent ele- dently of our own of the object; cannot
ments sensing of them; do cause-effect rea-
object: I have can inner
distinguish
sensation
soning; cannot recog-
nize that other persons
nothing. from outer stimulus have their own pur-
subject: I am poses independently of
ourselves; cannot see
objects. oneself as having
impulses that one can
control or manage
Perceptions Demanding need Transient Emotional
fulfillment States
of Next Stages

CATEGORY Unites plural data Cannot experience
THOUGHT in the actual under “the future” co-
Within Category one category; can present with “the
Thinking do cause-effect present”, that is
object: I have struct own can
reasoning; con-
point of
implicit as
quences of present
conse-
objects; view and see others actions; Cannot subor-
have different dinate current cate-
point of view; can gory to another for
subject: I am my regulate own same data or a possible
needs impulses, needs, category that is other,
goals; can delay hence, has no ability to
gratification create long range
plans, patterns, or gen-
eralizations; cannot
reason abstractly or
form hypotheses; can-
not take own point of
view and other’s point
of view simultaneously;
cannot construct obli-
gations and expecta-
tions to maintain
mutual interpersonal
relations; cannot inter-
nally coordinate more
than one point of view
or need; cannot distin-
guish one’s needs from
oneself; cannot self
appreciate “ I have low
self esteem”.
Cause-effect Transactional reci- Enduring Disposi-
procity tions: Needs, prefer-
ences
of Next Stages

ABSTRACT Can reason Cannot systematically
THOUGHT abstractly, can rea- produce all possible
Cross- Categories son about reason- relations; systemati-
Thinking [Traditional- ing; can experience cally isolate variables
ism] the future as co- to test hypotheses;
object: I have present with the cannot construct gen-
present--implicit in eralized system regu-
needs; what ones commits lating interpersonal
to in the present; relationships; cannot
can create hypoth- organize own states or
subject: I am my eses and test them; internal phenomena
values, I am my can form negative into systematic whole;
relations classes; can form cannot distinguish self
personal ideals; from one’s relation-
can be aware of ships (cannot see self
shared feelings and as author of relations).
expectations that
take precedence
over own feelings
and expectations;
can internalize
another’s point of
view; can empa-
thize on internal
not transactive
level; responsive to
socialization with-
out being responsi-
ble for it
Abstractions: ideals, Mutuality: can Inner States: self con-
values, generaliza- internalize sciousness
tion, hypotheses another’s point of
view
of Next Stages

RELATIONSHIP Can be free from cannot establish two
THOUGHT any ideas or values different power posi-
System-Complex in principle; is tions within one rela-
Thinking [Modernism] author of own val- tionship; cannot own
object: I have ues and manager of
own relationships;
their own work; cannot
detect how the institu-
values and rela- can create relation tional settings I am in
tions; between indepen- subtly control my val-
subject: I am my dent value-genera-
tors rather than by
ues and life outcomes,
limiting my autonomy
commitments; I sharing values;
am my loyalties; have separate
others concerns behaviors of others
causing my feeling
are my concerns so they are respon-
sible for behaviors
but I am responsi-
ble for feelings I
get from their
behaviors, not
them; others are
not responsible for
how I feel
Ideology as Theory Regulate relation- Self authorship: iden-
of Relationships: ships and multiple tity, autonomy, self
organize, evaluate, roles; maintaining regulation; a self
and create ideals boundaries and independent of
and values setting limits in duties, roles, and
relationships relations (having
duties not being
them)
of Next Stages

DIVERSITY Can be free of any Cannot get different
THOUGHT (hori- system of values or paths and ideologies to
zontal version of ideology; can work together. Cannot
Clear Mind unravel any subtle get people to shift to
Thought below) system of values in loyalty to two or more
Diverse System Think- institutional set- such complete compet-
ing [post modernism] tings; can detect itive systems. Can see
object: I have how lies
power under-
innocuous
the possible theoreti-
cal equal validity of
theories and sys- seeming hierar- different paths and
tems, commit- chies and proce- ways but cannot distin-
ments and dures around me; guish practical differ-
can build relations ences in concrete
loyalties between wholly powers and results.
subject: I am incompatible sys-
refusal of mysti- tems and cultures This stage probably
fying some one exists only because
human life-span have
system or ideol- extended from 50 to 75
ogy years of age in the last
50 years.
Procedures for De- Negotiating the Self whose construc-
constructing ideolo- provisional erect- tion is relativized: my
gies and systems ing of boundaries whole self is in need
and limits in new of re-invention to
types of relation- relate to selves of
ships between other cultures and
incompatible sys- genders; recognize
tems possibility of borrow-
ing styles across gen-
der and culture gaps
without unwitting par-
ticipation in power
sources hidden behind
gender and culture
behaviors;
of Next Stages

CLEAR MIND Can see the unity Cannot get beyond the
THOUGHT (verti- underneath fundamental anxieties
cal version of appearances; can of human existence:
Diversity Thought accept each cannot imagine how to
above) diverse path or way redesign humanity now
Trans-Diversity as one of many that the power of gene
Thinking [Buddhism valid ways towards design has been devel-
as a Philosophy] truth, having its oped by humanity; can-
own distortions and not imagine a new
virtues; can treat global religion founded
object: I have all comers as in clear “no mind”
demystifica- friends and fellow thought and feeling;
tions of each of spirit travelers; can
detect the roots of
various ideology power and ego
systems, gender drives in funda-
systems, mental human anx-
ieties that people
national system flee from rather
than befriend; can
befriend such fun-
subject: I am damental anxieties
clear “no mind” myself
consciousness
beyond illusions
of diversity
of Next Stages

Procedures for Negotiating provi- Self whose relativity is
Detecting Which sional unities relativized: the plu-
Fundamental Anxi- underneath appar- ralities and diversity
ety of Existence ently diverse sys- of ways around me is
Underlies Particu- tems and drives illusion, underneath
lars of a Way, Path, which is a reality of
Ideology, Gender divine emptiness,
shining clear con-
sciousness that fulfills
my dreams and
releases me from the
roots of division, dif-
ference, diversity in
ego; self who returns
energy from head to
base of spine, who
becomes its bodily
mind not its intellec-
tualized mind alone.
Self stripped of
modernity and West-
ern tradition “head”
energies and yet
stripped also of tradi-
tional society refusal
of self-negation cul-
ture and the open
future horizon it con-
tinually renews.
of Next Stages

GLOBAL ECO Can see why and Cannot invent new
THOUGHT how I and others consciousness to
From Individual use differences to replace global no mind
Trans-Diversity to keep others out, to clear consciousness:
Global Trans-Diversity deny the unity of cannot change con-
and Trans-Unity human clear mind sciousness I was born
consciousness; can with; cannot invent
use differences new partial ways tai-
object: I have myself as bridges lored for local condi-
clear “no mind” to others not walls tions and anxieties.
consciousness
beyond the illu-
sions of diver-
sity.
subject: I am a
global move-
ment to stop the
using of differ-
ences for preju-
dice, war, self
justification,
keeping others
out; I am using
differences as
bridges to others
instead of walls
to keep others
out
of Next Stages

Conflict resolution, Get differing peo- Self who has a mission
difference demystifi- ple to change loy- to shift loyalties of
cation, tracing dif- alty from their others from their local
ference wall effects local from birth happenstance com-
and envisioning systems and con- mitment systems to a
bridge effects sciousnesses to a new global clear mind
new global no commitment that does
mind clear con- not use difference as
sciousness that excuse for walling
refuses to use dif- others out or conflict.
ferences as walls
and excuses for
conflict
Below are two graphic summaries of all the above.

These are powerful single pages that top executives in
dozens of global corporations, and government agency
heads and cabinet members have found, as well as top
artists, designers, and creators agree with, identify
with, and admit describe the best parts of their own
lives and careers.
This is one simple theory--the theory of personal

growth (including adulthood, be X to have X, college
exposure to alternatives). This is one theory.
What are you BEING now that growth will require you
to instead, HAVE? That is the question this theory
always poses to everyone. What despair are you
avoiding that is essential for growth?
SOME IMPLICATIONS OF THIS ONE PERSONAL GROWTH
THEORY
If you do not despair deeply you get NO personal
growth in your life ever.
If you do not generate long huge strings of repeated

failures at some fondest goal, you get NO despair
hence NO personal growth ever.
If you do not try all you are and know and can invent
and imagine, you never reach enough failures in a
string to foster the despair that allows loosening love
of parts of self enough for personal growth.
Your attempt to lead others and build/run great

teams crashes upon the members around you that are
NOT adult--who defend any views-ways-ideas differ-
ent then their own. The door to leadership and great
teamwork is only through enticing and nudging peo-
ple, especially the most reclacitrant ones, from fat
satisfied wallowing in decades old ideas and ways put
in them by hometown and home nation, to strings of
failures that lead to depair that leads to self growth.
There is no leading and not great teamwork using peo-
ple not at all adult and attempting to never grow to
adulthood.
Ask yourself now--have you already before reading

this chapter, known and valued all this? Has this the-
ory on a few pages, changed, possibly, your future
destiny? How? Why? in what direction?
What is Theory? A Powerful Demonstra-
tion Exercise
Below is a table of replicated study results. They
describe male female differences. While the brain is
highly plastic so all these differences may evolve and
change due to deliberate practice of individuals or
social policy changes, like the habits of Japanese or
the habits of lawyers, the differences, whatever their
origin and whatever the ease with which they MIGHT
change given serious effort, they are right now every-
where and research keeps find them appearing even
inside radical feminists whose minds refuse any sug-
gestion of male female differences (British research
yesterday that feminists prefer “protective sexism”
from men, over expected male-female equality from
men, for one example).
THE EXERCISE. Talk to one member of the opposite

sex everyday for 20 minutes ENTIRELY using responses
not for YOUR gender but for THEIRS, from the bottom
16 items in the figure below. At every comment
respond not as you do, want to do, usually do, but as
the model, the theory in the table, suggests as what
the other gender expects and wants. Do this five days
in a row till you are good at it. 1) Then discuss--what
happened. 2) How many of you got naked sex right
away as a result of 20 such minutes of talk--why?
What is a Theory?--Conceptural View
Above you were exposed, very briefly, to 2 theories,
both in table form. That is because theories--all the-
ories--have typical components, listed below.
A theory is:
constructs
relations between constructs
ways to measure those constructs in real situations,

scales
variables (measured constructs)
cases explained by those constructs, relations, and

measures
predictions enabled by those constructs, relations,

and measures
empirical tests of the theory
assumptions of the theory
granularity of the theory
explanatory power of the theory
predictive power of the theory
generalizability of the theory
reliability of the theory

validity of the theory
Constructs are a decision, by the theory, of what is
important, where to direct attention. Constructs say
“look at this part of the situation, not those other
parts”. Constructs can be immensely powerful.
When some researchers measured policies that
improved voter happiness, and compared them to pol-
icies that improved voter well-being, it was found that
the latter caused support (votes) for the government
to increase, not the former. Happiness is one of six
components in many models of well-being. Yet if you
ask 99% of all governors, mayors, councilpersons, and
the like they will treat happiness and well being as if
they are the same idea. They “are” the same except
one of them gets you re-elected and the other does
not! This is a typical example of theory power.
Relations among constructs are usually causal--this

part of the world causes changes of a certain feature,
direction, amount, frequency, continuity in that part
of the world. Relations in a theory are salient ones,
never complete ones. That means most theories are
not system theories--they omit how every significant
stakeholder in the situation reacts to actions by any
one stakeholder and they omit how actions of any one
stakeholder at any one point in time have delayed
side-effects. The relations in a theory say “look at
how this part of the world affects that part of the
world, not how it affects these other parts”.
Measurement scales in a theory are how you measure
ideas, that is constructs. Measurement scales are
parts of the real world that change when a particular
construct changes, allowing you to take changes in
that part of the world as indicating changes in the
construct. A measurement sounds like a relationship-
-X part of the world changes when Y changes. How-
ever, they differ. A measurement is an obvious part
of the world that should change when the construct
changes whereas a relationship connects to parts of
the world that do not obviously affect each other
(except from the point of view of the particular the-
ory involved). A measurement “scale” is the amounts
of change indicating significant change in the con-
struct. You cannot measure “happiness” in units of
length but you can measure it in units of “better than
X type of situation in my past”. Really happy means
“this situation is better than the moment of greatest
accomplishment in my life thus far” whereas some-
what happy means “this situation is better than the
moment of one of my better accomplishments in the
past, excluding my very best ones”, for example.
Inventing good scales for measuring certain ideas is
very difficult work, requiring major amounts of clev-
erness. Measurement scales in theory say “to see
how much this part of the world has changed, observe
changes of these amounts in this other part of the
world rather obviously related to it, that is easier to
measure”.
Variables in a theory are measured constructs. Vari-

ables are parts of the world to observe and measure in
order to see how much the idea or construct is chang-
ing. I want to know if people are getting more and
more happy or less and less happy in a certain situa-
tion so I observe their responses to a direct question
“which of the following types of feeling do you now
have: 1) frustration 2) satisfaction 3) great satisfac-
tion 4) delight 5) ecstasy”. Their responses to that
direct question are my variable, meant to measure
their degree of happiness. Or, instead, I could mea-
sure the number of comments per day, while closely
observing them, that they make that express feelings
of anger, frustration and other unhappy emotions
compared to the number of statements expressing
satisfaction, delight or other emotions near happi-
ness. Measurement scales applied to variables tell us
how much the idea, the construct, is changing. When
you have a measurement scale that measures pretty
well changes in a construct, you have a variable in the
world that measure that construct. As you can imag-
ine, getting good variables and scales on those vari-
ables for measuring things like happiness is not easy.
Variables in a theory say: “this amount of change in
this easily observed part of the world corresponds to
this amount of change in this idea that is a more
abstract part of the world”.
Cases explained by a theory are past situations in
which the dynamics you wish to remember or use are
most cogently represented by a particular theory.
This means the theory tells you the smallest, least
complicated set of things to notice in the situation
that are yet capable of showing the causes of all the
things that actually happened in the case. It is a mat-
ter of what “explaining” a case well means. A case is
explained to us when we notice no effects without
obvious causes and no causes without obvious effects.
The smallest number of ideas that reveal the cause
behind every effect and the effect resulting from all
causes is the best “explanation” we can find. A the-
ory that does this is the best theory we can find.
Some cases, however, are complicated enough that no
one theory will do the job. Such cases require two or
more theories in cooperation, to map completely all
causes to all observed effects and all effects to plausi-
ble causes. Cases explained in a theory say “if you
observe in this past case the following parts of the
world, related to the following other parts of the
world in these ways, you will find no effects of impor-
tance to you not produced by changes in the theory’s
parts of the world and no causes of effects important
to you in the case other than those parts of the world
mentioned in this theory”.
Predictions made by a theory are the reverse of expla-

nations. In explaining you show how things actually
already observed are fully accounted for by a small
number of parts of the world nominated in your the-
ory. In predicting you show how things no one has
actually noticed yet, actually happen and exist,
because you theory says they will appear if certain
changes are made in parts of the world nominated by
your theory. Predications in a theory say: “if you
change these parts of the world in the following ways
and amounts, you will observe these other changes in
these other parts of the world that no one has noticed
yet”.
Empirical tests of a theory are cases deliberately

selected or invented that put a theory to test. The
theory makes certain predictions. If certain parts of
the world are changed in certain ways and amounts,
certain other parts of the world must change in cer-
tain other ways and amounts. Empirical tests of a
theory say: “if you make such and such changes in the
world, do you observe the changes in other parts of
the world that this theory says you will observe?”
Assumptions of a theory are rarely stated directly.

Rather, most theories assume motives, priorities, and
commonsense in people that may, in other times and
places, look ridiculous or even evil. Social darwinism,
two centuries ago, assumed that white races were
superior to colored races and nearly all the white
world did not dispute that assumption. Of course,
now that assumption looks ridiculous, even evil.
Assumptions in a theory say: “there are unstated
images of people and the world, popular at the time
this theory was created and subtly a part of this the-
ory, that may make this theory ridiculous or evil at
later eras and in different societies”.
A theory’s granularity is the number of size scales that

the theory operates validly across. It is the amount
of detail or generality that the theory handles well.
Most theories have levels--micro-, meso-, macro.
Most theories work on one level only. In fact, relating
happenings on one level to other levels is one of the
most intractable problems in science. Recently a new
type of granularity in theories has appeared. We can
model a few variables (measured constructs) inter-
acting to cause things in a situation or we can model a
population of hundreds of agents, each represented
by a few variables defining how they interact, to rep-
resent a situation. These new population models
show that social institutions can arise without any one
agent planning, designing, or intending them. This
represents a new type of causality omitted from past
statistical models of a few key variables affecting
things. Theory granularity in a theory says: “if you
understand dynamics at this level of detail in the situ-
ation, you will understand effects and outcomes at
this other level in the situation”.
The explanatory power of a theory is its ability to

make sense of past case we have encountered and are
still interested in. The power of an explanation
comes from several aspects of a theory. The com-
pleteness, accuracy, and reliability of a theory are its
power. If a theory accounts for all the interesting
effects in a situation that interest us, it is complete,
hence powerful. If a theory predicts the same size of
effects as observed in the situation it is accurate,
hence powerful. If a theory handles not just this type
of situation in case 1 but also in cases 2, 3, and 4,
widely separated in space and time, then it is reliable,
hence powerful. The explanatory power of a theory
says: “if you look at these parts of the world, mea-
sured these ways, including these particular relations
between parts of the world, then there will be nothing
interesting or important in the situation that you will
miss”.
The predictive power of a theory is its ability to pre-

dict effects that no one so far has noticed or
expected. Einstein’s special theory of relativity was
widely criticized and ignored by academics and
researchers for over ten years until an astronomer in
1919 observed light rays from a particular star being
bent by an intervening start, as predicted by Ein-
stein’s theory. From that observation on, most aca-
demics and researchers gave way and admitted that
Einstein was right and they were wrong. It is very
hard to invent theories that make clear predictions of
things that we do not already know or expect.
Though physics has made such predictions regularly in
the past century, other sciences have found it harder
and physics itself has recently found it harder to come
up with such completely unexpected predictions.
Most theories produce modest predictions well within
bounds of what we expect with occasional surprises
for us. The predictive power of a theory is its ability
to surprise us. The predictive power of a theory says:
“If you notice these parts of the world and these rela-
tions among them and manipulate the world in the
following way, then these other effects that you have
never thought about or seen before will also occur.”
The generalizability of a theory is its ability to handle

space and time far removed from the space and time
it was invented to handle. Isaac Newton’s theory of
gravitation handled everything actually observed by
people in the universe for several hundred years but
two centuries ago, observations appeared that the
theory did not readily handle. More and more such
observations appeared, making people look for a bet-
ter theory. The theory did not generalize to the new
situations and observations people were making.
Generalizability may be understood as the scope of a
theory, in terms of what parts of the world and how
long in time it works. How much of the world does
this theory cover? The generalizability of a theory
says: “how much of the world does this theory cover
and how removed in time and space are the cases that
yet are still well explained and predicted by this the-
ory”.
The reliability of a theory is its ability to explain cases

tomorrow as well as it explains them today and its
ability to make accurate predictions tomorrow as well
as it predicts today. Reliable theories do not vary in
power to explain and predict; unreliable theories work
well today but badly tomorrow, then good the day
after tomorrow--you cannot predict when they will
work well and when they will not. Reliability in a the-
ory says: “this way of viewing the world works just as
well tomorrow as today, just as well in this place as in
that place”.
The validity of a theory is its ability to specify what it

says it specifies, to explain what it says it explains and
to predict what it says it predicts. Some theories say
they can predict someone’s happiness level but actual
test cases show it predicts happiness sometimes and
well being others times, and satisfaction level still
other times. The theory seems to be measuring
slightly different aspects of something each time it is
applied. Such theories have partial validity. Validity
in a theory says: “this way of viewing the world
explains and predicts exactly what it says it does and
not something else slightly or not related to what it
says it handles.”
Using Theory’s Powers

The cost of thinking differently is acting differently.
Using the 9 theories, presented in a later chapter
below, means acting differently than you now do.
Leaving the world of unconscious theories working
daily inside you and entering the world of self-con-
sciously chosen theories operating inside you costs you
automaticity of action. When you self-consciously
choose theories, you lose automatic responses, and
replace them with theory-mediated responses. You
delay reactions where others react fast, naturally,
and unconsciously, out of theories acquired in their
childhoods. In return you find yourself with power
they lack. There are a number of ways to exercise
this power in daily life, given below.
Resolving disagreements.
Disagreeing parties nearly always are seeing and
reacting to different subsets of all that is there in a
statement or situation. People able to see a hundred
aspects of the situation that neither party fully sees,
can easily find common ground and explain past bad
reactions.
Uncompeted with actions.
People able to see dozens of aspects of a situation
that no one else sees, are also, thereby, capable of
taking actions in response to the situation that no one
else imagined or expected. This turns into competi-
tive power of the best sort.
Creation and invention.
People able to notice parts of situations that no one
else has noticed before have the chance to change
parts of situations that no one changed before. This
becomes, quite frequently, creativity and major inno-
vation.
Diversity spawned interest and entertainment.
People who see more “world” everyday of their lives,
who respond to aspects of situations that others can-
not even see, live in a more pluriform, more diverse
world. They find themselves more entertained by life
and more entertaining to others. People around them
notice more about themselves, life, and the world
when in their vicinity than when alone.
Easy memory of complex situations and
materials.
People, who elaborate hundreds of dimensions of situ-
ations they are in using plural theories, can remember
everything around them, indexed by particular key
concepts of particular theories, while others in the
situation notice many unique things but have no
indexes for them, hence, no way a week later to
recall them all. It is a matter of rich models and
memories from encounters versus rich feelings of hav-
ing encountered a lot but now being unable to remem-
ber what exactly one encountered.
Lack of bigotry or protection from it.
People who view situations from a dozen or more
diverse perspectives, highlighting different aspects
with each perspective they apply, are apt to find their
“automatic” and “natural” responses to situations
omit key parts of the situation. Such people are
thereby freed from the bigotries built into their
nation’s, era’s, gender’s ways of viewing things.
Their plurality of viewpoint liberates them from the
narrow interests and experiences built into responses
made automatic in them from when and where they
grew up.
Problemless living.
People who visualize a situation from a dozen differ-
ent points of view, carefully chosen to compensate for
each other’s weaknesses, find “ways to go”, dozens of
them, where others get stymied or blocked and frus-
trated. There is a fluidity of motion and action in
theorists in how they gracefully switch from one line
of solution to any of a dozen others visible to them, in
situations where others are getting angry and more
frustrated.
Managing group processes.
People who can see hundreds of aspects of a situation
that others cannot, find themselves in meetings and
group campaigns having obvious liabilities, limita-
tions, and illusions. At any time they can improve the
group with a single comment or nicely timed interven-
tion, that reveals to the group a part of its situation,
very relevant to concerns of the moment, that it was
omitting. Automatic “back of the room” leadership
evolves to those able to thusly see more of a situation
than the groups they are in.
Growing up people into inventors and leaders.
People able to see dozens of aspects of situations and
people that others cannot see, are able to spot what
is blocking or hurting the development of other peo-
ple. They find themselves releasing others into bet-
ter channels of attention, action, and growth with
each daily encounter. They see a larger world of pos-
sibility being missed by people having fewer theo-
ries. They constantly open up such people to larger
aspects of the world, with each quotidian encounter.
Living in a huge world versus living in a tiny
world.
People able to highlight hundreds of aspects of situa-
tions that others cannot see, live in a larger world.
They operate in a large universe. They have hundreds
of responses where other has a few responses to situa-
tions. Their lives are, simply put, larger lives, in a
larger world, of larger repertoires of response. Life
itself is larger for these people, more varied, more
interesting, more powerful, more alive.
The Power of Cross-Culture Experience

as Implicit Theory Power
People who live in two or more cultures--a Jewish per-
son born in the US but now working in Japan, for
example or an Indian from Tamil educated in the US
but working in Indonesia--find that they have auto-
matic power not found in those native to the places
where they work. This automatic power from differ-
ent cultures as background is really theory power, but
furnished by implicit, un-self-conscious theories.
You face a situation and you have inside you an auto-

matic Jewish response, and automatic American
response, and an automatic Japanese response, for
example. You have three theories of response from
which to choose what to do in the situation. This is
why entrepreneurs throughout history, are dispropor-
tionately people with immigrant or other multi-cul-
ture experience. Silicon Valley founders of ventures
are 40% immigrants, but 77% immigrants, children of
immigrants, or people with other multi-culture expe-
rience. Multi-culture turns into multi-theory.
Unfortunately, multi-culture does not turn into self-

conscious theorizing, so this book improves decidedly
entrepreneurs “stuck” in two or three cultures each
furnishing implicit theories by which they operate.
This book opens such people to operating with a dozen
or several dozen explicit theories that compensate for
each other’s weaknesses.
Below is a theory of how otherness encountered,

reveals unconscious previously unrealized self con-
tents while demonstrating alternative views and ways
to such revealed self contents = like college, inviting
self growth and change.
THE EXPERIENCE OF ENCOUNTERING “THE OTHER” CAUSES

ENCOUNTER OF HIDDEN ASPECTS OF SELF AND OTHER
---A Worksheet on Differences You Encounter
IDENTIFY FOR EACH OF THE 37 BELOW---Exactly When and
Where Did YOU Experience Each of These when Abroad/
Engaging Some OTHER Gender, Era, Nation, Profession, Family,
Profession, Group
VACUUM & The Other 1. we feel the ABSENCE or our own
LAO TSU as Vacuum ways, background noise, incite-
ments, status pressures
POWER 2. we feel the RELIEF that there are
other ways in the world, feel
UNTRAPPEDNESS
Filling the 3. fwe feel LIBERATION to try new
Vacuum versions of our selves allowed by
absence of our primary group of
friends/family
4. we feel LIBERATION to try new
things our new environment invites
and affords
Profession, Group
Experience 5. we busy ourselves with MAPPING
of Power all the new alternative ways to eat,
greet, relate, succeed, feel, express
6. we feel POWER from new ways/
views/practices added to our per-
sonal repertoires of ways
7. we feel CONFIDENCE from being
able to move beyond/around own
tribe ways/limits/views/norms
Dissolution 8. we feel RELATIVIZATION of all
of Worlds ways, own and other, having two
incompatible systems before us, own
and other, each claiming absolute
rightness and superiority to all oth-
ers--they both cannot be right so
both are wrong
9. we feel DISSOLVING of old power-
ful intimidating institutions and roles
in life, as we realize they all are sus-
tained by myriad daily routines of
ordinary people like us
10. we feel PARALYSIS caused by
facing our FREEDOM to remake our-
selves and our lives completely at
any time by installing new routines
within and around us
Profession, Group
MISSING & Perceptual 11. THRILL OF NEW PERCEPTS we
WRONG Learning feel that just wandering around
noticing new stuff daily is enriching
PRESENCE us, making us stretch and grow some-
how, doing perceptual growth work
for us effortlessly
12. PENETRATING AS INSIGHT PRO-
CESS we feel the work of penetrating
our new areas, roles, relations, cir-
cumstances, generating successive
over-reactions, too positive followed
by too negative till insight
Loss of 13. UNPREDICTABILITY & INEFFEC-
Effect TIVENESS we find our own ways do
not work as expected or at all (pro-
duce resistance or negative sanc-
tions)
14. LOSS OF WORD MEANING what
you say no longer means what you
intended to say to others
Loss of 15. MISSING IMPORTANCE we miss
Impor- things those around us see as vital
tances 16. LOSS OF WHAT IS IMPORTANT TO
US we notice things those around us
never noticed or cared about before
17. MISTREATMENT OF THINGS VITAL
TO US others dismiss or treat casually
what is vital and emotionally laden
to us
Reacting 18. LOSS OF ABILITY TO HELP help
without we offer hurts others instead
Influence 19. LOSS OF ABILITY TO THWART
sanctions we offer fail to impress or
stop others
Profession, Group
SELF DEEP- Self Discov- 22. DISCOVERY OF SELF we are
ENING & ery forced to notice ways in us we never
noticed before
SELF DIS- 23. FRAGMENTARYNESS DISCOVERY
COVERY we discofer our natural views and
ways are narrow and limited in sys-
tematic ways
Unknown- 24. DISCOVERY OF NOT KNOWING
ness Discov- OUR OWN SELF we discover that most
of us is unknown to us, routines oper-
ery ating unconsciously inside us
25. DISCOVERY OTHERS DO NOT
KNOW THEIR OWN SELVES we notice
aspects of other, unconsciously oper-
ating inside them, that they are
unaware of and do not control well
Profession, Group
Revision of 26. SOME OF OUR AIMS NEED
Means and REPLACING we have to replace how
we achieve some familiar existing
Ends Both aims we have
27. SOME OF OUR MEANS NEED
REPLACING we have to develop/
invent new aims and means beyond
what we have been and done thus far
in life
28. SOME OF OUR AIMS AND MEANS
NEED DROPPING we have to drop
some familiar aims and means we
have depended on throughout life
thus far
Not all is 29. JUDGMENT we notice Roman
relative ways that do not work in Rome or are
harmful but no Romans admit this--
the ease and sharing of their ways
bribes them to sustain bad ways
30. SELF JUDGMENT we notice that
WE are the Romans in the statement
above, too
Profession, Group
GOING OUT Natural Big-31. FATAL SMALLNESS OF SELF
REQUIRES otries FOUND what makes us good, excel-
lent, capable does not work or is
GOING IN & Uncovered harmful in most of the world
GROWS 32. FATAL SMALLNESS OF OTHERS
OUR DEPTH what makes others good, excellent,
capable does not work for us or in
& REPER- most of the world
TOIRE OF Long Road 33. NEW THOUGHT NOT EQUAL TO
WAYS of Effort NEW US noticing what to do and
thinking it does not suffice, laborious
Discovery practice of new routines needed
34. DISCOVERING THE ADULTHOOD
JOURNEY it will take decades to
notice routines inside us, evaluate
and replace many of them
35. DISCOVERING THE NECESSITY OF
THE ARTS we manage idea change/
challenge easily but not automatic
emotions within us
Bring Magic 36. THE FAIRY TALE JOURNEY--the
Back from monsters we encounter in strange
Adventures lands start out as others and end up
being parts of our selves, deep bur-
Abroad ied emotional parts from childhood
37. COMPASSION HAPPENS everyone
struggling so hard to insist on their
own rightness while comparison
makes it utterly obvious no one’s
ways are right everywhere for all
Immediately above is a model, the Culture Mix Model
of Creativity, showing how encountering a foreign cul-
ture (of foreign profession, foreign nation, foreign
gender, foreign business practice, foreign technology,
etc.) practices one in the INSIGHT PROCESS dynamics,
hence, practices one in the CORE of all creative pro-
cesses--it makes you more creative, automatically.
Theories Spawn New Bigger Better The-

ories--From Self-Growth to Otherness-
Encounters to the INSIGHT PROCESS
The self growth theory above introduced some dynam-
ics--strings of failure, despair, loosening habitual self
love, changes in deep parts of self, learning to have
what we used to be (defend, base pride on). Guess
what?---these are all found in Encounters with Other-
nesses of various sorts, as seen in the items in the
table provided above on that. Guess what?--these are
all subsets of a larger bigger better theory, a theory of
INSIGHT PROCESSES. It is summarizes in the figures
and tables provided below.
This INSIGHT PROCESS theory is provided here so you

can see how one theory--self growth--set the stage for
another--otherness encountering---that in turn, sets
the stage for INSIGHT PROCESS theory. In just this
way any one good theory gives minds the power to see
the same dynamics operating in widely wildly differing
parts of life mind the world. That expands the range
of effective human observation and action. It expands
your POWER.
1. alternating engagement with detachment
In many areas of thought, life, work we have
PULSED SYSTEMS---not more and more of some X
but alternating more X with less X, more engage-
ments followed by more detachment---the Asian
culture habit of pushing more and more, effort
more and more, therefore, is an anti-insight habit
and tradition--insight comes from forward engage-
ment followed by complete dis-engagement pur-
poseless reverie.
2. applied to ever more abstract models of reality

Insights begin with engagement with a challenge,
followed by detachment from it, followed by more
engagement somewhat differently directed, fol-
lowed by more detachment---WHAT changes?
What changes is you discover beneath the obvious
visible apparent aspects of the situation, hidden,
abstract patterns and dynamics, so what you
engage becomes deeper, wider, more abstract,
revealing new unexpected important concrete
details.
3. trying all you know till in despair because none of

it works
Insight comes from exhausting all you know by try-
ing out all you know and can think of. ONLY WHEN
EVERYTHING you know and can do FAILS COM-
PLETELY can insights appear. For an insight to
appear you have to have exhausted all your
present ways and mind can do and imagine.
4. at that point of despairing in all you now are and
know a door opens
Insight requires an EMOTION---you have to give up
on your mind and your self, you have to lose hope
of EVER reaching a way a solution as who you now
are, as how you now think, with what you now
know--ONLY WHEN YOU ARE SURE SURE SURE that
you will NEVER as who you now are and how you
now think be able to win, to solve, to invent what
is needed ONLY at that POINT OF DESPAIR, does
insight appear
5. collecting try after try, failure after failure till

despair
So the insights come quickly--they are prepared by
trying everything you know and can imagine--col-
lecting more and more failures---but that is not
enough, you have to LOVE and STUDY those fail-
ures as they accumulate
6. lovingly studying each failure

You see this at work all the time--it is the person
who LIKES their own failures, who RUNS TOWARD
THEM studying them in detail, who wakes up when
something does NOT WORK as it was planned---
THEY are the ones who get insights BECAUSE they
study their failures as they accumulate--they study
them and BUILD SOMETHING SPECIAL--see below
7. indexing your failures till patterns among them

begin to specify more and more what any eventual
solution must be like, INVERSELY
What do people who like and study their own fail-
ures build with them? They build an index that
organizes what fails and how it fails and why it
fails--X does not work in A way, Y does not work in
B way, Z does not work in C way, V does not work
in A way too, W does not work in B and C ways---
they see patterns in what fails--that INDIRECTLY
tell them what NOT to try in the future
8. THE DESPAIR DOORWAY---despair opens a door

Why does DESPAIR open the door to INSIGHTs
appearing? What does an emotion, the Despair
emotion, do that allows insights to appear? The
answer is below as the item 9.
9. you stop loving parts of you enough (deep uncon-

scious, that is, cultural parts) for them to CHANGE
When you try all you know and can imagine and it
STILL does not work---you stop loving parts of
yourself you habitually have pride in and depend
on--you doubt yourself, who you now are, how you
were educated, what you read and thought--you
DOUBT your self, stop loving its parts automati-
cally---WHAT PARTS OF ME are in the way, pre-
venting success, WHAT PARTS OF ME must I change,
stop loving? WHen you STOP LOVING all parts of
your self, you experiment with changing deep parts
of yourself you have always depended on or been
proud of and THAT allow INSIGHT to appear.
10. THE INSIGHT AVALANCHE--some slight butterfly
wing flap changes everything--the whole system
changes or is seen differently
INSIGHTS when they appear---what are they? What
do they consist of? Well slight, very small slight
ideas can spark SUDDEN CHANGE IN EVERYTHING
about a challenge or problem. Some slight aspect,
when taken as important and central and tried out,
re-arranges all parts of the challenge situation---
this is well illustrated in non-linear math models of
systems---a butterfly flaps its wings in Brazil
upward instead of usual downward and a month
later a TAIFUN hurrican appears in Texas thou-
sands of kilometers away---slight differences can
tilt huge weather, etc. systems into huge new out-
comes. INSIGHTS are avalanches on all size scales
of an idea system, that change big and small and
middle size things throughout the systems---they
rearrange how everything is seen and works
together. That is well studied in non-linear mathe-
matics of Par Bak, Mandelbrot and others.
11. Every prior try, failure, approach suddenly

explained by ONE totally new idea
A RECURSIVE PROCESS-- INSIGHTS WITHIN INSIGHTS
INSIGHTS when they appear, completely explain
why every prior try and effort failed--suddenly you
SEE why all those earlier efforts did not work;
INSIGHTS, big overall ones, also are recursive--they
build up as several smaller size INSIGHTS accumu-
late. We can get hints at partial solutions, this
part works this other part fails, and we can get
better at guessing new tries that will partly work
in some ways. Such little insights--seeing partial
solutions, that, if we could somehow integrate
them, would solve everything---can accumulate till
one last one leads to a huge avalanche of changed
views of the entire challenge situation--your final
BIG insight.
CHAPTER
2
Turn
Inputs into
Theory
A Note for Scholars Using the Theory
Power Parts of this Book
There are theories like “symbolic interactionism” in
social science or “contingency theories” in organiza-
tion science that are largely missing from this book.
Scholars may wonder about omitting such “important”
“mainstay” theories from their own disciplines. The
explanation is simple. Symbolic interactionism is so
vague, with so little uniformity in what it means and
what parts of the world one highlights with it that I
have chosen more tightly focused sub-theories within
it instead. A vague ill-defined theory is untestable,
with subsequent research not building on earlier
research, and few if any real predictions possible with
it because of its vagueness. I do not want to have
such intellectual baggage cluttering this book.
Contingency theory from organization science suffers

from self contradiction. It says many organization
relations among variables hold true contingently, only
when certain other conditions hold true. A theory
that is highly contingent, true only when conditions
local to a particular case hold true, is no longer a the-
ory. The power in a theory is its ability to guide
action in many different times and places, in many
different cases. A theory that is modified contin-
gently in many cases loses its attractiveness. It gives
us no leverage. “X causes Y when T is increasing as
long as W is not red and V is not nearby except on
Tuesdays” is what contingency theories end up sound-
ing like. They are intellectual baggage best omitted
from this book (and from scholarship in general I
believe).
What About Practice Power?

Theory power would seem to be different from prac-
tice power. If you develop theory power in your life,
do you still need a different kind of power, practice
power? What would practice power be, anyway?
Once theories open; you up to many aspects of a situ-

ation that no one else sees, the question arises of
what to do about those opportunities, problems,
dynamics that you alone see. Influencing parts of the
world that you see is different that seeing alone.
Therefore, there is a set of skills for influencing vari-
ables in the real world once you see them that differs
from theory power and is after it in time of applica-
tion. This is not a book for that. I have studied
effective people in over twenty different domains and
written a previous book (Are You Effective?) on 96
methods used by most such effective people. That
book shows how to influence a part of the world once
you can see it. This book shows you how to see that
part of the world in the first place.
Theories in Use versus Espoused Theo-

ries
Scholars have long studied the theories that actual
people use to do their everyday work. They found a
split between theories actually evident in how people
acted and theories missing from implementation but
spoken by people to explain or predict their perfor-
mance. It was a schizoid result--some people did
what they said and others did something entirely dif-
ferent from what the said. Theories in use were what
people actually did and espoused theories were what
people said about what they did or were to do.
Often this is a matter of implicit theories operating

powerfully underneath shallow minds. People who
are uneducated or who have not become self-con-
scious about the various theories they imbibed as
unconscious children while growing up, read books
and espouse nice sounding latest thinking theories
while actually leaving unconscious theories from their
background embedded in their automatic habits of
skilled action. Such people are uneducated and need
to read this book (as well as my previous book Are You
Educated?). Their action world is split from their
thinking world.
Cognitive Maps
Scholars have also studied the pictures and images
about the nature of other people and parts of organi-
zation that are in the minds of executives. The
found each executive often living in entirely different
worlds than their own company’s colleagues. They
found completely incompatible images of the same
person and organization within individuals and among
individuals. In short, cognitive maps revealed the
immense irrationality at work in functioning in organi-
zations.
Cognitive maps are usually implicit theories from a
person’s background or they are the results of apply-
ing unconsciously such implicit theories from a per-
son’s background. They are happenstance maps,
leaving most of the world out, because they do not
consciously apply a dozen different relevant theories
to elucidate parts of the world. They are extremely
partial mappings, therefore, and poor bases for act-
ing, no matter how automatic and believed they are.
Demystifying Theories
Corporations spend tens and hundreds of millions of
dollars to generate and promote certain theories
about consumers, lifestyles, products, and markets.
Tobacco companies are the most egregious exam-
ples. They have a theory that once individuals realize
cigarettes are dangerous, it does not matter if compa-
nies continue to provide dangerous products that kill
those using them. This theory has been immensely
successful, in court case after court case, protecting
tobacco companies from damage awards for the lives
they kill.
The success of tobacco company defense against dam-

age awards by courts is based on a theory of American
society as a whole--that individuals are responsible for
their origins, fate, and destiny in life. Americans
want to feel in control. They like theories that tell
them they are in charge. They dislike theories that
blame fates and outcomes on situations, social forces,
the circumstances of one’s birth, and the like. This
deep American belief furnishes the tobacco companies
with solid ground for their sub-theory that killing
yourself with a product guaranteed to kill anyone
using it, alleviates all responsibility of the companies
furnishing the product you use to kill yourself.
Behind every theory is a part of society with self inter-

ests in promoting that theory as true instead of some
other theory as true. To “understand” any theory you
have to demystify its basis, its origin, its supporters.
What do they stand to gain if you come to believe this
theory? What do you stand to lose? How are their self
interests different than yours? Answering these ques-
tions is called “demystifying” a theory. In this book,
wherever possible, I have suggested such demystifica-
tion by pointing out what groups typically use a theory
to promote their own interests, while pretending they
are merely seeking or following “truth”.
Combining Theories in Reviews of

Research Literatures and Elsewhere
Any one theory highlights certain aspects of a situa-
tion, draws attention to them. It thereby throws
other parts into shadow, withdrawing attention from
them. Any one theory is partial and dangerous in that
way. Each theory, no matter how complete or pow-
erful, has weaknesses stemming from parts of the
world it does not care about, highlight, or draw atten-
tion to.
Therefore, selecting another theory that highlights

precisely those parts of the world slighted by your
first theory is a good strategy in most conditions.
Since, however, any one theory necessarily leaves out
most of the world in order to focus on small parts of
the world, more than one additional theory will be
needed to cover all the vast neglected territory of the
world. As you add theories to highlight parts of your
situation, consider what each of the already selected
theories neglects and choose theories that cover those
neglected aspects.
One theory may handle static forces at play, then

choose a theory that handles dynamic evolution
among forces. One theory may handle conflicting
human interests and viewpoints, then choose a theory
handling human common interests and fellow feeling
creation. One theory may handle pricing of some-
thing in markets, then choose a theory handling dis-
tortions in markets and corrections for them. One
theory may handle things that motivate people well,
then choose a theory that handles differences among
motivation mechanisms in different cultures and con-
ditions. One theory may handle rational actions of
people, then choose a theory handling the irrationali-
ties in human thought and action.
In academic research, theories get combined usually

in the form of reviews of research literatures.
Research articles on a particular topic are collected
from one’s main field (physics, medicine, law, sociol-
ogy, dance, or others) and related research from rele-
vant other fields are also collected (for example
psychology of crowd phenomena can apply to dancers
interacting in a performance). These research arti-
cles, all on one topic, some from one field, some from
related other fields, are then “reviewed”. Reviews
are various and have various purposes but all of them
have to at least refer to certain standard components,
though some my emphasize and spend more pages on
one than the others: state of knowledge in the field
(what do we know, what do we not know, what to we
want next to know), research questions--what new
knowledge will one’s particular research study aim to
produce, research methods--what methods are appro-
priate to the aim of one’s research, research data--
what source of data in the world will be selected and
how will relevant to the research things in it be mea-
sured and that data analyzed, research results--what
about the results intended by a research study will
make them of interest to others studying the same
part of the world in this and related fields? At each
of these--knowledge state, research questions,
research methods, research data and analysis,
research results--one has to justify the particulars one
chose with what alternatives were considered and
why the un-chosen ones were dropped for the study.
It is in this context of “reviews of literature” that the-
ories applied thus far, invented thus far, tested thus
far, newly discovered in a current study, are discussed
and compared/combined.
Nations, Genders, Persons, Careers,
Families as Theories
After running through the nine sample theories in this
book a few dozen times a change comes over you, at
least according to students and managers who used
early drafts of this book. You begin to notice that
entire nations are theories, too, unproven ones rather
tenaciously and irrationally believed in. It is beyond
whether the theory a nation has about itself is true or
not, for a false theory tenaciously enough believed in,
becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy. Japanese believe
all Japanese are alike, and, though they obviously are
not whenever you collect real data, much of how they
think and behave is based on their belief that they are
all alike.
The theory that any one nation is predicts that

nation’s blind spots and weaknesses. Americans are
the most church-going society in the industrial world,
hence, they are the least tolerant of differences,
tending to turn casual differences into moral wrongs,
condemned by their gods. “You are not just differ-
ent, you are evil” this comes out as in most interna-
tional and inter-business situations. The godliness of
the Americans has the paradoxical side-effect of mak-
ing them intolerant of difference. Church becomes a
one hour a week place to feel forgiven, so that the
rest of the week you can abuse people more than less
religious people who do not have weekly ways of for-
getting harms done to others.
Genders too have theories about themselves and
about the other gender. “Women are emotional and
hormone driven” men believe while spending every
waking moment trying to prove to other men how
important they are, fighting for status instead of get-
ting real work done. “Men are cold emotionally and
selfish” women believe while spending every waking
moment talking only about their own emotional reac-
tions to life situations to everyone they meet.
Individual people are theories. John sees himself as

the Great Persuader, attacking relentlessly the casual
beliefs of others and getting them to change beliefs.
As long as he has challenged powerfully the beliefs of
someone around him, he is happy. That such chal-
lenging rules out many more serious types of personal
change and inter-relationship does not concern him.
His theory of himself as the Great Persuader makes
him seek and see only feedback about him acting that
way--other types of impact he might have go unno-
ticed by him. They do not fit his theory of himself.
Some of us had fathers whose theory about them-
selves as “I am the guy who quietly sacrifices himself
for the sake of my family members”. These fathers
could only receive and respond to messages about
themselves as the Great Sacrificers of the family.
Any message implying that they self-interestedly did
or manipulated things were rejected--such messages
did not fit their theories about themselves.
Careers that people do are theories. A good life

comes from being accepted as a member by a famous
and large organization is one such theory many people
subscribe to. A good life comes from avoiding author-
ity of all types and doing the unexpected in life is
another such theory. A good life comes from making
visible and challenging all the lousy little injustices
and corruptions in major institutions and parts of soci-
ety is another such theory. Entire careers get built
around such theories of what makes life meaningful
and “good”. Only when people find harm instead of
“good” from following their favorite theory-career, do
they jump to entirely different types of career. Only
people who perceive a variety of equally attractive
competing “goods” have careers that are pluriform
and broad.
Families are theories too. People grow by following

the dictates of older wiser ones is a theory that domi-
nates many families. People grow by getting involved
in plural various activities and forming communities of
friends around each such activity is another theory of
very different families. People grow by recognizing
daddy’s brilliance and using the great resources daddy
develops is a theory of all too many rich families
where the possibilities made possible by daddy’s
wealth and accomplishment are counter-acted by the
requirement to kiss daddy’s butt everyday and obey
his casual orders and daily tyrannies.
This change into seeing parts of the world and social

institutions as particular theories about what life is,
what “good” is, what is important, what problems are
worth tackling and the like is a powerful talent devel-
oped by reading this book again and again.
How Active and Healthy Are the Theo-

ries That You Use
All of us apply theories to the world everyday. Most of
us apply such theories unconsciously, using theories
we imbibed as children growing up somewhere. A
few of us, develop repertoires of self-consciously
applied theories, that supplanted the unconscious
theories we grew up with. These repertoires of self-
consciously selected and applied theories determine
much of our style, character, destiny, and effective-
ness.
How healthy is your personal repertoire of theories?

There are dimensions of answers to that question.
Coverage.
How many of life’s situations do you have relevant
theories for. How many life situations do you avoid
for lack of such theories?
Currency.
How recent are your theories? Are their leading edge
ideas and theories that you have yet to familiarize
yourself with?
Compensatory partners.
Does each theory you use come with a set of obvious
partners that compensate for its over-emphases and
weaknesses?
Diversity--Breadth of origin.
Do you have unusual, unlikely sources of new theories
that make the range of variety of theories you use
wider than the range of challenges and changes you
have to respond to in life?
Instantiation-ability.
Do the theories in your repertoire lend themselves to
rapid, thorough, particular and powerful application
to the particulars of many situations?
The quality of your theory repertoire is much of the
quality of you as a person and the life you live.
Historic Movements and Tyrannies as

Theories
Communism, capitalism, Mao-ism, and other “isms”
have hurt terribly and destroyed billions of people in
the name of ideas about how life “really” is. Islam,
Christianity, Hinduism, and other great world religions
have similarly hurt or destroyed billions of people in
the name of ideas about how life “really” is. You get
the picture of: “life is really this, agree and serve me
and my ideas or die infidel!” Paroxysms of “truth
command” develop. Christianity said the Bible was
“true” for all time and the :”most important” truth
for all time. Islam, being competitive, went Chris-
tianity one better by declaring that not only was the
Koran divine but every contact with the Koran was
direct contact with divinity itself--anyone denying
that was put to death. Marxism said that a dictator-
ship of the proletariat was needed to undo the harm-
ful class habits of the ruling class, and paid half the
population to spy on the other half and put them in
prison for disloyal “counter-revolutionary” remarks.
In every case for isms and religions, there seems to be

a fundamental insecurity about what is true that they
are founded on. They all fear other truths so much.
They all fight so hard to “support” their truths with
armies, weapons, torture, and aggressive sales tactics
(missionaries). If they really had confidence in their
degree of truthfulness one would think they would not
need to fight so hard with weapons to impress others
with the truthfulness of their positions and beliefs.
Instead we find their lack of faith in the truthfulness
of their own beliefs forces them again and again to
slaughter those disagreeing with them.
Theories in human history have been primary vehicles

for mass murder. Anyone developing, selecting,
inventing, or modifying theories for personal use has
to keep this in mind. What is it about theories that
turns so easily and thoroughly into justification for
murder?
As I said above, each theory is a focus, a drawing

attention to X and a dropping of attention to Y, Z, A,
B, etc. Each theory drops more of the world than it
highlights. It throws into dark more of the world than
it gives light to. Each theory has a large hidden cost
to its use. People who grow up looking for the “right”
theory are evil, in effect. They do not acknowledge
that every theory has a cost. They seek some sort of
“better” theory with little or not cost--there, by defi-
nition, are no such theories. There are merely theo-
ries that handle already known truths plus recently
accumulated discrepancies between current theories
and how the world actually works. Such new “good”
theories still have immense costs to their use--they
focus attention on something much smaller than they
withdraw attention from.
Only people who no longer seek “right” theories are

safe. Only people who rely on dozens of theories
compensating for each other’s weaknesses rather than
one “right” theory are safe.
Kuhn, Scientific Revolution, and Theory

Evolution
Theories come and go. Newton’s theory was replaced
by Einstein’s, for example. Or was it really? For most
scales of human operation both large and small, New-
ton’s principles of motion are still true. Only for
immense inter-galaxy distances and immensely small
inter-quark distances are Einstein’s equations needed.
So what we often have is a theory developed for one
size scale, replaced by another that is the same in
predictions for that size scale but that handles well
other size scales. Changes of size scale depend on
human interest in those new size scales. Such
changes in interest in size come from invention of new
instruments allowing the very large and very small to
be thought about and observed.
making. Irritation is not to be avoided but to be
heightened.
Your Turn
Now it is your turn to do similar things, using this book
to guide you. Examine your situations and analyze
them using whatever theories in this book turn out to
be helpful.
Instructions for Building

Conceptual Models from
Readings
Turning Whatever You Read into Models
You Can Instantly Apply
Knowledge Epitome is committed to installing in stu-
dents a discipline of weekly reading, a discipline of
turning all reading into models, and a discipline of
applying such models to expand what people can see
and do. Linking reading with sales and impact, selling
homework rather than trashing it, profiting from all
you read--all these are not goals in themselves, but
means of seeing the power and value of ideas. Other
universities hide the value of ideas by getting students
doing hundreds of days of reading with no apparent
result or tangible product from it. This also hides the
quality of reading done from students themselves and
others, leaving people little improved from years of
casually done such reading. This chapter contains a
method of conceptual model building that I teach to
all my undergraduate college students in Japan. It
makes them immensely better readers and immensely
better thinkers in just two years time. Lack of the
teaching of methods such as the one in this chapter at
the best universities in the US (except to graduate
students in some, not all, departments) makes gradu-
ates of those programs much less capable as readers
and action-takers.
I read about one really good book a week, for 52 per

year. I browse, rather than read, another four or five
books a week. For those 52 really good books I build
conceptual models of their key chapters and some-
times of all their chapters. This is in addition to
building structural reading diagrams of all the main
points of all the paragraphs in their key chapters.
This turns my reading into visual diagrammatic results
that I can easily later sell to corporations and use in
consulting engagements. This process of turning
one’s reading into saleable results motivates students.
There is nothing like a $30,000 deposited check for a
corporate 3 year site license of a hundred pages of
structural reading diagrams and conceptual models to
make students interested in reading.
The Big Picture:

The purpose of a conceptual model is to get your mind
to be exact, specific by making your reading exact and
specific. The natural tendency of people is to scan
readings for interesting bits that do not fit together
very well. Vast such reading produces few results. A
better form of reading lists all key concepts and all
key relationships among those concepts, then puts all
that into diagram form, where we can visually see
relationships supposed, in the readings, between spe-
cific concepts. You build such diagrams of each arti-
cle, them combine them all into one overall
conceptual model diagram.
Build
Conceptual
Model of Each
Reading
Build One Over-

Revise Select What to
all Concept
Research Read Next
Model of All
Questions
You Read
design question- design experi-

naire questions ment conditions
for each key for each key
relation in your relation in your
overall concept overall concept
model model
If you choose to If you choose to
interview people put people into
or send them experiments.
questionnaires.
Though everyone does creates research questions, and
based on them, selects something to read, and from
that reading builds conceptual models that get joined
into one overall conceptual model, these are more a
dialog than a sequence. You start with research
questions but those initial questions get modified by
what you learn while reading. Similarly, you build
conceptual models of first articles, but they get modi-
fied by what you read in later articles and chapters.
Your conceptual models, as they evolve, change what
your research questions are, and those changed ques-
tions change what you select to read. It is a cycle of
mutually inter-relating activities, not a simple
sequence.
Steps for Building a Conceptual Model

from One Reading:
1. Read an article or chapter (structurally read it is it
is a good one with lots of good ideas in it).
2. List all the key concepts in the article.
3. List all the important relationships between any of
those concepts mentioned in the article.
a. what causes X (A and B if both high in value
cause speed to increase, for example)
b. what blocks X (If A and B are both high in value
but C is very low, speed will not increase, for
example)
c. what conditions whether X gets caused or
blocked (if A is slow, B fails to cause C, for exam-
ple)
4. List the important overall outcomes in the article
that interest you.
5. For each such listed outcome, list all key concepts
that cause it to occur or have a good value.
6. For each such listed key concepts that cause a key
outcome, list all “interesting to you” conditional
relations (below are several out of many possible
examples):
a. if x is frequent A will cause B
b. only when x is present will A cause B
c. if x is very high (above 10), then A will cause B
more strongly than usual
d. if x is very high (above 10), then A will cause a
larger value of B than usual
NOTE: if you have five outcomes in the article that
interest you and each of them has an average of 3
things mentioned in the article that cause them,
and each of those causes has 2 on average things
that condition whether those causes succeed or are
strong enough to be interesting then you will end
up with: 5 outcomes, 15 causes, and 30 condi-
tional causes
7. Draw a diagram combining all the causal relations
and conditional causal relations for each of your
outcomes.
8. If possible and helpful (readable) create one overall
diagram, per article you read, showing all the out-
comes, all the causes, and all the conditional
causes.
9. As you do this for one article after another, gradu-
ally combine the overall diagrams for each article
into one overall diagram for the domain as a whole
(this will be quite large, too large to be useful
unless you ruthlessly focus on key outcomes and
causes as you read more and more).
Examples and Exercises in Building Con-

ceptual Models from Prose in Articles:
Here is an example of an article (represented here by
one paragraph) and the drawing of a conceptual
model derived from that article (paragraph).
The personality we are talking about is awash on

waves of change, trends, styles, alternatives.
Trembling before each purchase, exhausted by
brochures laid out for planning a vacation, the
modern personality struggles with choice. And,
the difficulty of choice is not found just in the plu-
rality of everything, including values and prefer-
ences, but it is also made difficult by the lack of
appeal to authority. There are plural authorities
too and they disagree. All experts appear impres-
sive within their narrow domain but virtually stupid
outside it. All experts can be demystified--found
to have hidden self interests that make their own
interests not their clients interests, hence, abuse
of clients is a real possibility the modern personal-
ity develops a certain fatalism for handling. These
frustrations and stresses explode, in persons, from
time to time, causing the personality to fall back,
as it were, to a more primitive state, in fact, the
state the person has just worked so hard to leave,
namely, fixed, stable, authorities and values that
one has little chance of influencing. Shaved head
bigots, neo-nazis, fundamentalists--these are per-
sonalities that shrink from modern realities and
cling to pasts, unable to handle the stress of
choice, ambiguity, and missing authority in their
lives. People who feel such explosions but do not
fall back sometimes resist by rehearsing the advan-
tages of choice.
We list key concepts and relations:

concepts:
personality
choice
difficulty of plurality in choice
difficulty of conflicting authorities in choice
authorities disagree
authorities are virtually stupid outside their fields
authorities have cloaked self interests hidden from
their clients
client fatalism to handle cloaked self interests of
experts
exploded personalities
fall back to state just liberated from
fall back to state of non-plurality, non-choice,
unconflicted authorities
resistors of personality explosion
rehearsing advantages of choice
relations:
choice causes stress
plurality causes choice stress
conflicting authorities causes choice stress
conflicting authorities is plurality causing choice
stress
virtual stupidity of authorities causes choice stress
cloaked self interests of authorities causes choice
stress
cloaked self interests of authorities causes client
fatalism as means of handling choice stress
excess stress causes personality explosion
personality explosion is fall back to non-plurality,
non-ambiguity, non-choice situation
people work hard to liberate themselves from non-
plurality, non-ambiguity, non-choice situations
rehearsing advantages of choice causes some peo-
ple to resist personality explosion
Outcomes of interest:
unexploding personalities
exploding personalities
Causal relations:
exploding personalities caused by excess stress
stress caused by choice
plurality in choice causes stress
plurality of authorities in choice causes stress
disagreement among authorities causes choice
stress
virtual stupidity of authorities outside their fields
causes choice stress
cloaked self interests of authorities causes choice
stress
cloaked self interests of authorities causes client
fatalism as handling mechanism
personality explosion causes fall back to non-plu-
ral, non-choice, non-conflicting situation
non-plural, non-choice, non-conflicting situations
cause people to want liberation from them
Conditional causal relations:

rehearsing advantages of choice causes some peo-
ple to block personality explosion
The diagram:
CONCEPTUAL MODEL OF THE PARAGRAPH ABOVE
disagreeing plurality
authorities in choice personality
choice stress
explosion
virtually plural
stupid
authorities authorities
cloaked
self interests
of authorities partly
blocks
client explosion
fatalism
mechanism
rehearsing
advantages of
choice
NOTE: you do not do this conceptual model building
for every article/chapter you read. Some are just too
thin. Some are rich in ideas but only some of those
ideas pertain to your chosen topic. You do conceptual
model building for the best and main article/chapters
that you read.
Test of Your Learning:

Elsewhere, I have provided a one page structural
reading diagram of the main points of the Preface
(Foreword) to Brown and Duguid’s book, the Social
Life of Information. Apply the steps above to that
one page, listing all key concepts and all key relations
between concepts, finding key outcomes, causal rela-
tions per each outcome, and conditional relations per
each causal relation. Then build a conceptual model
diagram of the main points of that Preface.
Goals
For a fifty page research paper, you should build a
minimum of twenty conceptual models of important
individual articles, and try to mesh them into three or
four composite overall models that will guide your
building of interviews, questionnaires, or experi-
ments.
Additional Test:
In the diagram above of a sample conceptual model,
there is one obvious mistake. What is it?
Instructions for Building
Structural Reading Diagrams of
Readings
The structural reading diagram furnished here is
sometimes needed as a preliminary step preceding
development of a conceptual model. When a text has
high meaning density--a lot of interesting points in a
small number of words and sentences--then there may
be so many points that making a conceptual model of
them all is both hard and futile. Some structure
among them all needs first to be discerned. Prefera-
bly before discerning a structure among them that you
yourself like and think up, you discern the structure
among them the author of them put among them.
Most of us “read” by scanning a text for points of
interest to us, ignoring the clues the author puts there
to how he structured and prioritized them. By omit-
ting parts of the structure the author put among some
points, we can continue our own biases and prejudices
and learn less from “reading”. Reading as scanning--
most normal people’s reading--is both sloppy, missing
much, and dangerous, sustaining our biases and preju-
dices by unconsciously leaving out points that diverge
from what we want.
Structural reading is a process of constructing from a

text structural reading diagrams like the sample one
shown here. You number all the paragraphs and
drawings/figures of a chapter. Then you read the
first and last sentences only of each paragraph, under-
lining the name of the main topic of the paragraph
and structural clue words--words like “for example”
“on the other hand” “later in history” “after that”
“before proceeding to” and so on. You then in the
margin mark lines between sections of paragraphs/fig-
ures that share the same topic and ones that start a
new topic. At the beginning of each grouping of para-
graphs you make, you write in the margin your guess
as to what this coming section of paragraphs is about;
at the end of that section when you mark a line to
show a new section is beginning, you write again the
topic of that group you are leaving correcting any
error in your guess about its topic when you entered
the section earlier. Each section gets two topic
names in this way which you must later reconcile by
choosing one or combining them into one good name.
After you have named groups of paragraphs, you then
draw the structural reading diagram on a word proces-
sor by using its table function and creating a five col-
umn table with 25 rows (40 or more rows if using A3
size paper). You put the names of each paragraph in
column two, names of groups of paragraphs in column
three, names of groups of those groups, in column
four, and names of groups of those groups of groups in
column five. Then, and only then, after thusly dia-
gramming the structure the author put into the topics
of his chapter, you put interesting points for you from
each paragraph in column one, using groups of para-
graphs as boxes to hold your comments. Judgements,
reactions, noticings, and noticed lists from paragraphs
are all appropriate contents in column one. Column
one’s purpose is to collect garbage--all the stuff you
normally get while reading. We isolate it by putting it
in one column and dedicating four other columns to
more valuable reading of the structure among topics
the author, not you, put down.
A great structural reading diagram will show at a sin-

gle glance the count, the names, and the principle of
ordering of main points in a text. When naming main
points of sentences or paragraphs or groups of para-
graphs keep in mind these distinctions--topics are not
functions (“intro” “counterexample” are functions not
topics; “Napoleon’s reasons for war” is a topic whose
function may be “intro”, Napoleon’s initial winter vic-
tories may be a topic whose function in the text is
“counterexample” to the general way the Russian
winter defeated him overall). You want topic names
not function names though at times putting the func-
tion in parentheses after the topic helps you to think
clearly. Distinguish also the representative function
of a name from the relational/distinguishing function-
-a good name does both--it represents what is com-
mon to the points below it and it distinguishes all
those points from points that came before and come
after. Make sure you names of points represent and
distinguish well, both. The natural tendency of
beginners is to write sentences instead of names of
points, due to naming skills underdeveloped while in
school systems. This tendency can be overcome best
by writing both--first writing long sentence “names”
of points then going back and writing above each such
sentence a shorter pithier actual “name” that leaves
out the grammar of the sentence and more accurately
captures the unique (representative and distinguish-
ing) point of the text.
When structural reading diagrams of all the important
chapters of a book are finished, you take each dia-
gram and circle key concepts and relations among
those concepts mentioned anywhere on those dia-
grams and proceed to finish the above-described steps
for conceptual model building. Not all texts, by any
means, are dense enough with meaning and valuable
enough to do this structure reading work for. Only
the best texts are worth this effort, but there really
are several books and many articles published each
year worth this effort, in my experience.
As practice you can put marks between every 20 lines

of Shakespeare’s play MacBeth, and structurally read
the actions in each 20 line segment, then structurally
read the imagery or metaphors in each 20 line seg-
ment, comparing your two diagrams (they will have
the same segmentation hierarchy). An amazing new
insight into what that play is all about (nothing to do
with Kings and murder) will appear before you when
you finish--the play is about something all humans
struggle with--purpose relating to something (you
have to find that something by doing the diagrams, I
am not going to tell you here). Another such exercise
is doing similar diagrams of J. R. R. Tolkien’s short
story, the Smith of Wooten Major (if you are ambi-
tious you can compare it to similar diagrams for
Borges’ story, the South). Again, amazing meanings
of the entire story magically appear that you would
A Structural Reading of The Social Life of Information, Forward,
“Tunneling Ahead”
Copyright 2000 by Richard Tabor Greene
Commentary
and Within Main Point of Super
Super-
Paragraph Every Groups Super-
Interesting Paragraph groups
groups
Points
A parallel exists:
1) technologists pushing info
systems,
the information age has tunnel
vision; its looks too straight ahead
Info Systems Hide
Resource Dependencies
Social
what info focus hides--social con-

The Info System
Lie What
2) investors pushing info
stocks,
focus on info hides--context, back-
ground, history, common knowl-
text and resources Information and
information sys- Informa-
tion Sys-
edge, social resources--which
3) globalization pushing costly determine info’s meaning tems ignore a
speed of change. periphery of
Viewing the world without such
enthusiasms--the contrarian
investor--is a traditional cor-
example of talk--meaning caused by:
appearance, age, accent, back-
ground, setting--clues that support
Social Context Determines Info
Meaning
clues to context create meaning,
social
that
factors
determine tems Hide
rective.
or erode what is said not info or message alone what the infor-
mation means and Lack-
-Certain
cyberspace generates fraud and cons
because information offers too few “Tunnel Vision”
clues
The lifestyle and workstyle of

technologists generate,
tunnel design comes from informa-
tion-only views; when more info
Tools that Fail to Disappear
Reveal Something
The Usefulness Social
of Info Failures
endorse, and deepen the illu-
sions of info-centric viewing of
equals less some systems and tools resist
modern replacements--why? The world fights Resources
back against nar-
that Con-
tunnel design makes technologies
the world. Tools of, by, and that bite back, that create as many
for Nerds. problems as they solve row info-centric
tools and sys-
Tools resist new ways not only
because they represent valued
well designed technologies fight
back against tunnel design--exam-
tems, and old trol What
tools stubbornly
social resources but also
because many people are not
ple: tools that continue in spite of
predictions of their demise--type-
writers, hinged doors
stay around, for a Informa-
good reason per-
educated, entooled, and
funded to participate in the
digital revolution--they hang
opposing responses: tunnel viewers What Old Tools Teach haps. Why? tion
“Tunnel Design”
Means
criticize dated relics, other cheer learn from stubborn old tools that
onto what they have because downfall of tunnel designs; 3rd refuse to die quietly
they cannot afford better. approach: learn from power of old
and Does
tools = ask why they endure?
This book’s authors are some- tunnel design underestimates it tar- Info is Surface, Meaning is Con-
what nerdy in their view of the gets, it aims at surfaces of life textual Depth
bad side-effects of nerd design beneath surface of info designs
are resources people care greatly
we plead for attention to the stub-
bornness of things people fight for-- for
for it hides resource people care
about
breadth/narrowness of design issues

not for designers alone
We are in a transition stage overlooked resources in the social

periphery: communities, organiza-
Overlooked Resources
overlooked resources in the social
Tools Depend on
from one technology set to tions, institutions that frame human periphery Unseen Social
another (with a biological elim-
ination of death soon to revolu-
action--are omitted often from
design
Resources
tionize even more of life). We like the
resources tend to become so cus- results info sys-
Possible causes of social sup- tomary, automated we no longer
notice them while new technologies
tems give us
ports needed for information get a lot of attention without acknowl-
tools and systems;
1) information is marginal, edging the myr-
social institutions are central
example: colleague said he now
gets instant digital access to library
example 1: digital library
depends on myriad social roles
iad social and
2) people and institutions are institutional sup-
just learning what to do with example shows his result is valid but ports that make
information systems so they depends on myriad social and insti- them work.
still need lots of social supports tutional factors
3) the virtual organization, “Fight to the Fin-
paperless office, and agents similar example: unmediated access example 2: news is built by orga- ish”
are all going to happen just as to news is illusion, whole organiza- nizations
tions create it
the nerds envision them but
delayed by three to four Popeye cartoon example: sweet pea example 3: sweet pea falls with-
decades as was response to falls, bounces, lands safely, without out seeing how she is saved
previous new technologies like care
the steam engine.
Popeye example lesson: some peo-
This book is not ever clear on ple oblivious to resources that sus-
which of the above three is its tain/save them
primary belief.
People become antagonistic to Failures Reveal Dependencies
resources, maybe because they are people notice social resources
noticed when things go wrong when things fail so they dislike
this dependency
this book: middle way between tun- examine predictions that fail in
nels and antagonism, avoid tools practice to find unseen social
that ignore resources resources
we examine plans and predictions

supported by theory yet ignored in
practice
A Structural Reading of The Social Life of Information, Forward,
“Tunneling Ahead”
Copyright 2000 by Richard Tabor Greene
Commentary
and Within Main Point of Super
Super-
Paragraph Every Groups Super-
Interesting Paragraph groups
groups
Points
The main point of this
entire book is found in the
this book summarizes
conversations between
contents of the book:
five illusions and one
A contrarian
book Five Info
chapter on a matrix of
organizations across com-
munities of practice
its authors solution About why info
does not solve
Illusions
spawning ecosystems of
technologies. This chap-
everything:
Five Illu-
Plus One
ter alone offers solutions,
not just criticisms of the
sions: info
worlds are not
Solution-
info enthusiasms of oth-
ers.
worlds, soft- -The
ware agents
Read the Structural are not agents, Contents
Reading Diagram of that
chapter first.
managing
not info shar-
is
of This
ing, documents
are not mean- Book
ing, distance
education
(learning) is
not education
“Conversa-
tions”
contents of book: limits
of info enthusiasm,
exaggerations in soft-
ware agents, social
nature of work and
learning limiting man-
agement, matrix of
firms/practice commu-
nities spawning ecosys-
tems [KEY, SOLUTION,
CHAPTER], documents
as deeds documented
socially, the illusions of
distance education
avoid enthusiasms of info systems as prob-

infocentric people lem not solution
we are not writing a

book about how infor-
mation systems will
solve every problem
never have gotten from your usual “scan” type of

reading instilled in you by school systems.
Instructions for Creating Structural
Readings of Sentences, Paragraphs,
Speeches, and Action Streams
Normal “Folk” Reading
Our normal way of reading is this: we read in a text
what interests us, ignoring the rest; we read individ-
ual meanings that interest us, we impose structures of
meaning already in our heads or backgrounds on the
texts that we read. Our normal way of reading
includes, therefore, three distortions: ignoring what-
ever does not interest us in the text, ignoring struc-
tures among individual meanings that give the context
and scope of each individual meaning, and substitut-
ing for structures that the author of a text put there
our own structures put there by habits and happen-
stances contents of our backgrounds. This means
normal “folk” reading is optimized to perpetuate our
biases and prejudices. It is optimized to produce as
little change in our attitudes, beliefs, and ideas as
possible. Normal “folk” reading is reading optimized
to produce minimal learning.
Where do we get such a biased, limited, self-contra-

dictory ineffective way of reading? Schools. We
learn to read badly in public schools. Of course the
best students in such schools somehow, without being
directly taught, manage to see structures of meaning.
Their general effort for years to read better than oth-
ers so as to get into the best colleges, results in them,
individually and unconsciously, discovering how to
retain more of the meaning that is there in texts.
They may never know how they manage to do this,
but, when you examine in detail how they read you
find many of the components of structural reading as
presented in this chapter.
Baby Steps for Reading Structures of

Meanings
There are stages of reading we all grow though even-
tually. Learning to read sentences structurally hap-
pens first. Later we learn to read paragraphs
structurally. Still later we learn to read entire chap-
ters and articles structurally. Still later we learn how
to read structurally sets of articles and chapters on
some one theme. Most college students can quickly
learn to structurally read chapters and articles but
some students cannot, since they have not yet mas-
tered reading individual sentences and paragraphs
structurally. Below I apply, one by one, the steps of
structural reading, to a set of paragraphs, to help such
students graduate to reading entire chapters and arti-
cles structurally as a first step towards creating con-
ceptual model summaries of all the main points of
entire books or theories.
Note, the first passage below is a set of three related

paragraphs. Reading that set of three is dealt with
then reading the last one of those three and the fol-
lowing paragraphs is dealt with.
Applied to the Set of 3 Paragraphs:
Step 0: Number Each Sentence in the Paragraph
Step 1: Mark Structural Clue Words in the First and

Last Clauses of Each Sentence of the Paragraph
Step 2: Articulate the Questions Naturally Arising

from the Structural Clue Words that were Found
Step 3: Read the First and Last Clauses of Each Sen-

tence and Mark or Write Down the Main Topic of Each
Sentence
Step 4: Try to Use Sentence Topics to Answer the

Questions from Structural Clue Words or Generate and
Answer New Questions
Step 5: Group Adjacent Sentences that Share the

Same Topic (By Drawing a Line Between Sentences
Where There is a Break in Topic) and Name Such
Groups
Step 6: Group Groups of Adjacent Sentences that

Share the Same Topic and Name Such Groups of
Groups
Step 7: Draw Tentative Initial Structural Reading Dia-

gram
It would, I suppose, be all right to just live
with the tensions between the idea that
mental processes are syntactic and the idea
that they are global, if, by and large, our
cognitive science actually worked. But
there’s a good case to be made that much of
it actually works rather badly, and that its
failures trace directly to the sorts of prob-
lems that we’ve just been discussing: The
theory that mental processes are syntactic
gets it right about logical form having causal
powers; but, in the course of doing so, it
makes mental causation local, and that
can’t be true in the general case.
For example, the failure of artificial intelli-

gence to produce successful simulations of
routine commonsense cognitive competen-
cies is notorious, not to say scandalous. We
still don’t have the fabled machine that can
make breakfast without burning down the
house; or the one that can translate every-
day English into everyday Italian; or the one
that can summarize tests; or even the one
that can learn anything much except statis-
tical generalizations. (It’s a striking pecu-
liarity of Pinker’s book in particular that he
starts by remarking how hopelessly far we
are from being able to build a serviceable
robot, but never explains how to reconcile
our inability to do so with his thesis that we
know, more or less, how the cognitive mind
works.)
It does seem to me that there’s a pattern to
the failures. Because of the context sensi-
tivity of many parameters of quotidian
abductive inferences, there is typically no
way to delimit a priori the considerations
that may be relevant to assessing them. In
fact, there’s a familiar dilemma: Reliable
abduction may require, in the limit, that the
whole background of epistemic commit-
ments be somehow brought to bear in plan-
ning and belief fixation. But feasible
abduction requires, in practice, that not
more than a small subset of even the rele-
vant background beliefs is actually con-
sulted. How to make abductive inferences
that are both reliable and feasible is what
they call in AI the frame problem. No doubt
the claim is tendentious (for further discus-
sion see Fodor 1987), but I think it’s plausi-
bly because of the frame problem that our
robots don’t work. After all, robots are
mostly computing machines. So if a lot of
quotidian cognition is abductive, and if
there are intrinsic tensions between abduc-
tion and computation, why would you even
expect that our robots would work?
--the mind doesn’t work that way by Jerry
Fodor, MIT Press, 2001, page 37 and 38.
Step 0: Number each Paragraph
Last Sentences of Each Paragraph
There are no structural clue words in the first sen-

tence of the first paragraph. “For example, the fail-
ure of ...” in the beginning of the second paragraph
shows it is presenting an example of some idea in the
first paragraph (what idea we must find out).
“there’s a pattern to the failures” in the first sen-
tence of the third paragraph connects it to the fail-
ures in the second paragraph.
So we have:
an idea
an example of the idea: failures of artificial intelli-
gence
a pattern among the failures of artificial intelli-
gence
from the Structural Clue Words that were Found or
Generate and Answer New Questions
From these structural hints we get some natural ques-
tions. What is the idea of the first paragraph? What
are the various failures of artificial intelligence pre-
sented in the second paragraph? What is the pattern
among those failures of the third paragraph?
Step 3: Read the First and Last Sentences of Each
Paragraph and Mark or Write Down the Main Topic
of Each Paragraph
if cognitive science actually worked, we could live

with tensions between global and syntactic views
of mental processes
the failures of artificial intelligence are an exam-
ple (of how cognitive science does not work, from
the first paragraph)
context sensitivity as the pattern among the fail-
ures of artificial intelligence
Step 4: Try to Use Paragraph Topics to Answer the
Questions from Structural Clue Words
What is the idea of the first paragraph? cognitive

science does not work (so we can’t live with ten-
sions between global and syntactic views of mental
processes)
What are the failures of artificial intelligence? no
answer from topic of paragraph but there is a list
of answers in the middle sentences of the para-
graph: make breakfast, translate, summarize,
learn
What is the pattern among those failures of artifi-
cial intelligence? context sensitivity is missing.
Step 5: Group Adjacent Paragraphs that Share the
Same Topic (By Drawing a Line Between Paragraphs
Groups
cognitive science does not work--this is the topic of

all 3 paragraphs in the set
these two paragraphs are an example of the topic
of the first paragraph
example: artificial intelligence has failures
context sensitivity is the pattern among the fail-
ures of artificial intelligence
Step 6: Group Groups of Adjacent Paragraphs that
Groups
There are no groups of groups here because we are
only dealing with 3 paragraphs, too small a number to
have groups of groups.
Step 7: Draw Tentative Initial Structural
Reading Diagram
Structural Reading of the Set of 3 Fodor Paragraphs
name of
points of main point name of groups
name of groups
of each groups of of groups of
interest paragraph paragraph of
groups groups
so we can’t cognitive Idea: cog-

tolerate the science nitive sci-
tension does not ence fails
between global work
and syntactic Cognitive science and
views of men- artificial intelligence fail
tal processes because they cannot han-
dle the frame problem:
make break- example: Example: the contradictory
fast, trans- artificial artificial requirements of reliable
late, intelligence intelli- and feasible abduction
summarize, failures gence fails
learn because it
does not
contradiction pattern handle
between reli- among arti- context
able abduc- ficial intelli- sensitivity
tion and gence
feasible abduc- failures:
tion: reliable context sen-
requires whole sitivity
background,
feasible
requires not
more than
small subset--
of epistemic
commitments--
this is called in
AI the Frame
Problem. The
Frame Prob-
lem causes
robots to not
work.
Applied to the Last of the Paragraphs in
the Set of 3:



Sentence


Groups

Groups

gram
It does seem to me that there’s a pat-
tern to the failures. Because of the
context sensitivity of many parame-
ters of quotidian abductive infer-
ences, there is typically no way to
delimit a priori the considerations
that may be relevant to assessing
them. In fact, there’s a familiar
dilemma: Reliable abduction may
require, in the limit, that the whole
background of epistemic commit-
ments be somehow brought to bear in
planning and belief fixation. But fea-
sible abduction requires, in practice,
that not more than a small subset of
even the relevant background beliefs
is actually consulted. How to make
abductive inferences that are both
reliable and feasible is what they call
in AI the frame problem. No doubt
the claim is tendentious (for further
discussion see Fodor 1987), but I think
it’s plausibly because of the frame
problem that our robots don’t work.
After all, robots are mostly computing
machines. So if a lot of quotidian cog-
nition is abductive, and if there are
intrinsic tensions between abduction
and computation, why would you even
expect that our robots would work?--
the mind doesn’t work that way by
Groups
bias of Western social scientists that traditional

and modern societies are opposed types caused
view that Hindu culture was opposed to moderniza-
tion
modernization was viewed as problem of trans-

forming traditional elements into modern forms
assumption was Western culture traits are univer-

sal, ideal, and necessary for modernization
assumption that Western social ethic, nuclear fam-

ily, individualism are necessary for modernization
assumption that modernization will: secularize

rites, nuclearize families, class-ify caste, individu-
alize personality
psychological corollary: collective familial person-

ality is incomplete, underdeveloped, immature,
passive, dependent
assumption that traditional familial self is incapa-
ble of incorporating modernizing changes and must
metamorphosize
Groups
bias of Western social scientists that traditional

and modern societies are opposed types caused
view that Hindu culture was opposed to moderniza-
tion
modernization was viewed as problem of trans-

forming traditional elements into modern forms
assumption was Western culture traits are univer-

sal, ideal, and necessary for modernization
assumption that Western social ethic, nuclear fam-

ily, individualism are necessary for modernization
assumption that modernization will: secularize

rites, nuclearize families, class-ify caste, individu-
alize personality
psychological corollary: collective familial person-
ality is incomplete, underdeveloped, immature,
passive, dependent
assumption that traditional familial self is incapa-

ble of incorporating modernizing changes and must
metamorphosize
Step 7: Draw Tentative Initial Structural Reading
Diagram
Lacan



Sentence


Structural Reading of One Paragraph
main main points of
points of main points of each main points of points of groups of
interest sentence groups of groups of groups of
sentences groups of groups of
sentences sentences
Not enough bias of Western social Western science bias: Western bias
detail in scientists that tradi- traditional and modern are creating a type
sentences to tional and modern opposed types of moderniza-
put any- societies are opposed tion that
thing here. types caused view destroys tradi-
that Hindu culture tional culture
was opposed to mod- and self ele-
ernization ments
modernization was modernization = three defi-
viewed as problem of replace tradition nitions of
transforming tradi- with modern ele- moderniza-
tional elements into ments because tion and
modern forms West is ideal the biased
assump-
assumption was tions they
Western culture traits are based
are universal, ideal, upon
and necessary for
modernization
assumption that modernization =
Western social ethic, Westernize forms
nuclear family, indi- because Western
vidualism are neces- forms are neces-
sary for sary for modern-
modernization ization
assumption that mod-
ernization will: secu-
larize rites, nuclearize
families, class-ify
caste, individualize
personality
psychological corol- modernization =
lary: collective famil- replacing tradi-
ial personality is tional family self
incomplete, underde- elements because
veloped, immature, collective men-
passive, dependent talities are
incomplete,
under-devel-
assumption that tradi- oped, immature
tional familial self is
incapable of incorpo-
rating modernizing
changes and must
metamorphosize
Groups

Groups

gram
The relativization of our sociology by

the scientific collection of cultural
forms that we are destroying in the
world, and also the analyses, bearing
genuinely psychoanalytic marks, in
which the wisdom of a Plato shows us
the dialectic common to the passions
of the soul and the city, may enlighten
us as to the reason for this barbarism.
What we are faced with, to employ
the jargo that corresponds to our
approaches to man’s subjective
needs, is the increasing absence of all
those saturations of the superego and
ego ideal that are realized in all kinds
of organic forms in traditional societ-
ies, forms that extend from the rituals
of everyday intimacy to the periodical
festivals in which the community man-
ifests itself. We no longer know them
except in their most obviously
degraded aspects. Furthermore, in
abolishing the cosmic polarity of the
male and female principles, our soci-
ety undergoes all the psychological
effects proper to the modern phenom-
enon known as the ‘battle between
the sexes’--a vast community of such
effects, at the limit between the
‘democratic’ anarchy of the passions
and their desperate levelling down by
the ‘great winged hornet’ of narcissis-
tic tyranny. It is clear that the pro-
motion of the ego today culminates,
in conformity with the utilitarian con-
ception of man that reinforces it, in
an ever more advanced realization of
man as individual, that is to say, in an
isolation of the soul ever more akin to
its original dereliction.
--Ecrits, a Selection, by Lacan,
Norton, 1977, page 26.

relativization of sociology and analyses of dialectic

(soul and city) tell us reason for a type of barbar-
ism
we face absence of saturations of superego and ego
from organic traditional society forms
we know organic traditional society form only in

degraded aspects
furthermore, by abolishing cosmic polarity

between male and female principles, we create
battle of the sexes (anarchy of passions leveled
down by tyranny of narcissism)
battle of sexes is reinforced by advance of individ-

ualism, hence return to pre-civilization isolation
from the Structural Clue Words that were

ism--what does he mean by relativization and anal-
yses here and what barbarism does he mean?

from organic traditional society forms--what are
‘saturations’ of superegos and egos that are found
in traditional society forms?
degraded aspects--why do we not know traditional
society forms in non-degraded aspects?

down by tyranny of narcissism)--how have we lost
the cosmic polarity between male and female?
what is the battle between the sexes? is the battle
between the sexes an anarchy of passions leveled
down by a tyranny of narcissistic people?

ualism, hence return to pre-civilization isolation--
no question here.
tence and Mark or Write Down the Main Topic of
Each Sentence
Same as structural clue words because we used simple

subjects and verb pairs which is like topics.

ism

degraded aspects


Questions from Structural Clue Words or Generate
and Answer New Questions

ism--modern society is barbaric, driven there by
individualism that breaks dialectic between soul
and city?

from organic traditional society forms--traditional
organic societies were better than modern society?
only if you do not actually live in them perhaps?
degraded aspects--if we know it degraded maybe it
was worse, far worse, when not degraded by mod-
ern influences?

down by tyranny of narcissism)--cosmic polarity
between male and female in traditional society
meant young men climbing into huts of young
females and fucking them whenever they got the
urge--do we want to return to that?

ualism, hence return to pre-civilization isolation--
do we have too much individualism or do we have
too much ineffective traditional organic ideals?
Groups

ism

degraded aspects


Groups

ism


degraded aspects

Step 7: Draw Tentative Initial Structural Reading
Diagram
Structural Reading of One Paragraph
main
main
points main points of each main points of groupspoints of points of
of groups of groups of groups of
interest sentence sentences of groups of
sentences groups of
sentences
relativization of sociol- soul/city dialectic breakdown rela- modern
ogy and analyses of tivizing sociology is reason for our society is
dialectic (soul and city) barbarism barbaric
tell us reason for a type because of
of barbarism tradi-
tional
society
we face absence of sat- we lack satura- traditional soci- aspects it
urations of superego tions of ego that ety is better than has lost
and ego from organic traditional soci- modern society due to
traditional society ety has increas-
forms ing indi-
we know organic tradi- vidualism
tional society form
only in degraded
aspects
furthermore, by abol- advancing indi-

ishing cosmic polarity vidualism wors-
between male and ens battle of
female principles, we sexes caused by
create battle of the loss of cosmic
sexes (anarchy of pas- polarity between
sions leveled down by the sexes
tyranny of narcissism)
battle of sexes is rein-

forced by advance of
individualism, hence
return to pre-civiliza-
tion isolation
CHAPTER
3
9 Theory
Examples
Exercises
Nine Theories
Knowledge Epitome is the intersection of over 200
separate educational innovations. Only one of them
is a micro delivery mechanism for delivering ideas to
lives and minds. Only part of that micro delivery
mechanism is Theory Power. This chapter illustrates
what the previous chapter outlined, provided philoso-
phy for, and methods for producing. Readers should
read the example theory presentations below as typi-
cal outcomes of one night homework assignments for
any Knowledge Epitome class. Knowledge Epitome
installs a discipline of reading in its students, dis-
cussed elsewhere in this book, and a discipline of pro-
duction. Turning one research journal article or one
graduate research book chapter per night into the
model types illustrated in each of the nine sections
below, constitutes a typical homework assignment for
one class in the Knowledge Epitome framework. This
is, therefore, a chapter of nine completed homework
assignments for a Knowledge Epitome course. The
integrity assured and enforced in Knowledge Epitome
is a cycle of inputs, all of them, translated, trans-
formed, transitioned into useful, applicable, saleable
outputs. No assignment is trashed in Knowledge Epit-
ome; no input is wasted in mere mental speculation
without becoming a verifiable applicable output. It is
the discipline of this transformation that is “being
taught”, not the contents of any particular model
built, though quality of such outputs is strictly
enforced via voluntary comparison with other student
and similar professorial work.
Theory Power can be developed by building concep-

tual models and structural reading diagrams of all that
you read. In the beginning it slows you down and
seems cumbersome, but it makes you sense structure
and sensitive to structure, teaching you thereby, new
and more sophisticated structurings for your own
thought. After repeated practices, however, things
speed up, become automatic, and become easy. You
find yourself mentally building diagrams, instead of
having to do them by hand all the time. You find
yourself automatically counting, naming, and ordering
main points.
My experience, however, has been that students have

to see it to believe it. You have to show students a
text, how someone bright has marked up the text to
make visible its main point count, names, and order-
ing, how, stage by stage, they have converted that set
of markings into, eventually, a causal path style con-
ceptual model of the ideas in the text and how they
relate to each other. When writing this book I
wanted to summarize a broad panorama, not teach
details and individual methods, but I feared leaving
out methods entirely--how could readers get a flavor
for classwork and homework in Knowledge Epitome
classes without actually seeing some of the simplest
structural reading and writing methods used all the
time there? In the below section I present the step by
step transformation of marked text into causal path
conceptual models--the sort of models I constantly
sell to industry from my own reading. From the
examples below, readers should readily be able to
assess how Knowledge Epitome empowers is students
compared to usual universities with their low quality,
casual, scanning styles of reading.
Jun and Wright’s

Globalization
Theory
Overview
It used to be that all land was national, so that chang-
ing local land use patterns involved going to a nation’s
capital and negotiating changes in law, funding, or the
like. Now all land is international land. This is not
literally true but it is more and more true. The bid-
ders for local city lands that are most wanted, invited,
and welcome are international. A new level of initia-
tive taking and policy making has arisen--the region--
below the level of nation and above the level of local
city or county or state. The rise of this level has
resulted in national policies that are made taking on a
different form--that assumes experiment and diversity
among regions as part of the policy results to be
obtained. This theory of globalization sees an entire
planet of regions interacting more than nations or
towns interacting. This is a theory of how the world
as a whole is being reorganized by economic growth;
global service industries like air travel, next day
freight, and the internet; and the inspiring example of
Silicon Valley.
The Theory’s Key Concepts

This theory sees five transformations of the world
going on:
1) intermesticity--the rise of issues that are simulta-
neously both international and domestic
2) civitas--a new approach to governance involving

fostering the emergence and interaction of plural
types of local private sector organizations
3) decentralization--experiments with various dif-

ferent kinds of decentralization of power, funding,
authority, initiative, and policy making
4) clusters--emulation, globally, in each region of

what Silicon Valley has taught us all about keys to
self-sustaining economic take-off and growth
5) experiment--a switch from emphasizing standard-

ization to emphasizing diverse experiments
“farmed” till a winner appears for replication.
The world is being re-organized as millions of Darwin-

ian natural selection creativity processes of many
units competing, best adapted winners being
selected, and replicated elsewhere. Control, author-
ity, power, policy are becoming the invention, launch,
and from-a-distance enablement of evolution of such
Darwinian communities of competing experiments.
Direct authority application and rule are feared as
dooming a community to being surpassed by more per-
missive, experimental “looser” peers.
The Theory’s Key Relations Among Con-

cepts
There are two causal forces involved in this theory:
Cause 1: intermesticity forces changes in relations
between higher levels of governing and lower
Cause 2: higher levels and lower levels together fos-
ter decentralization to make room for local initiatives
that are diverse experiments for creating citivas and
clusters
Diagram of Forces in This Theory:

FORCE CONSTRUCT FORCE CONSTRUCT
decentralization
experiments
decisions to
higher level change
governing ways of
governing fostering local
diverse
experiments
global resources
entering local
areas creating
civitas
by trade, lower level decisions to
immigration, change
governing ways of
internet, creating
ads, investment, governing venture
lifestyles, clusters
entertainment media
The forces at play are global resources--corporations,
investments, government foreign government scru-
tiny, United Nations mandates--increasingly visiting,
joining, funding, influencing local communities and
decisions by both higher and lower level governments
to change relations to handle intermestic issues. The
decision of these levels of governing to change pro-
duces decentralization experiments and fostering
local diverse experiments among local units by higher
levels and it fosters creating civitas networks of pri-
vate initiative and Silicon Valley like clusters of ven-
tures by local governing levels.
Theory Explanations
This theory is empirical--it originated as people tried
to make precise a pattern of similar changes observed
in many different nations and cultures. The theory is
the precise statement of what is the same that is
going on in all those different cases. This theory
explains what that pattern of common behavior
shared across dozens of societies is. Two causal
forces are in sequence: first, global resources inter-
act with several levels of governing. Second and as a
result of that, those levels of governing together
decide to change their ways of governing (hence their
relationships). The higher levels of governing change
to conducting devolution experiments and to structur-
ing programs and policies to take the form of supports
for local diverse experiments and the lower levels of
governing change to fostering private sector initia-
tives and formation of venture clusters. This theory
does not say these forces should exist and should have
the outcomes listed here but that the do exist and do
have these outcomes. This theory tries to capture an
essence of what is now going on and express it clearly.
Globalization is these two sequenced causal forces
and the five (one then four) outcomes they produce,
according to this theory.
Theory Predictions
This theory in itself does not directly make predic-
tions. Any predictions in it are latent, for readers to
guess at and express. First of all, this theory does not
state that the two causal forces in it are the only, the
main, or the most interesting forces operating on
these levels of government. Hence, we cannot expect
to predict anything that levels of government do by
applying this theory. A theory that the primary forces
affecting levels of government are so and so is a much
stronger statement than this theory’s statement that
two forces, so and so, are affecting levels of govern-
ment. Second, this theory does not contain any
statement of time scale. Are the two causal forces in
this theory valid and powerful for the next two years,
the next ten, from 1997 to 2007, from 2000 to 2010?
We are not told. This theory does not contain any
statement of geographic limit. Is every nation
affected by these same two forces to considerable
extent? Are only advanced industrial nations thus
affected? We are not told. The implication is the
forces operate on all nations, nearly, but only some
nations are constructively dealing with them.
Measuring the Theory for Future Expla-
nations and Predictions
Measuring the degree of global investment, visitation,
and influence in any local community is not hard.
There are Chambers of Commerce and Economic
Development Offices of governments that keep track
of visitors, their proposals, interests, and possible
funding. Measuring the degree that relations between
levels of governing change is a little more difficult but
can be done. You count the number of new laws
structured in any different than similar laws/topics’
laws were structured in the past. You interview law
makers and stakeholders and ask their impressions of
changes in relations among government levels. Mea-
suring the degree that decentralization experiments,
fostering diverse local experiments, development of
civitas, and venture clusters occur is not hard.
Decentralization experiments can clearly be spotted
in new laws, as can efforts to foster diverse local
experiments, civitas, and venture clusters.
Enhancements by Related Theories

Self organizing systems, as studied in complexity the-
ory, may be a deeper and broader reality underlying
the phenomena this theory deals with. The upper
level of governing opening itself up to policy content
that is not mandated actions but enticements to local
units to self-organize into solutions combined with the
local units of governing seeing themselves as fostering
self-organizing of private sector civitas coalitions of
organizations on the one hand and self-organizing ven-
ture clusters of companies on the other hand, seem a
neat fit. Female opening for male initiative taking is
one metaphor for it. Perhaps both levels are respond-
ing to a new image of non-linear systems self-organiz-
ing into wanted outcomes instead of central
controllers mandating machine-like fixed roles and
actions for units that combine, machine-like, into
wanted outcomes. Intelligence goes from a central
all-knowing all-controlling designer to distributed
intelligent agents in a population of interacting units
whose interactions cause self-organization of wanted
outcomes.
Uniqueness and Information Value of

the Theory
How surprised are we by the constructs noticed and
relations among them highlighted by this theory?
That is, if you read a good newspaper, like the New
York Times or Financial Times regularly, would any of
the constructs or relations among constructs in this
theory surprise you? The answer is no. The internet
is epitomizing this globalization trend. It brings global
information and influences into individual homes,
offices, and individual personal computers. Yet it is
just the most ballyhooed path of global forces influ-
encing localities. Japanese businesses have invested
around the world the past twenty years bringing
entirely different ways of managing that the whole
world has learned from. After the Japanese the
Northern Europeans traipsed the world with telecom-
munications innovations. Before the Japanese the
Americans brought cheap unhealthy foods and enter-
tainment content to every nation. Wave after wave
of localities being influenced by global forces has
appeared. Something more has happened, however,
because local governments formerly staid, defensive,
and recalcitrant, have begun to actively court global
investors. They have begun seeking to be influenced
more.
The Simplification Value of This Theory

Theories that are not unique may have other types of
value, the primary one of which is simplicity. A good
theory can capture hundreds of experiences and
impressions in just a handful of constructs and rela-
tions. It can focus our attention on the core of a phe-
nomenon. It can help us leave behind the confusing
trivial details and accidental trappings of a phenome-
non. Does this globalization theory have this simplifi-
cation and focus value? This is a competitive
question, really. Can we think of another model of
what we all sense as “globalization” around the globe
that is better than this theory’s model? If we confine
ourselves to globalization as the phenomenon we wish
to explain or predict, then this theory is admirably
simple and what it emphasizes is nicely abstract. It
postulates changes in levels of governing, whether
upper level is nation and the lower level is states or
regions of states, or whether the upper level is cities
and the lower level is wards. That is a nice abstract
touch in this theory. It postulates two changes by
upper levels that nicely mesh with the two changes it
postulates by lower levels--decentralization experi-
ments and structuring policies to foster local experi-
ments nicely fit local units trying out civitas and
venture clustering experiments.
Weaknesses
I think this theory can be significantly improved. The
weakness is explaining why venture clusters, civitas,
decentralization and diverse experiment fostering are
the outcomes of intermestic issues increasing. Why
these outcomes? Some old image of governing has
been undermined or destroyed. Glorification of
states, and state intervention have decreased. Fasci-
nation with central control regimes in dozens of intel-
lectual fields has occurred. It is not just governments
that are decentralizing but psychology, anthropology,
computer science, and the rest of intellectual life.
This large scale decentralization revolution is not
mentioned by this theory, yet is surely a general caus-
ative force behind the forces in this theory or along-
side of them.
Is Anybody Testing this Theory, Ever?

This is the type of theory that nobody tests. It offers
ideas not surprising enough. We all can imagine theo-
ries like this one by reading major newspapers regu-
larly. Not only that, but this theory does not predict
anything surprising enough or valuable enough to
interest us. There is no reward large enough in this
theory to justify the immense expense of making the
measurements in this theory. Finally, this theory’s
lack of time and space scale make us suspicious that
this theory’s relations among constructs may be tem-
porary or rapidly replaced by newer more powerful
constructs.
Generalizing This Theory

Behind or between the lines of this theory you can
sense a similar change simultaneous at all levels of
policy making both in governments and businesses.
People are seeing venture clusters as the way to orga-
nize any community or business. Why would you want
to organize any way other than as Silicon Valley, with
self-organizing exponential growth take-off and
immense wealth, jobs, ideas, products, and social
benefits? Other nations who cannot stand the social
costs tolerated in the United States are struggling
mightily to invent new forms of Silicon Valley that
grow in their slower, more socially concerned soils.
Using this theory in part involves seeing nations, busi-
nesses, prefectures, towns, businesses all restructure
themselves as diverse experimental solution units
competing in a Darwinian struggle to adapt, survival
of the fittest, which then gets replicated to other
organizations. The basic dynamics of the creative
process itself--variation, combination, selection, and
replications--become the basic dynamics of all levels
of governing and organizing. That is implied in this
theory. How to use this theory, then?
Using This Theory
Health of Community Response to Globalization Forces
Questionnaire: Use With Any Community Undergoing or Wanting to
Undergo Globalization in Order to Differentiate Constructive
Responses from Defensive Self-Destructive Responses to Global Forces
Space
Type Construct Use Questions For Your
Answers
input global What global images, resources,
resources purposes, forces, personnel, orga-
entering local nizations, internet aspects are
communities entering this community? How?
first thing higher level of How are the higher levels of gov-
impact- governing erning in this community respond-
ed ing to these entering global
influences?
local level of How are the lower levels of gov-
governing erning in this community respond-
ing to these entering global
influences?
first decision to How are ways of governing and/or
respon-se change way of relations between levels of gov-
governing erning changing in this commu-
nity? Are these resulting from
global influences entering the
community?
higher decentraliza- What experiments with decentral-
level out- tion experi- izing power, authority, funding,
comes ments and other resources are this com-
munity making? Are these result-
ing from global influences
entering the community?
policies struc- What policies and/or decisions of
tured to call for this community are structured to
diverse local create diverse local experiments?
experiments Are these resulting from global
influences entering the commu-
nity?
Health of Community Response to Globalization Forces
Questionnaire: Use With Any Community Undergoing or Wanting to
Undergo Globalization in Order to Differentiate Constructive
Responses from Defensive Self-Destructive Responses to Global Forces
Space
Type Construct Use Questions For Your
Answers
lower civitas develop- What local initiatives in this com-
level out- ment as policy munity are trying to leverage pri-
comes implementa- vate sector organization
tion means cooperation to get something
done instead of central govern-
ment? Are these resulting from
global influences entering the
community?
venture cluster What local initiatives in this com-
development as munity are trying to foster devel-
policy imple- opment of a venture cluster as
mentation ways to get things done here? Are
means these resulting from global influ-
ences entering the community?
The constructs and relations among constructs of this

theory represent constructive engagement with global
forces, rather than recalcitrant, defensive, or self
destructive engagement. This theory, therefore,
becomes a partial measure of health of response by
communities to globalization forces. You can take
any community--a town, a boy scout troop, a research
and development lab inside a corporation--and ask “is
this community globalizing constructively or self
destructively?” measuring the constructs and relations
of this theory in your situation. Where none of the
four constructive outcomes from the theory are found
in your community, you can propose such outcomes as
way to improve your community’s response to global-
izing forces, according to this theory. Much of theory
seems empirical, inductive, and just reporting data on
operators and not others is the fundamental content
of the theory this empirical skill research gives rise to.
30 Skill Dimensions for Handling Diversity

category
function
skill method
recognizing plural scenario judging

possible reactions
to diversity scenar-
ios;
recognizing your own culture self assessment
propensities along
ambiguous dimensions of
dimensions
response to diversity;
recognizing social, cogni- skill dimensions
tive and other dimen-
sions to responding to
diverse situations;
recognizing your own culture penetration stages
stage of penetrating a
diverse situation/culture;
recognizing your own personality development stages
stage of personality
development;
recognizing cognitive step stratified responding
strata
sequence in responding
to diversity;
recognizing illusions all culture illusions
people have about the
nature of values and cul-
tures;
manage values
recognizing the uses to plural culture definitions

which culture is put in
business situations;
recognizing the other learning cultures
guy’s way of doing
cultures
things; learning to do
things the other guy’s
way;
category
function
skill method
undoing unconsciousness counter neuroses

of costs of talents;
undoing unconscious being educated
value commitments
made in the process of
growing up (socializa-
de-socialize
tion);
undoing power given de-myst, myth, constructing
over to outsider institu-
tions while growing up;
undoing commitment to problemlessness
plans and process not out-
come;
undoing casual dropping personal quality checklist
of self-reflection in daily
de-behave
life;
undoing automaticity of response stopping
response to situations;
undoing ignoring implicit transplanting business practices
culture supports and across cultures
blocks to business prac-
tices;
transfer & shift
undoing common bounds being stretches

and intensities of doing
manage self
mundane work tasks;

undoing information leadership shifts
shifts to diversity results
rather than people shifts;
category
function
skill method
balancing how manage- JIT managing

ment functions are deliv-
ered where and when and
in the amount needed;
balancing costs of pain sharing
improvement among
people at work;
balancing (and recogniz- manage by balancing
ing imbalances among)
dynamics of various com-
interests
prehensive models of all

the diverse elements at
work;
balancing types of meeting behavior plotting
remarks in meetings;
balancing causal analysis causal diversity
types;
balancing types of topics, democratic rules of order
types of treatments of
meetings
topics, and leaders of

treatments in meeting and
work process assign-
ments;
balancing public display polis
of excellent word and
deed with functional
appearance opportunities
for employees at work;
balancing emotional community quality cabaret
infrastructure in support
manage groups
of needed transitions with

rational requirements;
balancing need to special- managing by events
ize with need for organi-
events
zational learning and

parallel processing;
category
function
skill method
manage scripting what you are emotion mapping

flow having feeling about
scripting the interplay of comedies of expectation
different frames for
viewing the same action
stream
scripting the market extreme product extrapolation
principles inherent in out-
rageous products/services
that already sell well in
some market
The triangle below is drawn to allow us to easily see

the group structure in the table above.
Krugmann’s
Order from
Instability and
Random Growth
Theory
Overview
Economists have developed deep biases and ruts that
have turned most of their professional publications
into games for academics with no real world sense to
them. The 1990s saw Nobel Laureates take the Black-
Scholes theory of continuous futures hedging and go
bankrupt following it to ridiculous investment deci-
sions in the real world. This was a good proof that
proofs in theories have left behind essential parts of
the real world they supposedly were “models” of.
This kind of thing embarrasses economists who have
used math to hide their inability to think ever since
MIT and Paul Samuelson ushered in competition
among social scientists to look most like physicists and
write bigger equations.
Another deep embarrassment of economists was a

whole body of theory on complex systems that had
immense implications for the economy, but no econo-
mists were involved in developing it (at least for five
to fifteen years depending on whether you take Euro-
peans or Americans as “beginning” it). Instead, non-
economists were hired by Citibank and others to apply
these concepts to economic issues. Economists
missed the consulting income that thus went to oth-
ers. They resented it. Krugman is a leading econo-
mist who found out about complexity concepts a little
late--the insular mathematic nature of economic dis-
course slowing his ability to see and learn, perhaps.
He wrote an apologetic book trying his best to make
complexity theory ideas seem central and natural to
economic thought. In that book, what he tried to do
and what he did do are different. He tried to impress
us with economics and how it “already” decades ago
understood much of what complexity theorists at the
Santa Fe Institute were ballyhooed for learning. He
failed at doing that, in my opinion. Instead, he pre-
sented a good example of a brilliant mind, his own,
struggling to learn complexity theory concepts using
examples from his own field of economics. Read this
way, his book is valuable. His theory is hard to elicit
from his book because he does not yet really under-
stand himself. He is “in process” with this theorizing
work and his ideas come out not fully formed or cogni-
zant of each other. In this chapter I somewhat ruth-
lessly try to model what he succeeded in doing and
what he did not succeed in doing.
His theory of complex systems is a theory that tells us

where “order for free” comes from in various systems.
How does a chaotic unordered mess suddenly generate
a neat, somewhat stable, structural pattern of impor-
tant consequences for human affairs without any
human intervening to help the system structure itself?
How does it happen that local actors doing local things
among each other cause immense global patterns to
appear like hurricanes and economic depressions that
they did not intend, plan, design, or deliberately fos-
ter? He proposes two sources--instability and random
growth. Are they really separate causes or the same?
This chapter answers that.
This version of a complex adaptive systems theory, by

Krugman, offers a few concepts of great use in guiding
action and understanding the world. Other complex
adaptive systems theories offer still other attractive
and powerful concepts, not presented in Krugman’s
theory. Krugman takes pains in putting out his theory
of complex systems to not make certain mistakes
common in other publishings about them. He works to
avoid assuming that “being complex” is automatically
good or better than being “simple”. [Interesting in
this regard is Jay Stephen Gould’s book Full House
that takes the epitome of complexity represented by
human beings compared to other animals and shows
that that is not progress, some kind of “best”, or even
evolutionarily strong (resistant to environmental
shocks--bacteria are likely to outsurvive us.] He works
to avoid assuming that many phenomena are “self
organizing” without carefully defining what “self”
organizing means and carefully distinguishing things
that “organize” without “self organizing”. His mind
is a good mind and a well trained one and reading his
struggles to map complexity theory concepts onto his
economic experiences and models is worthwhile, even
while being an incomplete mapping and incomplete
use of complexity theory concepts developed by other
authors.

Krugman announces that he has two key concepts--
order from instability and order from random growth.
These correspond to systems like spin-glasses in phys-
ics and systems like percolation systems (water seep-
ing through porous rocks) in physics.
Spin-glasses are networks of atoms in fixed arrays

whereby the “spin” of one atom can be aligned in dis-
crete directions only (often two only--an “up” direc-
tion and a “down” one). The spins of nearest
neighbors (in the array) of an atom determine its spin.
There can be various rules for this. First, there can
be various array types, differing in how many nearest
neighbors any one atom has (2, 3, 5 and so on; two-
dimensional neighbors, three-dimensional neighbors
and so on; nearest as within a certain distance, near-
est as unblocked straight line access to any one atom,
and so on). Second, the power or configuration of
nearest neighbor spins capable of affecting any one
atom’s spin can vary (opposite nearest neighbors
affect it, adjacent nearest neighbors affect it, major-
ity of nearest neighbors affect it, alternating nearest
neighbors affect it and so on).
What interests people about spin-glasses is local per-

turbations in some types of existing array usually have
purely local effects. Few or no local perturbations in
such arrays have global, entire array scale effects. In
other types of array nearly every local perturbation
has global, entire array scale effects. The first type
of array is uninteresting because local changes have
purely local effects. It is boringly stable. The sec-
ond type of array is uninteresting because nearly any
change anywhere changes everything everywhere--
that is such arrays are chaotically overactive. In
between these two polar opposites, however, is usu-
ally a critical value of some parameter--called the
“order” parameter (though it could just as well be
called the “disorder” parameter). At or near this
critical value, local perturbations expand from local
effects only to global effects or (in the other chaotic
types of array) most local perturbations stop affecting
everything and instead only some local perturbations
affect everything. At or near this critical value,
structures appear on the whole array scale, as a result
of local perturbations.
Percolation systems are porous rocks in physics that

water or some fluid flows into the holes of. Holes on
all size scales exist inside the rock and physicists think
of a hole as either filled or unfilled by the fluid (that
is discrete values like the spin states in spin-glasses
above). Percolation systems have two polar extremes
too--ones in which local perturbations affect only
local things and ones in which nearly every local per-
turbation affects everything. The first is boringly sta-
ble and the second is boringly chaotic. Percolation
systems have critical values too at or near which a few
special local perturbations, only, have global effects.
At this critical value, structures appear on the whole
array (of holes) size scale, as a result of local pertur-
bations.
Krugman treats spin glass systems and percolation sys-

tems as if they are somehow fundamentally distinct
and different. That is, he treats order from instabil-
ity and order from random growth as different. That
is because of two further types of things he is distin-
guishing. He distinguishes avalanching systems from
power law behaving systems and he distinguishes self
organizing in space systems from self organizing in
time systems. The first (avalanching and self organiz-
ing in space systems) are like spin glasses, he says; the
second (power law and self organizing in time sys-
tems) are like percolation systems, he says.
From my descriptions just above, however, it is clear

that both concern connectedness, the degree of con-
nectedness in systems. At certain critical values, of
intermediate connectedness (of a system’s basic units
with each other) interesting patterns on a larger size
scale appear from simple rules of influence of neigh-
boring units on a smaller size scale. Krugman struc-
tures his book into two sections based on his
distinction between spin glasses (avalanching, order
from instability) and percolation systems (power law,
order from random growth). If, however, you have a
concept of abstract “connectedness” and view both of
these, you see them as virtually identical; you lose the
distinction with which he structures his theory.
Thus, a concept he does not explicitly discuss and
acknowledge in his wording of his theory--connected-
ness of a system’s basic units--unites the two primary
concepts in his theory.
In sum, at the highest level, his theory has two dis-

tinctions, united by a concept he omits, connected-
ness.
At a lower level, Krugman presents particular eco-
nomic models of different economic phenomena to
illustrate self organizing processes in economics and
economies. He does this exploratorialy, not defini-
tively. Self organizing in space models evolve as fol-
lows:
concentric rings of crops around a town center
emerging from transport costs and crop prices and
land rent differences in simultaneous application
(each local farmer independently makes decisions in
his economic interest that result in a pattern of land
use, on a larger size scale than each farmer’s farm,
that neither he nor anyone else planned or
intended)
even spacing of centers (cities) along dimensions

resulting from even population distribution plus
transport costs interacting with economies of scale
industries (each producer and consumer makes
decisions in their own economic interest that result
in a pattern of spacing, on a larger size scale than
each person’s location, that neither he nor anyone
else planned or intended.)
people having moderate preferences for being near
their own kind of person interacting in neighbor-
hoods to produce completely segregated locales
(each local person independently making choices in
their own preference order that result in an overall
pattern, on a larger size scale, emerging that no
one planned, intended, or now likes--namely, in this
case, complete separation, segregation)
slightly uneven population distribution under forces

of attraction to centers and repulsion from centers
that have different ranges such that a pattern of
center spacing arises (each local producer and con-
sumer independently making choices in their own
preference order that result in an overall pattern,
on a larger size scale, emerging that no one planned
or intended.
These models are all growth in space models (but

that, puzzlingly, takes place over time making the dis-
tinction that Krugman makes between space and time
vague and dissatisfying (his distinction comes from his
math more than the meaning of these models, in all
likelihood). These models evolve from less “self orga-
nizing” to “more self organizing”. When nothing out-
side the system is needed for organization that no one
plans or intends to appear, then the order that
appears is self-created by dynamics “inherent” in the
system itself, rather than environments or conditions
outside the system influencing it. Order, thus, arises
from dynamics inherent in the system. Such order
appears “for free” because no actor intends, plans,
or, in some cases, likes it.
At the same lower level, Krugman presents models of

self-organizing in time, as follows:
populations arrive at sites in clumps, either joining
an existing clump or starting their own new site of
collecting clumps; the size (in population) of a
clump of clumps determines its power to attract
new clumps; (these two conditions produce a distri-
bution of city sizes that follow the power law
observed for actual city sizes, if capitals are omit-
ted from one’s data)
weather vortexes appear in flows of atmosphere

and a distinct gradient of chemical presence
appears in morphogenesis of developing animals and
a power law in distribution of sizes of pieces of bro-
ken ceramics appears because of the instability of
smooth and even distributions in growth processes
to slight perturbations;
increasing returns to scale economies (success

breeds more success, failure breeds more failure)
like VHS and Beta video formats as competing tech-
nologies, can be understood as systems with distinct
“attractors” that draw actual system behavior to
tiny portions of their overall “state space” of possi-
ble states they could be in; at certain critical val-
ues, smooth changes in a parameter suddenly
switch the system from one attractor to another,
causing unsmooth, whole system change of state
from slight changes in input parameter value;
if, in time, you have actions that increase some
value over the short term but decrease it over a
longer term, this acts like attractors and repulsors
with different ranges in self organizing-in-space
models; the result is business cycles instead of equi-
librium single points, like vortexes in weather
instead of steady state flows
if you have layers (like supplier levels in an econ-

omy), units of which (firms) pull products from
firms in other layers, combined with stores (inven-
tories) of what they pull, you can create systems
that on their own evolve towards critical values of
inventories at which point, long chain reactions
across the whole system reconfigure it fundamen-
tally as a result of single new inputs; this is more
than self-organization of structure no one intends
but it is self-organizing criticality--the tuning of a
system of itself till it is extremely sensitive to per-
turbations (two large economies with 2% of their
GDPs from exports can yet greatly influence each
other, throwing each other into recession for exam-
ple, by phase locking wherein both economies
evolve toward their critical points in inventories till
they become extremely sensitive even to small
changes in inputs from the other economy--such
small changes being provided by the other economy
that “phase locks” with the first economy)
These models are all growth in time processes that

evolve from self organizing structure to self organizing
criticality (from a system inherently generating struc-
ture that no system unit planned or intended to a sys-
tem inherently evolving towards a critical value of
some parameter at which slight perturbations switch
the entire system from one overall structure and state
to a radically different one). That is we start with
systems that happen to be set near critical values and
we end with systems that on their own, regardless of
where they start out “set”, drift towards a critical
value that makes them susceptible to enormous reac-
tion to slight perturbations. The self-organizing in
space models teach us that spatial distribution evolves
by waves of allocation, the most unstable wave of
which, ends up dominating the final structure--that is,
generating the final structure--that we perceive.
The self-organizing in time models teach us that sys-
tems having: objects that grow, growth rates that are
randomly distributed among objects, expected rate of
growth that is independent of size scale (big objects
grow neither faster nor slower than little objects)--all
exhibit power laws of size (population size is inversely
proportional to size ranking); in addition, there are
many systems wherein there is a critical value at
which power law type growth processes, such as the
above, occur, and these systems tend to evolve
towards such critical values, making the systems
extremely sensitive to slight fluctuations in inputs.

cepts
Growth in space takes place in time so that Krugman’s
distinction between self organizing in space and self
organizing in time is partial, not a whole story. Many
ness in systems that spawns whole system patterns at
critical values of some parameter. At lower levels in
Krugman’s theory what are the key relations among
concepts? For Krugman’s spatially self organizing
models, a centering force shorter in range than a
decentering force, applied to an initial population dis-
tribution slightly irregular results in waves of growth
that result in one wave length dominating all others
and thereby determining the final regular spacing
achieved by the system of centers. This is just as
true of centers in time as centers in space. For Krug-
man’s temporally self organizing models, some sys-
tems naturally evolve toward critical values of a
parameter at which a particular power law type of
growth process appears (object grow, growth rates
randomly distributed to objects, big objects do not
grow at different rates than small ones on average)
that creates ordered patterns, on a larger size scale,
that no one intends or plans, from actions on a smaller
size scale of basic units interacting.
Diagram of Forces in This Theory

Critical Value
Feedback of Some Feedback
that Drives Order Param- that Drives
Order Param- eter Order Param-
eter to Criti- eter to Criti-
Waves of Slight Perturbation Chain Reac-

Growth with Switching System tion Making
One Wave Dom- from One Attractor Global Effects
inating Others Basin of Its State from Local
Power Law
Type of
Growth at
Critical Value
Objects Grow Random Dis- Big Objects

tribution of Grow Neither
Growth Rates Faster nor
of Objects Slower than
Structure (Ordered Pattern) that Self

Emerges Without Any Basic Unit in the
System Planning, Intending, or Wanting It
Careful examination of this theory shows little differ-
ence between its virtual country and network of small
firms scenarios.
Lowering of Coordination Costs
Actor 1: pioneer Actor 2: large firms Actor 2: large firms

individuals Response: form
Response: fluid Response: embody fluid coalitions
coalitions of populations bidding between firms so
ventures on the net in internal markets larger competitive
units arise
Core: guilds
Periphery: temporary job Core: partnership track Core: competitive competence
coalitions Periphery: outsourced functions
Core: net savvy people
employees
Periphery: welfare non-net Periphery: non-track employees
savvy people
Self-organizing management Self-organizing management Self-organizing management

Emergent results BUT Emergent results BUT internal Emergent results BUT little re-
requires great standards systems career paths jam self organizing organizing by large units
Danger: all time spent bidding Danger: loss of standards based Danger: inability of outsiders
leverage on external market to compete reduces internal
quality, value, speed
Welfare: need new “guilds” Welfare: existing system okay Welfare: from govt. to firm
Emergence (self organizing) replaces design, command, & management

All Nine Theories
in One Application
Framework
What Nine Social Theories Tell Us
Society Change Social

Capability Non-Linear Systems
Theories Theories Theories
Jun and Wright’s Fiske’s 4 Ele- Krugmann’s Order

Globalization mentary from Instability
Theory Types of and Random
4 changes in governance: Social Rela- Growth Theory
de-centralization, experi-
mentation, civitas enlist- tion Theory competing waves of growth
with 1 wave dominating
ment, venture clusters sharing (group over
members), ranking becoming the unplanned
(higher over lower), order appearing in the sys-
reciprocating tem; chain reaction making
(treatment over global effects from local
condition equality), actions at critical value of
pricing (allocate to order parameter till
contributors not unplanned order appears in
members) the system; random distri-
bution of growth rates of
objects, big objects grow
neither faster nor slower
than little ones at critical
value of the order parame-
ter;

1• a socialization pro- 2 • a socializa- 3 • a socialization pro-

cess: generate new tion process: cess: tune parameter
and more power, gen- specify how rela- values of competing
erated by replacing tive emphasis of waves and chain reac-
central command with these four roles tions till better-than-
self-organizing power constitute prob- expected results
development in plural lems and speci- emerge
centers of initiative fies re-balancing
of emphasis
among them as
solutions
Giddens’ Delocal- Grondona’s Malone’s Coordi-

ization Theory Culture of nation Cost The-
educativeness of everyday Develop- ory
life increasing relativism
and practices as homes, 5 ment Theory technologies lowering coor-
dination costs cause: coali-
effects, 2 costs, 1 para- establish reliable
near future, populations of small ventures into
dox: intimate subworlds, big ones on the net; verti-
self built identity, invent- tion of strivers,
action scope cal departments replaced
ing not following; cogni- by populations bidding for
tion career spaces, enhancing infra-
structures; reliable work on the net; coalitions
cognitive locality risk (nar- of large firms increasing
rowness); cost 1--self persons, laws, sys-
tems; via training, overall firm size on the net
reflection load, cost 2--
yearning for missing single tooling, tolerance
authority; paradox--want- of rivalry & heresy;
ing what we just worked education/democ-
hard to get away from racy/partnering/
technologies
4 • a socialization pro- 5 • a socialization 6 • a socialization pro-

cess: individual persons process: continual cess: establish missing-
self building their iden- work to re-estab- till-now locality and
tity anew via bricolage lish a culture of demos powers;
from what their organiza- development (in
tion offers from around various domain 7 • a socialization pro-
the world types) as new sub- cess: distribute governing
strates, social and functions to mass events;
technical, undo 8 • a socialization pro-
parts of past- cess: establish insight
erected cultures of processes among mega-
development organization components;

Toffler’s De-massi- Greene’s Gladwell’s Tipping

fication Theory Diversity Man- Point Theory
2 mass system effects, 4 par- agement The- non-linear dynamics: slight-
adoxes, six subeffects, six nesses, epidemics, system
results; diversity invading ory wide avalanches, law of the
locals, speeded up images/ unconsciously valued few, degree of connectedness,
change; uniformity creates contents, automati- system tippiness, butterfly
diversity, institutions/prod- cally used contents, effect;
ucts wrong size; together in inappropriate for cur- human nature dynamics: situ-
loneliness, yearn for what rent situations; undo atedness (susceptibility to
just left; centrality too uni- unconsciousness/auto- non-verbal, emotions are out-
form, centrality too slow, maticness; see diver- side in, some people draw us
institutions both too big & too sity--within self, into their feelings, slight
small, products both too big across time, human details symbolize care so must
& too small, nuclear family condition; balance-- be controlled, we blame
too big and small, liberation seen/unseen, partici- human traits miss situational
without freedom; frustration pation evolution, causes); structure of human
with leaders--wrong size solu- polarities of life cognition (confirm our worth
tions, too slow solutions; need, make sense of things
regions above and below need, fit into daily lives
localities appear, custom need); human group effects
designs replace mass designs, (12 in sympathy groups, 150 in
family extensions/intentions, acquaintance groups, we store
seeking one right way though memories in other for socially
just left it extended minds, we level,
sharpen, assimilate, stories
that we transmit)
9 • a socialization pro- 10 • a socializa- 11 • a socialization pro-

cesses: get operations on tion process: since cess: operate on organi-
organizations done in a the reflection load zations through
fractal manner, across of encountering technologies of persua-
plural size scales diversity is far sion, help organization
beyond capacity of democracies operate bot-
current tools, tom up through technolo-
invent new tools gies of persuasion; and
for fractally engag- get organization policies
ing “othernesses” grounded in how the
articulated in 64 or human mind works;
so specific dimen-
sions
CHAPTER
4
Theory
Basics in
More
Detail
Theory Power--The Basics
Again
Most people shy away from theory. Theory has a bad
reputation. People think theory is the opposite of
reality and power. Actually, however, all of us, with-
out exception, are theorists. Most of what we see
and hear comes from theories inside us, directing us
to pay attention to some parts of the world and not
others. However, the theories inside us are mostly
unconscious, put there while we grew up as small chil-
dren. We larned millions of things we did not realize
we were learning. More tragically, we learned ways
of doing things, and things to do, without learning, at
all, alternatives to them. For each thing to do we
think of there are thousands of other things to do we
have never imagined or thought of, because they were
not part of the life of people around us while growing
up. For each ways to do things we use there are doz-
ens or hundreds of other ways to do them we have
never imagined or thought of or used, because they
were not part of the life of the people around us while
growing up. We are ignorant both of the routines and
beliefs inside us and also of the alternatives to those
that we never were exposed to. As a result, most
people are only partly steering themselves--most of
what they value, believe, and do, come from routines
inside of them that they are unaware of. Also most
people are unaware of the alternatives they are miss-
ing--not having grown up among them, they cannot
imagine them or consider them for comparison with
their own contents, most of which they are uncon-
scious of--a double source of ignorance.
If you turn what you experience or what you read into

a theory, you can apply your reading and experi-
ence. If you do not turn experience and reading into
theory, then you cannot apply them--they pass by and
leave no trace in your life. Theory is a way to cap-
ture parts of your life and reuse them again and again
to improve what you do and how you do it. Theory is
a short form of experiences, a short form of reading
contents. You drop certain details and maintain oth-
ers. You capture the “points”--their count, names,
and how they are ordered. Each book or experience
elaborates a few themes, not too many. So the elabo-
rations overlap and inter-relate. A theory captures
the smallest number of different concepts and rela-
tions among concepts to represent all the interesting
and important points in your experience or reading. A
theory filters experiences (including reading experi-
ences) by what interests you and is important to you.
A theory says things like this “the world works this
way” “the world needs this kind of thing” “the parts
of the world most valuable are these parts”. Theo-
ries contain such contents plus the framework or point
of view that generates that framework. So complete
theories say things like: “viewing the world X way,
shows it works A way”, “viewing the world from Y dis-
cipline, shows it needs B kind of thing”, “viewing the
world from the vantage point of how W reduces X
except where Y is present, makes C and D the most
valuable parts of the world”.
Since a theory is not a truth, because many theories

have not been thoroughly tested, perhaps truths are
what we should aim for, not theories. This makes a
certain sense but it is finally unrealistic. It costs a
huge amount of effort, time, and money to validate
any one theory. The vast majority of theories in the
world are never tested. There is not enough time,
money, and not enough highly trained people capable
of validating them. Only a very few theories are
tested well enough to know when and where they
work. Even those are not tested so well that we know
all the times when they work and do not work. A few
years ago two Nobel Prize winners in economics cre-
ated an investment firm based on the theory they
developed together. They rapidly grew very rich, till
one day, their firm went bankrupt, saved only by the
US Federal Reserve Bank’s intervention. The men
could not tell when their theory worked and when it
did not work, so they used it too long and it caused
them to make a series of very large bad investments,
destroying their bank and their personal wealth. Even
famous, highly research theories, by Nobel Prize win-
ners are dangerous, because we do not know exactly
when they work and when they do not.
What good are theories if they are not true?--you may

ask. If they are better than the jumble of happen-
stance theories inside us now, put there by growing up
somewhere, then even untested theories may improve
what we see in the world and what we are capable of
wanting to do and getting done. Second, theories tell
us what parts of reality to pay attention to, what
parts are important. Theories let us notice things we
would not notice without them. If you have lots of
theories inside you and they are very different from
each other, you notice a lot more things in the world
than others do. You live, actually, in a bigger world,
in every situation noticing lots that others fail to
notice and fail to react to. This is real power even
when the theory is not entirely true.
This part of the book shows you how to make yourself

powerful using theory. It shows all the necessary
components of this--how to transform experiences
into theories, how to apply theories to cases in your
life, how to blend and separate theories, how to
notice new aspects of life and situations using theo-
ries, and so on.
The Everyman Theorist--

Conscious versus
Unconscious Theories
We are all theorists, though most of us are unaware of
the theories inside us that control what we believe,
do, and seek. This does not mean much till we experi-
ence the power of theories. My favorite way of dem-
onstrating theory power is using Dr. Tannen’s research
on male female discourse differences. Twenty years
of research of hers, published in You Just Don’t
Understand, showed a number of small differences in
how men and women talk. Men and women of all
ages want to be liked by the opposite sex. Yet nearly
none of them study how the other gender operates.
At most, a few magazine articles, each year, present
“how to please your man” or “new lines for picking up
girls”. A pop book or two deal with “John’s tricks for
getting women into bed” or “Susan’s dress for passion
techniques”. I ask students to study just two or three
of Dr. Tannen’s results on how male and female dis-
course differs. Then I ask them to apply those results
to conversations the students have with the opposite
sex during the next day or two, writing up the results
and reactions they get. It never fails that two or
three of Dr. Tannen’s hypotheses about discourse dif-
ferences, suffice to utterly transform both what stu-
dents notice in the world, and what impact they have
on members of the opposite sex. For example,
women talk to share feeling, express empathy, while
men talk to fix the world. This means when women
express a problem, men offer them fixes, when what
the women want is empathy, sharing of feeling. If,
instead, a man, one day, were to offer empathy, not
fixes, the woman would be both amazed and deeply
touched. Romance follows. This is about as simple
as any theory gets, yet it, by itself, has great power to
transform lives of my students, changing what they
see and relationships they build. This simple theory
allows men and women to see for the first time in
their lives the different intents behind comments by
the opposite sex. This simple theory allows men to
greatly increase their attractiveness to women, and
vice versa. The person having more theories lives in a
bigger world than the rest of us and can react to
aspects of the world we never notice. Theory
increases the size of the world we live in. That is real
power, tremendous power.
Having a sense of the power of theory to expand the

size of world we live in and the things in that world we
can notice and therefore react to, it makes sense to
talk about the theories inside us that we are not
aware of and learning to become aware of what those
theories are so we can substitute better ones, con-
sciously chosen. Why bother changing theories inside
us unless theory has value, in this case, power.
The Theory Content of Our Project of

Becoming an Adult
Adulthood starts at 20 as a project, not an achieve-
ment. At about 20 years of age, we realize that the
us created by our family, home town, schooling,
nation, gender, and era, is not optimal and not what
we want. We find a number of lackings in who we are
that can only be fixed by changing our identity, our
contents, the kind of self we are. This discovery of
the suboptimality of the most intimate things inside
us, starts us on a journey lasting a lifetime but largely
completed in the 20 years between 20 years of age
and 40 years of age. This is the adulthood journey,
the journey of becoming an adult by age 40 or so. In
order to become an adult, we have to replace parts of
us unconsciously put there in us by things around us
that we grew up among, with better things consciously
chosen from the best people in history and in the con-
temporary world. This is the function of college--the
entice us, in freshman and sophomore years, beyond
our satisfaction with our selves, by exposing us to the
severe narrowness, brittleness, and limitations of who
are are as we arrive at college. The variety of people
and points of view, departments and courses at col-
lege do this for us--showing a hundred different view-
points all different than each other yet each believing
it is the only right one. The relativity of truth, thusly
discovered from the variety at college, opens us to
the possibility of cleaning our souls of what nations,
eras, genders, parents, home towns, schools put into
us while growing up. Instead of that happenstance
local tradition stuff, we choose what we are to be, by
replacing things in us with better things from the best
in the contemporary world and from history, both of
which colleges furnish amply.
Becoming an adult requires that we spot contents
inside us and replace them, launching this process
during college, but continuing it for the next 20 or 25
years, till adulthood is reached, when most of our per-
sonal contents is stuff we consciously chose and put
there, instead of stuff we unconsciously absorbed
while a kid growing up somewhere.
College, in all this, is where the adulthood project

begins, because college relativizes beliefs by showing
us others just as justified and sincere in holding very
different beliefs, because colleges make us highly dis-
satisfied with our self and its contents (in part
because relativization of our beliefs exposes the flaws
we ignored in them while growing up), and because
colleges expose us to better contents and beliefs from
the best in the contemporary world and the best in
history (via books and coursework). College reveals
the adulthood project and launches it; it does not fin-
ish it. Finishing it requires at least two decades of
constant work.
Finding New Theories and Finding Old

Theories
Where do you find new theories? Of course there are
books and research journal articles that present new
theories and even have titles indicating that--”a new
theory of X”, or “recent international trade theories”.
The larger source, however, is experiences that you
turn into theories and readings that your turn into
theories. There are steps to doing this--marking all
the types of objects and operations on objects in
experiences or readings, grouping objects and opera-
tions by similarity, renaming those groups as single
variables, drawing diagrams showing causal relations
between such variables (what is input, what is out-
come, what is conditions needed before those inputs
produce those outcomes). After much practice you
can do this in your head--as you read you build a men-
tal diagram of inputs, outcomes, and conditions. As
you experience a situation yo build a mental diagram
of inputs to it, outcomes from it, and conditions
allowing all that to transpire. There will be much
detailed treatment of how to do this later in this part
of the book.
Less obvious, perhaps, is how we uncover theories
operating unconsciously inside us. How do we find all
that stuff put into us while growing up? We cannot do
that without facing alternatives to theories inside us.
Only when we encounter different things to do or
ways to do them, do we realize we have inside us only
one particular things to do or way to do it. Alterna-
tives reveal our buried mental contents to us. That is
why adventure fosters self growth--the strange and
unusual practices or living arrangements we encoun-
ter reveal to us how singular, limited, and particular
our own habitual ways are. A fish cannot appreciate
the water he swims in until he has swum in milk.
Working in foreign nations and their cultures is a
major way of making our own mental contents
become visible to us for transformation and improve-
ment. Not just foreign adventures do this, how-
ever. Any trespassing into parts of life or roles in life
we have never seen or been near before, wakes us up
to alternatives that show us ways inside us we did not
know were there before. For example, while living in
Manhattan for a year, I happened to observe a fashion
photo shoot set up on a sidestreet sidewalk. I was
amazed at the models, stripping off all their clothes in
public, quickly putting on new ones for the shoot. I
was amazed at the sound guys, the video camera guys,
the light guys, the make-up guys, the facility guys, the
crowd control guys, the director, the photographers
and their assistants, all rapidly switching from shoot
to shoot, following some sort of pre-decided schedule
of types of scenes to shoot. It was a lot of rapid
work, and what shocked me, was I had denigrated
design and fashion all my life, but here I was
impressed with it, as a solid, interesting kind of work.
Actual encounter revealed inside me a theory that
physics and math were serious, sociology and psychol-
ogy were less serious, fashion and design were junk.
For years I had walked around with a bias against fash-
ion and design, cutting myself off from beautiful
women and decent presentation of my self, for no
better reason that pure prejudice. I did not know that
that bias for certain fields and against others, had
cost me a lot, had cost me missing lots of value and
interest in the world, until coming upon that fashion
shoot on that sidewalk that day, showed me how
wrong I was to be biased against trendy fields like
design and fashion. In this sort of way, any encounter
with a part of life we never met before, has the
chance to reveal attitudes and theories inside us that
are not all that productive, interesting, or harmless in
their effects on us and others. Most of the theories
inside us, put there while growing up, shrink the
amount of world we notice and respond to. Discover-
ing those theories offers us the chance to expand
greatly the parts of life we operate in and appreciate.
It makes the world we live in bigger, as I said above.
Exercising the Finding of Theories
Inside Us
The exercises that follow in the text below are ways
to reveal theories inside us that we did not know were
there. Most of such theories, when we discover
them, turn out to be ways to shrink the size of world
we live in. Most such theories rule out much of the
world, so we do not notice it and get involved in it.
This can be as simple a thing as men, when first get-
ting married, discovering on their dinner plate, at
night, strangely colored objects--green, purple, yel-
low, red, and so on--called “vegetables”. Not a few
men, given to eating carbohydrates and protein only,
while single, discover vegetables, for the first time in
their lives, when their new wives prepare dinners for
them. Suddenly on the plates before them are funny
colored things called “vegetables”. This is an
extremely common experience, of hundreds of mil-
lions of people every year around the world. When
men encounter vegetables this way, a theory inside
them becomes visible--”all my life I have preferred
protein and carbohydrates, ignoring vegetables”.
The question is why? Why do single young men avoid
vegetables? In many cultures they do not. It is
clearly a gender-based cultural belief--that it is manly
to eat for energy--carbohydrate and protein. Men for
thousands of years were cultured to die young--soci-
ety killed off most of them every generation in wars.
Recent research has found that young men, till the
age of 28, cannot assess risks, realistically. This may
be because realistic risk assessment would make it
hard to find any warriors among men. So men are
genetically endowed with a stupidity about risk that
makes participation in war okay for them. They
dumbly think they are safer than they are in war.
Similarly, they may eat for energy because eating for
longevity was not, in most of human history, some-
thing men had to worry about--most of them got killed
long before long life became a realistic possibility for
them. Perhaps this is the origin, perhaps not. In any
case, marriage causes many men to discover vegeta-
bles, and with that, to discover a theory of manly-eat-
ing in them for decades before marriage. In this way,
adventures into new cultures (like marriage, as a close
encounter with female culture), expose theories
inside us that we were unaware of. The manly eating
theory shrinks the world for men--they do not get
exposure to and do not eat vegetables. Most theories
inside us shrink the size of world we live in, the num-
ber of alternatives we consider, the options before us.
Most theories inside us make the world and life
smaller for us. Finding theories inside us, does the
opposite, it expands the size of world, the alterna-
tives we consider, the number of options before us.
World Shrinks--finding how each
dimension of our identity shrank our
world--identity is a prison
Below are some questions, below those questions are
some aspects of our identity. Answer all the ques-
tions for each of those aspects of your identity.
Questions:
What did this aspect of who I am
tell me is most important in
life? is not at all important
in life?
What habits and routines that fill
most of my day each day of
my life came from this
aspect of who I am?
What alternative ways to think
and live did this aspect of
who I am hate and tell me
to avoid?
What alternative ways to think
and live did this aspect of
who I am simply never
mention so I never imag-
ined them?
Identity aspects:
my nationality
my gender
my parents
my social class (degree of wealth)
my schooling from age 4 to 18
my school and hometown friends
What theory of what the world is and what is important
in the world did each of the above aspects of my
identity give me? How did that shrink and limit my
life?
World Encounters--finding theories

inside us when new experiences chal-
lenge our habits and views
List examples in your personal life experience of each of
the below:
when I encountered a person
from another nation
when I visited and lived in
another nation for a week
or more
when I worked or played with
only people from the other
gender for an entire day or
more
when I lived with a family differ-
ent from my own parents
and relatives for several
days or more
when I met a powerful, profes-
sional person much more
confident and accom-
plished than any adult I had
met thus far in my life
when a member of the opposite
sex who was immensely
attractive to me started a
conversation with me
For each of the above six incidents, answer all the fol-
lowing questions:
what typical attitudes and reac-
tions of you did not work
during the encounter?
what mistakes did you make in
the encounter? where did
these mistakes come from?
what generated each mis-
take?
what that was completely new to
you did you experience or
observe during the encoun-
ter?
what aspects of the world did the
other people in the
encounter embrace and
enjoy that you had never
experienced or used
before?
Next, answer the following question, for each answer to

questions above:
what theory inside you was
revealed by this? what
part of the world did you
emphasize that made you
miss a part of the world in
the encounter?
Likes and Dislikes--as theory gener-

ated things
List ten things you like the best in life.
List ten things you dislike the most in life.
List ten things you recently learned to like that you used
to not like
List ten things you used to like but recently started dis-
liking
For each answer to each of the above questions, do the

following:
What does this item reveal as the
values and attitudes inside
you, the rules about what
to value and what to ignore
inside you?
What theory of what is valuable
does that amount to--state
the theory in rule form:
Example: people who depend on
others are weak and end
up with bad lives; people
who take care of them-
selves are strong and have
good futures, therefore,
society tempts people into
weakness--you have to
learn to resist depending
on others in society if you
want to be happy
Adulthood Begins at 40:

The Demystification Job of
way so I go to a book store and buy a dozen books on
how women think, talk, and act differently than men.
I get both popular fluff books for idiots, made to make
money for publishers, and serious research books by
scholars who have spent decades studying how male
and female are different cultures. I learn that
women mention problems not to get fixes but to get
empathy, to get the boy to share their feelings. I
learn that women spend a great deal of time,
resources, and attention, all their lives, taking care of
their skin while men spend equally taking care of their
toys--penis, cars, stereos, ditigal devices, computers,
and the like. I learn that women have a longer,
deeper, and more accurate emotional memory than
men have. I begin to change what I talk with women
about and how I talk based on these research findings.
I also go one step further, the grounding step, and
identify how I always ignore empathy and fix things
for women in conversation, how I always ignore skin
concerns and selfishly talk about my toys, irritatetd
that women have no interest in my toys, how I forget
emotional hurts the next day while my female part-
ners remember them for years. In minutes, of apply-
ing these groundings, I find my girlfriend taking off her
clothes and initiating wild sex with me, so pleased was
she by my transformation. This is grounding ideas in
experience, and getting real practical power from it.
It is grounding ideas in a real, current, problem or
issue experience of my life and improving my handling
of it using ideas thusly grounded.
Grounding Tables: Grounding Causes
and Grounding Predicted Effects
If I turn whatever I hear or read into causal models of
some ideas said to cause some other ideas as out-
comes, then grounding the cause ideas will tell me
how to change or create certain results in my life. I
can build a table of all the main ideas in a book or
chapter, separating cause ideas from effect ones, and
use the table to tell me how to increase or produce
certain effects in my liffe that I now do not achieve.
In another book I presented examples of entire books,
turned into causal models, that, in turn, were turned
into such “grouding tables”. Each idea in the theory
that the book presents is represented in the grounding
table by a question for people to answer. Then, the
latter parts of the grounding table have questions the
get people to predict what results they can expect to
produce if they adjust causal variables as the book
suggests. It is hard to visualize and grasp the practi-
cality of this without a detailed example, so below, I
present, word for word, from that other book, part of
one chapter--a book by a sociologist Giddens on mod-
ernization and its effects on self and identity. The
grounding table is found near the end of the quoted
section below.
CHAPTER
5
1 Theory
Applied in
Detail
Gidden’s Delocalization
Theory Again--Applying it in
Detail
Overview
This is a theory about how globalization is changing
what a “person” is. It surveys popular literature, self
help books, advice columns in newspapers and the like
and builds a theory based on patterns common to
them. Globalization is the destruction of sub-worlds
walled with tradition, ritual, and local audiences.
Globalization is the injection of values, habits, and
items from others’ cultures into one’s own and the
projection of items of one’s own into others’ cultures.
This relativizes all value systems, in a way destroying
them all, or at least breaking any automatic authority
and rightness one believed they had. A crisis of
authority, belief, trust in one’s own symbols and tra-
ditions occurs alongside a criss of plural systems of
belief, cultures, competing for “being right”. The
concept of “rightness” itself withers in this soup of
competing authorities and belief systems. People par-
adoxically want liberation from any old authority and
tradition system while yearning for control, clear
authority, and power centers they have just willingly
left behind. They lack a way to feel at ease with and
operate comfortably among plurality itself. There
are perhaps cognitive as well as social tools missing
that make plurality overwhelming rather than some-
thing comfortably manageable.
This theory sees two fundamental transformations in
the modernization processes of our current global civ-
ilization. The subworlds of trust we all live in to pro-
tect us from the immense forces in the world at large
are changing:: one, from geographic based communi-
ties to cognition based ones and two, from objectively
social ones to intimate personal ones. Second,
responsibility is changing in two ways: one, from guilt-
based following of social and other authorities to
shame-based self-building of our identities and life-
styles; and two, no one is binding, uniting, blending
all the individual acts of liberation, variation, and self
discovery, no one is building community anymore.
The cost of these two major transformations to indi-
viduals is immense self reflection required to inte-
grate, unite, make coherent, a subworld to live safely
in and continual liberation from things while yearning
for the certainty, authority, and singularity of what
we just liberated our selves from. In other words two
costs appear: the workload of continual self reflec-
tion and the paradoxical yearning for the certainty
and authority and centrality we just liberated our
selves from. The two transformations (four sub-trans-
formations) and the two costs can be explained by one
overall factor not mentioned in this theory but breath-
takingly circled around by it without being named--
the globe as college, all alive as college students.
The stages of psychological transformation found in
research fifty years ago in typical college undergrads
are now the stages entire populations are undergoing.
1. where diversity of other student beliefs
undermined one’s beliefs from home
now diversity of global cultures undermines
one’s trust in one’s own ways
2. where students respond to diversity-shock at
first by giving over to absolute relativism--since
all views have some degree of truth one cannot
choose among them
now populations are disintegrating into anything
goes since absolute authority is proved impossi-
ble and illusory
3. where students escape absolute relativism by
composing a comprehensive composite belief of
best parts from many sources
now populations are not yet at this point--they
have not begun wide-scale composing experi-
ments except second and third generation urban
inhabitants.
The cause is “educatedness” achieved--people are

being educated by simply being in the world. That is,
in the twenty first century being in the world is equiv-
alent to being in college a hundred years earlier.
Entire national populations are being college edu-
cated, going through the stages of personal belief
transformation found earlier to be common to nearly
all college undergrads.
TRANSFORMATION ONE: Changing the Nature of Sub-

worlds in Two Ways:
FROM GEOGRAPHIC TO COGNITIVE SUBWORLDS: sub-
worlds of knowledge (expert systems, the risk of nar-
row function) replacing subworlds of place (village
communities, the risk of locality)
FROM SOCIAL OBJECTIVE TO INTIMATE SUBWORLDS:
subworlds of narcissistic pure relating replacing sub-
worlds of fixed community inter-relations (eclipse of
public realms)
TRANSFORMATION TWO: Changing the Nature of

Responsibility in Two Ways:
FROM SOCIETY-GIVEN TO SELF-BUILT IDENTITIES: self

built identities/subworlds replace social built ones;
self built fatalism in risking expert use replaces social
built trust
FROM FOLLOWING TO INVENTING, INTENTIONALITY:

making replaces finding, personal risk replaces soci-
etal risk; undoing overtakes doing, variation overtakes
combination,
COSTS: The Costs of Liberation:

COST ONE, A YEARNING--WANTED LIBERATION FOUND
WANTING: liberation from tradition and authority
while yearning for tradition and authority
COST TWO, A WORKLOAD: SELF REFLECTION THE
COST OF HANDLING PLURALITY: the cost of handling
plurality is self reflection work
The Ultimate Cause of These Effects:

EDUCATION EFFECT--THE WORLD HAS BECOME A COL-
LEGE WHOSE CURRICULUM WE ARE ALL IN analogy with
“going to undergrad college” experience--dogmatic
belief gives way to anything goes relativism then one
comprehensive best overall composite then commit-
ted provisional relativism

cepts
Certain infrastructures have juxtaposed different
kinds of music, thinking, beliefs, institutions, prod-
ucts, lifestyles, communities that in the past never
intruded into one’s own home and community. In the
past you could ignore them and as a practical matter
never have to deal with them. Infrastructures such as
air travel, the internet, television, global publishing
companies, global music and entertainment indus-
tries, global investment and spread of workpractices
now make it impossible to ignore that your own way
is: one, not the only way; two, not the most popular
or powerful way; three, not credible as the “best:”
way the way you used to unthinkingly and automati-
cally believe. In other words, by force we all are
finding our selves, ways, communities relativized.
Authority and certainty have died along with gods,
rites, and rituals as bases of living and truth. People
respond by clinging more and more irrationally and
self destructively (fundamentalistically) to past
beliefs--as more and more other ways to believe over-
whelm them they have to insist more and more that
all beliefs are still inferior to the ones they happened
to grow up with. Or, people respond by saying “any-
thing goes”, if all beliefs have so degree of truth in
them, it does not matter what you choose and do, fol-
low yourself and nothing else. This is the absolute
relativism position.
In undergraduate colleges the stage after dogmatic

freshman beliefs give way to sophomore absolute rela-
tivism is a synthesis attempt in junior year to make
one giant composite new belief systems of one’s own
that encompasses all the bits of truth that attracted
you in the diversity you were exposed to earlier in col-
lege. This stage has not appeared as a mass move-
ment effect yet but can be expected. In urban
populations experienced in city living for two or more
generations we begin to see such composite “self-
built” positions.
The infrastructures expose people to diversity. That
diversity generates absolute relativism as a response.
That evolves naturally on its own power into synthe-
sizing a self-built comprehensive composite new
belief (lifestyle) system. That evolves naturally on its
own power into committed provisional relativism--I
completely commit to this current belief, but am
ready in an instant to drop it if new data shows it to
be untrue or suboptimal.
This causal path from infrastructures to diversity to

relativism accounts for three of the four sub-transfor-
mations above--from social to intimate subworlds,
from social built to self built identities, from following
to inventing. It does not account well for the sub-
transformation from geographic to cognitive sub-
worlds, it seems. Actually, when the nature of the
new infrastructures is looked at in detail, an explana-
tion appears. Air travel, the internet, global media
and entertainment empires, investment in other
nations--these have transformed careers from local
community based to global function based. Instead of
opening a mom and pop retail store, being the local
representative of Globality Inc. I study marketing in a
college and join Globality Inc. becoming a marketing
representative in a dozen different places around the
world. My community is more cognitive, more
abstract, more global--not geography based. Careers
at first geography based have evolved into being pro-
fession or domain of knowledge based. People’s
homes are domains of knowledge, “communities of
practice” as Brown and Duguid say.
So we have a modified path: infrastructure making

domains of knowledge home and the basis of careers
within the domain’s community of practice scattered
across the globe. Treating educatedness as the ulti-
mate cause operating here we can rework the two
causal paths presented in this section as follows:
Infrastructure causes educatedness as: diversity
causes relativism as intimate subworlds, self built
identity, and inventing instead of following. Infra-
structure causes educatedness as: domains, commu-
nities of practice, to become homes for career
building, instead of geographic communities.
intimate
subworlds Cost One:
Self Reflection
Causes self built Workload
Relativism identity Paradox
narcissistic loss of
New Increased inventing of meaning
Causes Educativeness Wanting
not following Causes What I
Infrastructure Diversity of Daily Life Paradox Just
Causes cognition Cost Two: Liberated
C of Practice career spaces Yearning for Missing Myself
Homes From
Single Authority
cognitive increased risk and
locality risk fatalism with expert
(narrow systems
specialization)
We have infrastructure causing diversity which in turn
causes educatedness which causes two paths of
things: one, relativism which causes intimate sub-
worlds, self built identity and inventing not following;
two, communities of practice as the new home for
careers which causes cognition career spaces to
replace geographic ones and cognitive locality risk
replacing geographic locality risk (specialization’s nar-
rowness causing inter-disciplinary problems and solu-
tions to be missed). The cost of the first relativism
causal path is a self reflection burden each modern
person bears. The cost of the second communities of
practice homes causal path is yearning for missing
authority. These costs are both paradoxical for in
them humans yearn for what they just worked hard to
liberate themselves from.
The above paragraph and drawing represent this the-
ory in a nutshell.
Theory Explanations
This theory explains us--you and I. That is it explains
the impact of globalization on persons and personal-
ness. It finds that impact by examining self identity.
Who we are is changing. Globalization is changing
who people are to themselves and each other. This is
a theory of what those changes are.This theory, there-
fore, should explain changes we are experiencing in
who we are and what a person in general is (for those
of us in modern societies). The natural response is to
ask yourself--
am I experiencing as important intimate sub-
worlds replacing socially objective ones,
self built identity rather than community gener-
ated identity,
inventing myself rather than following social
roles,
cognition career spaces replacing local commu-
nity based ones,
cognitive type risk from being too local to a
domain of knowledge replacing geographic
locality risk from being too local to a small com-
munity,
an immense workload of self reflectiveness in
managing my life,
an immense yearning for single authority due to
the risk increase of having nothing but compet-
ing conflicted authorities in expert systems
around me,
and finally, a paradox of wanting what I just
worked very hard to liberate myself from (cer-
tainty, authority, stable values, single ways of
viewing things).
If these things are true about you and nearly everyone

else in the modern society around you and if these
things are important, more important than other
things we might way about people, then Giddens’
localization theory is true. For college students these
questions are ambiguous in interpreting the truth of
this theory for Perry’s theory says college students
usually in their sophomore years experience these rel-
ativism and knowledge domain narrowness costs. So
college students experience these things whether they
characterize modern society as a whole or not. So we
should ask these questions about people in modern
society other than college students--older people or
people on family farms who decide not to go to col-
lege, for example. Are these people experiencing and
placing importance on the things in the question list
above?
Fundamentalisms of various sorts from the rightwing

religious zealotry in the US to the amputational Islam
of middle east nations are explained by this theory
nicely. They are refusals of relativism and diver-
sity. They wish the modern world to go away. They
are engaged in total war with all modern infrastruc-
tures--television, air travel, books, global entertain-
ment, global cross-border investment, new ways of
work. They are at war with the era. There is no
question of who will lose--history mashes mercilessly
those with hubris enough to think man dominates his-
tory rather than the other way around. Giddens’ the-
ory helps us see precisely what fundamentalists deny,
hate, avoid, fear, flee.
The crisis in industrial nation education systems is also

nicely explained by Giddens’ theory. If daily life edu-
cates by exposing people to fundamental powerful
ineluctable diversity that relativizes all values and
traditions, then high schools and colleges, in their tra-
ditional form, are not as needed or astonishing or
attractive in some ways. We can get the personal
continual vigilance, however, and a repertoire of
other related theories to substitute or combine when
problems appear.
Theory in Academia versus Theory in

Life and In This Book
This book makes theory useful. It makes it useful for
study and research, but more importantly, it makes it
useful for competing, building, and working in the real
world. This book takes 25 theories and makes them
usable for parenting, for managing a workgroup, for
establishing a venture business.
I use this book with two distinct audiences. One is my
students, undergraduate and graduate. I ask them to
select six theories from the 25 in this book to apply to
their thesis. The thought of selecting from 25 and
combining the six you select is important intellectual
work for such students. The thought of applying all
the inter-related key concepts from six theories to the
part of the world you are researching is important
work as well. New parts of the situations they are
studying are seen as each theory gets applied.
The other audience is business executives and
research and development managers. I take intracta-
ble business problems and cases and get these people
to select six relevant theories to use to understand
the situations involved. With no exceptions, six theo-
ries have proven enough to discover major solution
avenues utterly unimagined and untried by the corpo-
rations involved. It is as simple as seeing parts of sit-
uations that you never saw before, parts that happen
to reveal avenues of solution you never otherwise
would have discovered.
Theories in Use versus Espoused Theo-

ries
Scholars have long studied the theories that actual
people use to do their everyday work. They found a
split between theories actually evident in how people
acted and theories missing from implementation but
spoken by people to explain or predict their perfor-
mance. It was a shizoid result--some people did what
they said and others did something entirely different
from what the said. Theories in use were what peo-
ple actually did and espoused theories were what peo-
ple said about what they did or were to do.
Often this is a matter of implicit theories operating
powerfully underneath shallow minds. People who
are uneducated or who have not become self-con-
scious about the various theories they imbibed as
unconscious children while growing up, read books
and espouse nice sounding latest thinking theories
while actually leaving unconscious theories from their
background embedded in their automatic habits of
skilled action. Such people are uneducated and need
to read this book (as well as my previous book Are You
Educated?). Their action world is split from their
thinking world.
Cognitive Maps
Scholars have also studied the pictures and images
about the nature of other people and parts of organi-
zation that are in the minds of executives. The
found each executive often living in entirely different
worlds than their own company’s colleagues. They
found completely incompatible images of the same
person and organization within individuals and among
individuals. In short, cognitive maps revealed the
immense irrationality at work in functioning in organi-
zations.
Cognitive maps are usually implicit theories from a
person’s background or they are the results of apply-
ing unconsciously such implicit theories from a per-
son’s background. They are happenstance maps,
leaving most of the world out, because they do not
consciously apply a dozen different relevant theories
to elucidate parts of the world. They are extremely
partial mappings, therefore, and poor bases for act-
ing, no matter how automatic and believed they are.
Demystifying Theories
Corporations spend tens and hundreds of millions of
dollars to generate and promote certain theories
about consumers, lifestyles, products, and markets.
Tobacco companies are the most egregious exam-
ples. They have a theory that once individuals realize
cigarettes are dangerous, it does not matter if compa-
nies continue to provide dangerous products that kill
those using them. This theory has been immensely
successful, in court case after court case, protecting
tobacco companies from damage awards for the lives
they kill.
The success of tobacco company defense against dam-
age awards by courts is based on a theory of American
society as a whole--that individuals are responsible for
their origins, fate, and destiny in life. Americans
want to feel in control. They like theories that tell
them they are in charge. They dislike theories that
blame fates and outcomes on situations, social forces,
the circumstances of one’s birth, and the like. This
deep American belief furnishes the tobacco companies
with solid ground for their sub-theory that killing
yourself with a product guaranteed to kill anyone
using it, alleviates all responsibility of the companies
furnishing the product you use to kill yourself.
Behind every theory is a part of society with self inter-
ests in promoting that theory as true instead of some
other theory as true. To “understand” any theory you
have to demystify its basis, its origin, its supporters.
What do they stand to gain if you come to believe this
theory? What do you stand to lose? How are their self
interests different than yours? Answering these ques-
tions is called “demystifying” a theory. In this book,
wherever possible, I have suggested such demystifica-
tion by pointing out what groups typically use a theory
to promote their own interests, while pretending they
are merely seeking or following “truth”.
Combining Theories
Any one theory highlights certain aspects of a situa-
tion, draws attention to them. It thereby throws
other parts into shadow, withdrawing attention from
them. Any one theory is partial and dangerous in that
way. Each theory, no matter how complete or pow-
erful, has weaknesses stemming from parts of the
world it does not care about, highlight, or draw atten-
tion to.
Therefore, selecting another theory that highlights
precisely those parts of the world slighted by your
first theory is a good strategy in most conditions.
Since, however, any one theory necessarily leaves out
most of the world in order to focus on small parts of
the world, more than one additional theory will be
needed to cover all the vast neglected territory of the
world. As you add theories to highlight parts of your
situation, consider what each of the already selected
theories neglects and choose theories that cover those
neglected aspects.
One theory may handle static forces at play, then
choose a theory that handles dynamic evolution
among forces. One theory may handle conflicting
human interests and viewpoints, then choose a theory
handling human common interests and fellow feeling
creation. One theory may handle pricing of some-
thing in markets, then choose a theory handling dis-
tortions in markets and corrections for them. One
theory may handle things that motivate people well,
then choose a theory that handles differences among
motivation mechanisms in different cultures and con-
ditions. One theory may handle rational actions of
people, then choose a theory handling the irrationali-
ties in human thought and action.
Nations, Genders, Persons, Careers,

Families as Theories
After running through the 25 theories in this book a
few dozen times a change comes over you, at least
according to students and managers who used early
drafts of this book. You begin to notice that entire
nations are theories, too, unproven ones rather tena-
ciously and irrationally believed in. It is beyond
whether the theory a nation has about itself is true or
not, for a false theory tenaciously enough believed in,
becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy. Japanese believe
all Japanese are alike, and, though they obviously are
not whenever you collect real data, much of how they
think and behave is based on their belief that they are
all alike.
The theory that any one nation is predicts that
nation’s blind spots and weaknesses. Americans are
the most church-going society in the industrial world,
hence, they are the least tolerant of differences,
tending to turn casual differences into moral wrongs,
condemned by their gods. “You are not just differ-
ent, you are evil” this comes out as in most interna-
tional and inter-business situations. The godliness of
the Americans has the paradoxical side-effect of mak-
ing them intolerant of difference. Church becomes a
one hour a week place to feel forgiven, so that the
rest of the week you can abuse people more than less
religious people who do not have weekly ways of for-
getting harms done to others.
Genders too have theories about themselves and
about the other gender. “Women are emotional and
hormone driven” men believe while spending every
waking moment trying to prove to other men how
important they are, fighting for status instead of get-
ting real work done. “Men are cold emotionally and
selfish” women believe while spending every waking
moment talking only about their own emotional reac-
tions to life situations to everyone they meet.
Individual people are theories. John sees himself as
the Great Persuader, attacking relentlessly the casual
beliefs of others and getting them to change beliefs.
As long as he has challenged powerfully the beliefs of
someone around him, he is happy. That such chal-
lenging rules out many more serious types of personal
change and inter-relationship does not concern him.
His theory of himself as the Great Persuader makes
him seek and see only feedback about him acting that
way--other types of impact he might have go unno-
ticed by him. They do not fit his theory of himself.
Some of us had fathers whose theory about them-
selves as “I am the guy who quietly sacrifices himself
for the sake of my family members”. These fathers
could only receive and respond to messages about
themselves as the Great Sacrificers of the family.
Any message implying that they self-interestedly did
or manipulated things were rejected--such messages
did not fit their theories about themselves.
Careers that people do are theories. A good life
comes from being accepted as a member by a famous
and large organization is one such theory many people
subscribe to. A good life comes from avoiding author-
ity of all types and doing the unexpected in life is
another such theory. A good life comes from making
visible and challenging all the lousy little injustices
and corruptions in major institutions and parts of soci-
ety is another such theory. Entire careers get built
around such theories of what makes life meaningful
and “good”. Only when people find harm instead of
“good” from following their favorite theory-career, do
they jump to entirely different types of career. Only
people who perceive a variety of equally attractive
competing “goods” have careers that are pluriform
and broad.
Families are theories too. People grow by following
the dictates of older wiser ones is a theory that domi-
nates many families. People grow by getting involved
in plural various activities and forming communities of
friends around each such activity is another theory of
very different families. People grow by recognizing
daddy’s brilliance and using the great resources daddy
develops is a theory of all too many rich families
where the possibilities made possible by daddy’s
wealth and accomplishment are counter-acted by the
requirement to kiss daddy’s butt everyday and obey
his casual orders and daily tyrannies.
This change into seeing parts of the world and social
institutions as particular theories about what life is,
what “good” is, what is important, what problems are
worth tackling and the like is a powerful talent devel-
oped by reading this book again and again.
How Active and Healthy Are the Theo-

ries That You Use
All of us apply theories to the world everyday. Most of
us apply such theories unconsciously, using theories
we imbibed as children growing up somewhere. A
few of us, develop repertoires of self-consciously
applied theories, that supplanted the unconscious
theories we grew up with. These repertoires of self-
consciously selected and applied theories determine
much of our style, character, destiny, and effective-
ness.
How healthy is your personal repertoire of theories?
There are dimensions of answers to that question.
Coverage.
How many of life’s situations do you have relevant
theories for. How many life situations do you avoid
for lack of such theories?
Currency.
How recent are your theories? Are their leading edge
ideas and theories that you have yet to familiarize
yourself with?
Compensatory partners.
Does each theory you use come with a set of obvious
partners that compensate for its over-emphases and
weaknesses?
Diversity--Breadth of origin.
Do you have unusual, unlikely sources of new theories
that make the range of variety of theories you use
wider than the range of challenges and changes you
have to respond to in life?
Instantantiation-ability.
Do the theories in your repertoire lend themselves to
rapid, thorough, particular and powerful application
to the particulars of many situations?
The quality of your theory repertoire is much of the
quality of you as a person and the life you live.
Historic Movements and Tyrannies as Theo-

ries
Communism, capitalism, Mao-ism, and other “isms”
have hurt terribly and destroyed billions of people in
the name of ideas about how life “really” is. Islam,
Christianity, Hinduism, and other great world religions
have similarly hurt or destroyed billions of people in
the name of ideas about how life “really” is. You get
the picture of: “life is really this, agree and serve me
and my ideas or die infidel!” Paroxysms of “truth
command” develop. Christianity said the Bible was
“true” for all time and the :”most important” truth
for all time. Islam, being competitive, went Chris-
tianity one better by declaring that not only was the
Koran divine but every contact with the Koran was
direct contact with divinity itself--anyone denying
that was put to death. Marxism said that a dictator-
ship of the proletariat was needed to undo the harm-
ful class habits of the ruling class, and paid half the
population to spy on the other half and put them in
prison for disloyal “counter-revolutionary” remarks.
In every case for isms and religions, there seems to be
a fundamental insecurity about what is true that they
are founded on. They all fear other truths so much.
They all fight so hard to “support” their truths with
armies, weapons, torture, and aggressive sales tactics
(missionaries). If they really had confidence in their
degree of truthfulness one would think they would not
need to fight so hard with weapons to impress others
with the truthfulness of their positions and beliefs.
Instead we find their lack of faith in the truthfulness
of their own beliefs forces them again and again to
slaughter those disagreeing with them.
Theories in human history have been primary vehicles
for mass murder. Anyone developing, selecting,
inventing, or modifying theories for personal use has
to keep this in mind. What is it about theories that
turns so easily and thoroughly into justification for
murder?
As I said above, each theory is a focus, a drawing
attention to X and a dropping of attention to Y, Z, A,
B, etc. Each theory drops more of the world than it
highlights. It throws into dark more of the world than
it gives light to. Each theory has a large hidden cost
to its use. People who grow up looking for the “right”
theory are evil, in effect. They do not acknowledge
that every theory has a cost. They seek some sort of
“better” theory with little or not cost--there, by defi-
nition, are no such theories. There are merely theo-
ries that handle already known truths plus recently
accumulated discrepancies between current theories
and how the world actually works. Such new “good”
theories still have immense costs to their use--they
focus attention on something much smaller than they
withdraw attention from.
Only people who no longer seek “right” theories are
safe. Only people who rely on dozens of theories
compensating for each other’s weaknesses rather than
one “right” theory are safe.
Kuhn, Scientific Revolution, and Theory

Evolution
Theories come and go. Newton’s theory was replaced
by Einstein’s, for example. Or was it really? For most
scales of human operation both large and small, New-
ton’s principles of motion are still true. Only for
immense inter-galaxy distances and immensely small
inter-quark distances are Einstein’s equations needed.
So what we often have is a theory developed for one
size scale, replaced by another that is the same in
predictions for that size scale but that handles well
other size scales. Changes of size scale depend on
human interest in those new size scales. Such
changes in interest in size come from invention of new
instruments allowing the very large and very small to
be thought about and observed.
Kuhn had a theory of evolution of scientific thought.
He divided science into normal science, wherein peo-
ple elaborated details of an existing paradigm, till dis-
crepancies developed between that paradigm and
observations and someone invented an entirely new
paradigm that maintain what the older paradigm
rightly handled plus handling those accumulated dis-
crepancies. This made scientific progress rather
lumpy--long, boring elaboration of existing paradigms
punctuated by sudden revolutionary inventions of
entirely new paradigms.
While Kuhn was seeing the evolution of scientific the-
ories this way, biologists were seeing the evolution of
animals this way. Punctuated equilibrium was their
name for a new model of evolution, not as Darwin
originally imagined as a continuous process of tiny
incremental changes, but as a lumpy process of bor-
ing, long periods of incremental progress punctuated
by short periods of immense change.
Total quality was a movement among world businesses
that similarly saw business as punctuated equilibria.
Whole workforces boringly made continuous tiny
improvements in work processes, punctuated by sud-
den re-engineering of all those processes as new tech-
nologies made old work assumptions no longer
necessary or safe.
Behaviorism dominated psychology in the United
States for many decades till Noam Chomsky with one
published paper destroyed it forever by showing that
ordinary children could speak infinitely many sen-
tence types without there being enough time in the
history of the universe for them to have been stimu-
lus-response rewarded for each of those sentence
types. Apparently there were human capabilities,
important ones, for which stimulus response was not
only not needed but entirely incapable of modeling
and producing. The question is, why was behaviorism
so dominant so long in spite of its obvious triteness as
a set of concepts and as a way of viewing the world.
One explanation given is before behaviorism, psychol-
ogy wallowed in subjective introspections by people
of their own minds, publishing their personal opinions
about how the mind worked. Behaviorism ended that
swampy subjective opinion publishing by furnishing
standard concepts with standard methods of measur-
ing those concepts than anyone could use, objec-
tively. Humanity was, for behaviorism, not in the
mind but in the observables, the actions of people.
Another explanation is eugenics. We are unaware
today of this powerful early twentieth century move-
ment, that spawned Nazi racial killings and Swedish
mandatory sterilization of handicapped people (into
the late 20th century). However, all over the world
the idea of purifying the race by reducing birth influ-
ences of less hardy and attractive types of people,
turned into government policy and general belief.
Behaviorism was the opposite of eugenics. Behavior-
ism said it was not genetic endowment that controlled
who people were and what they became, it was
entirely environment that determined those things.
Behaviorism was immensely welcomed and attractive
only in the context of the ugly one-sided-ness of
eugenics as a theory of life.
In other words, one theory gains ascendancy and
power by the way it handles weaknesses of a previous
theory. This is just the idea presented in this chapter
already of a repertoire of theories each compensating
for weaknesses in others.
Why Not One Truth Replacing Another

Truth?
Why am I wasting time talking about theories when we
could move beyond theories to facts and real truths?
Because it takes so much time and money to deter-
mine the truth of any relation among ideas of any the-
ory that 99% of all theories never get tested
thoroughly enough with data to determine whether
they are true or how many of their supposed relations
among ideas actually correspond to relations among
outcomes in the real world. We lack the resources to
deal in a world of truth. Hence, till we become vastly
richer than we are, we have to find ways of living in a
world of possible truths--theories, unfully tested,
largely unconfirmed, some highly plausible, some not
so plausible, some highly attractive, some highly
repellent.
CHAPTER
6
From Plu-
ral Theo-
ries to
Plural
Models
Another Step--from Sets of
Theories to Meta-Models
(Models of Models of some
X)
If plural diverse theories make us big-
ger, make what we notice bigger, make
how we respond bigger, expanding
fractally models of common topics--
educatedness, culture, creativity,
innovation, design approaches will
MAKES US AND OUR LIVES EVEN BIGGER
Below is a formal article making a formal argument to

explain why elite single right-y models, as from places
like Harvard, when sincerely and competently imple-
mented all too often produce nothing. Their “right-
ness” gets entirely in the way of their effectiveness
and impact. SO leaders tend to discount claimed
“rightness” of theory and “rightness” of model, in
favor of sets of plural diverse models that each com-
pensate for the flaws in the rest. \
The argument below first appeared in a book as an

invited anchor chapter. I use it to close this book
because I have 50 other books based on the kind of
regularized fractal model of things like leadership,
culture, creativity, educatedness, and much else, sug-
gested in the text that follows. Move from sets of the-
ories to sets of models in regularized fractals and you
expand, thereby, how many diverse ideas and ideas
sets (theories) you can apply ordinary mental opera-
tions to in any unit of time. Where others apply one
unrealized unconscious limiting theory from their Ini-
tial Factory Settings you can apply 64 models from 41
nations and 63 profesions and from 8000= eminent
ccreators--in the same amount of time!
Below the article on multiple models/theories below

comes a tool showing in detail all the main parame-
ters of 20 theories of creativity in table format. This
is to introduce you to the power of 20 theoires of any
one X when those theories are not vague generalities
but instead are articulated in comprehensive multi-
level detail as in the table below.
For lots of other sets of models, sets of theories, to

expand what you notice and how you respond, get my
other 50 books.
FROM SINGLE RIGHT-Y
MODELS OF ZILCH
IMPACT TO PLURAL
DIVERSE MODELS
COMBINES OF WHICH
CHANGE HISTORY
Fixing Academia’s
substitution of Status for
Thinking, Work, & Impact;
Fixing Sicknesses USA
Academia inserts into Minds
and Global Publishing
MULTIPLE (120) MODELS OF
CREATIVITY
The Idea of NOVELTY & CREATIVITY

SCIENCES
This article introduces 1) the Novelty & Creativity
Sciences (creativity, invention, innovation, design,
composing, business venturing, and others), 2) the
idea of multiple models of each, 3) with example
multiple models (Meta-Models) of creativity and
innovation, 4) and more detailed models than are
usual (here a 64 item model of the most creative
process known—Natural Selection). The model of
creativity models that this article presents is the most
comprehensive and detailed such model yet
published, at the time of this writing--a prior article
on 42 models and book on 60 exist (Greene, 2001,
2005). This article also presents four size scales
(compared with Levels of Invention in this
Encyclopedia) as contexts around and under Creativity
& Novelty Sciences: Excellence Sciences (scale 1)
some of which are Novelty & Creativity Sciences (scale
2), one of which is creativity (scale 3), 120 models of
which are presented here, and another of which is
innovation (scale 3), 54 models of which are
presented here. Finally, 64 dynamics of one of those
54 innovation models (scale 4), of the single most
creative process known, Natural Selection, is
presented.
Rather than summarizing the other creativity models

in this Encyclopedia (see Theories of Creativity,
Innovation Systems and Entrepreneurship), this
article presents an intellectual tradition, centered on
developing large diverse repertories of models, and
tools specially invented to support the development
and use of such repertoires. One such tool, a
proposed replacement for prose itself, is presented at
this article's end (the model, from Michod, of 64
natural selection dynamics).
Academia educates creator-designer practitioners into

a tradition of one right-y model, righter than all
others. The multiple models tradition in this article
contradicts those practices and their academic
source. In the history of science (Eamon, 1996)
European world-wide collecting produced collections
categorized in museums, that later scholars
“explained” via causal models. Modern journals
refuse categorical models (and the size of article they
require). This article attempts to open up: 1) multiple
Novelty & Creativity Sciences and 2) multiple models
of each of them, 3) highly detailed such models--as
new contexts and frontiers for practice and theory.
The costs of our mania for single right-y models and
benefits of switching to repertoires of diverse models
are included here. Figure 1 shows one pattern
among the Novelty & Creativity Sciences (also see
Creativity, Design, and Innovation).
Figure 1
The NOVELTY & CREATIVITY SCIENCES
Study of all the ways the new gets into society in relation
to each other:
VERSIONS OF LEVELS OF LIBERAL/SOCIAL ARTS
OF
Creativity/ Educated Persons History of all 16 in 1st
Discovery (Created Selves) 2 cols.
Design/Invention Creating Literature of
Selves
Innovation Creating Philosophy of
Careers
Founding Tech Creating Politics of
Ventures Systems
Fashion Creating Culture of
Others
(Leading)
Evolution Creating Design of
Cultures
Composing Stories, Creating Economics of
Games, etc. Quality
Performing/ Creating Practice of
Exploring Knowledge
(from Greene 2011 and De Tao Master's
Academy 2011)
Tools for Non-Narrow: Thinking, Professions,

Academe, & Outcomes
Herbert Simon wrote that exponential increase in
knowledge volume meant professions, disciplines,
theories, and professional people were, relative to
the totality of that knowledge, becoming smaller and
smaller fractions, with severe effects, namely, that
all our major problems fell in the cracks between our
increasingly narrow persons, professionals, and
disciplines (Simon 1996). System science failed as a
solution (Bartanlanffry 1969). Total quality worked
better—horizontal processes replacing vertical ones,
continuous improvement replacing giant innovation
leaps, kansei engineering of delight quality frontiers
of customer imaginings of future requirements,
statistical measures replacing management by rank
opinion (Greene 1993; Lillrank & Kano 1989; Ishikawa
1991; Cole 1995, 1999; also in this Encyclopedia see
Creativity, Innovation, and Quality Assurance).
Lately systems engineering has arisen as design of
systems of systems (Maeno, Nishimura, Ohkami 2010;
plus Creativity and Systems Thinking in this
Encyclopedia). From these “binding”-other-fields or
Meta-Fields, tools for handling plural diverse models
have arisen (Greene 2010; Nakano, 2011).
Structural cognition (Zwicky 1969, Kintsch 1998, van

Dijk 1997, Meyer 1982) is another Meta-Field that
addresses this issue of ever narrower people and
professions in a world where problems are wider and
wider. Where ordinary science seeks one right-y
model; structural cognition identifies diverse
repertoires of models that explain a phenomena, with
each model in each repertoire of models
compensating for weaknesses of the other models. In
doing this, Structural Cognition sees itself as midway
between Asian causality (10,000 bee stings to move an
elephant; and Western causality (find the one tipping
point in a system where slight inputs have huge
outcomes). Both aim at predictive capability---but
one seeks a single model while the other seeks diverse
well-balanced repertoires of models.
Structural cognition tools are especially suited to

crowd-source and swarm intelligence arrangements on
the web. The tools encourage application of blends
of diverse models, enabling:
1. more comprehensive coverage of a phenomenon
2. more diverse aspects of a phenomenon
distinguished from each other
3. more detail handled at the same time as more
comprehensiveness is achieved
4. more accurate and localized diagnosis,
assessment, and strategic direction done
5. more adaptive alternative responses and ways
to go at crisis points
6. more common ground possibilities for reducing
first apparent conflicts/differences.
A Creativity Theory Support of Many

Diverse Detailed Creativity Models
Torrance (Torrance 1974) in his famous work to
measure creativity chose three mental capabilities:
1. FLUENCY---the total number of interpretable,
meaningful, relevant ideas generated in response to a
stimulus
2. ORIGINALITY---the statistical rarity of the
responses generated
3. ELABORATION---the amount of detail in
responses generated.
We might, then, ask these three traits of our models
of creativity: 1) how many models do we have and
use? 2) how rare are these models? how diverse from
each other are they? 3) what is the level of detail of
elaboration of each model? Creative modeling of
creativity, it would seem, would involve us in having
1) many 2) diverse 3) highly-detailed models, not
single right-y models of great abstraction lacking
detail and specificity. This little exercise makes us
clear that academia's aim for “rightness” of model
gets in the way of “creativity” of model. Perhaps,
mono-theism drifts into mono-theory-ism, culturally.
The Idea of a Novelty & Creativity

Sciences School
Colleges and corporations today split the Novelty &
Creativity Sciences into different departments,
centers, sites, and degree programs. No journals
reach all creativity sciences. Therefore, each Novelty
& Creativity Science is being learned, studied,
presented, and applied on its own, for the most part.
What might improve were they all studied, taught,
applied together? That is the concept behind creating
a Novelty & Creativity Sciences School (and Research
Center).
The few initial experiments in this direction—primarily
at De Tao Masters Academy in China and Keio in
Japan---show these results:
Ò intense formats—9 Creativity & Novelty Sciences

taught in one 18 day period via 2-
consecutive-days per course (so interactions
among them are intense)
Ò the graduate student insight—students get,
after initial frustration of their habit of
seeking one right-est model, the insight that
no one model is powerful, unbiased,
comprehensive, or accurate enough to be
trusted
Ò discovery of mental hiding places—instead of all
teams depending on “brainstorms” and all
individuals depending on “insights” (see
Brainstorming and Invention and The Role
of Intuition in Creativity), dozens of
particular new ways for new ideas to enter
life and work are found (social design
automata, stratified responding, and others)
Ò what one Novelty-Creativity Science teaches
others—we ask designers to invent and they
find “over-specification” a problem; we ask
inventors to design, and they find “under-
specification” a problem—each develops
wider new approaches, stretched by
experience someone else's ways.
Multiple Models from the Practitioner's

Point of View
Industry CEOs find two great weaknesses in single
right-y models: one, it is too risky to assume that
“our” present consultant-academic's model is the
right one and all others are wrong; two, the best most
statistically-valid single right-y models, when fully,
expensively, sincerely applied by competent private
sector organizations produce laughably tiny
improvements in creativity. A recent Harvard article
reported copying a Japanese hit product 8 years later
as the creative result from changing 40+ environment
variables to create a “creative” and “innovative”
environment (see Measurement of Creativity).
Delayed copying is not a robust useful result. Single
models however right-y are usually useless.
SIX META-MODELS
Below 4 levels of repertoires of models (meta-models)
are presented, without discussion—54 Excellence
Sciences (Figure 2) many of which are 18 Novelty &
Creativity Sciences (Figure 3), two of which are 120
Models of Creativity (Figure 4) and 54 Models of
Innovation (Figure 5), one of the innovation models
being 64 Dynamics of Natural Selection (Figure 6).
This demonstrates both vertical and horizontal
dimensions of the structural cognition program of
tools for thinking as broadly as our problems without
losing specificity and application power. All the
models come from 8000+ people from 41 nations and
63 professions interviewed over a 6 year period, the
resulting capability models linked to nearest-match
theories from 4000 research books on Novelty &
Creativity Sciences. At first re-doing Plato by asking
high performers in many fields who was top in their
field and how they got to the top, produced 54
Excellence Sciences in the below table, many of which
were Novelty & Creativity Sciences. The same data
also defined capabilities of highly creative people,
great innovators, great designers, and for the other
sciences.
Meta-Model One: 54
Excellence Sciences, Some of
which are Novelty & Creativity
Sciences too
Figure 2
54 EXCELLENCE SCIENCES
Routes to the Top of 63 Professions in 41 Nations from 8000+
Respondents
Combining Tacit Knowing, Practical Intelligence, Knowledge Evolution Dynamics, Declarative
& Procedural Knowledge, Theory and Practice Knowledge. Items with an * have books
presenting sets of capabilities that define them.
SOURCE De Tao Masters Academy Creativity & Novelty Sciences Studio

Plan, 2012)
Re- Com-
Perfor- Adap- Diver-
Person flec- pila-
mance tation sity
tion tion
educatedne diversity* structure* cases humanities between
ss* (handling it) (social & & arts of knowledge
cognitive) knowing formats
KNOWLEDGE TRAITS
META-KNOWING
effectivenes complexity system* theories natural & between

EXPERIENCE
s* (handling it) social knowledge

BASICS
SELF
REALITY
MODEL
sciences of categories
creativity* error quality expertise knowing
(handling it)
professions across
& knowledge
engineerin explicitnes
managemen leading & artfulness global humanities across
t innovating* (handling effectivene & arts of 1 cultures
functions* constraintl ss discipline
PRODUCTIVITY
essness) (Western,
KNOWLEDGE LOCALES
managemen composing/ coping power natural & across

META-DISCIPLINES
MANAGE
t design* (handling types social selves/

GLOBALITY
levels* constraint sciences of personaliti

PRODUCE
STYLE
s) 1 es
managemen performing* paradox morality discipline
t domains (handling (establish
incongrue solace
ncy) systems)
professions across
& systems
engineerin
influence data entrepren fashion practice: across
(collecting eurship (idea/ liberation knowledge
& analysis) sources* method) context &
size gaps
careers* research manage by ecosystems practice: across

TRANSFORM
INFLUENCE
META-PRACTICES
(+job (processes) events & clusters freedom & knowledge
finding) (of ideas & historic sequence
LEARNING
DISCOVER
CHANGE
practices) dreams gaps
technology venture organizati practices practice: across

(social life (founding) onal (movement novelty knowledge
etc.) learning s of conserved surprises &
change) novelty noticings
(from Greene 2011 and De Tao Master's Academy 2011)
Meta-Model Two: 18
Novelty & Creativity Sciences
The below Figure 3 presents 18 Novelty & Creativity
Sciences in rough order, showing top level relations
among them. Creativity is the root of them all
because it is what generates novelty into them all.
The structure of the table below suggests:
1. that evolution goes on in all Novelty Sciences,
that narration and other liberal-social arts of
each Novelty Science derive from evolution
dynamics in each
2. that multiple models of creativity apply to all
other Novelty Sciences
3. that selves and knowledge together capture the
levels Novelty Sciences apply to
4. that experiment & discovery, art & invention,
expression & exploration capture what is applied
to those levels (each of those pairs expressed via
multiple models of creativity involved in them)
5. that 8 Novelty Sciences (creativity, evolution in,
story-comedy-history-philosophy of, selves,
knowledge, experiment & discovery, art &
invention, expression & exploration) somehow
support and apply to twelve other Novelty
Sciences (educatedness, careers, creating
others, systems, cultures, quality, innovation,
ventures, design, composing, fashion,
performing).
6. that it is all about Novelty in the end---each
Novelty Science is about bringing the new into
our world
7. that each Novelty Science differs from others in
having a sort of basic direction:
a. tries---in the experimenting and discovery
involved in innovation and venture building
b. builds---in the art and inventing involved
when people design and compose
c. roles---in the expressing and exploring of self
and other involved in fashion and performance
d. formats---in the flows of knowledge in
systems, cultures, and quality achievement
e. persons---making and made in educatedness,
careering, and leadership.
Figure 3
THE 18 NOVELTY & CREATIVITY SCIENCES
Creativity generates Novelty which generates Selves, Knowledge,
Discovery, Invention, and Exploration
SOURCE De Tao Masters Academy Creativity & Novelty Sciences Studio
Plan, 2012)
1) The Liberal Arts of Each Novelty Science EVOLU- STORY-
Come from the Evolution, Natural TION IN COMEDY-
Selection dynamics, of Each; (Natural HISTORY-
2) Novelty Comes into the World via FIVE Selection PHILO-
Types of Creation and TWELVE Levels of dynamics SOPHY OF
Creation of):
Educated- -
ness (self
SELVES creating
persons)
Careers
Creating
Others
(Leadership,
CREATIVITY
Parenting)
Systems
NOVELTY
KNOW- Cultures
LEDGE Quality
EXPERI- Innovation
MENT & Ventures
DISCOVERY
ART & Design
INVENTION Compose
EXPRESSION & Fashion
EXPLORATION
Perform
(from Greene 2011 and De Tao Master's Academy 2011)

Meta-Model Three: 120
Models of Creativity
The table below presents 120 models of creativity.
These came from three sources: 150 eminent creators
in 63 professions and 41 nations, 8000 eminent people
similarly distributed, and 4000 books and research
articles on creativity from academics.
There have been some meta-models of creativity

model types: (Harnad 2006) method, memory, magic,
mutation types of creativity theories; (Styhre &
Sundgren 2005) 4P creativity model types: process,
person, product, and place (see Four P's of
Creativity). However, the model below of 120
creativity models, is the only published model,
derived from empiric data from creators, yet with
nearest match academic models indicated for each,
this comprehensive and detailed. Remember each of
the models named below, in its full form, printed
elsewhere, has 20 to 60 well-ordered components.
Figure 4
120 Models of
Creativity
from 150 Creators, 8000 Eminent People, & 4000 Books and
Research Articles
People from 63 diverse professions and 41 nations were sources of
the below.
[A book of detailed models for 60 of the models below is available
from scribd.com]
Academic models that correspond with each empirical model below
are noted in each box.
This Model of Models is the basis of a 4 semester course at KEIO SDM
in Creativity Models.
SOURCE De Tao Masters Academy Creativity & Novelty Sciences
Studio Plan, 2012)
The Comprehensive First 60 The Partial Second 60
Models Models
Each model below purports to Each model below purports to
explain ALL of creativity explain SOME KINDS of
NOTE a book on all the below was creativity
published (Greene 2000) NOTE the below are being
tracked closely for eventual
generality
THE THE BRAIN MIND
SOCIALITIES MENTALITIES MANAGE- EXTENSIONS
OF CREATING OF CREATING MENT OUTSIDE
BRAINS
CATALOG EXPERIMEN SEEK ENTOOL
T EXCEP- MENTAL
TION OPERA-
TORS
RECOMMEN SOLUTION EVERYMAN DECENTRALI
DATIONS CULTURE SCIENTISTS, ZE
create creators HYPOTHETI INTUITIONS
CALITY each group
creative life articulate (BAYES) and era has
(by making to creators its own
interior & themselves become characterist
exterior their chosen aware of ic
room, and field as a limitations intuitions,
embracing failure and which
tendencies creators
paradox culture; in how they notice and
enough to then they view the reverse or
enable reverse all world (what change;
mental dimensions they notice when
travel), that and miss), central
accumulate characteriz they control by
consciously leaders is
subcreation e that seek assumed,
s till they failure frameworks creators
become culture to for getting imagine
creation invent a beyond many actors
machine, solution those limits self
your culture, in self and organizing
others, they without
creative life which they develop central
uses your then apply exquisitely exchanges
creation to realize precise and and
machne to aims the unusual specially
create field has hypotheses, designated
Gardner , failed thus then invent leaders;
ways to test Resnick,
Simonton, far to them; Papert,
Sternberg, attain. artists do Minsky,
Root- Jonathan science. MacDermot
Bernstein, Feinstein, Bayes, t
Greene, Judea
Marx, Pearl,
Bunge,
Arendt, Sloman,
Eamon
TRAITS POLICY BY ENDISH CHANGE
creators EXPERIMENT MEANS MIND MAP
vary via creators creators TOPOLOGY
embed ends creators
being take all that they aim for assimilate
ingenue, exists as in the ideas into
problem hypotheses means they models and
seeking, not use to seek arrangemen
violating established those ends, ts on paper
bounds, truths, they so that or in their
trying for minds, but
bricolage, play around goals, they take
then they with, incremental another
combine experiment ly step and
ideas via with what actuallizes transfer
metaphor, now is, them; they whole
abstraction, including liberate models of
themselves ideas from
indexing, present from past one
and trends and ways, then geometry
multiple thoughts; in no man's type to
worlds they land seek another,
mappings, structure out other viewing the
then they work not to ones same set of
liberated ideas from
select make from the diverse
combines systems same frameworks
via finding work but to realities, Herman
saturated learn from with some Hesse, T.S.
fields, whether of whom Eliot,
countering they work they dream Foucault,
dreams of a Parsons,
intuitions, or not, how replacemen
articulating, the universe t for old
applying functions. ways. Mao
aesthetic Deanna Tse Tung,
rules. Kuhn (us as Joseph
Guilford, intuitive Campbell
Sternberg, scientists)
QUESTION CREATION EXTREME BRIDGE
FINDING EVENTS CONCENTR COMPETIN
creators find creators ATIONS G NETS
vital tipping
point turn creators creators
questions via distributed do normal just do
finding gaps sloppy thoughts, social
(reverse unorganized feelings, work in
trends, latent and this
depersonalize processes of actions model:
, undo
successes, thinking but they put
expand into continue networks
models), via intense, them to of people
finding points events, ridiculous and
of high either of extremes thought
leverage two ways, which into
(fully
represent, by tweaking cause contact
socially in parallel them to that
index, seek several attract before
intersections, emerging great were not
change processes attention at all in
models), via and getting and contact,
changing
representatio them to change and by
ns of inter- framework how much
situations relate, or by s and contact,
(change: getting the expectatio where, of
measures, right parties ns of what sort,
scales, together in others, creators
causes/
effects, the right being create a
models), via context and declared particular
changing logic roles. “creative” flow of
(relate, Greene . Arnold ideas.
imply, unify, Ludwig Ron Burt,
cross Gladwell
domains)
Einstein and
Infeld 1938,
Runco
CHAPTER
7
20 Models
as 1500
Parame-
ters
A Creativity
Checklist
1500 Variables
that Create Cre-
ativity
by Richard Tabor
Greene
RESEARCH QUESTIONS:
1. How do research and
achievement of creativity
improve when a tool of much
greater comprehensiveness,
detail, and level of organiza-
tion is applied to common
assessment, evaluation, and
specification tasks?--the sec-
ondary question in this
paper.
2. How do you create a
checklist vastly more
detailed, comprehensive,
and ordered than any prior
such tools?--the primary
question in this paper.
3. What models of creativity
if put into a large checklist
format offer enough compre-
hensibility, diversity, and
practicality to motivate peo-
ple to use, study, and fully
apply the checklist tool?
This article presents the key
variables of each of 20 well-
ordered models of creativity,
in a checklist format. 1500
variables, organized in
checklist format, with 0 to
10 point scales and fill in
spaces for each variable, are
included. Each of the 20
models is explained as well
as some important initial
uses of the checklist, by the
author and other organiza-
tions. The significance, for
understanding creativity and
impacting it practically, of
having more detailed, com-
prehensive, well-ordered,
and articulated models of it
is examined in the context of
an overall program of struc-
tural cognition--applying
ordinary cognitive operators
not to sets of 3 to 6 ideas at
a time but to ordered pat-
terns of 50 to 100 ideas at a
time. Research, educative,
and work improvement uses
of the checklist are
described.
METHOD: A model of 60 mod-
els of creativity was used to
select 20 models, from
diverse original model cate-
gories, to balance practical-
ity, diversity, and
comprehensibility.
The most comprehensive
model of creativity models
yet published was used to
furnish 60 models from
which 20 were chosen for
this 1500 item checklist.
1500 items were the cut off
point because that is the
maximum number of items
that could be explained and
scored by actual groups in a
3 day 8-hour day format.
Which of the 60 models was
chosen was entirely deter-
mined by dozens of consults
over a period of years, not-
ing which models were most
requested, used, studied,
asked about, by hundreds of
consulting clients. A count
was kept over a five year
period of these requests,
etc. and a simple summary of
it used to pick the models
most salient to clients during
that time period. This is a
non-scientific sampling
method that yet has signifi-
cant practicality.
RESULT: A checklist of 1500
variables that affect creativ-
ity or generate it, from 20
diverse models of what being
creative is, in a format that
non-professionals can under-
stand and score in a 3 day 8-
hour day format, if led by an
instructor who explains each
of the 1500 items just before
each is scored.
Extending Minds with Checklists
School systems are dedicated, all over the world, to
“schooling” minds, that is, brain matter inside peo-
ple’s skulls. However, anthropologists and others
have suggested it is tools outside our minds--our so-
the checklist measure creativity instead
of other forms of excellent performance
8 find parts of an organization favoring one
model of creativity, then other parts favor-
ing another model, and still other parts
favoring still other creativity models on the
checklist, then get people in those parts of
the organization to fill in the entire check-
list--to see which models of creativity
participants in an organization see and u
OVERALL CREATIVITY CHECKLIST, 1526 Basic Items from 20 Models

of Creativity, Non-Consulting Public Version, 18 December 2004
60 Models of Creativity, 64 Steps of Becoming Creative, 64 Steps of Creating, Darwinian Systems, Insight, Population Automaton, Culture
Blending, Subcreations, Accelerated Learning,Traits, Question Finding, Scientific Creativity, Entrepreneurship, Performance,
Composing, Art Purposes, Creation Power, Info Design TRIZ, System Effects, Culture Dimensions
Copyright 2004 by Richard Tabor Greene, All Rights Reserved, US Government Registered
Email: richardtgreene@alum.mit.edu
60 Models of Creativity
Recommendations 1. I created a “creator life” by making
interior and exterior room, then embrac-
ing paradox to enable wide-ranging men-
tal travel--which involved accumulating
many small subcreations of facility, tool,
inspiration that eventually made up a
creation machine of great productivity
enabling me, as a creator life type, to
CATALOG
explore much diversity via many tries till

a hit--creation--eventuated.
Traits 2. I collect traits that creative people,
works, domains, and fields have, orga-
nize them, and regularly review them to
improve the creativity of my work.
Question Finding 3. I collect ways that creative people
find great questions to tackle, organize
them, and regularly review them to
improve the creativity of my work.
Darwinian Systems 4. I notice how persons and works in my
domain, and how my domain itself and
the people who run it, all four, foster the
basic evolution functions of variation,
combination, selection, and reproduc-
tion. I use the result to position myself
for maximal creativity.
Combined Thought 5. I select certain types of thinking and
Types develop them individually as well as
exploring possible combinations of them
till creativity results.
Garbage Can 6. I use nearly all fundamental parts of
my existence from personal identity to
social dynamics around me to ways of
work to develop partial creations of life
and work style that become tools for
making creative works.
Culture Mixing 7. I use the various cultures I have
been exposed to, have within me, or
live among now, blending them till
creation emerges.
Discipline Com- 8. I use the various fields I have
bines been exposed to, have mastered, or
live among now, blending them till
creation emerges.
BLEND
Tuning 9. I position myself between

extremes and polar opposites, tuning
my approach toward subtle points
between extremes where creativity
happens.
Paradox Doorway 10. I seek out paradoxes and force
myself against them till they, in turn,
force my thinking out of its ruts and
into lateral, peripheral new paths
that open up creativity to me.
Scale Blend 11. I seek out phenomena on multi-
ple size scales, aligning them by simi-
larities of various sorts, till
phenomena on one size scale solve
major problems on other size scales.
Idea Marketing 12. I market ideas within my own
mind to various viewpoints I can
develop mentally, then select best fit
ideas to market, again within my own
mind to representations of actual
social market forces in my field, till I
come up with a creative work as the
package that transmits that idea to
those social market forces in my field
effectively.
Community of 13. I assemble possibly rel-
Ideas evant ideas and let them
interact as their own
natures dictate, noticing
how they pair up, conflict,
sequence themselves and in
general inter-relate, till
powerful interesting such
idea assemblages come to
my attention as possible
SOCIAL
creations.
System Model 14. I influence the social
judgement dynamics of that
field of people who judge
what works are creative or
not in the domain in which I
work by tuning the dialog
among myself, my creative
work, those judges, and
rules of the domain till cre-
ation appears.
Social Computa- 15. I am in the midst of a commu-
tion nity of people among whom flow
various social computations having
inputs, outputs, and processors
consisting of layers each more
flexible than the next of hardware,
firmware, software, in each layer
of which are operations each hav-
ing input, output, and processor
(repeating the above endlessly). I
manage that flow till at where I
am in the community a critical
mass of ideas appears that
becomes creativity.
Social Movement 16. I am in the midst of a commu-
nity of people among whom frus-
tration builds up till released into
a social movement of new ideas by
the slightest particular new idea,
avalanching the entire community
into a new overall idea configura-
tion.
Space Sharing 17. I share the same intellectual
space with a community of like-
minded others, inventing tools
that intensify that sharing and
pursuing competitively similar
intellectual goals till rather unpre-
dictable slightnesses among us and
the ideas we work with cause cre-
ativity to appear somewhere
among us.
Participatory 18. I notice how in modern societies
Design specialization of function has
stripped certain kinds of thought,
thinking, collaboration, feeling, from
entire populations concentrating it in
profit-making centralized industries
and create by undoing important
pieces of that harmful over-central-
ization and over-concentration.
Mass Solving 19. I define a certain solving process
and get many people to simulta-
neously apply it while interacting
with each other tuning their motiva-
tions, interactions, and configura-
tions till creativity emerges.
Process Deploy- 20. I come up with one interesting
ment process after another and deploy
them across certain social configura-
tions of people, tuning motivations,
interactions, and configurations till
creativity emerges.
Optimize Ideal 21. I identify the intended flow of
GROUP
Flow energy through particular systems

and optimize the design, environ-
ments, conditions, and controls of
the system to get as close as possible
all of the energy to flow in the
intended path through the system till
performance or qualities never seen
before emerge.
Meta-Cognition 22. I organize my tools, facilities,
collaborators, associated institutions
and relationships for heightened
meta-cognition--awareness of how we
think and work till creativity
emerges.
Social Connection- 23. I work in certain idea layers and
ism social relationship layers combining
and selecting what comes both to my
conscious symbolic mind and what
comes to my unconscious associative
mind, coaxing ideas and relationships
through phase changes till creative
new patterns emerge.
Demystification 24. I return power to people who
have been habituated to giving power
to things outside themselves via cre-
ating works that communicate a
demystifying-of-the-world-message--
that makes people conscious of how
they have given power and options to
things outside themselves that rule
them unwholesomely.
Counte pre-posi- 1161. pre-position things for
tion where and how they will be used
r counter
forces/
rather than delaying use by posi-
properties tioning when they are needed
to produc-
tion/use
turn use 1162. turn actions of using
actions or something or parts used into
parts into properties of use to end-users
properties
insulate/ 1163. insulate or optimize sub-
optimize systems so they enable other
sub- nearby subsystems to attain
systems
their needed performance val-
for unreli-
Reconfigure
able sub- ues rather than hinder it (opti-

systems/ mize performance around line
users/ values not point performance
uses/envi-values so performances can be
ronments tuned to help other subsystems
reach their goals)
optimize 1164. optimize away free
away free energy in a design rather than
energy in optimizing away what bothers
designs
customers/users (if you do not
do this, you end up optimizing
away the same free energy
appearing in different places as
you optimize it away from previ-
ous places--chasing the free
energy all over the design rather
than getting rid of it altogether)
Chapter 8
THEORY to
MODELS to
TURNING inputs
into models
PUT ASIDE ALL USUAL BOOK, EDUCATION, LEARNING
CONTEXTS & HABITS This is a course/book on:
--World Best Thinker Ways
--New Mental Power for YOU
--Updating Thought Foundations
--Monastic Innovations
--Expanding Mental Productivities
--Make Great Grades & Work Leadership AUTOMATIC
--Read/Hear, Compose, Write/Speak Geometries of
Thought not Single Points of Mere Lists
--Notice More, Build More, Respond Differently
--Notice/Build/Express GEOMETRIES of Thought
--Ordinary Mental Operators Applied to Dozens of
Ideas at a Time not 4 to 7 at a Time.
This is a book/course on PROCEDURES to master via

practice, not FACTS to memorize via quizzes.
This is a book/course on SLIGHT changes in the most
HEAVILY USED per hour mental MEDIA/INTERFACES.
This is a book/course providing MENTAL PROCEDURES
from world best THINKERS & CREATORS.
All who DO the 16 core EXERCISES (small assignments)

herein, get ENOUGH PRACTICE to greatly improve PER-
SONAL MENTAL PERFORMANCE & IMPACT the rest of
their lives.
All who ALSO DO the 10 optional peripheral EXERCISES
(small assignments) herein, get ENOUGH PRACTICE to
greatly improve mental performance and impact of ALL
TEAMS they participate in.
YOUR EXPERIENCE (in taking this course) = initial dis-

comfiture as deep habits of mind you assume and easily
wield are questionned, reformed, updated--digitally,
computationally, biologically, evolutionarily, multi-cul-
turally, THEN, after 8 of the 16 core exercises (small
assignments) are done, discomfiture gives way to ease
and familiarity, plus increases in speed, accuracy,
THEN, after the 2nd 8 core exercises are done, that
gives way to IMPRESSIVE new mental POWER & IMPACT,
that all around you notice, almost as if a MAGICAL power
in you.
YOUR GOAL (in taking this course) = use 13 new theories
of mind, comprehension, communication, idea indexing,
etc. in this course/book to UNDERSTAND the steps of
each of this course/book’s SIX TOOLS, then use the 16
core exercises to practice use of those tools enough to
CHANGE YOUR POWER, IMPACT, & DESTINY.
The CORE is those 16 exercises--all else

aims you at understanding and doing
them well--get them well practiced and
in 6 weeks your personal POWER,
IMPACT, & DESTINY will be significantly
changed/improved.
THE PURPOSE of all theories, slides, pre-

sentations in this course/book is ONLY to
help you PRACTICE correctly, easily, and
well the 16 CORE EXERCISES--remember-
ing the theories, slides, presentations is
NOT a main goal for this course, it is just
an option.
NOT worship
BUT thought
Every book written proposes some hope, improvement,
insight to its readers. Today there are bits, comment
storms, video segments, likes, and all the rest of web and
social media fun thingies. When we add it all up, look at
lives spending decades drenched in this stuff--we find a lot of
people not good at synthesizing ideas. The web and social
media are making brains, thoughts, noticings, lives, and out-
comes a bit shallow, immediate, tiny in scope. We are accu-
rate reflections of our media. Quite a few lives get entirely
lost in media and end up lost like the main character in the
movie Taxi Driver.
Some people want escape from all this. Some people have
already escaped this. Some people are so old they never got
exposed to all this. This book is about people who think hun-
dreds of times faster, broader, more detailedly, more multi-
level-ly than web generations and click-maniacs--people who
put many diverse ideas together into new inventions, compo-
sitions, worlds. I have special words for this:
the tree people--web clicksters, social-media com-

menters
the forest people--people who escape or never get
sucked into web-itis
the tree people--know everything, heads full of bits
of factual dust
the forest people--see patterns organizing bits, see
framings of facts.
This book is about showing tree people the methods used by

forrest people. This book is about showing ordinary forrest
people methods used by the world’s very top mental per-
formers across a broad diversity of professions and nations.
The DISEASE that Harvard and Harvard faculty and grads

are Goethe painted the devil centuries ago--Mephistophe-
les. It was controversial at the time because instead of
painting a low life mafioso, hands on a checkered tablecloth
in a dive Italian restaurant, he painted the devil as an 800
GRE Kennedy School graduate--as Robert McNamara, for
example, the first generally globally recognized mass mur-
derer American (if you ignore centuries of slaughter of native
people by invading anglo culture “Americans”). McNamara is
a funny man---he spent the last 30 years of his life puzzled
about how someone as elite as he, as articulate as he, as
superior to others as he, with a career of top this and that,
like few others--how can someone so elite and skilled at top
colleges be------evil? He could not understand his own evil-
-though it was clear he had directly caused the murder of
millions in Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam year after year for
over a decade--actually setting up, like a good accountant
from Harvard, the counting of dead bodies in order to “mea-
sure” “progress” in the war. As a result the USA lost, lost
entirely, lost humiliatingly, and was defeated by a tiny,
poor, George Washington who decades earlier in the 1950s
had written US presidents asking their help “fostering
another American revolution here in Vietnam, of we Viet-
namese liberating ourselves from foreign French rule”. A
half dozen US presidents could not understand that analogy--
too many had been trained at “top” US colleges it appears.
Analogies like that are not included in any Harvard depart-
ment or degree program, apparently.
This Goethe painting appeared more meaningful round about

2008 and 2009 when Harvard grads on Wall Street were given
$700 billion free by the US president to save them from their
own fraudulent products and financial self enrichment gim-
micks. The rest of the American population waited patiently
for their $700 billion--in vain. This fixed a certain image of
Harvard and its ways of thought, its “top” ways of thought,
its “top” status, its various other “topnesses” including the
giant piles of wonderful skills and experiences and network
contacts of each Harvard student and grad. Suddenly it was
made clear that all that topness, netted down to theft--mas-
sive theft from the population to a venal, criminal elite
made by the “top” of the “topmost” “top” colleges. Sud-
denly the word “top” and “think like the top” became
roughly equivalent to catching a fatal “disease”.
This book, unlike nearly all books by all professors published

so far, defines “top” thinking in humane, non-suicidal, non-
Harvard ways. It promotes kinds of thinking that protect you
individually and civilization itself from the evil of present-
day “topnesses”. “Top” thinking in general is bit diseased,
evilish, and we need protection from it--this book is not
naive, not even a bit naive.
the destructive top--most top global elite univer-

sity faculty/grads/ways
the constructive top--people who build futures
not steal on Wall Street.
The DISEASE that the USA East Coast Religion of Business is

Americans who are raised in or near Silicon Valley live in an
entirely different “America” than most Americans do. They
derive from people who fled aristocratic snobberies of the US
East Coast by going “West” to California. They derive from
get-rich-quick gold rush guys living dirty--all the best things
in life are dirty, the Broadway song says. They derive from
hatred of Hollywood and its central broadcast media--a few
cocaine addicts pushing junk and violence onto generation
after generation for profits--populations sitting, sitting, eat-
ing eating, imbibing imbibing, learning violence learning
aggression learning unrealities. They derive from digital
technologies replacing analog technologies. They invented
gradually “technology ventures” though today we never hear
that, we hear only “business ventures” like Facebook, a giant
app lacking high level technology (buying clicks to stay large-
appearing).
Silicon Valley out-invented out-produced the entire East

Coast Harvard-MIT nexus by 800% the last 50 years. When
people go to Silicon Valley from the East Coast they undergo
culture shock--a period of about 18 months where all their
ways and common habits are crudely roughly rejected dozens
of times a day. Gradually they see patterns---giant British
empire style snobberies put into them by the vertical “beat
all others” decades of test taking needed to get into Harvard
and MIT. They see California de-snob them, de-vertical-ize
them, de-elite-ize them, de-management-ize them, de-
finance-ize them. Silicon Valley is an entirely other Religion
of Business, eleven nested anti-cultures each undoing exactly
what Harvard-MIT do to people and select faculty and stu-
dents for.
This book looks at thought from this Silicon Valley 800% more
productive perspective and this book shuns and prunes away
mental and media image junk in reader minds put there to
perpetuate deadly ineffective East Coast Religions of Busi-
ness ways from Harvard and MIT.
Proven tools proven theories of mind This is the smallest
book I have ever written. The tools it presents are so ele-
mental, so fundamental to thought processes all of us use
dozens of times an hour and hundreds of times a day, that
slight improvements in how we do them, suffice to enor-
mously increase daily productivity, allowing more diversity of
what is tried, which, in turn, makes minds, lives, and their
outcomes more creative. How do I know? Two sources--the
three research projects this book is founded on results of
(top left corner of the book cover page), and the generations
of my students, undergrad, grad, and industry execs, who
have taken courses with several of these tools and applied
them in assignments I supervised and graded. Over 71 of my
former students were vice president level in global Fortune
500 firms before age 40, using these tools taught herein, for
the most part. The tools are tested in the EU (at Karlsruhe
Institute of Technology, ETH, TUDelft, Oxford) in the USA (at
the University of Michigan, University of Chicago), in Asia (at
Keio University, Beijing University, Temple University, Fudan
University). The tools have been tested in the seven global
corporations whose ways of delivering technologies I changed
(by setting up Artificial Intelligence circles programs in the
1980s and 1990s)--Sekisui and Panasonic in Japan, NVPhilips
and Thompson Paris in the EU, and EDS, Coopers&Lybrand
Consultants, and Xerox PARC in the USA. The tools and the-
ories of mind presented here have proven themselves world-
wide in business and government, in NGO and academia, and
in the arts. They work, they work immensely well.
Readers need to know that in the early years, when three

research strands in my life began overlapping in their results
I had not yet tested widely the tools that appeared. I used
them personally and with powerful results in my career and
in outcomes for the organizations I worked in, but perhaps
only I liked and got results from them, I constantly worried.
It was only gradually that I learned effective ways to get oth-
ers to see and develop interest in and use the tools, practice
them enough, to get good at them and produce powerful
results. But when Americans at the University of Chicago
did this--I worried about Europeans and Asians--perhaps the
tools work only in America. So it took more years before
results showed Europeans from dozens of nations got the
same power and impacts as Americans. Then Asia was my
worry--Asia was “rising” and “the future”--perhaps my tools
did not work well there or could not catch serious interest
and attention there. But Keio and Beijing University, Ali-
baba, and Google Japan consults and courses proved the
tools and theories of mind worked just as well there. I have
confidence these days that nearly everywhere in this planet,
these tools and their respective theories of mind, greatly
change how people think towards more powerful results.
What do I mean More Powerful Results of Thinking? Well

as two earlier sections of this Preface already explained--not
Harvard-MIT snobberies and thieveries, not East Coast infe-
rior-to-Silicon-Valley production and creation. That is a low
standard but at least this book meets that standard. So,
what do I mean?
Story ONE--(a compilation of dozens of my own and student

actual incidents, written up on assignments)--we are in a
meeting with our VP, he asks us to fix a product not selling
well enough to continue so we either fix it or kill it off. He
gives us 2 hours for each of the 6 of us--his direct reports--to
come up with 2 or 3 ideas for saving the product cost and
time effectively. Sure enough 2 hours later, the VP back in
our room, each of us, in turn presents his 2 or 3 ideas. I was
late getting back from the restroom and so answered last
(not entirely by accident). When the VP called my name I
handed out a 64 box fractal triangle that had on it every idea
by all the other five people, plus 49 ideas none of them had,
many bolder, more feasible, more overlapping other trends
and product projects than their ideas. The VP wondered
aloud--how have you in the same time as everyone else come
up with all their ideas plus 49 ideas beyond them? This
book is my answer to his question then.
Story TWO--Procter & Gamble Mexico, Lever Brothers Mex-

ico, Nestle Mexico all shared “transplant X across cultures”
problems. For P&G it was a problem engaging employees, so
turnover was terribly high; for Lever Brothers it was innova-
tive products refused by retail chains and small stores--own-
ers wanted profits not innovations; for Nestle Mexico it was a
style of leadership that had made 2 Mexico CEOs in a row fail
expensively. By accident I did a presentation In Mexico
attended by mid-level execs of each of these three compa-
nies. The presentation was on two tools of this course, but
one tool stood out in the minds of these 3 companies--read-
ing action and image flows for the geometry of thought
underneath and generating them. By diagramming the
deeds of each local exec’s first year, a previously invisible
geometry of points appears--revealing ideas, strategies, mes-
sages that all heard but that meant entirely different things
to Mexicans and foreign execs. Seeing the diagram of
exactly what framework each Mexican interpreted each exec
action by and exactly what framework each foreign exec
interpreted each Mexican action by--revealed the gap--invisi-
ble frames in minds that differed and made shared words and
actions mean entirely different things. In short order this
educated all parties in what, invisible, in minds, caused com-
pany problems and errors. One tool solved the 3 different
problems in all 3 companies in Mexico. They were amazed
together.
SHORTEST
ROUTE
What makes modern people bother with reading an entire
book? The web and social media habituate us all to bits,
likes, comments, news-lets. The scope and scale of thought
is greatly reduced, chopped up, shaken or stirred, with huge
losses of organization, pattern, abstract frameworks. The
result--people who know everything but cannot think and do
anything with what they know. Worse yet, these same peo-
ple know everything they need to know is on the web so they
can get it anytime they need to = they never bother to get it
at all, for the most part.
Shortest Route as why a few people read entire books

Steep powerful increases in you, your capability, always
require changes in deep patterns of thought and lots of prac-
tice--new routines you have to laboriously practice till they
are fast, effortless, automatic, and unconsciously done when
needed. If any or all of that is too much for you, you will, in
50 years, be roughly the same person with the same capabili-
ties that you have today, dressed up in whatever magazine
articles and web news tidbits furnish you. You will be
human fluff. Readers not bothered about becoming fluff
probably should put down this book and read some bits some-
where else.
For those few who wish to rise above factual dust and media
bits all over the world today--entire books are your shortest
route to escape from mediocrity and boring normalcy. But
the books have to be special in several ways--no fluff, clar-
ity, only needed steps and new ideas, minimal amounts of
needed practice specified, contexts on when and where to
get the most impact from a tool.
This book presents six tools and one or two theories of mind
that explain why top performers achieve top performance
using each tool. We get the tool from top performer people
(not top “elite” people, not East Coast Religion of Business
Wall Street thieves) but why each tool step works for them is
something most of them cannot articulate--so we go to hun-
dreds of books on how the mind and society work, for clues
to why each part of each tool in this book works. So if you
master the six tools herein and the one or two theories of
mind explaining each--at the end of reading (and some prac-
tice, generally doing exercises or tests scattered throughout
this book) you will find yourself enormously “smarter” than
others, “faster in thought” than others, “more comprehen-
sive” than others, “noticing what others miss”, “imagining
alternatives others cannot imagine”. I know because I have
hundreds of former students, as stated already in the Pref-
ace, who have out-performed their peers in Asia, in the EU,
in the USA, in academia, in business, in NGO work, in arts.
I thought this sort of mental work improvement was

already done in nearly all colleges? I went to a lot of “top”
colleges (and extricated myself after some years of effort
from their tendencies to generate kinds of elite evil). The
most popular course in all those colleges I attended was
some verion or other of “ways of thought”, usually a psych
course. These courses were so immensely popular that only
a fraction of those wanting in could attend. Waiting a year
did not really help you get in--the numbers were so bad.
This is typical of a deep flaw at the root of the entire idea of

colleges in the last few centuries. ONE, why capture all the
world’s best ways of thought and restrict access to an elite
few? What a foolish way to run a society and civilization--
we have great ways of thought but we will give special hard
exams and only the top 0.0001% of those applying will be
allowed in. On the face of it this is an utterly sneaky way to
run a society and it is hard to imagine why every college we
know is structured and operates this way. It is as if, says a
scholar of scholarship, Bledsoe, colleges are invented as
ways to justify an elite ruling dummies, by sprinkling smarty
cooties on a select few then giving all the good jobs and sal-
aries in society only to them, while they rule the dummies
who could not pass the right exams. The “dummies” remain
dummies, hence, easy to “rule” because they are dis-allowed
access to the best thoughts and thinkers of their civilization!
A circular sneaky system indeed!
An offshoot of this truth is the answer to this question---why

would any college ever have a course that nearly every stu-
dent wanted to take but arrange so that less than 1/8th of
those wanting the course could take it, during their four
years at the college. People for over two decades have
wanted mostly a course on ways of good thought but no col-
lege has arranged it so that everyone interested in that can
take such courses---again---why?
If you teach top thinking skills to some students, they will

get top grades, scholarships to grad schools and demoralize
other students. That much is clear. Also you will have a
grading system conflict--when student levels of thought
quite generally improve rapidly, they become a threat to
common grading systems---what if every student gets an A?
Would empoyers believe that or consider the whole college
junk and dishonest. Upgrading all student ways of thought is
in these above ways--troublesome.
And there is a deeper bigger deadlier obstacle--colleges pre-

tend that every course in every department “improves
thought”. If a particular course creates huge numbers of
students with vastly better grades and coursework than all
other such courses create--perhaps the college might end up
under pressure to drop most of their existing courses. Why
keep around courses with virtually no improvement of
thought capability?
Why keep around hundreds of
courses that only minimally if at all
improve thought?
Another Problem--What Top Colleges Make you Top in

The phrase is “colleges are conservative”, that means they
shun coding “bootcamps” that in 2 months ship you out to
jobs payin $130,000 a year and more. That means they have
oodles of expensive faculty who are terrible at teaching,
they get all their status from writing research that few ever
read, that they have to hire and pay for--to up the status of
the college enough to attract enough Chinese students to pay
for all those useless faculty. Readers may have a little
chuckle or two here--it is allowed!
So colleges, being “conservative” in the above sense, have

faculty who are masters of media, interfaces, ways of
thought centuries old. You get admitted to “best” colleges
by top level mastery of ancient media and interfaces of
thought--finding points hidden in prose, etc.--and you get
admitted to faculty of such places by even more mastery of
such ancient media/interfaces of thought. They passed
exams and dissertation committees to prove their mastery of
centuries old media--prose, finding points in texts, dividing
thoughts into bullet points, and so on. Colleges are faculty
who are masters of centuries old interfaces and media mak-
ing generations of students masters of centuries old media
and interfaces. THEN the entire onrush of innovation and
global problem solving of each era comes crashing against
those dated ancient “skills” in faculty and students, as rocks.
Think about famous old Robert McNamara, so smart Ford

Motor Company made him the first non-family CEO, based on
analysis he learned at places like Harvard. Think about him
applying those Harvard analysis habits of mind to warring on
Vietnam--”measuring” “progress” in the war via counting
dead Vietnamese bodies weekly--a whole system of nation-
wide reporting all over Vietnam. Somehow that made him
and America lose that war. Somehow counting and measur-
ing and data analysis were how to lose wars, not how to
win them. Duh.
So becoming top in centuries old media and interfaces is not

only ineffective but dangerous--it runs the risk of turning you
into a mass murderer, an 800 math GRE Harvard grad mass
murderer.
Prose, discussion, meeting--Making them Evolutionary,

BIologic, Computational, and Global Our entire present
world, rides on an ever evolving stream of new technologies
and gadgets. It and each new invention riding it, are evolv-
ing, in ecosystem relations to other new techs, compute and
are computed, cross dozens of diverse types of border--of
gender, profession, organization, nation, and others. That is
our reality. So we can ask:
What is a more evolutionary replace-

ment of prose?
What is a more biologic replacement of
prose?
What is a more computational replace-
ment of prose?
What is a more fractal replacement of
prose?
What is a more global replacement of
prose?
What is a more evolutionary replace-

ment of reading?
What is a more biologic replacement of
reading?
What is a more computational replace-
ment of reading?
Whatis a more fractal replacement of
reading?
What is a more global replacement of
reading?
And similarly for all the most mundane

heavily used fundamentals of mental
operations--writing, mental models,
presenting, discussing, brainstorm-
ing and others.
It is almost embarrassing to call this kind of work--innova-

tion. When we update ancient media and interfaces in the
way of all we think and do, to catch them up to the evolu-
tionary, biologic, computational, global nature of all we do
and need---should we be praised as “innovators” or criticized
for being late?
TWO ROUTES to greater mental productivity in this book

FIrst is the above--slight changes in mental operations so
common, mundane, ancient, unchanged-for-centuries,
repeatedly used hundreds of times a day, that slight changes
result in immense overall improvements in production. This
has a name--monastic innovations, similar to how the “job”
was simultaneously invented in Spain by the Benedictine
monks and in Japan by the Rinzai zen monks. The second is
called structural cognition, ways to apply ordinary mental
operators not to our usual 4 to 7 ideas at a time but to 64 or
128 or more ideas---in the same time but with higher quality,
more comprehensive coverage, more levels, more detail.
This is story one above--where one person produces 4 times
the total output of six other people in the same elapsed
time, including all their ideas and many more. This book
changes you in both these ways, if you read it all and do all
the exercises and tests in it. In two weeks to one month,
you will be thinking, every day, at levels dozens of times as
fast, comprehensive, diverse, detailed, multi-level as others.
COMPUTA-
TIONAL
DIALOG
One of Our Deeper Patterns You and I can get leverage, power,
lasting insight from a more abstract view of what overall is going
on in our era. There are many such abstract viewpoints available,
one of the more powerful ones is---a dialog among 5 known com-
putational system types that continually spawns ever more new
types of computational system.
All readers can appreciate this viewpoint. All you have to do is

observe how machine computer computation types, once invented
and installed, get us noticing similar computational system types
in biologic systems, in social systems, in how brains work, and in
web and dynamics of other mind extensions. Similarly, whenever
we uncover a new biologic or social computation type, in short
order, someone installs a version of it plus bold tweaks beyond it
on this or that machine computer platform. In truth this is a dia-
log, at present, among five computational system types--machine,
biologic, social, brain, mind extensions.
This is making everything, that is our models of everything, what

we notice in them and how we seek to tweak them, more:
evolutionary
biologic
computational
fractal
global.
In dozens of academic fields old static and equilibrium models and

maths are not unpublishable, boring, useless, out of date. In doz-
ens of industries huge “artificial natural selection” evolution sys-
tems invent drugs, design engines, allocate floor space, seek safe
investment portfolios, optimize policies for lasting impact. Aca-
demic fields and the professions associated with each used to wor-
ship at the shrine of Physics. No more--they all worship at the
shrine of Biology---new materials that sense where under strain
and grow themselves stronger there, that sense where broken and
repair themselves. Things that used to be fixed, determined,
decided by white male heros ruling inferior genders and races, are
now calculated at the moment of need, from interactions of actual
people in all their diverse views, races, values, genders, origins,
aims. Alvin Toffler 50 years ago in a book Future Shock wrote of
the world now being the wrong size--everything was either too big
or too small, too static or too chaotic---the MISSING MIDDLE, he
called this.
Now 50 years later computation, biologies, globalities, fractalities,

evolution fill that gap, constitute the NEW MIDDLE of all systems
and projects.
So whenever a new digital device appears, new system or cloud

appears, new networks or social apps appear--we can identify
clearly the specific evolutionary, biologic, computational, fractal,
global rails it rode, laid out by past devices-systems-clouds-apps,
now interpolated and extrapolated to new invention. This dialog
of computational systems types is a deep pattern that even allows
prediction of new devices to appear in the near future and predic-
tions of which present world-best things will rapidly decay and col-
lapse.
Updating the Foundations of Thought--Our Most Basic Mental
Processes & Media Among other things being made more evolu-
tionary, biologic, computational, etc. are some of great difficulty,
great antiquity, great leverage, and great promise. Most powerful
of these are media and interfaces, foundations of thought itself, so
ancient and omnipresent, so much an unthinking unchanged-for-
centuries part of all schools and universities world-wide they have
frozen multiple civilizations into thought processes, capabilities,
statis more and more inadequate for the challenges and world we
face.
how we notice
how we see
how we hear
how we read
how we model points in our various inputs
how we make those model useful to guide
invention/action
how we write
how we talk
how we present
how we discuss
how we meet
how we message
Each of the above are just now, in this book for the first time in
the world in our era, being made more evolutionary, biologic,
computational, fractal, global. Read the chapters that follow to
see exactly how this is done and what new powers, impacts, and
value it produces.
Where did the six tools of

Six Tools Six Theories of Mind
this book come from? Abstractly they are basic
input, model building from inputs, output appli-
cations of such models mental operations
updated from ancient media and interface form
to new more evolutionary, biologic, computa-
tional, fractal, global forms. Concretely they came
from three studies, some rather huge, of who the best thinkers in
the world are and what makes their thinking better than thinking
by all others. Three separate research strands contributed their
results---a study of the top 40 Harvard-MIT faculty for how their
thinking differed from average faculty there, a huge study of
8000+ eminent people from 63 professions and 41 nations for who
is top of each of those 63 fields and how (what capabillities) did
they rise to the top, and finally 80+ world famous designers whose
design processes were transcribed at the every 30 second level of
detail (making 500 to 800 page books on how they thought them-
selves through one design project), capturing in writing creative
thought processes.
So the six tools originated in empirical data from top people in

many fields and nations. However how and why particular tools
worked well for each top perfomer was often not clear to the top
performer involved or to researchers. Some 2000 books on skills,
cognitive linguistics, neural models of mental processes, text com-
prehension, communication theory, message theory, signal to
noise studies of web and face-to-face mental formats/processes,
artificial intelligence models of particular thought types--all these
research areas were surveyed to find why and how particular
empirically found tools worked well. The result was, associated
with each of the six tools of this book, one or several theories of
mind. This book presents both to you--the tools and their associ-
ated theories of mind.
A Brief Look at Those Theories of Mind Comprehension theory is

what built the SAT, GRE, ACT and other college entrance test ver-
bal ability sections. Strangely all those for-profit schools to up
such test scores, omit teaching and applying the very theory that
forms those tests. The tools in this book, on the other hand, have
huge impacts on such test scores. For the theory behind those
test items is presented here.
Causation is best understood as all that our minds do every second

of every day--babies are “child scientists” researchers now say--
they constantly ask themselves “what happens when I change X in
Y way?” They constantly fiddle with things--mini-instantataneous
experiments--babies are so motivated by their own such experi-
ments that if interrupted by lunch or a trip, hours later without
prodding on their own they will compete such experiments they
themselves have started. Causation is the bedrock of all we are
and do--we are in a huge dangerous powerful world and situating
ourselves well in it is enormously less pain and trouble than situat-
ing ourselves badly in it--so we pursue this lifelong project of fig-
uring out what we can do to enjoy more, live better, construct
alternative worlds to live and work in, better than situations that
otherwise are imposed on us by world and others.
Strangely schools do not teach us to read and hear all we input as

structured causal links--so we miss most action implications of
ideas we read. Strangely schools do not teach us the five funda-
mentally different types of cause in the world--instead they force
on us one or two causal types favored by ancient national borders
and ethnic cultures, leaving us lifelong missing 3 out of 5 causal
types.
Stories are almost always not heard/read not understood. They

distract without communicating to us anything other than style
and pop topicality (friends like this whatever this is). Our own
lives, careers, relationships as stories end up undesigned, un-
improved, un-understood, un-directed. We drift into mediocrity
and vile cul-de-sacs formed by modern venal media. Live and
minds get lost, like the movie Taxi Driver in swirls of crap from
venal media and peers. Stories, all stories, are about this--about
extracting yourself and your life from this. Ancient myths from
this and that era and culture, modern movies and novels, tales
from friends and family--all these are about extractig yourself
from “the system” “the machine” “the deadening effect so-called
’normal’ life”. Monsters in fairy tales and movies, whether
human or beast or alien lifeforms, are projections of powers within
us unadmitted by who we are and where we were born and raised.
We fight something external and fail till we realize its powers
come from unadmitted parts within us.
Schools and friends teach us that “words” communicate--this is

total error. For what my words X mean to me when composing
them depends on frameworks from my background missing in you,
so those same words recall entirely different feelings and valence
values in you, meaning entirely different things to you. Almost no
one uses this basis of all messaging and communication except
some of the employees of the world’s top ad firms and many of the
world’s top artists. To deliver a message we must craft words
PLUS a package around those words that transplant what frames in
us, missing in the target we message to, and what fraces in the
target missing in us as such frames form the meaning of the words
we transmit. This can be done and top performers have practiced
it till fast, easy and expert at it.
Insight dynamics--alternating engagement with detachment,

applied to ever more abstract representations of situations, accu-
mulating and indexing failures till in utter despair at solving as
who we now are and how we now think, freeing up beloved old
parts of our selves for change, bingo, sudden avalanches of solu-
tion = the insight itself appearing after months or years of failure.
No despair means no insight, ever. Insight’s cost is always
despair--there is not short cut so all those business school tech-
niques are emotionless, overly male, delusions of faculty incapable
of anything but elite analysis (one of the top college diseases).
Culture penetration is what all marriages are about, all jobs are
about, all product inventions are about--most of life and nearly all
value comes from crossing culture borders, operating across
diverse repertoires of shared practice routines held by this and
that group and person. Strangely culture penetration is just
insight dynamics applied across diverse repertoires of diverse
shared routines.
When we notice things, view situations, read, hear--we notice but

abstract frameworks and ideas inside us pre-narrow what we
direct attention to, and when we notice we have to name what it
is to recall and apply it later on. Strangely no schools and col-
leges directly teach this and practice us in it, though top perform-
ers practice greatly.
Microsoft menus, google search results, prose paragraphs, nearly

all our media and interfaces are irregular, messes, bushy--too
many different numbers of things, named sloppily, in irregular or
no order--so we miss nearly all points in nearly all we read, hear,
view, find. Top mental performers regularize in special ways that
turn bushes into ordered fractal patterns empowering instant
application.
Indexing is most of what our mind does--naming, combining, dis-

tinguishing, regularizing so inputs form models in our mind allow-
ing later recall and use. Top mental performers use the tools of
this book to turn bushy inputs into self indexing models in minds
that allow instant accurate applications and enhancement of
ideas.
SURE I’M RIGHT
This is not the book for this topic. Fundamentally all selves
are high performances (no one is you as well as you, has as
much practice in it), all selves are cultures (routines heavily
practiced with others, shared with others, therefore routines
expertly done without effort and no criticism from the others
sharing them). All cultures are selves and high perfor-
mances too. This means “the other” is always a threat to the
heavily practiced shared routines me and my acquaintances
practiced together into automaticity so we no longer know
them all, remember learning them, or have conscious access
to them. Strangers do not share these routines and slow us
down, force us into baby-hood again, do things we have no
learned fast easy reactions for. They spoil the game of being
self, culture, high performance. They turn self and culture
from high performances into inept blind processes that do
not work well. So we hate the other and minimize exposure
to it, invasion by it, collaboration with it. I have written
entire books on this, probably the best written thus far, and
readers interested in the above would do well to read them
Your Door to Culture Power and Culture Power--What Can Be
Done with It.
This book later presents message theory. It has several sim-

ple findings--words do not communicate (ever), each person
first receives unconscious emotion messages that pre-narrow
attention and determine what gets noticed, what some
words mean to the composer is their location in layers of
context inside the composer (what the words recall and
remind him/her of), what the same words means to the
receiver is what they recall and remind that receiver of
(never the same things in the life/head of the composer). To
communicate you have to wrap words in packages that trnas-
fer meanings from the frameworks recalled in the composer
mind to the framrworks engendered in the receiver mind.
These and other propositions are part of modern message
theory findings.
Now we are ready to tackle the biggest human problem---

each person, sure they are right, imposing that right-ness on
others, without ever seeing or admitting that their noticings
and rightnesses are tiny fractions of any situation faced, dif-
ferent fractions than ever other person viewing the situation.
None of us ever sees the entirety of any
situation.
Each of us sees a portion, limited by
frameworks
unconsciously operating inside our
minds.
Each of us insists what we notice is all of
reality in
situations faced, if there were more
“we would
have noticed it” we think, quite
wrongly.
Schools for some reason never convinc-
ingly train
us in this partiality to all we notice
lifelong.
By noticing what others notice in a situa-
tion we
we effortlessly fail to notice, again
and again,
for different others, we find ALL
actual situa-
tions enormously bigger than what we
notice.
Something in how we are raised and
schooled
makes us trust our noticings and never
experi-
ment with comparison with noticings
by others
in the same situation, thereby proving
we are
ever partial, biased, blind to much
going on.
The Comprehension Part of All This--what we notice in
talks, readings, observations In this book we do, early, jast
a few pages from now, a demonstration. We present single
small paragraphs and ask classes of people to spend half an
hour or more reading these tiny paragraphs and then tell us
the points, their number, their names, and how they are
ordered in the paragraph. No one comes up with the same
count, names of points, ordering, ever, not once in the many
years i have given this little demonstration to classes.
No one reads all the points, how many of them

there are, their names, how they are
ordered for any paragraph at all, lifelong,
except a few very trivial paragraphs with
almost no content.
We do not get the count, names, ordering of

points that others get BECAUSE we, and
they, never notice and “get” the actual
number, names of points, and ordering of
points there in any paragraph we hear or
read. We are BLIND to most of the points
around us.
[But as I said a page ago, we each are sure we

got all the paragraph said, though our
impression differs from that of all others--
we are narrow, partial, biased, always, yet
sure our narrow, biased view is “right”
because of the automatic, effortless, way
certain contents “appeared” to our minds.
It never occurs to us that these fast, easy,
automated processes operating inside us
may be bigotted, narrow, partial, biased,
dated, sloppy, distortive, or evil. The ease
and effortless operation of them bribes us
into trusting their results.]
The Source of All Meaning and How and Why We Always
Miss It In real estate price and value come from--location
location location. In reading and hearing and writing too,
meaning comes from location, location, location in layers of
context around any word phrase. Example--you, my read-
ers, are ugly monsters that I hate--said the sign above the
witches lair in the fairy tale by President Eisenhower. The
core word phrase--you, my readers, are ugly monsters that I
hate--sounds pretty false and horrible, but the meaning of
that phrase is neither false nor horrible--four contexts take
all the sting out of that word phrase---that phrase is on a sign
(context one), that sign is above where an imaginary crea-
ture (witch) lives (context two), that sign of the imaginary
character appears in a fairy tale (context three) and the
author of the tale is unlikey in the extreme, a General who
became President of the USA, Eisenhower (context four). In
a smiilar fashion, the meaning of any word phrase in a
speech, talk, chapter, article, discussion comes mostly from
the location of each phrase in layers of context.
What are such layers of context? In this book we use a spe-

cial word---Geometries of Thought. The overall configura-
tion of layers and orderings of ideas, into geometric
configurations of related points--is the structure and an
idea’s location in that structure provides 90+% of its mean-
ing. This is obvious because in most good writing the layers
of context are so powerful we can take out particular word
phrases and substitute meaningless symbols and yet correctly
guess the original words.
When we miss the count, the number of points, the names of

each point, the principle by which they are ordered, that is,
the geometry of thought, we miss the layers of context that
determine 90+% of the meaning of any sentence.
It is my statement here, earlly in this book, that you, all of
you who read this book, miss 90+% of nearly all that you
read, hear, view, observe each and every hour and day.
Gradually as you engage each chapter of this book, you will
become convinced this it actually true and not an exaggera-
tion.
All your life you and everyone you know has missed most of
the points and nearly all of the geometries of thought around
those points. Every friend, parent, teacher, college, school
practiced you in these bad mental habits till you now, as you
read this sentence, are a world-class point and geometry of
thought misser.
You are a world class point and geometry of

thought misser
How Did We Get This Way--What Made Us All Cognitively

Largely Ineffective? First, we use ancient unimproved-in-
centuries media and interfaces like prose. Prose is long
strings of symbols that make its points perfectly invisible.
People have to do laborious de-coding to “find” the points in
paragraphs, spoken or writtetn. Indeed prose is such a bad
interface that people good at finding points in it go to our
top colleges! Imagine an interface so bad that only the top
thinkers in the entire world can find the points it is for and
about!
Second, all schools and colleges from the worst to the best,
from the digi-tech bootcamp to the traditional grad school--
practice us in huge old sets of habits from these old media
and interfaces. Everything in our minds and work becomes
as nasty to find points in as prose is, because we use prose
for everything every day in every school of every quality.
Indeed Harvard and other top colleges are assemblages of
people masters of ancient bad interfaces and media. The
status hierarchy in our societies (and minds) makes us wor-
ship people great at the stupid game of “finding” points hid-
den in prose.
Third, there is a huge snob hierarchy of “correctness” oper-

ating throughout societies, assimilating daily the web, social
media, life itself to centuries old elites’ ways. Good and
proper and correct and publishable stuff is stuff that these
elites find fit their “ways”, which, in turn, tend to be
ancient and unimproved in centuries. You get to the “top”
to become “elite” by mastering what older elites respect and
are good at = ancient ways, handed down from elite to elite,
keeping societies as a whole unsmart.
Fourth, escaping old habits is hard work, not done at Harvard

because their professors and students are selected from
those great at old media and interfaces and proud of their
greatness--judging and awarding scholarships and careers to
people under them also becoming masters of prose and other
old ineffective media. Thus, the status hierarchy all around
us, rewards those great at ancient old media and interfaces.
We assimilate, praised by them, new media and interfaces to
old ways in our heads. In this way we all are made stupid by
the smartest people in our worlds.
The VISION of this BOOK Imagine being the ONE in

every situation who notices the many things all oth-
ers around are missing, who imagines alternatives
all others around cannot imagine, who see orderings
around points that determine 90+% of their meaning
that others miss. You end up living in a BIGGER
WORLD than all others, noticing more, imagining
more, doing more, meaning more and amazing all
around you.
AN ERA MUCH
BIGGER THAN
WE ARE
Imagine a world that seethes with multiple strands of innovation,
weaving, overlapping, contending, evolving rapidly, with many
diverse global locales spewing forth strands that go global and
weave with strands from very non-local locales. That is our world.
There are a number of infrastructures that have done this--the
web, primarily, and self publishing of videos and blogs and social
media profiles secondarily. An alternate world to this physical
world has appeared, a digital universe with everything human cop-
ied from the old physical world to this new seething evolving
accelerating digital world. If you stay calm and stable you fall
immensely behind and in five or so years are worthless to all oth-
ers. If you swim with all your might the same thing happens--you
cannot keep up. You are, we all are, doomed. We have already
become and will remain, ridiculous cruel bigot fragments of a
world far beyond us and growing farther beyond us. We store
knowledge in slow narrow-door brains and in the time it takes us
to store 7 ideas, a hundred new sources of ideas appear on the
web and social media--making our stored up ideas even more ridic-
ulous, partial, biased, useless, dated, pitiful. This is us today, now
as you read this.
We used to be, our grandparents, used to be, fragments of a huge

world of many cultures, professions, and nations. Each step of
success narrowed us but gave us depth and a community who knew
and interacted with us. We became good physicians or physicists
and thereby ignorant of most of the world, that is it’s other 200
professions. We contributed to the globe through a local commu-
nity (not much) and mostly through our profession’s forms of care
for others (more). Our fragmentary nature was in a static world
we occupied a place stably in.
Now is different. What “world” is has become fundamentally

fluid, seething, constant new sources of innovation coming on
stream with global reach. Situations can become (grow to) global
commonality in months and decline into global neglect in some
more months (MySpace for example). There are no stable situa-
tions to aim for, adapt to, plan for, prepare skills for. We are
land-lovers now on a sea--we need to see and ride and make
waves, not see and stand atop hills.
Some Extreme Fundamentals of Human Life and Work We can

net down consciousness itself to awareness, what we notice. Get-
ting our attention is essential for any collaboration, product, rela-
tionship in life--it all must start by being noticed, getting
attention. Only today it is not a static landscape with visitors or
trips, but a sea of seething diverse strands of intersecting innova-
tions we ride. Like white water rafting, it takes all our effort just
to stay afloat and ride the waves. That leaves little or no atten-
tion to devote to anything beyond ocean surface survival moves--
what we do to not drown in too much diversity, too mucy evolu-
tion, too many sources, too much change, too many things inter-
secting.
When Nothing Gets Done without First ATTENTION.... Then all

work whatsoever becomes creativity--for, by definition, creativity
is coming up with the utterly new, the valuable utterly new, the
not seen before, the not imagined, the beyond hope and thought.
Each retail chain, each clothing line, each Youtube channel--has to
get attention to survive and that requires negating self, continual
creativity.
The scene is now set--we are ready for implications of this descrip-
tion of our era and world.
IMPLICATION ONE--creativity and leading are becoming one

This is happenining in more than a dozen ways but five of them
anchor us in the idea and guide future development of us and our
careers:
1) CREATIONS THAT LEAD--example: products that

change or invent entirely new industries
2) LEADERS WHO CREATE--people whose leadership come
entirely from what they cause to be created
3) CREATORS WHO LEAD--creators whose work output
leads the world into invention of new directions,
needs, industries
4) LEADERS OF PEOPLE WHO CREATE--leaders who can-
not command for they must lead un-command-able
creators who must direct themselves into unsup-
ported, non-fitting, unpopular directions and out-
comes
and
5) LEADING CREATIVITY ITSELF IN NEW DIRECTIONS--cre-
ations that are not for self promotion of own career
or self promotion of next shampoo (making it appear
“innovative”) but that are historic in scale, changing
entire games and professions, wiping out markets
entire and establishing new worlds--creations that
change creativity itself, its scale, direction, out-
comes.
IMPLICATION TWO--Tools for Ordinary Mental Operations to Apply Well

to Our New More Evolutionary, Biologic, Etc. Things that need Think-
ing About Certain evolutionary, biologic, computational, fractal, global
models that are highly abstract can become resting places for thought--
stable viewpoints that reveal stable patterns amid the seething waves
and flows of our new world. This was the point in prior pages of this
book--the dialog among five computational system types whose copyings
of each other spawn ever newer forms of computational system. New
tools for thought that make ordinary mental operations we depend on
apply well to the more--evolutionary, more biologic, more computa-
tional, more fractal (multi-level, regularized), more global (diverse cul-
ture)--operands of our new world are both needed and, fortunately
emerging (presented in the rest of this book).
Tools Enabling Our Ordinary Thought Operations

to Apply to Our New Kinds of Things to be Thought
About:
1) MORE EVOLUTIONARY things to think about
hence ways to think
2) MORE BIOLOGIC things to think about hence ways
to think
3) MORE COMPUTATIONAL things to think about
hence ways to think
4) MORE FRACTAL things to think about hence ways
to think
5) MORE GLOBAL things to think about hence ways
to think.
IMPLICATION THREE--right models and top models become evil Our

old world had a hierarchy among professions, medicine and analysis
fields, at the top, anything that cared for people, especially in female
styles, at the bottom. Educations splintered into more and more nar-
rower and narrower professions, so each person, mind, body of knowl-
edge became and ever tinier fraction of the challenges we faced. Each
profession’s best model of a situation was ridiculously narrow, tiny, dan-
gerous, biased. Each top model, ones that had defeated all other infe-
rior models, was ridiculously narrow, tiny, dangerous, biased. The only
effective actions came from weaving multiple diverse models from each
of many diverse professions. Nothing in any present school, top college,
or bootcamp achieves this kind of mental capabililty today--hence the
growing immensity of unsolved problems our seething fluid evolving
world faces. Our only chance, to have knowledge with power that works
in our new world is:
1) plural diverse models in each profession in reper-

toires of models each compensating for biases
and flaws and sources of the others
2) such repertoires from plural diverse professions
3) TOOLS of thought that enable 1) and 2) above--
able to handle repertoires of plural diverse
models from plural diverse professions time
effectively without effort dissipating arguments
and cultural relativities
IMPLICATION FOUR--landscapes of leading and creating becom-

ing the same Both creating and leading face the same new bur-
geoning world--growing exponentially faster than our educations,
minds, habits, media, interfaces. By the time Harvard or MIT
develop a course on something, it is years old on the web and peo-
ple have moved beyond it--”higher” education has become
“deadly out of date” education. “Famous” professors have
become “dangerously out of date and narcissist, self praising” pro-
fessors. If we do basic geology of the new world we surf on rather
than sit on, we find 9 landscapes, 9 distinct sources of novelty we
face and need new tools of thought to handle:
1) BRAINS--knowing how they work determines

whether all we do helps or harms--all policies,
inventions must engage actual brain ways in con-
structive fashion
2) SOCIETIES--ancient instituted forms of male hor-
mone dynamics (territory, competition, beating
others, bombast, self praise, etc.) that were
taken in past eras for what being “social” was are
not seen to lead to mass murder and analytic
manias like global finance crises (2008/9)--all we
do must engage actual full social dynamics not
mythic male biased fragments of them
3) BIOSENSE--we used to use steel as our image of
strength, now bone is it--bone senses where
stressed and grows stronger there, it senses its
own breaks and repairs them; MIT and Harvard
each have 4 biology departments and only 2 phys-
ics ones---our commonsense about what is good
and excellent has become biologic
4) SYSTEMS--the stupidities of MBA faculty at Harvard
and elsewhere, plans and models and measures--
helped Robert McNamara lose America’s first war,
killing millions--now everyone can see that the
environment of step 2 of any plan is different
from the environment of step 1 due to reactions
of stakeholders to step 1 itself; this leads to
non-linear forms of acting, planning, reading
5) CULTURES--all selves are high performances and
are cultures, all cultures are self and high perfor-
mances--these three are all just collections of
shared heavily practiced routines; all cultures
bribe us into mistaking them for best or correct--
the ease, speed, unconscious automaticity with
which we enact shared practiced routines un-crit-
icized by others sharing them with us; thinking
beyond our own culture’s bribes is new and
requires new tools for thought not “diversity”
programs
6) TECHNOLOGIES--technologies interact today eco-
logically--symbiots, parasites, niches on other
niches etc.--the biologics of technology evolution
and interaction are typically missed by nerd engi-
neers overly male and living in centuries old
mechanosense not biosense
7) EMOTIONS--emotions travel faster than concepts
and pre-narrow what we notice, reducing how
much reality we see and respond to--the male
self-image of being emotion-neutral is a complete
lie and hides the emotional nature of territory,
status, self promotion, taking appearance over
care, and other male hormone effects; creativity
and productivity always involve making systems
and products more feminine, that is, undoing
eons of everything being rules by male emotions
masquerading as non-emotion Platonic Descartian
analysis.
8) MIND TYPES--there are twenty pairs of mind types
such that doing more of one way of thinking
reduces the other to dangerous levels--what we
like for example we are uninterested in, what
interests us, we dislike; anything we do has to
engage these costs of any one mind type being
favored or used
9) GENDERS--the diversity argument is harmful, cer-
tain TYPES of diversity help certain TYPES of task
and hurt other TYPES--with many diverse types of
diversity and task, mapping these relations is a
huge geography we operate on. we have to do the
mapping rather than bitch from this or that ideo-
logic refusal or messy complex diverse reality.
Furthermore, some types of diversity fail certain
task types due to no prior tries or poor tooling--
we have the task of developing tools for getting
some diversity types helping some tasks.
SIX OF 36
TOOLS
This course is a slice of a much bigger pie. You could call it
the beginning slice, or the foundation slice, or the monastic
innovation slice. All of those are correct. Each set of 9 tools
is for persons operating at different levels of reality they
engage. The first set, what this book presents, is about cog-
nition every second of every day--really basic input, model-
ing, output. No one who operates these mental functions
using standard “top” college ancient media and interfaces
can have much impact and escape the worst flaws and biased
of old male-dominanted institutions and activities. Slight
changes in the first level operations lead to huge increases in
productivity and creativity of thought.
INDIVIDUAL SEE-DO LEVEL--THE

INPUT-MODEL-OUTPUT LOOP
1) READ POINT STRUCTURES
2) READ CAUSE-EFFECTS
3) READ ACTION IMAGE STRUCTURES
4) IDEA FACTORING
5) MULTI-DIMENSIONAL NAMING
6) FRACTAL CONCEPT MODEL BUILDING
7) 3 PASS WRITING
8) FRAME WEB WRITING
9) ACADEMIC EVIDENCE/LOGIC COMPARE
WRITING
The second set of 9 tools are individuals to use to make

groups powerful. This involves helping groups get better
inputs, build better representations of what was in those
inputs, and therefore apply what was input faster and more
accurately. You use these tools to get great input-modeling-
ouput from each group you make or are in.
GROUP SEE-DO LEVEL--THE GROUP
INPUT-MODEL-OUTPUT LOOP
1) SCIENTIFIC RULES OF ORDER
2) STRATIFIED RESPONDING
3) WEB AND PHONE RESEARCH EVENTS
4) EDUCATE MIND EXTENSIONS
5) MIND DISTRIBUTIONS
6) GLASS BEAD GAME MODULES
7) STRUCTURAL REMARK MAKING
8) SHADOW & VIRAL MANAGEMENT
9) POWER CREATION AND USE
The third set of 9 tools is all about going beyond the present-
-by combining in more powerful ways, by extrapolating
beyond farther, by escaping limiting analysis and Descartian
biases of males and Western cultures. You use these tools to
escape all present assumptions, goals, persons, systems,
aims, circumstances.
CREATE LEVEL--THE COMBINE-

BEYOND-FEEL LOOP
1) DIMENSIONS OF DIFFERENCE ANALYSIS
2) SOCIAL DESIGN AUTOMATA
3) NATURAL SELECTION CREATIVITY
OPERATORS
4) FRACTAL MODEL EXPANSION
5) EXTREME METAPHOR GENERATION
6) CULTURES OF DEVELOPMENT, RISK,
HIGH PERFORMANCE
7) CARTOONING
8) ASSESS THE PURPOSES OF ALL ARTS
9) COMPOSE SONGS OF SELF AND GROUP
TRANSITION
After you know roughly what you are going to do and how you
are going to approach it, you engage realities in more con-
crete ways and end up with piles of problems to prioritize
and solve. Superficial partial biased solutions, or uncon-
scious aiming your efforts at the easy-for-you-to-solve ones,
results in shallow solutions that unravel and ruin efforts and
inventions. The tools of this fourth set of 9 undo the expan-
sion and broadening from getting creative and aim you well
and truly and what is vital, root, determinative. People
under-estimate how vital these tools actually are because
few people reach this level of actualizing something wonder-
fully new. Most of us are trapped in actualizing things only
nominally looking new or coming up with launches of new
things never carried through to actualization (the male hor-
mone hobby of stopping with mere appearance).
SOLVE LEVEL--THE CAUSE-SOLVE-

FOCUS LOOP
1) MODEL BASED INTERVIEWS
2) ROOT CAUSE ANALYSIS AND INTER-
VIEWS
3) CAUSE DISTRIBUTION DIAGRAMS
4) QUESTIONLESS QUESTIONNAIRES OF
SATISFACTION
5) EVOLUTIONARY PROBLEM SOLVING
6) OPTIMIZE INTENDED ENERGY FLOWS
7) CUSTOMER OF YOUR CUSTOMER FEA-
TURES
8) MINIMAL GRAMMAR DESIGN
9) LANDSCAPES OF DESIGN AND LEADER-
SHIP
Keeping in mind what Tools for Geometries of Thought are

For Remember, dear readers, that the above tools for
thought are needed because our usual mental operations
have to apply not to static located things as in past centu-
ries, but to seething, weaving, rushing, evolving things in an
accelerating stream with new sources coming on line of glo-
bal reach hourly. Our old media and interfaces of thought
simple are overwhelmed and totally inadequate for handling
these new operands we have to think about.
Getting Personally Algorithmic People quite generally are

stupid. They see and feel themselves as tool-less and
method-less. That is a terrible mistake. They have labored
to learn, automated via repeated practice, particular pro-
cesses in their lives and now those routines operate effort-
lessly, easily, quickly unconsciously inside the, creating the
illusion that we do things without steps, method, tools.
Most people refuse new tools and practice of them due to the
mistake that their smooth, easy, effortless, rapid response
adult selves are without method. That is a tragic mistake
(unless you compete with these people in which case it is a
great advantage to you).
The Practice Doorway from Back to Baby-hood To add

something powerful to our selves requires two unpleasant
things---starting out with steps we are not familiar with or
masters of, that is, becoming a baby again. Many people
refuse change due to the unpleasantness of this. Secondly,
change requires practice--taking at first slow laborious un-
natural steps and repeating them till they become fast, auto-
matic, effortless, quick and unconscious, requiring little or
no attention. Thirdly, change, adding something to our lives
requires killing a part of us we love. We cannot add things to
us--we have to make space for them by stopping old parts in
the way and filling that void, once made, with better rou-
tines.
These three are so difficult that in practical reality all per-

sonal change, improvements in capabiiity, require a new
transition community of different friends and acquaintances
to interact with--ones who do not know the old us and who
welcome the new us trying out new routines. Your old
friends and family, primary group they are called, will be
enemies of any serious changes you attempt because such
changes force changes on them in the routines they share
with you and practiced together with you growing up or
working together. To master the new tools of this book you
may have to assemble around you a new set of acquaintances
and friends who do not know you and who welcome the you
with new routines.
The Personally Algorithmic YOU There is a change that

happens unexpected to writers. I, for example, will work on
an elaborate 50 page table of contents for years for a new
book till, after letting it hang around for a year or two, I no
longer hate it and no longer easily find flaws and dated and
self indulgent crap in it. I will gather 200+ books while toy-
ing slowly off and on with this giant table of contents. When
the contents is done, good enough, I assemble 50 or so books
for each chapter, and dialog--writing off the top of my head
some sections, and building models to support and challenge
that from my assembled books. Along the way I teach
classes based on portions of the developing book--key chap-
ters turned into 3 week sections of this or that course. See-
ing reactions of top EU, top Asian, top USA students helps a
lot, exposes poor or overly complex presentation. Amid all
the above comes something unexpected. Somehow, without
any intention to do so, I end up using for my personal other
projects and consults portions of each developing chapter,
not as idea I present but as algorithms of how I input, model,
output, combine, go beyond, feel, find causes, solve, and
focus. Particular models I turn into six or 8 steps to follow
and I find those steps out-perform my “natural “ mind and its
easy well trodden ways. There is awkwardness in this as
these new protocols are not nearly as easy or effortless and
masterfully done as my old ways--but something in their new
sources gives them power to extend me, to make a bigger
better more impactful me. I become a body of enhanced and
more algorithms. There are things I can automatically
notice, operate on, and apply that all my prior life I could
not, often also that others around me cannot do.
You Personal Algorithm Library Turning every experience

or reading or input into new capability and new situations to
handle well is your lifelong responsibility and pleasure. The
sooner you assess the number, variety, coverage areas of the
algorithms you already use unconsciously well, and target
new algorithms to substitute or add to them--the sooner you
open up larger bigger better worlds to engage and impact.
Your worlds expand, you expand, life expands, impact
expands, and what to further learn, expands. We can image
some white light at the end, as we, like characters in Clark’s
old book Childhood’s End see beyond earth, self, human
form, life itself--becoming one with the cosmic processes
that make and unmake us.
THE FLOW OF
THIS BOOK’S 6
TOOLS
The “geometry of thought” the tools in this book are arranged
in--input, model, output--is not accidental. it is elemental and
very very important. The full loop has to be part of every tidbit
of education or else people pile up ideas while developing the
habit of not remembering or using them = normal schools and
colleges.
However, readers need to pay attention. The loop is inputs,

from which we build models inside our minds (and perhaps dia-
grammed outside our minds at first), which models we use to
generate outputs that are new both to the world and to we our-
selves. Without inputs changing something inside us from which
we later operate, inputs are wasted---they create feelings of
doing something that never amount to anything = ususal schools.
Between inputs and new outputs comes models that change
what we notice and what alternatives we imagine = expand us
so we live lives in a bigger world.
As the first diagram above shows---the six tools are organized as

3 input tools, 2 model building tools and 1 output tool. This is
somewhat deceiving for the output tool--fractal concept mod-
els--proposes itself as replacement for prose text in all its
forms. So the six tools loop here ends not in usual strings of
anonymous text hiding its points, prose, rather with a replace-
ment to prose that displays instantly and fully all its points, the
number of them, all their names, and how they are ordered. So
you can read completely knowing you got all the points and
instantly after reading you can apply all the points read--both of
these are unlike prose where we almost never read all the
points (only geniuses can find them, that is why we have verbal
SAT and GRE tests) and therefore where we actually never
apply all points (because we never input them into our minds)
because we have no complete detailed multi-level well named
model of the points we just read to apply. So 3 tools for input,
2 tools for building models of points gotten by inputting, and 1
tool for outputting, not usual prose but something far more
powerful and visually “grabbing” than prose--fractal concept
models, a way of writing proposed as a replacement for prose.
Readers will notice the first set of 9 tools presented above in

this book had 3 tools after the 6 in this book and those 3 addi-
tional tools were all ways of writing. In the context of those 9
tools (our six in this book plus 3 new ways of writing) fractal
concept models are really ambiguous---either viewable as mod-
els to build from inputted points or as outputs of models once
built. In the 9 tools context the outputs are 3 kinds of writing,
and fractal models stay within minds as what generates such 3
writing types.
The Three Input Tools This book presents Reading Point Struc-
tures, Reading Causes, and Reading Action-Image Structures.
Most fundamental is reading point structures--this has to be
done first always. From it we can then read cause-effect links.
From it we can then read action image structures. In a way
there is ONE input tool--diagramming geometries of thought
with the thought targetted changing from ordinary prose
“points” to “cause-effect links” to “action-image structures”.
In each case the diagramming method and result is the same,
only the contents in the boxes change. To do causal reading for
example you first do reading point structures then label each
box as either a cause or an effect and draw arrows linking
causes to effects in other boxes. In reading action and image
structures you read point structures of the actions in a passage
and read point structures in the images of a passage and put
both diagrams on one page opposite each other.
The Two Model Building Tools When you input the points out
there to be noticed (and not your own biased distortions of them
omitting ones that challenge your own prior ideas) you have to
turn those points noticed into something enduring, findable, and
use-able that changes what you notice and imagine as alterna-
tives in the future. Without such models being built of any input
points, you not only forget them, lose access to them, and never
apply them, but assimilate them to old familiar views you have
never noticing anything different = never learning anything from
much inputting.
The two model building tools presented in this book are where
all bigottry and bias starts--mis-abstracting what is shared by a
series of ideas and mis-naming what remains of a series of ideas
once their common element is factored out. Mis-abstracting
and mis-naming were frequent tiny mundane instantaneous
mental operations where the foundations for bias and mass mur-
der are laid, thought by thought in our lives and systems.
The One Output Tool Fractal concept models are: one, a pro-
posed replacement for prose; two, where the web with its likes-
comments-blogs are heading us; three, ways to make each docu-
ments and experience, speech and page, self index itself for us
so the points form regular patterns easy for out minds to recall
and later apply. Prose itself makes application impossible for
only a few geniuses can even find in prose the points hidden in
it. And the points hidden in it are, quite possibly because they
are hidden, irregular in everything--in count, in naming, in
ordering, making it impossible for us to remember the number,
just the number of points in any one paragraph (unless it is ter-
ribly simple and without content).
Fractal concept models are regular in three or more ways---the

same number of sub-ideas under any one main idea, the same
format of names on any one level of a point hierarchy, and the
same order found in top level points repeated by analogy on all
lower levels of points. These regularizations offend and violate
centuries old habits in us. We casually write there are 3 causes
of World War II, 2 consequences of the Treaty of Versailles, and
so on. Those numbers in schools are treated as “truths” for us to
memorize and nearly all of us grow up treating such numbers as
“true”. This is ridiculous--there are 3 causes, 19 causes, 2104
causes, 212,997,114 causes, indeed, any number of causes of
anything we want. Causes are relative to the amount of impor-
tance and detail we need for the task at hand. Some tasks
require 2 causes, other tasks require 25 causes, still other tasks
require 4500 causes. The granularity, it is called, at which we
view things comes from the granularity at which we intend to
act on things. Our minds are filled with arbitrary numbers
taken as truths wrongly. Fractal page forms and concept models
replace these arbitrary numbers with regular patterns of num-
bers--3 things each of which has 3 sub-things each of which has 3
sub-sub-things and so on, 4 things each of which has 4 sub-things
and so on. This offends our mental habits from ineffective
schooling. So we always get resistance to fractal concept mod-
els from the ineffective centuries old rules in our schools that
they violate.
What We Never Read, Hear, Notice, Observe--the vast reality

we always MISS nearly all of Three initial exercises--Test
Yourself sections--follow below. It is important that you
attempt all three with all your heart and capability. They and
they alone will produce the realization in you needed for the
rest of this book to help you. ONLY readers who discover, on
the 3 pages that follow this page, how much they miss of all the
points always around them--ONLY those readers will be modest
enough, open enough, worried about quality of their minds’
present habits enough--to learn truly the rest of the stuff in this
book.
Some readers, without those exercises, may from the argument

I make in the following sentences of this paragraph do the same-
-but this will be far fewer readers. I have tested over 8000+
eminent people in 63 professions and 41 nations, over a period
of 7 years in my Excellence Science Research Project at the Uni-
versity of Chicago. For these and many later others I gave a set
of 5 paragraphs of 200 words each on diverse topics, most of
undergrad college reading difficulty level. Out of 8000+ people
getting these paragraphs over a 7 year period, only 2 (out of
8000+) got the count of points correctly, none got the names of
points correctly, none detected the ordering of the points, none
got the number of layers the points were in, none got the over-
all geometry those layerings comprised, none got which points
cause which other points, none got all the imagery telling how
the author wanted readers to feel about the points. In other
words, out of six dimensions of meaning, only 2 out of 8000+
people got one dimension correctly. I suspect those 2 got the
number of points correctly out of sheer luck of guessing. That
means 7,998 people got none of the points, their number,
their names, their ordering, their layering, their geometric
configuration, their imagery correctly. What did those 7,998
people get from what they called “reading”? They scanned the
text for poitns that fit their pre-existing views and prejudices.
They extracted the first easy subset of the points that chal-
lenges none of their present ways and views. That is what we
all call “reading” and “listening” and what schools including
Harvard taught us to call “reading” and “listening”.
What Do We Do with the Few Points we Scan We do largely

nothing--we attempt to memorize individual points, not turning
them into models or at most adding them to models we have
long had and favored--bolstering us against learning and growth.
We generally do not build models of points read/heard and use
them to challenge different models already inside us.
Worse than that, even when we attempt to build models of

especially interesting or relevant points, we fail at factoring out
of a string of adjacent ideas the common more abstract idea
they all share and comment on. Also, we give names to points
that reflect only where they fit in our existing preferred ways of
vewing reality. We distort any details of points or whole points
that do not fit our pre-existing beliefs. We actively strip out
anythng different, non-fitting, challenging of our ways.
On a macro level this astonishes. Harvard faculty when pre-

sented with changes in business practice worldwide from Japan,
took what was team oriented in Japan and made it individual,
took what was everyman empowerment in Japan and made it a
manager-only perogative, took what was statistical in Japan and
made it formulaic, and in a dozen other ways, assimilated what
made Japanese total quality total and superior to US profession-
delivered quality and stripped out precisely those parts leaving
behind a ruined shell that perfectly replicated just those weak-
nesses of Americans and their ways that caused Japan to defeat
the USA in 11 industries in the 1980 and 1990s. Clark and
Wheelwright at Harvard published books doing this--demonstrat-
ing on every single--every single--page this assimilation to Amer-
ican neuroses and omission of anything challenging American
ways. Harvard faculty clearly publically in this way failed to
turn inputs into models that changed ability and power.
The Output Problem Later in this book I show the branch fac-
tor diagram of a simple paragraph--3 mains points, the first has
5 subpoints, the second has 2 subpoints, the 3rd has 4 subpoints,
the first subpoint has 3 subsubpoints, and so on. To recall just
the count of points at every level in the paragraph requires
remembering a random-looking string of 51 numbers! THINK
ABOUT THAT. The irregularity of branching of points to sub-
points---the bushyness--of how we express, think, and write/
talk makes remembering/recalling the NUMBER of points impos-
sible-that is not even considering the other five dimensions of
meaning--names, ordering, layers, geometries, causes, imagery.
Look at any two prose facing pages--they perfectly hide all
their six dimensions of meaning--count of points, names, order-
ings, layers, geometries, causes, imagery. Prose is an interface
so bad it hides its contents rather than gives access to them--yet
all our schools and website and “top” professors promote prose.
THREE MENTAL
TASKS
ENOUGH EXER-
CISES
Above are 3 small exercises--one on proper inputting, one on proper
turning of inputs into models, one on regularizing models into great
ouputs. Readers need to know, here, clearly, that I have put just
enough exercises of just enough challenge in this book that if you do
all of them sincerely, no matter whether fast or slowly, you will get
enough practice to be far beyond all others in ability to input, model,
and output. This book is enough; the exercises and tests in this book
are enough practice to turn the ideas in this book, the procedures in
this book, the six tools of this book into new powers of you.
There are enoug exercises of the right level

of challenge in this book that if you do
them all sincerely, your actual practical
powers for inputting geometries of
points, turning them into regularized
models, and outputting new forms of
writing better by far than prose will suf-
fice to put you far beyond all others in
hourly, daily, weekly mental productiv-
ity.
The first exercise above. This is one of those 5 200-word each para-
graphs I used years ago with 8000+ people to test their ability to find
points. No one got the count, names, ordering, layering, geometry,
causes, or imagery correct for this simple 200 word paragraph. 8000
out of 8000 people got all six meaning dimensions wrong. So this is
my challenge to you:
Can you get 3 of 6 dimensions of meaning--

count, names, ordering--of a 200 word
paragraph in 20 minutes of what you call
“reading”? Well, can you? Test yourself
above.
Of course in real life, taking 20 minutes to get 3 of 6 dimensions of

meaning from a 200 word paragraph is a bit slow and partial. In
real life, after reading this book and doing all its exercises, you
should be able to get 6 of 6 dimensions of that and similar 200
word paragraphs in about 2 minutes.
The second exercise above In the second exercise you are pre-
sented with three sets of six sentences each and asked to name
the overall topic shared by those six sentences (three names total
then). Again you have 20 minutes to do the task, turning 3 sets of
six sentences each into 3 topic names, one for each set.
Notice you are not asked to rename the individual sentences

showing what they are when, what they share, is removed from
them all. In real life turning of input points into models, you do
both---name the shared topic, abstract it from individual sen-
tences or paragraphs--and rename the items it is extracted from to
show their point names without the shared element you just
named.
This exercise is very very hard to do well but people I have

trained, hundreds of them, do it 20 times as fast and 100 times as
accurately as normal Harvard people and professors do. This is a
skill that nearly everyone can move to far beyond Harvard profes-
sor levels (I know because Chomsky led me in a research project as
an MIT undergrad in how the thinking of Harvard’s top 20 (and
MIT’s top 20) faculty thinkers differed from average faculty think-
ing at those institutions. I know.
The third exercise above. This exercise asks your mind to

detect the geometry of thought that some point constitute then
regularize that geometry so as to express it as 3 things divided into
3 subpoints each, with the order of the top 3 things repeated by
analogy among the lower level 3 sets of 3 subpoints.
Strangely no college in the world today as this book is being writ-

ten teaches this. When I wrote my first book Structural Cognition
as an MIT undergraduate reporting my research for Noam Chomsky,
I had several chapters on this mental skill for we found it operating
in top 20 Harvard and top 20 MIT faculty but not in average faculty
there. Very few top thinkers regularize geometries of thought
input, for that matter very few of them notice geometries of
thoughts among points read/heard.
The Worked Examples Parts of This Book Each of the six tools
presented in this book has a section on Worked Examples. Also
those six Worked Example sections are gathered together at the
end of this book as an appendix because the Work Examples sec-
tions all take one large prose paragraph and read its point struc-
ture, its cause-effect links, its action-image structures, factor
common ideas shared by subpoint series in it, name those topics
and rename the subpoints the topics were derived from, and regu-
larize that geometry of thought into a fractal concept replace-
ment-for-prose model page. Seeing all six tools one after the
other applied to one input is a powerful resource this book pro-
vides (provided in no other book at the time of this writing).
A “Domain Knowledge “ Warning on Both the Exercises and the

Worked Examples This book is about monastic innovations in
deep fundamentals, ancient fundamentals you could say, in sev-
eral of our more heavily used per hour mental processes. Many
readers--my experience with class and consult has shown--make
the mistake of importing domain knowledge about a text or
speech, or model from wikipedia or other sources, hoping to fill in
from abroad what they fail to read in a particular text. This is a
disaster. It is a form of cheating yourself. It devastates your
total mental capability, eroding it over a period of years into fat,
slob, incompetent middle age levels of performance.
You are being asked in this book to input--what is there--in a text

or talk--not to ignore what is there and scan other sources on simi-
lar topics. Though you can actually read poorly five or ten sources
and combine their partial pieces into some overall sloppy model of
a topic, that does not ever come near matching what carefuly
reading of one decent quality source produces. Fused shallow
scans do not add up to precise, comprehensive, detailed, multi-
level models of geometries of thought.
The EVIL WEB Eroding Mental Capabilities Quite Generally The

web has become a way to find out about things, whenever what a
particular source, text, talk seems difficult to us. Instead of mas-
tering the reading/hearing of geometries of thought inside particu-
lar texts and talks, young generations habitually read shallowly
and go to other sources to “get info” on a topic. Everything they
input is bits, pieces, factual dust I called it in the Preface of this
book. Such people end up “knowing everything” and “thinking
nothing”. They are full of pieces that do not add up, that form no
patterns or abstract structures, that guide no action streams or
reveal no high leverage places to intervene in lives and the world.
They are, in a phrase, wasted effort.
Long hard books when read (which is rare even by Harvard faculty)
expose you to organizations of thought different than your own in
authors’ minds. Writing long essays or books forces you to dis-
cover what you think on topics and forces you to organize what
you think, though few authors realize the geometry of thought
they just wrote down. A few authors--Henry James the American
novelist is one--actually diagram out geometries of thought and
sentence by sentence execute them (see his short novel The Bel-
donald Holbien, said to be the world’s most boring novel-it has a
perfect bridge structure of points from beginning to end--all early
points having a corresponding opposite ending point).
Creative Genius Other work--five books on creativity I wrote

decades ago--listed stages toward creative genius--that is mental
stages towards creativity that changes entire fields and history
itself (not petty corporate “innovation” degrees of creativity):
1) GEOMETRY NOTICING noticing geome-

tries of thought
2) GEOMETRIES USED ordinary mental oper-
ators applied to geometries of thought
not just to individual points
3) REGULARIZED GEOMETRIES USED ordinary
mental operators applied to fractal reg-
ularized geometries of thought
4) PLURAL REGULARIZED GEOMETRIES USED
two distinct fractal geometries of
thought together used to generate a
third or other outputs
5) CONTRADICTORY REGULARIZED GEOME-
TRIES USED two conflicting or contra-
dictory fractal geometries of thought
together used to generate a third or
other outputs.
Isaac Newton is a great example of the above stages. The vast

majority of his experimenting and theory building was entirely
trapped in the mania of his era for short cuts for turning various
cheap materials into gold, the alchemistry delusion. Newton
wrote thousands of pages of mental junk with just a few iceberg
tops rising about his ocean of junk--optics, physics of motion. The
two shining climaxes of his work that made him famous centuries
later in our day, are at stage four or five above--unusually pure,
pruned, simple, minimal, undistracted, regular, ordered points
force to interact beyond all common beliefs and prejudices.
History changing scale creations are always at the levels 4 and 5

above. The coindience of great simplicity and focus along with
equally great contradiction of models/ideas used--generates (cre-
ates) history changing creativities.
It has to do with forcing ideas to interact--not hordes of disordered

ideas, and not some of a set of ideas with some of another set---
but ALL ideas of a lean set with ALL ideas of another contradictory
lean set. Complete, hard (overcoming contradictions), forced
interactions of contradictory lean sets of ideas--generate our high-
est level surprises and changes of entire fields and histories.
Knowing COVERAGE, LEVEL, COMPLETENESS, DIVERSITY of Idea

Sets/Models Knowing if our model or any set of our ideas covers
all dimensions, sources known on a topic; knowing if our model or
idea set covers all levels, from most abstract and general to most
detailed and concrete; knowing if all the ideas in a model/set/text
are covered/used; knowing how much diversity of model/idea/
source/text is involved in a model or set of ideas---these are
dimensions of judgment at the core of high mental performance of
any sort. There are no short cuts around knowing these aspects of
your own knowledge on something. Of course when such knowl-
edge reveal lack of coverge, missing levels, incompleteness (miss-
ing core ideas), little diversity--you have much work to do and can
expect your models or sets of ideas to perform poorly or to
achieve something other than you aim to achieve.
EVERYTHING IN THIS BOOK

AND THE COURSE THAT USES
IT AS TEXT IS FOR THE EXER-
CISES (small assignments)--
THEY, DOING THEM, IS WHAT
CHANGES YOU FOR THE BET-
TER, NOT READING SOME
IDEAS AND STORING THEM IN
YOUR MIND. THIS IS NOT A
BOOK/COURSE
MONASTIC
LEVEL INNOVA-
TIONS
Change the most
heavily used-per-hour
foundations of thought
= key interfaces and
media for thought
At left is an illustration of Monastic level Innovations. You

change very frequently used mundane things nobody has
upgraded in centuries, and the new capabilities from even
marked so I know later connectors to
and from it might need change due to
its new location and environment.
At the end I scan the outline created,

choose an average branch factor (how
many subideas any one idea has),
input that and the outline, all of it,
reorganizes to have that one branch
number throughout on every level of
detail. Blank boxes naming groups of
topics appear as do blank boxes nam-
ing details missing due to the branch
factor being a larger number than the
number of details I first sloppily
wrote. I fill in these blank boxes and
as I do so the prose reorganizes at left
with blinking box names where I need
to elaborate mere topics into full sen-
tences.
When all blanks have been filled and

turned into sentences and when con-
nectors of all sentences and para-
graphs have been checked and
edited, the final forms--a prose form,
and an outline form, appear. I click
edit or approve and if I click approve
a series of geometry formats appear I
can choose from that the app will fill
up with my outline AND prose con-
tents, using the outline items as topic
names and the sentences as explana-
tions of each topic.
This is the DUAL STREAMS approach to

such a new word processor--having
before users constantly a prose side
and an outline side, so changes in one
instantly reorganize the other. Then
regularization operators, at any time,
can be imposed by the writer,
instantly reorganizing both the prose
and the outline track. Another
approach is TRIPLE TRACKS--with a
sloppy prose, outline regularly regu-
larized, and fractal geometry display
third colum--all co-developing in real
time as I contribute to ANY of them.
Automatic Generation of Geometries of Thought Hidden in

Prose This is not going to happen in the next century--no
one is even going to come close. There are so many missing
components in contemporary artificial intelligence and in its
direction of evolution that we need not bother waiting for
several centuries. Most importantly, stupid technology
dreams like this, freeze us from developing tools of great
power now. They discourage long term investment in more
immediate useful tools by sucking morons into dream worlds
of self advancement rather than technology or tool advance-
ment. They become famous Harvard egos sucking money
that could have done hundreds of times more without male
hormone monkey hierarchy forces distorting thought and
investment. There are lots of good books on this but some of
the best are by a former President of Harvard, Derek Bok, 35
years ago.
A World Where We GET Nearly All the Points Others Make
(Plus Our Own Points) What changes when we input all the
points that are there in the other layers of context (meaning)
from lives different than our own? What are the changes
that happen to us?
I sit in classes and hear, simultaneously, as consult clients or

grad students speak, both all the points they are making and
the geometric configuration of them and the limited life
experiences and limited abstract frameworks in those others
that generated those points--i identify while listening a half
dozen highly relevant frameworks completely missing or sup-
pressed by each person talking, while also seeing perfectly
the geometry of thought they produced but usually are not
aware of. In business this leads to immense power--auto-
matic leadership regardless of formal position. You see the
points, all of them, someone makes, especially the ones you
yourself would not have valued or noticed and you see doz-
ens of equally or more relevant to that viewpoint points they
missed or suppressed or simply never imagined and never ran
into.
Now consider the thousands of Point Structure Diagrams I

have made over the years, and repeatedly used, till many
hundreds of them are memorized and fully recall-able within
my mind without reviewing notes. I notice dozens of
aspects of every situation missed by those around me. This
experience is best remembered by your first boyfriend or
girlfriend--remember them? They heard you talk for a while
and instead of being drawn into your viewpoints, at the end
of your words they somehow acknowledged the whole frame-
work you were operating within while dismissing it due to
this or that deep limitation--a humiliating experience we all
go through in middle school years. How did they see abstract
frameworks I built my mind and life around that I had never
noticed?
As I have said several times before in this book---finally you
live in a bigger world than all others. You notice what no
one else notices, dozens of things in any person or situation
or idea, and you imagine alternative ways to go that no one
else considers. These are real practical powers leading you
to a bigger life, bigger impacts, bigger circles of interest and
engagement--a bigger life.
My new word processor--I need a name for it, not yet forged-
-would allow you to compose in three diverse degrees of
structure simultaneously, playing one off against the others,
with the software automatically prompting changes in the
other two from whatever you put in one of the three. I have
set several generations of my grad students on this task and
have pieces that hint at something history-changing.
THE EVIL “TALENT
STORY”
Let me tell you a short true story For 120 years the psy-
chology profession and its associated academic departments
in top US universities, through its journals refused to publish
any research on great human performance except “talent”
studies--all great performances of all sorts by all humans
were, for 120 years of psych publishing in the USA, due to
people with “lots of” talent.
This was overthrown in the late 1900s by Ericcson and Simon-

-software people from Carnegie Mellon. They took arbitrary
even ridiculously hard top human performances of dozens of
sorts and by getting inside-the-mind every 30 second protocls
of how people achieved these feats, creating training in
those protocol elements, they then selected “anyone” and
trained them to world best performances of “any” sort. It
took them 10 years of increasingly well published in top non-
psych journal results before a single psych journal was will-
ing to publish them---why?
The British Aristocrats that set up Harvard, Princeton, and

the male hormone monkey hierarchy of this professor is
higher and better than that professor, this idea is higher and
better than that idea, in the USA, to preserve their class
privileges, denied scientific investigation to any theory of
high human performance that did not derive it from supe-
rior family blood lines such as aristocrats alone had. For
120 years this held sway in American journals till software
people embarrassed all of psych into including studies show-
ing--repeated professional practice of expert protocols as
an alternative (and faster and more democratic) route to top
mental performances.
All of academia, 120 years ago, 60 years ago, today, and 60

years from today, is filled absolutely filled with this sort of
bigotry, intellectual bigotry. Academics, their journals,
their promotions committees--have their manias and impose
them on any supposed “research result” that does not con-
form to how they want reality to be.
Now consider a civilization that takes its greatest thinkers

and isolates them with special exams so that nearly no one in
their entire population gets exposed to them, taught by
them, inspired by them, mentored by them, networked with
them. Imagine that committee of leaders in that civilization
discussing this arrangement--”I think the best thinking should
be hidden, isolated, kept away from ordinary people and
reserved only for a tiny fraction of all people”. Of course
they needed an excuse because without something more,
this is obviously suicide for the civilization and evil for its
population. So they added--”99.999% of all our people are
too “lacing in talent” to learn, so let’s make exams to weed
out everyone and leave behind a tiny fraction who we allow
to meet and work with our top thinkers”.
For centuries, moronically, European societies and the USA

did this, exactly this, for exactly these reasons. The web,
the internet, in our era, has revealed the suicidal and evil
nature of these arrangements, formerly unquestionned for
eons. The so-called “knowledge crisis” in our era, is just
everyone discovering that for centuring, universities were--
not only NOT universal but were ANTI-universal, excuses for
restricting access to new and top knowledge to wealthy
elites only--making entire populations less smart and less
capable of changing elites. That elites, in many nations,
century after century, perpetuated this evil system, reveals
something about the habit of evil endemic in our elites,
endemic for centuries.
Your deepest life learning begins when you emotionally real-

ize at some point in your life that all those you have all your
life looked up to and respected might well be evil and from
the results they produce, must be quite evil.
When you realize that a door opens. You realize most people
lack “top” “talent” or “mental skill” not due to lack of “tal-
ent” but due to centuries old hoarding of knowledge institu-
tions throughout societies and their vertical status
hierarchies. A major part of that hoarding knowledge, limit-
ing access, system was and is “the talent” story--that you,
readers of this book, “lack the talent” for elite performance-
-baloney!!! Baloney!!! Baloney!!!! Realizing the scientific
dishonesty of the talent story and all research on talent,
allows you to open the door to “any wonderful kind or level
of thinking those elites can do, I can also, in a few months of
practice match and surpass”. Every reader of this book is
capable of world top mental performance, matching and
surpassing top 20 Harvard-MIT faculty ways of thought, and
can do that in about six weeks by completing the core 16
exercises of this book.
THE DOOR THAT DEMYSTIFYING ELITES OPENS:

“any wonderful kind or level of thinking those
elites can do, I can also, in a few months of prac-
tice match and surpass”
The Page Above, One Paragraph and Five Geometries of

Points It Presents What are you now missing, in mental
capability? One answer is on the page above. There is one
paragraph there--try reading it right now and counting the
number of points it makes, their names, how they are
ordered, their layers, and the overall geometry they consti-
tute.
On the left side of the above page is the paragraph at top.

On the right side is four versions of ONE STRUCTURE of points
in the paragraph. Each diagram, of the four down that right-
hand side, derives from abstracting something from the dia-
gram above it. The first diagram shows the number, names,
ordering of points in the paragraph, as TOPICS AND TOPIC
GROUPS. The second diagram “reads” abstractly each box
of the first diagram identifying the FUNCTION it plays. The
third diagram abstracts from the first two diagrams a SEC-
OND LEVEL OF ABSTRACT TOPIC/FUNCTION. The fourth dia-
gram rewrites the paragraph using that 3rd level diagram
with details from the first diagram. These have names;
1) topic level point structure diagram

2) function level point structure diagram
3) topic of topic level point structure
diagram
4) proposition level point structure dia-
gram
5) bubble blow up view of any of 1
through 4 above
(5 is the bubble diagram at left under
the paragraph).
Now all those types of point configurations, layers, geome-

tries, names, orderings, functions, topics, propositions are
there in all you have ever heard or read but you have
missed nearly all of that all your life. Most of the points and
their arrangements in all inputs to you, have been entirely
missed by you. Only because everyone around you is as
bad as you and has been for centuries do you get away with
this dismal level of input performance in your life.
The nice thing is only the very top 20 faculty at Harvard and
MIT, in my research years ago, grasped some of the points,
their count, their names, their ordering, their layering, their
geometry. Those top thinkers in US society missed more
than 60% of all that in everything they heard and read. By
getting 40% they amazed us all because most of us missed
even more--nearly all points, count, names, orders, layers,
geometries. In a world where everyone’s mind operates at
dismal levels of performance, those who are less dismal rise
to the very top and “shine”, get worshipped, get obeyed,
and as elites ruin their societies because they superior brain
performance it, though superior, quite horrid in absolute
capability for frunction terms.
This is good news for readers of this book. If you can stop
worshipping Harvard and realize that in short order you can
mentally perform better, far better, than their top faculty
ever have--the amazing thing is--you actually can in six
weeks with this book end up out-thinking all the top fac-
ulty at places like Harvard and MIT in the limited input-
modelbuilding-output domains this book deals with.
The Unexpected MIRACLE Side-effect of Building Expert

Systems When in the 1980s and 1990s I and hundreds of
other artificial intelligence programmers went around the
world making giant 800+ page books of the every 30 second
inside-the-mind steps top designers used to do a project, we
found 1) top designers had theories about how they thought
at top performance levels there were almost always wrong
or at least terribly incomplete 2) that prior mental algo-
rithms that had led them to an early success in their career
trapped most of them in re-doing that past victory applied
to this and that new substrate 3) that these famous designer
had mystified to themselves how they worked and to oth-
ers how they worked till they actually believed in some sort
of rough “talent” by hiding from themselves early-in-career
particular approaches they observed or modified or invented
that brought them fame and fortune.
As dozens of us talked and shared stories about the above 3

observations, we developed convictions that these were real
not isolated to this or that few designers. There seemed to
be a quite general tendency for humans to gradually turn
actual professional practice built levels of high expertise into
talent stories that hid from one and all the actual history of
skill development. What was built by hard work and experi-
ment, learning lots of bits from others, was retold as a “nat-
ural” result of “who I am” and “how I approached things”. It
was very hard to find a designer in any nation or genre who
did not, after 20 or 30, or even 2 or 3 years, mystify his/her
own work in this way. How does that relate to this book and
this first tool--Reading Point Structures?
There is a gap between what “top” colleges and their “top”

faculty insist are best mental protocols/methods and what
protocls/methods actually perform best in their era on their
challenges. So we get the paradox of our best and brightest
ruining things for decades, applying “top” protocols that are
not really top, just deeply insisted on by those who labored
for decades to “beat” all others and so rise to “top” faculty
positions in Harvard-MIT etc. Many of us who at age 40 had
risen to the top of 2 or 3 diverse professions with global audi-
ences, when we met Harvard-MIT professors in those profes-
sions, observed huge amounts of mental fluff, often ideas
from around the globe so badly distorted and understood
(points missed) that the professor version was useless--all
you could do with it was teach it because applying it would
fail utterly (but professors are paid to “just teach” and “just
raise grant money” and “just publish” not “just implement”.
This chapter gives you a capability that
nearly all top Harvard-MIT faculty have only
40% of, but here you will get 100% of.
COMPREHENSION
THEORY
A True Story Years ago I taught programming in the base-
ment of Procter & Gamble’s downtown Osaka headquarters
(Sunhome). I had to individual students of high rank--the
head of sales and the head of research. The former had
never been outside Japan, the head of research had spent a
total of 11 years, some in England and some in the USA. I
spoke little Japanese so communicated in English, the com-
pany language. The head of sales just did “Hollywood
Indian/Mexican” talk--word phrases without grammar. The
head of research had complete rather sophisticated sen-
tences packed with subordinate clauses and even some sub-
junctive case verbs. After some months I noticed it was
vastly faster, easier, and more rewarding to talk to the head
of sales, not the head of research. Why?--I wondered. I
always knew after any amount of talk with the head of sales-
-how many points he had, what the name of each point was,
and how the points were ordered/related. For the head of
research, both long and short talks failed to make clear any
of these things--I never knew what he wanted, how many
things he mentioned or wanted, and how they were related/
organized. Grammar was not useful for communication I
concluded and many later incidents in Europe and elsewhere
in Asia confirmed this observation.
The Page Above--8 Parts of a Theory of Comprehension

First I will summarize the whole theory, its 8 parts above,
then deal with each part.
CALCULATING coherence of topic and topic shifts--reading
and hearing are calculation processes where we track topic
and spot shifts of topic and on the fly give fast names to top-
ics and the comments made about them as they appear.
People good at naming topics accurately, neither too gener-
ally nor too specifically, neither as something familir nor as
something entirely strange--get remarkably more from situa-
tions that they later can use than people who name sloppily
or poorly or with bias.
CLARITY OF WHAT? Good hearing/reading, speaking/writing

makes clear--we all agree, but what does it make clear.
Research (Kintsch, T. A. VanDijk, B. Meyer, Entwhistle, Pask)
made clear, five things--count (number of points present),
names (of those points), order (how they are ordered), layers
(which points are subpoints of which others), geometry
(which points reflect, contrast, drill down, drill up from, etc.
other points). Inputs that you find all those FIVE in readily
without error are CLEAR inputs; writing/speaking that makes
those FIVE clear to audiences is CLEAR output. Minds that
perceive all FIVE and compose expressions making clear all
FIVE are CAPABLE minds.
POINT STRUCTURE--INVISIBILITY & BUSHYNESS In every sen-

tence, paragraph, page/talk we input are points arranged in
a definite but often irregular somewhat messy geometry.
Indeed such geometries differ among authors and evolve dur-
ing the career of each author. Most of us are trained not to
read/hear that geometry but we are schooled to “find
points”, scanning for them and memorizing their wording.
As a result few of us get the layers and orderings that points
are located in. Why are point geometries hidden and irregu-
lar? A primary cause is the conversion of geometric configu-
rations of points (2D or 3D or more) in our imaginations into
linear media--streams of spoken words or streams of written
sentences. We take several simultaneous ideas in spatial
relations to each other and convert that into a linear string
of symbols. This is hard, inaccurate, and frustrating work.
THE FINDING POINTS GAME WE CALL THOUGHT As receivers

inputting ideas, we receive long strings of symbols, orally or
in prose sentences, and try to FIND points in these long
strings. Spoken and written prose is an interface--the pri-
mary interface of all human verbal messaging. It is thou-
sands of years old, yet has not been updated in centuries.
Look at any page of prose and tell yourself--how many points
am I seeing? what are the names of those points? how are
they ordered? what layers are they in? what geometry config-
ures those layers and orderings? Truth is--prose HIDES all
these aspects of meaning. It is an interface so bad that if
you get nearly all the count, names, order, layers, geome-
tries in prose, you go to the world’s top colleges. Imagine an
interface so bad that only the world’s top 10,000 people
each year can find its point contents!!! As generators of
prose, we are generally unaware of the count, names, order,
layers, geometry of the points we just generated. It is nor-
mal for great readers/listeners to understand our points bet-
ter than we who imagined and expressed them do. We
generally do not know our own thoughts before expressing
them and therefore great writers, write three times (passes),
one to discover their own thinking on a topic, two, to orga-
nize those points well, three, to convey that organization
well to a particular audience. Most of us try to do these
three at the same time--and--as a result we are never aware
of the points we generate.
MISSING MEANING--WHERE IS IT? In real estate there is com-

monsense that most of the value/price of a piece of land is in
its “location, location, location”. In comprehension, most
of the meaning, more than 90+% of it, is in the location, loca-
tion, location of a word phrase in layers and orders of points-
-the geometry of thought those points constitute. You can
demonstrate this by subordinate clauses--a horrible insulting
proposition used as an example of a valid grammatical sen-
tence--all of which is on a bumper sticker on an alien space-
ship says a novel by H. G . Wells. As each layer of context is
added, the meaning of the original insulting phrase becomes
less insulting and entirely different. We do this all the time
when we discount statement of fact that come from the
mouth of people who have a strong self interest in believing
the world is X way and not A, B, or C ways--if they say some-
thing is X-ish, it is not all that likely to be true, we think--the
person is just bolstering an already held belief and refusing
all inputs that do not support what they already believe.
Now those layers and orders of points that constitute the

geometry all points are “located” in, form the context
around the points and therefore determine 90+% of all of the
meaning of each point. When you omit reading/hearing the
ordering of points and their layering, you omit 90+% of the
meaning, even if you actually input all the points (complete
count, which is very very rare). So add to missing most
meaning the fact that we usually miss a good number of the
points there (and therefore how many ponts are present) and
our comprehension has to little to hang on that we assimilate
all we input to belief we already have by filling in blanks
from sloppy missing of points, mis-naming them, missing
their ordering, missing their layers, missing the geometry
(orders plus layers) they are located in.
YOU RIGHT NOW CANNOT READ/HEAR You are illiterate, lit-

erally, missing most of the points and meaning in all your
input. To go over it again--you miss how many points, their
names, their ordering, their layering, the geometries of
thought (order plus layer) they are located in, therefore
most of their meaning. You do this all the time in every-
thing you hear and read. You are missing most of the points
and meaning around you all the time every day of your life.
But average Harvard-MIT faculty are doing exactly the same-
-missing it all. Our whole civilization is crippled by prose
media from centuries ago that entices us into terribly inef-
fective mental habits. As new web and other media come
along, we spread the mental bad habits prose perpetuates to
these new media, contaminating them, weakening them, till
their use and value is as poor as prose.
WHAT IS COMPREHSION? Getting the point count, names,

ordering, layers, geometry of thought locations--that is get-
ting the elements that create context and meaning and get-
ting the meaning they constitute.
US MISSING MOST POINTS--WHAT FILLS THE GAPS? It is bad

enough, we would think, that we all miss most of the points
around us. Worse than that, however, is we must calculate
coherence in all we notice so we fill in gaps--from points
authors or speakers generated that we missed, with our own
guesses, which always end up mis-naming anything new and
challenging and substituting something comfortable we
already believe in its stead. We each live in worlds like giant
parrots endlessly repeating what we want reality to be, a
version of--you Richard are a genius and you already know
everything so why waste time reading or listening anymore in
your life.
THE CHALLENGES THAT REMAIN We have the problem of

discerning the point count, names, order, layers, geometry
of thought location in all our inputs, and we have the prob-
lem of the irregularity of all that, if and when we discern it,
and how that irregularity makes it impossible for us to recall
all points-counts-names-etc. and apply them later. We
developed the habit of 1) missing most points and meaning,
2) filling in gaps with biased self-loving stuff 3) finding the
messes we discern in inputs to irregular to recall and use so
we trunctate them ruthlessly into some pieces we can
remember and use 4) what we speak and write for others is
in prose form that hides point count, names, ordering, etc.
and in any case, we do not realize at any point how many
points, what their names are, how they are ordered in what
we speak and write and we generally compose irregular
bushy messes of points so maybe it is a good or at least con-
venient thing that we do not realize what we are writing or
speaking in point terms.
The rest of this chapter will deal, solidly and completely and
practically, with both these challenges, offering solutions
that work amazingly well for anyone willing to do all the
exercises and one test in this book.
THIS CHAPTER--The Foundation of ALL in this Book You

have to get this chapter right and thoroughly in order to
enjoy the rest of the book. Fortunately this chapter’s exam-
ples are thorough, realistic, and complete--from them you
can get a perfect understanding of what you need to do to
out-think average Harvard-MIT faculty.
The chapter below on Tool 1 presents Reading Point Struc-

tures in prose text but it goes beyond that to Hearing Point
Structures in speeches, talks, and discussions. Example dia-
grams with step are provided for both. You do them exactly
the same way, only the diagrm layout differs slightly because
writing a diagram in real time while hearing input prose
gives you less time for some operations.
The two chapters after this one, that is the chapters on Tool
2 Reading Cause Structures and Tool 3 Reading Image and
Action Structures, extend this Tool 1, Reading Point Struc-
tures to these other aspects of certain types of texts/talks---
causes and reading fiction imagery and action streams.
PRACTICS OF TOOL
1 USE
GOOD WRITING IS BAD--THE COMPREHENSION PARADOX If
you get the points of a passage of speech or text without
“depth of processing”, it is harder for you to recall and use
those points--ease of access to points makes for difficult
retrieval of points. GOOD WRITING IS GOOD However, if
due to difficult writing with points hidden in text, count
unclear, names of point requires decoding, ordering requires
calculation, layers are not clearly marked, etc. even when
you recall easily such bushy irregular messes of points you
can do little or nothing with them (in part because many
points in that original text mess are missed). GREAT WRIT-
ING IS BOTH GOOD AND BAD To get both good access to all
point counts-names-order-layers-geometry and good later
recall and use you have to combine two contradictory things-
-a great highly regular comprehensive, detailed, well named,
well ordered geometry of points expressed in a mystery novel
cum detective story fashion of building up clues for guessing
parts of the overall pattern till suddenly one last straw
results in complete grasp of the whole geometry and all its
constituent points. Another way to achieve this is highly
complex overall geometry of points with clear signal sen-
tences (ones without content just indicating structuring of
points before or after) and structure clue words, so the
“depth of processing” is not from guessing the structure but
from surveying its complex parts and dynamics. This means
instead of hiding a simple point geometry in anonymous
strings of prose symbols as we usually do, clearly signalling a
much more complex and dynamics geometry of points, so
complex that getting our minds around all its interlocking
sections requires “depth of processing” sufficient to get later
recall and use.
STEP BY STEP INSTRUCTIONS FOR THIS TOOL All the tools in

this book handle complex inputs, not missing complex config-
urations of points there, complex models built of points you
input from several sources so inputs change your powers to
notice and imagine and achieve, and enable you to design
and express complex regularized patterns of points instantly
use-able for lecturing, training, assessing, designing and
other applications. However, though the tools, all six of
them, enable handling such complexity of input, model, and
output, the steps of the tools are quite simple.
In computer science automata theory shows us how

extremely complex structures and behaviors can come from
repeated use of extremely simple sets of a few rules. This
has amazed science in general and changed a lot of “explain
complex things with complex models” habits in science and
science education. The step by step instructions for tool use
in this book are similar--get powers to handle and make com-
plexity from extremely simple step by step instructions.
To diagram point structures you merely:
1) number basic units (sentences in

paragraphs or paragraphs in chapter/
article)
2) circle structure clue words in signal
sentences (signal sentences have no
content just mark prior or coming
structures or functions of points)
3) mark changes of topic points
4) name topics between topic change
points
5) group similar adjacent topic areas,
name them
6) continue 5 till one overall name.
The simplicity of these intructions is deceiving. Finding

ideas shared by adjacent topics or topic groups is not taught
in schools, and people are quite sloppy about it and not
capable of doing it well without deliberate practice. Simi-
larly, naming the topics where text changes from one topic
to another, is not taught in schools and people are uncon-
sciously happy to be bad at it, because mis-naming allows us
all to distort an author’s ideas that differ from or challenge
our own, to we “read” or “hear” all text and talks and
authors as saying one or another way “you Richard are so
smart that everything you hear and read confirms what you
already know”. That is a sure route to adulthood stupidity
and evil. Without professional practice naming points accu-
rately, learning along the way all the dimensions that any
one “good” name must satisfy, we, lifelong, mis-name most
of the points we notice (and remember we fail to notice
most points in talks and texts before us). Those mis-naming
are never random, rather they consistently distort anything
new and different into being stuff we already know and like.
TWO DIRECTIONS OF USE OF THOSE ABOVE 6 STEPS We can

direct the six steps above towards written texts--chapters,
articles, and the like. We can also direct the same six steps
at spoken speeches, talks, discussions. The difference is
anytime diagram building verus real time simultaneous dia-
gram building. In the oral case we fill in a middle column
down a piece of paper (or on screen) with each new topic we
hear, adding left and right of it, who made that comment,
what prior comment it refers to, our approximate immediate
evaluation of its worth, marking where topics shift and nam-
ing prior groups of related topics whenever such a shift is
noticed. As we get to comment 30 and 50 (on pages 2 or 3)
of our notes, we get moments from time to time to review
prior topic groups we named or put question marks in and
rename or name groups of groups of topics. We also get
moments like that for musing about alternatives, flaws,
errors, new sources or ideas to mark for later immediate use
by us. This means the real time building of such diagrams is
more taxing work for the attention and mind that off line
diagramming of a static text that we can stare at for min-
utes, hours, or days. This is the primary difference. There-
fore, practice diagramming points in written text, 5 times
minimum, should be done before diagramming in real time
emerging spoken speeches, talks, or discussions.
Later this chapter presents examples of both--Reading Point

Structures of written texts and of discussions.
THREE STRUCTURES TO NOTICE First and most fundamen-

tal is Reading Point Structures as already described above
and done with the six steps above. Second is causal path
redoings of that Point Structure diagram. Third, is the regu-
larization of either the causal path diagram or the point
structure diagram--regularizing branch factor (how many
subpoints any point has), order (imposing top level groups of
topics ordering on all lower level groups of points), and nam-
ing (formats of names tell you what layer they occupy on the
overall geometry of point. Above is a blue and white illus-
tration with the point structure diagram on top, the causal
diagram on bottom, and the fractal regularization in the mid-
dle. The three diagrams above are all versions of the SAME
PARAGRAPH, that is, the SAME POINTS diagrammed three
ways.
USES OF TOOL 1--READINGS BETTER THAN WRITINGS As

was said earlier, researchers found that we do not know the
points we write, their count, their exact names, their order,
their layering, the geometry they overall constitute--we do
not know that as we write or before we write (with a few
rare exceptions). Indeed, Flowers and Flowers at Carnegie
Mellon years ago, found that people in effect write three
times--the first pass to discover what they think the second
pass to discover a way to order that mess, the third pass to
express that order to a particular audience. Most people do
not separate these as distinct passes (but quite a few profes-
sional writers do) so most people do not know what they are
saying as they write. This has been tested and typical col-
lege educated adult writers cannot recall over 40% of the
points they have just written a few minutes after writing
them. Part of that is due to the irregular geometry they put
points in on the fly. When the first point has 3 subpoints,
the second 5, the third 2, the fourth 6, and the first subpoint
has 5 subsubpoints etc.--we cannot a couple of minutes later
remember even just the count, number of points we wrote.
What all this means is this--readers who Read Point Struc-

tures will have a better, more comprehensive, more
detailed, more multi-level, better named, better layered,
accurate geometry of points “understanding” of a text or
speech than the author of it ever has. Hence--the following
use of Tool 1.
A NEW “PUBLISHING OF EXPERT READINGS” INDUSTRY If

good readings of a text can know its point count-names-
order-layers-geometry, better than authors of that text,
there is value, great value in publishing “expert readings” of
texts (hefty interesting, good texts not fluff for-mere-profit
texts). Right now US copyright law forbids derivative works
but case law finds a work derivative not if it has the same
points, but if it has the same expressions of those points.
Great Reading Point Structure diagrams name points better
and differently than authors in the text do, plus express
orderings and layerings of points hidden entirely by prose
expression of the points. This means a Point Structure Dia-
gram, a Causal Path Diagram, a Fractal Model Diagram of a
text does not express the same ideas with the same expres-
sions. We can go to court with Kintsch, Van Dijk, B. Meyer,
Entwhistle, Pask deBeaugrande research proving that good
readings generate better and more complete expressions of
ideas that all but the most brilliant and rare authors.
FOUR OTHER USES--Readings that change you, Seeing all

meaning not portions, Recall and use years later of a chap-
ter’s points, Mental operators applied to entire geometries
of points not individual ones When you are forced to read
ALL points by an author not just ones you like, when you are
forced to make accurate names not casual self-praising dis-
tortions of points, when you interpret meaning by viewing
location in a geometry of points--each reading challenges
your ways and preferences, forces learning. Seeing all
points, names, orderings, layers, geometries also closes off
chances for bias--bias depends greatly on dropping points not
fitting your prior beliefs. The “depth of processing”
involved in building Point Structure Diagrams means years
later you have recall of the points and by hauling out the dia-
gram can instantly apply the points as lecture contents,
assessment items, design elements and more. Finally certain
geometries of thought are regular enough without making a
fractal model of them, that you can apply mental operations
to all their points, greatly improving how much you notice,
imagine, and can do as alternative actions.
Tool 1 is fundamental. All mental productivity starts with

accurate, complete, detailed, well ordered inputs. Inability
to perceive geometries of thought that points are in, forces
you to miss 90+% of the meaning in all your life situations.
Reading that is not reading, that is mere scanning for inter-
esting bits (the web?), results in 12 year old minds inside 50+
year old bodies = completely uneducated dangerous people.
All the above means some shocking statements are true.
Schools DO NOT TEACH reading. You CANNOT READ at
present, most likely. YOU HAVE NEVER READ a page or chap-
ter in your life thus far as defined here.
SOME COMMON
GEOMETRIES OF
THOUGHT
THE BEGINNING AND THE END You, the readers of this
page, are at the beginning of Reading Point Structures.
Page by page this book will get you interested in geometries
of thought, noticing such geometries of thought, and eventu-
ally designing and writing them. At the end, along with
designing your own geometries of thought (in this book as
highly regular Fractal Concept Models) you will find, without
writing down a diagram of points, you will quickly notice the
overall geometric pattern points are in. As you do a lot of
this you will find 8 such geometries highly common and
appearing everywhere from TV comedy scripts to cooking
recipes to detective fiction to machine learning textbooks.
The above 8 geometries of thought are common, not at all,
complete, there are hundreds of others not presented above-
-you have years to explore them. It is enough, here, to see
how even the very simple short paragraphs beside each
geometry above embody a particular geometry of thought
(columns 2 and 5 have text illustrating the geometry at left
of them while columns 3 and 6 have been shuffled so you
have to draw arrows to the correct geometry they express).
The Causal Chain This is A causes B which causes C which

causes final result X.
The Causal Bush This is A causes X, B causes X, C causes X.
Conditional Causes This is A causes X but only when B is
high (low, soft, crazy etc.)
T Under Bridge This overall point as 1st and last item, with
core in the middle having 1st and last items too
Embedded Bridges This is overall topic repeated as 1st and
last point and core within that in two levels--a first
and last point as overall core and within that the
single central point as “core of the core”--this is
the usual structure when people peel away chaff
from wheat, fluff from value.
Deduction This is principle, example 1, example 2, example
3, or principle, case 1, case, 2, case 3, or method,
step 1, step 2, step 3
Induction This is example 1, example 2, example 3 Princi-
ple; or case 1, case 2, case 3 Principle, or step 1,
step 2, step 3, Method.
Induce Deduce This is example 1 example 2 Principle case 1
case 2 for instance and similar symmtric patterns
with the main idea in the center
Deduce Induce This is First Principle case 1 case 2 case 3
Last and Differing Principle--the often is drama,
case 1 OK case 2 doubtful case 3 dangerous Last
Principle doubting the First principle
Conditional Causal Bush This is a combinations of causal
chain, causal bush, and conditional cause--orga-
nized with any of them in the center being modified
by the others.
The above geometries are equally found in fiction and non-

fiction. They are equally found in imagery streams and
action streams. T Under Bridge and Embedded Bridges
geometries are drill down in direction. Deduce and induce
are opposite in direction. Their combinations--induce
deduce while has its main point in the center--is popular with
Germans and deduce induce with differing start and end
main points--is popular with the British for some reason.
WELCOME TO THE COURSE
Welcome to our “Unusual Tools for Creative
Thinnking” course! This article explains how all
six weeks of this course will make you more cre-
ative while also increasing your overall mental
productivity.
SOME QUESTIONS THE COURSE EXPLORES
1. Why does nearly everyone all life long want

more creativity from others around them and
want to be more creative themselves? What
makes creativity so universally attractive to us?
2. Most of us create some things and impress

friends and family with them at times but a few
people amaze entire professions and even his-
tory itself with what they create--what explains
this difference in size of what these people cre-
ate? How do you and I expand the size and
amazement power of what we create?
3. Research has shown the most creative people

of every era and profession also are those who
produced the most works--why does more men-
tal productivity lead almost inevitably to more
overall creativity of outcomes?
4. How do people who have great mental pro-

ductivity, hence, who end up creative, do ele-
mental everyday mental activities like reading,
listening, combining ideas heard/read, organiz-
ing and naming ideas, ordering and expressing
new ideas--differently than you and I now do
them? Have you noticed creators doing such
basics of thought differently than you and I?
When? What was different? What value did such
differences have or produce?
5. What enables creators to enter the same situ-

ations the rest of us enter but creators notice
more aspects and unusual aspects somehow you
and I miss?
6. What enables creators to enter the same situ-

ation as the rest of us, but think up responses to
it far different than you and I think up?
7. Research found many kinds of creators had no

special mental operations that they used, but
instead, they applied ordinary mental operations
to far more ideas and to more diverse ideas than
you and I do--what enabled creators to do this--
apply ordinary mental operations to 20 to 30
ideas at a time instead of the 4 to 7 ideas at a
time of most people?
8. In business and personal relationships, it is

common for what some words, that we make as
a message or remark, mean to us, when making
them, to end up meaning something far different
to those receiving them--what causes the same
words to mean entirely different things to other
people? What effect does this now have on
business, careers, getting work done in groups?
Can something improve this? What might
improve it?
9. Steve Jobs, for example, created the world’s

most valuable corporation, Apple Computer--he
was famous for extremely creative and powerful
new product announcements. These were
shows, with drama, surprise, amazement--
“amazing greatness”. They were messages,
crafted by Apple people, delivered by Steve
Jobs, that meant largely the same to who
crafted them and who received them. Are cre-
ators, in general, somehow able to craft mes-
sages and creative works that transmit more of
the meaning in who crafted them to who
receives or views them? What gives creators
this power?
A HINT AT OUTCOMES FROM TAKING THIS
COURSE
You Different
You will find yourself, at the course end, notic-
ing more, noticing what others miss, living, in
effect, in a bigger world. Also you will find your-
self, due to that new capability in you, respond-
ing to situations in ways you could not have
invented and done in your past. Add up a lot of
such slight differences and you get creativity
that was not in you and from you before.
Your Thinking Fast, More Diverse, More

Detailed
Also your general mental productivity will be
improved in terms of noticing more in what you
hear and read, and transmitting more of what
you mean effectively to others in talk and text.
A Side-Benefit--Top College Entrance Exam

Scores and Power in Business
Though not a main aim of this course, a side-
effect all who have learned these methods expe-
rienced, was higher scores on standard verbal
ability tests for college entrance. They also
were highly valued by first jobs after college
exposure to this course’s contents. Bosses found
them getting all points, naming points accu-
rately, expressing things in regular patterns oth-
ers easily understood and did not forget points
of.
MOST COMMON ROUTES TO CREATIVITY AND OUR

ROUTE HERE
There are 3 primary approaches to increasing
personal creativity. One, the most common
courses and approaches to increasing creativity
in people all involve special tools and ways of
thinking--lateral, metaphoric, visiting alien
viewpoints, brainstorming, and the like, that you
add onto usual ways of thought.
Two, the most common routes to high personal

creativity are different. These routes come
from riding baby fields--machine learning in
2000, deep learning in 2005, etc.-- as they grow,
hitching a ride on the burgeoning creativity that
forms entirely new fields and professions, by
spotting them early enough to grow with them.
This approach is risky--you bet on things small
and insignificant looking now--that one or more
will grow exponentially into fame and fortune.
Three, this course takes a third route--the so-

called “monastic innovation” approach--chang-
ing the foundations of ordinary thought, forms of
thought used dozens of times every hour of
every day by every person. Slight changes in
such mundane heavily used foundations add up
to large increments in mental productivity. That
extra mental productivity allows you to think of
more ideas, which allows more diverse ideas to
be explored, which makes you eventually more
creative.
This course is based on this third route--the Pro-

ductivity Model of Creativity--it has been called
in research. This route to creativity has a solid
foundation in research by Simonton Origins of
Genius--in his study of 700+ creators in 60+
genres of creating, across 400 years, the most
creative figures were always also those who pro-
duced the largest number of works. The dou-
ble-Nobelist Linus Pauling expressed this
approach simply--you make a lot of ideas, and
throw away the bad ones. This is the route this
course takes--upping the number of (hence also
diversity of) ideas you input, fuse into models,
and convey easily to others. Therefore this
course both--increases your overall mental pro-
ductivity and makes you more creative.
THE MOST COMMON MODELS OF “COMPREHEN-

SION” AND OUR MODEL IN THIS COURSE
Understanding text and talk, finding points and

meanings in them is one of the most complex
and central of all human activities. Artificial
Intelligence has made progress but only at the
simple basic edges of the least interesting kinds
of text. Therefore, there are as many models
of what “meaning” and “comprehending” are as
they are people it seems.
Some common models include the following.

Relativism Each person gets a different meaning
from any text or set of words so “comprehen-
sion” means trying to discern what the words
meant to their author and how your differences
of life from the author will change what those
words mean. Tracking Topics, Comments,
Topic Changes This sees “comprehending” as
sensing breaks, where what is being commented
about shifts, and where kinds of comments
about it shift. Structuralism (Sausssure) mes-
sages/texts appear in ecosystems of related sig-
nals so the “meaning” is not located merely in
the words but in the interactions between sur-
rounding actions/messages and the words.
Remembering Expressions This still is the pri-
mary model of comprehension in most schools
and their tests--you are asked to remember
“points” and relate them to each other as the
author did in the text then as you yourself think.
In this course later you learn the “comprehen-
sion paradox” that the best way to remember
expressions is by deep reading that ignores
efforts to memorize word phrases (read Walter
Kintsch’s last few books for much on this).
5 COMBINE FIRST GUESS OF OVERALL TOPIC
WITH SERIES OF SECTION SUBTOPICS TO

IMPROVE OVERALL TOPIC EXPRESSION
COMBINING GUESSES: SLIGHT CHANGES & DEVIA-

TIONS FROM DATA UPEND BRITTLE LEARNING
SYSTEMS
BRITTLE LEARNING
ALGORITHM--slight
changes cause mis-
classification
DEEP LEARNING = NO
UNDERSTANDING--lack
experiences
WE ANNOTATE
TRAINING EXAMPLES--
hints from experiences
systems lack
NEURAL NETS NEVER

UNDERSTAND--because
trained on very narrow

inputs
FINAL OVERALL TOPIC NAME--three ver-
sions, in sequence, same ideas, re-ordered a
little:
DEEP LEARNING SYSTEMS ARE BRITTLE

BECAUSE LACK UNDERSTANDING because
trained on examples annotated based on
experiences only humans have
THE HUMAN EXPERIENCE IN ANNOTATING

TRAINING EXAMPLES MAKES DEEP LEARN-
ING BRITTLE, LACKING UNDERSTANDING
DEEP LEARNING SYSTEMS LACK UNDER-

STANDING BECAUSE LACK HUMAN EXPERI-
ENCE THAT ANNOTATES THEIR TRAINING
EXAMPLES
BRITTLE LEARNING
ALGORITHM--slight
changes cause mis-
classification
DEEP LEARNING = NO
UNDERSTANDING--lack
experiences
WE ANNOTATE
TRAINING EXAMPLES--
hints from experiences
systems lack
NEURAL NETS NEVER

UNDERSTAND--because
trained on very narrow
inputs
A TEST PARAGRAPH--TRY
APPLYING ABOVE PROCESS
TO THE BELOW:
This replaces reading points you get from scanning text for
stuff interesting to you. This replaces reading key points
with reading structures of such points. You read normally
the first and last paragraphs of a chapter or article, guess-
ing and writing down the main point of the entire article
and the way its approach to that topic sequences subtop-
ics covering it. In particular you look at the first and last
sentencs of those first and last paragraphs, for “signal sen-
tencs” that is, sentences without point contents but that
summarize prior point structures or announce coming
structurings of points. Then you read the first and last
sentence of each following paragraph in the article in turn
circling possible main topics of each, boxing possible main
topics of the entire article different than what you already
guessed. You then review names of topics you guessed for
all paragraphs from their first and last sentences, looking
for SHIFTS--what one topic stopped and another began,
where one type of comment on a topic stopped and
another type began. Just mark point where topics shift,
perhaps with a horizontal line. Then when that is done for
the entire article, go back and write down, via guessing,
the topic being left before each line and the topic being
entered after each line. That will give you two possible
names for each paragraph’s main point. When that is
done, scan each paragraph in turn for “structural key
words” like when, unless, example, finally, however,
first, then, next, last, ultimately, on the contrary. and so
on. Mark the two or three MAIN PARAGRAPHS in the arti-
cle from this and diagram the structure of their main
points using signal sentences in them and structural clue
words in them, marking where in each key paragraph topic
shift or kinds of comments about topics shift. Put your
results into 3 or 4 overall diagrams--one of the whole arti-
cle main points--topics named, sub-topics named, whole
article main point named--2 or 3 others of similar diagrams
of the main points of the 2 or 3 key paragraphs within the
article. For each set of adjacent paragraphs in the article
sharing one topic, on your completed diagram, in boxes
below or on one side, if your diagram is vertical, put lists
or small drawings of main points of interest in those para-
graphs not covered by the topic names already given, then
add your own reactions, evaluations, and references to
other competing/alternative views, ideas, readings.
Each student should find the following:
1) the NUMBER of points (both general points

that have subpoints under them and subpoints--
both added together)
2) the NAMES of all top level points and all sub-

points under such top level points
3) the PRINCIPLE THAT ORDERS THE POINTS in

the sequence they are found in the paragraph
(top level points may be ordered one way and
each set of subpoints under one or more of them
may be ordered differently)
4) the LAYERS of the points---that is how many

main points have subpoints and how many sub-
points have sub-subpoints etc. Which main
points have which subpoints and which subpoints
have which sub-subpoints.
5) what OVERALL GEOMETRY, approximately,

organizes all the points, as thusly ordered and
layered, in the paragraph.
6) DRAW A DIAGRAM SHOWING your answers to

all the above on one diagram
DISCUSS:
1) The individual points in the paragraph are

quite simple and easy to understand, but how
are they arranged and what effect on their over-
all meaning comes from how they are arranged?
2) Did you (and any other students now taking

this course) get all of 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6 correct?
well and accurately done? Why or why not?
3) Whose diagram of 1 through 6 above was best-

--take a look at it---what do you get from scan-
ning it that you MISSED from your usual reading
of the paragraph itself? Why? What value did
the diagram add missing from the paragraph for-
mat of the same points? Why?
4) What would happen to your mind, your think-

ing, your productivity, your career, your creativ-
ity if once or twice each day you read or listened
to interesting content by noticing 1 throught 6
above instead of by doing your usual scans for
points of interest?
5) Have you ever met, worked with, or observed

someone who reads 1 through 6 above instead of
as you now read---who was that person and what
powers did such reading give them?
WHAT IS LEFT?
Above you read point structres. Next is read-

ing such structures as causal relations--this
box contents causes that box contents, this
other box contents is the result of that box
contents. After that is reading actions in sto-
ries and imagery flows that wrap around
actions in stories. The Hamlet diagrams given
much above, are perfect examples of that.
That makes 3 kinds of structures read--points,
causes, action-image pairs.
After that comes perfecting the names you

give to points in the context of between lay-
ers relations of points (superior-subordinate)
and in the context of sequences of points--
points before, now, and following. Then you
have to reconcile point names accurate verti-
cally across layers with ones accurate hori-
zontally across ideas-sentences-paragraphs in
a sequence.
FINALLY, after that you have regularizing the

messy structure of most writing and most
point geometries. You regularize ordering,
layering, then names to reflect position of an
idea vertically and horizontally in a geometry
of thought.
The result is A REPLACEMENT FOR PROSE

ITSELF, that, unlike prose, which hides its
point count, names, order, and layers,
reveals, makes visually evident at a glance all
four--number, names, order, layers.
These regular fractal forms not only replace

prose but they enable you to VASTLY EXPAND
how many ideas all your ordinary mental
operations apply to, and hence generate.
This greater productivity means you explore
more diverse idea territory and that means
automatically you become creative. The for-
mal name for this in research is The Produc-
tivity Model of Creativity.
The author of this book you now read--Rich-

ard Tabor Greene, has a book sold on amazon
on all these further developments, titled:
The Ways Best Thinkers Think .
The author has a 2 semester course on 66

tools like in power to the one tool given
above, and a 6 semester easy version of that
for businesses and colleges. The cover page
for that is given immediately below.
THE 48 BOOKS OF
RICHARD TABOR
GREENE
ON 10 PAGES
All contents Copyright 2018 by Richard Tabor Greene, Rights Reserved, Government Registered
THE 13 THE 48 BOOKS OF RICHARD TABOR GREENE
LEVELS ORGANIZED BY THE 13 LEVELS OF HIS OVERALL PUBLISHING STRATEGY
LEVEL 1 Culture Power; Peerless when published, these books
MASTERWORKS 60 Models of Creativity; have a chance to be still valued decades
Innovation in Innovation indeed centuries hence--we will see.
& in 29 Other Creativity
Sciences;
LEVEL 2 Global Quality, Baldrige Award Founders of U Chicago Booth School in
NATIONAL for AI Circles at XEROX PARC; writing called these--”works of genius”
PRIZE WINNERS Japanese AI, Deming Prize and reasons to hire me onto their faculty.
for AI Circles at Sekisui Chemical;
All Richard’s papers were written at
LEVEL 3 Designs that Lead;
50+ ARTICLES/ Monastic Mental Innovations; knowledge/field intersections so play
PRESENTATIONS Culture Power, What Can Be in multiple emerging new contexts.
ORGANIZED Done with it;
LEVEL 4 Are You Educated? All mental life rises from and
Japan China EU USA; is made human and safe by
EDUCATION Our Knowledge Singularity; taking the “being made” self
FOUNDATIONS Are You Educated? 64 Capabilities of kids, remaking it consciously,
INNOVATIONS Global Self Make & Change Dynamics then helping others remake.
Are You Effective? 100 Tools; 8000+ people at the top of 63
LEVEL 5 Power from Brain Training; fields in 41 nations were inter-
TOOLS, METHODS Ways Best Thinkers Think;
viewed for their capabilities--
150 at top via effectiveness,
UPDATE MIND When Creativity Leads 66 Tools; shared these tools.
FOUNDATIONS
18 of 54 Excellence Sciences; Redoing Plato means defining
LEVEL 6 Supreme Selling: to Self & Others; excellence and the good via
REDO PLATO Totalizing Quality of High Techs; modern empiric methods, not
EXCELLENCE religious, philosophic, cultural
SCIENCES old ones--so foundations work.
LEVEL 7 72 Innovation Models; Creativity, design, innova-

Steps of Creating; tions, venture launch, com-
CREATIVITY Thinking Design; posing, + 25 others are the
SCIENCES All Creativity is HERE; Creativity Sciences--APPLE
96 Innovation Models; won via doing 8 at once.
Get Real about Creating
LEVEL 8 in Business; Reality is MORE creative
APPLIED Taking Place: Cities and than people--it invented
City Lives as Insight Processes;
people and it invented
CREATIVITY Your Door to Creating--in
English and Chinese; SIlicon Valley; But reality
Are You Creative? 128 Steps-- thwarts its own creatings;
in Japanese.
LEVEL 9 VOLUMES 1 thru 4 Schools, parents, bosses, companies,

all want to do this well and better;
EVERYONE of
but the genius of corporations is do-
CREATIVITY Creating ing what is the exact opposite of
Creators;
BOOKS creating--so creators always are a
cancers growing inside corporate bodies.
LEVEL 10 YOU: Make Selves, Cultures & One field used to be enough but now
High Performances; such narrow “experts” are dangerous;
EVERYONE How to Rise to the Top: any serious issue requires a dozen such
SELF MAKING Updating YOU; “experts” less expert in that they flow
BOOKS and blend easily with other fields--these
books update your fundamentals to be
as diverse evolving as your situations.
LEVEL 11
INTELLECTUAL
SNACK BOOKS
LEVEL 12
FICTIONS,
POEMS,
SCREENPLAYS
(in process
2018-19-20)
LEVEL 13
(forthcoming--2019)
BOOK FUSIONS
FICTIONS, POEMS, SCRIPTS, COMEDIES
How do THESE genres of creativity CHANGE when all the contents of the 40+ above books are applied to them?
AFTER 44 NON-FICTION BOOKS, RICHARD IS READY FOR marked in piles of hundreds of books on a new topic. Instead
FICTION, FANTASY, ART, COMEDY are 50 kinds of mental invention, verbal invention, person-
BOOK ONE ABOVE the Creations Lead poetry book is done story invention to include in each chapter written--because
and sold now on Amazon. readers WANT to learn diversely from what entertains them
BOOKS 2, 3, 4, and 5 are in process and who knows when these decades.
they will be ready for public display and distribution. RIGHT NOW read the poems to guess how the fiction-
scripts-comedies will turn out. That is what I do.
40 YEARS AGO RICHARD MADE 50 POINT OUTLINES OF 147
NOVELS HE MIGHT WANT TO WRITE SOME DAY That old docu-
ment was typed and I still have it. “Not bad” was my reaction
while reading over it a few days ago. This move to art is a
rather significant change in my habits of production and imag-
ination. Gone are the giant well ordered outlines of points
THE FIRST AREA WHERE ALL THE DYNAMICS IN PRIOR BOOKS

OF THIS DOCUMENT GOT APPLIED IS AT LEFT. Richard has 700
suits he designed for himself over the years--recently selling
some to nouveau riche in China.
AS ANY DESIGNER WILL TELL YOU you cannot know or plan or
think ahead of time what you can do and want to do with a
material. You have to hang around it, play with it, try things
with it and gradually via trial and error you learn what that is
great it can be made to do and what that is great it cannot be
made to do.
As the figure at left reveals--Richard has played around with
dozens of elements in male dress--not necessarily liking or using
the results. But early on he could not guess or know his own
reaction to new designs till he wore them around in several
occasions and venues and watched his own reactions and those
of others.
Amazing how this adds up so hundreds of kinds of errors in
past designs no longer can happen as Richard has experienced
the principles causing design under-performance or failure.
Now Richard has to invent more difficult newer kinds of failure--
most past type he can guess and edit out before a design is actu-
alized. This is quite normal for all genres of design.
IN CLASSES Richard teaches fashion design NOT for com-
merce or for design but to get people DISCOVERING creativity
models and tools and methods and outcomes.
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CONTENTS:
page Table of Contents
4
page 5 Chapter 1--We are ALL Theorists--5 Theories
that will Expand Your Life NOW
page 100 Chapter 2--Where do Theories Come From--
Turn Inputs into Theories into Power
page 195 Chapter 3--9 Theory Example in Causal Form
that will also Expand Your Life NOW
page 436 Chapter 4--More Theory Basics--Each Part of
Your Identity SHRINKS You and Your
World
page 502 Chapter 5--One Theory Applied in Detail--
Giddens De-Localization Theory
page 605 Chapter 6--From Plural Theories to Plural
Models--escaping Rightnesses
page 672 Chapter 7--20 Models of Creativity, Each a
Distinct Theory of Creating in Table
form for Assessment
page 1264 References--500 of them
page 1098 Chapter 8--Theory to Models to Turning
Inputs of All Sorts into Theory-Models
page 1364 the author’s other 49 amazon.com books
page 1376 the comic back cover
The process in all of living that has the greatest power and payback
is always there; we fear and flee and avoid it, not because it is hard
or risky or scary, but because the degree of improvement and change
in who and what and how we are it offers overwhelms our imagina-
tion and threatens to dump in the dustbin of history our favorite parts
of our present selves. Stories of Herman Hesse
AN EVERYONE EDITION
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VIA THEORY POWER
FORMATTED FOR SMALL SCREENS
(A5 pages 13 pt. fonts)
More Theories, More Diverse Ones = BIGGER WORLD & LIFE:

By Richard Tabor We start life FILLED with Theories Put INTO US that BLIND Us,
Greene A FEW of Us Discover Them, Edit, & Replace THEM = Adulthood
Professor at KeioU, BeijingU,
TempleU, UChicago; PEOPLE HATE THEORY
“..I think I have THIS BOOK:
given this book Five theories that NOW expand
Democratized AI tech delivery it bores, it’s useless, weak academics make it
at 2 Japan, 2 EU, 3 USA firms; to everyone who- you and your world
BUT it determines noticings and responses lifelong.
Founded 3 Palo Alto AI ventures; PEOPLE THINK THEY MAKE THEIR OWN VIEWS
soever that I Turn inputs into Theories
SB in AI at MIT, but their unconscious view determines what they notice know...kids, Nine theories in causal model
Creative Writing at Wellesley, PEOPLE LOVE WHAT THEY ARE AND CAN DO spouse, friend, form and how they expand you
MA MA PHD at UMichigan; mastery of own routines gets mistaken for boss, colleagues, New theory basics--all aspects
Master of Innovation Sciences safety and effectiveness of them strangers in the of your ID shrink your world
at Detao MA in Shanghai; night..it HELPS” Learning expands capability,
won Deming Prize in Japan,
Baldrige Award in USA; THERE IS THIS LINK--the made-by-others you hits 20, finds others Educating expands your world
AUTHOR of 46 amazon books Detailed application of one
have better views/ways, begins 30+ year journey to find his/her
Kimono SportFormal Fashions theory--GIddens’delocalization
own self contents, cut the bad ones, replace with better, till around
From plural theories to plural
55 becomes “adult” a person totally beyond Initial Factory Settings,
models
a person who HAS what all others BE, who evolves what others DEFEND.
Checklist form of 20 creativity theories
“...this book is EVERYTHING really really foundational, vital in life-- Course in turning INPUTS into THEORIES
you bet my kids read it, and I reread it year after year, is SAVES lives.” into MODELS
“Someone should Jobs-Apple VOID MASTERS
make this first
thing freshman
year in every
college, grad
school, new
job, marriage;
it hits you up
front with with
5 theories of
self, adulthood,
educatedness,
self growth,
culture change,
all as INSIGHT”
“....what saddens me, removes
most of my respect for every
single person I know, including
myself, is we all, ALL, hold our
views, opinions, and habitual ways
too much, too strongly, with too
much feigned certainty, all the
while all of us knowing all that
is based on virtually nothing but
the convenience of it being local
around us when and where we
grew up and were educated. We
defend assinine views totally
lacking support or data, telling
others how wrong they are,
hating them in quiet, putting
nasty remarks on Facebooks.
Our own minds disgust us, split
us off from friendship, collabo-
“....my dog sat on this book a week ago, and rative initiatives, expanded
has eaten nothing since.” lives and destinies. THIS BOOK
in the only book I have found
“....I gave this book to a friend a while ago with a COMPLETE, MODERN,
then early this morning the police found him non BIGOT, way of addressing
crouched outside my window in the bushes and CHANGING all that. It is the
with a revolver talking incoherently about MOST IMPORTANT BOOK I have
‘that damn book’” ever read.”--Ectoplasm R. J.
Hissypoop Kaboom, CRPTx201,
“This book was nominated as the book most Author of FUC EVERYTHING CEP
impossible to hate enough by the Chicago ME
Circle Literature Snob Cootie Generation “.....when I meet anyone or any
Society” thing new, why do I try so hard
rightaway to push on it who I am
“This book is full of suggestions that I change and what I believe and all that
my self--who says!? The nerve! I am pretty old me stuff? In minutes I have
damn good as I am and I plan to stay that way wiped out all possible newness
and make the other 6 billion of you dummies and change from every encounter
give way and worship me.” in my life. I am imprisoning my-
self in me every minute. This
“Parots, they say, are smart, and live long, so book got me out of all that!”
it did not surprise us when we found a white Ms. Con Fident Soulstripper,
mountain of Parot poop all over this book.” Founder, Society for Getting
Even on Everything.

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More Theories, More Diverse Ones = BIGGER WORLD & LIFE:

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It is worth noting here that theory should be, in this

Theory is Constituted of Abstractions

Businesses suffer from the practical implications of

Seven Stages in How People Think:

Name/Objects Cans/Persons Cannots/Self

Name/Objects Cans/Persons Cannots/Self

Name/Objects Cans/Persons Cannots/Self

Name/Objects Cans/Persons Cannots/Self

Name/Objects Cans/Persons Cannots/Self

Name/Objects Cans/Persons Cannots/Self

Name/Objects Cans/Persons Cannots/Self

Name/Objects Cans/Persons Cannots/Self

Name/Objects Cans/Persons Cannots/Self

Below are two graphic summaries of all the above.

This is one simple theory--the theory of personal

If you do not generate long huge strings of repeated

Your attempt to lead others and build/run great

Ask yourself now--have you already before reading

THE EXERCISE. Talk to one member of the opposite

relations between constructs

ways to measure those constructs in real situations,

variables (measured constructs)

cases explained by those constructs, relations, and

predictions enabled by those constructs, relations,

empirical tests of the theory

assumptions of the theory

granularity of the theory

explanatory power of the theory

predictive power of the theory

generalizability of the theory

reliability of the theory

Relations among constructs are usually causal--this

Variables in a theory are measured constructs. Vari-

Predictions made by a theory are the reverse of expla-

Empirical tests of a theory are cases deliberately

Assumptions of a theory are rarely stated directly.

A theory’s granularity is the number of size scales that

The explanatory power of a theory is its ability to

The predictive power of a theory is its ability to pre-

The generalizability of a theory is its ability to handle

The reliability of a theory is its ability to explain cases

The validity of a theory is its ability to specify what it

Using Theory’s Powers

The Power of Cross-Culture Experience

You face a situation and you have inside you an auto-

Unfortunately, multi-culture does not turn into self-

Below is a theory of how otherness encountered,

THE EXPERIENCE OF ENCOUNTERING “THE OTHER” CAUSES

Theories Spawn New Bigger Better The-

This INSIGHT PROCESS theory is provided here so you

2. applied to ever more abstract models of reality

3. trying all you know till in despair because none of

5. collecting try after try, failure after failure till

6. lovingly studying each failure

7. indexing your failures till patterns among them

8. THE DESPAIR DOORWAY---despair opens a door

9. you stop loving parts of you enough (deep uncon-

11. Every prior try, failure, approach suddenly

Contingency theory from organization science suffers