Reducing Errors.

The problem with making a mistake is not just the direct consequences but the further indirect consequences. These are like a ripple on a pond’s surface as a stone drops onto it. Concentric rings in all directions, some barriers stop them but they rebound back and deflect and are channeled in many directions. Any action does the same but less obviously hence the need of a metaphor! The sequence after an action can die out with time or forever change the world like the butterfly effect. Physical examples of negative accumulations after the first act could be the foot position in a squatting action if the foot is like a duck (no not really like a real duck their not that stupid) the arch of the foot collapses and the knee collapses in, stretching the inside ligaments and creating a shear force on the whole joint and this will have ripples up the other joints. The consequences of not getting it right first time and not correcting cause chronic failure later. If you land from height with the same foot/knee/body position it can be traumatic. The trick is to get it right first time not make the error, as once the first move is made many factors keep from changing to a better position and motion after the initial action. In fact it’s safer to say you enter a tunnel in a bad direction and cannot change back. There is leeway in the body for foot position but you only have so many goes before you must have a correct position.

Much of the time adults make error upon error. Many accumulate, (chronic) to cause harm of themselves or others. Now ‘to err is to be human’. But the cost of errors can come back to haunt whether through pain, or failure. That is not enough for the modern world.

In fact reason started early, as with other animals some pattern spotting demonstrated a type of early reason. This has built up to a huge amount of knowledge and abilities for humans. And yet the ape heritage shows itself regularly in actions and words. We still make unreasoned decisions. We buy things we do not need, we pay over the odds for them, we make unhealthy and ineffective decisions in many areas of life. A concept alluded to by Sun Zi in the Art of War is of making oneself invincible and watching for vulnerability in one’s opponents. This higher level of competitive strategy consists first of making yourself strong and then perfecting this from becoming hard to beat to impossible. This is achieved by stopping making mistakes from the simple, big ones to the more subtle, and from the beginning to end. It has wider applications to life where eliminating errors reduces problems.

The first error is the health error. Do you want a Heart Attack? Stoke? Cancer? Other fatal but also painful debilitating illness and disease? I’m guessing the answer’s no. And yet the error of unhealthy eating, lack of activity or exercise and poor sleep patterns is the norm. The decisions made are not reasoned. The problem is not knowledge. We find all sorts of excuses for not eating, sleeping and moving well, but guess what our arteries still narrow with disease and then block, and our cells are bombarded with toxins to encourage cancer. Our body is still sent pre-diabetic reacting to lack of sleep and poor food. Then some add poisons beyond the bodies capacity to cope and bad movement patterns that destroy the joints and bones.

These health errors are primarily picked up in childhood and infancy. There is a limit to what education establishments can do when many factors are from the first 1,000 days (Barker’s hypothesis) of life. Also the majority of hours are outside of school hours beyond schools’ control. Perhaps the outside of school hours could be aided with the use of school facilities for nutrition, sports and activities. Arnold Schwarzenegger is behind a scheme to make this happen in the U.S. between 3 and 6 pm after school time perhaps giving children options rather than street corners and the internet. More support is needed for children under school age, to encourage better sleep, diet and activity.

A large factor beyond health although that may be enough is to improve thinking skills. The factor above is not the individuals choice the decision to give poor food and not enforce good sleep patterns and then move. These are adults decisions for the baby, infant and child. The child now has a harder time making decisions with a body full of unhelpful toxins and not enough of what the body needs like sleep and movement. The body then must cope in this situation and try to operate. Getting the brain to work beyond coping with these problems has to be supported. Reasoning takes practice! Here the adults reasoning is at fault and holds the children back.

Within education reason has to be promoted and errors of thinking challenged and corrected. Before you shout that I’m the thought police, enjoy the consequences of your errors in judgement and decisions that lead to such great outcomes as more heart attacks and pain from physical and mental actions (and you can self applaud your moral stance!). Of course the existing thought police already do this where traditions and their regimes for behaviour are enforced. I just think reasoning skills should be promoted to get better decisions and actions for better health (physical, mental, financial etc.) and avoidance of the consequences of errors in daily life.

The main thinking errors are combated with critical thinking, now not everyone wants people to think critically as they benefit from the errors that are made by the majority. As with health, young people have the deck stacked against them in thinking. They are bombarded (as are adults) with irrationality. ‘Legal’ marketing, politicians and unchallenged outbursts and supposed professionals produce a blanket of false facts and irrational stimulus. Now people buy emotionally so rationally, marketing is based on emotion. The defense against this onslaught is reasoned thinking and action. The skills for this are mentioned in passing, but little application is made in the real world. Many people are defenseless in the legal environment, or dealing with professionals or confidence tricksters.

The subject ‘critical thinking’ includes many of the defenses. The health habit has to be mirrored by healthy thinking habits. There are many cognitive biases that we naturally error with. We have to practice reason it is not a do once tick box subject. Simple aspects such as recognising more common and less common, and risk is a big black-hole of understanding for most. Many examples exist like the fear of gun crime, with accidents or violence in the home with guns. Although a bigger problem is more people are killed in swimming pools than with guns (U.S.). Where is the campaign for that? The analysis and interpretation of data needs to be regularly practised and corrected. Other fallacies occur regularly and mostly are unchallenged. Much political ‘debate’ is two doses of false argument. These fallacies need to be identified for children (and adults) and explained and practised to improve decisions. Good habits can be rewarded even if there is not understanding of why they are good, but explanations must be attempted. Study of what is effective, for instance what have successful people done consistently that correlate and cause their success. Are they organised, clear thinking, determined and constantly learning on the whole yes! They are not wearing fashionable clothes, shouting loudly and taking drugs, and yet that’s what children see most in the media and often in their surroundings.

Expertise by having some can then use analogy of hard work and higher levels of thought and performance. So the path is recognisable rather than ineffective instant gratification (delaying gratification is a big predictor of future success).