Opinions, Hypothesis & Questions

I recently heard some opinions expressed with absolute confidence and certainty and they set my synapses crackling which then launched a string of thoughts, unwinding in a sort of uncontrolled and undirected domino effect. Not so much about the specific opinions themselves but about opinions in general.

First I thought that you really can’t have an opinion without knowledge, an opinion should be the end result of a learning process, and that unsupported opinions are so much hot air. The less you know the more questions you should have, resolve the questions and then you can formulate an opinion, right?

However this led to a side observation, that I better pose as a question (having no real evidence to support it as an opinion), on the relationship between the strength of an opinion and the knowledge underpinning it: is the relationship inverse? the stronger the opinion the thinner the knowledge base supporting it? Of course I find this particularly valid when I happen to disagree with the opinion. But then to disagree with an opinion, even an unsupported one, I  would also need have a significant knowledge base, wouldn’t I?

If we could only harness the energy in all the hot air generated from arguments unsupported by knowledge... and it would be renewable since the world seems to have a huge and always multiplying supply of fools. Maybe there is some geothermal energy technology that we can build into the many houses of congress, senate and parliament around the world and connect them to the electrical grid...  but I digress.

I then tripped over a reflection on the often quoted concept that the more you learn the more you realize how little you really know, and this seems to imply that the more knowledge you acquire the more questions you should be asking. Again apparently leaving no room for opinions, only for hypothesis.

So without going into a debate on the nature of knowledge (and faith, a particularly touchy subject) which has and will continue filling books, I dare hypothesize that opinions are particularly valueless. We should be asking questions, hypothesizing, acquiring knowledge, proving or debunking our hypothesis (i.e. asking and answering questions), adjusting our hypothesis based on the outcomes, and debating them again, in a continuous and ongoing knowledge seeking process.

Holding an absolute opinion would appear to require possessing absolute knowledge and this would land in the realm of gods, and I would hypothesize that that is not our element.

So if you find yourself passionately defending or debunking an opinion, stop, take a breath (or two) and start formulating questions, honestly and without bias. Focus on seeking knowledge not validation, and eschew opinions because we probably are not gods and we definitely don’t want to be fools.

Overwhelmed Synapses

For a while now my synapses have been clearly overwhelmed by the multiple fire hose flow of information they are subjected to on a daily basis, and not only are they not crackling, they are drowning. I’m Facebook fazed, Linkedin out, Twittered in and Google+ nonplussed (not to mention Stumbledupon, Quora querried out... you get the picture).

I have always been a news junkie, and my contributions at work frequently  revolve around tracking industry issues, trying to identify trends and sharing knowledge, so digital and social media have provided  welcome and addictive information fixes.

But following different interests means multiplying the SM relationships and inputs of information, so now I have 10 FB lists, 11 Google+ circles, 10 Twitter lists and 17 Linked groups! Blogs? My Google Reader lists 14 or 15. And then come the newletters, and alerts, who knows how many! So much to read, so many contacts to follow, what am I missing if I disconnect?

And since we are also talking about building relationships this also means adding value to the networks I have joined: retweet, comment, reply, link, post....

And I do have to pay attention to my day job once in a while.

So every so often all this makes me feel like my brain is cramping up trying to connect the dots and make sense of everything. You know how there are situations when time seems to slow down because your brain is reacting very fast (at least in the movies...)? Well, I sometimes find that time slows down, well, because my brain slows down. So frustrating! I contribute therefore I am, so if I don’t contribute what am I?

So once again I will review my list of blogs and prune it, look at my Linkedin groups and trim them, peer at the list of people and organizations I follow and reconsider the relationships. However this is always a difficult process because of the feeling that the next posting from one of the contacts I cut could be brilliant. But the bottom line is that I miss more by having brain cramps, so there is no option but  to cut and shake my synapses back into action. Hope it works again this time.

Crackling Synapses

I have been thinking for the longest time about starting a blog but have been stuck on the objective and  topic. What should I write about? Marketing, the transportation industry, politics (local, provincial, national & international) or the environment? Anything I eventually write about  marketing or the transportation industry has a destination in the company blog (JAN Kelley Blog), and the others are very personal. Why would anybody care to read about my thoughts on those topics? Who knows...

So I decided to write for myself as a mental exercise, an effort to clarify my thoughts, no quixotic quest, no expectation of effecting change And if other people find my posts interesting enough to comment on and challenge me to drill down on them then all the better.

Now, what do I call the blog? Actually I’ve had the seed of the name for some time (talk about putting the cart before the horse!). For some reason the word “synapse” has been loitering around in my mind. “A synapse is the structure that permits a neuron to pass an electrical or chemical signal to another cell (Wikipedia def).” Bottom line, the rate of synapse activity reflects brain activity, something that I want to promote in myself, maybe because my grandmother died of Alzheimer.

But I can’t just call it “Synapse”, it has to imply activity, so do synapses, snap,crackle or pop? I don’t know, and I’m not going to research a lot of medical papers to find out so I’ll have to wing it. Psyches snap and knees pop and neither are attractive alternatives. On the other hand when I have the rare epiphany I get a crackling, static electricity like feeling.

So writing for “Crackling Synapses” will hopefully get mine going, and the frequency (and quality!) of the posts will reflect my brain activity levels. Let’s see where it leads.JAN Kelley Blog