The Myth of the Objective
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The Myth of the Objective
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Re: The Myth of the Objective
#2I appreciate the work and research that went into this.
However, I can't help but feel as if some of these statements aren't very concretely true, or untrue.
For example, ok, if I get tunnel vision and just focus on one objective, I might lose sight of other paths.
I can see what you mean, but let's put that into practice.
"If you focus on profit, you might lose focus on innovation."
Ok, but if I focus solely on innovation, what happens when I'm not selling anything, or selling things at a loss?
The bills come due at some point, and so many people fail.
We don't all have endless sums of money that we can rely on while we wait for our Zen powers to coalesce and then people magically send us money.
Re: The Myth of the Objective
#3The article made me realize I do this frequently. I keep an eye out for serendipity. Encountering new problems often makes me take up an adventure from months or years ago where I learned a new piece of technology or a method that _seemed_ like a dead end at the time, but becomes a stepping stone in hindsight.
A dead end only means you're looking at the wrong direction at _that_ moment.
Always chase the yet unlearned.
Re: The Myth of the Objective
#4> When you have one eye on the goal, you only have one eye on the path.
> Objectives can, ironically, be obstacles to innovation and creativity.
This, like much of the Zen worldview, is self-refuting. If objectives can be obstacles that leave me with only one eye on the path, then the new objective is just to focus on "the path" of innovation and creativity. My objective may have changed, but I still have an objective.
Re: The Myth of the Objective
#5> When you have one eye on the goal, you only have one eye on the path. > Objectives can, ironically, be obstacles to innovation and creativity. This, like much of the Zen worldview, is self-refuting. If objectives can be obstacles that leave me with only one eye on the path, then the new objective is just to focus on "the path" of innovation and creativity. My objective may have changed , but I still have an objecti…
Another way of looking at it is that having both eyes on the path is a bi-product of not having an objective. You are not distracted by superficial goals. If you objective is to focus on the path, you now miss all the opportunities the paths lead to.
Re: The Myth of the Objective
#6> When you have one eye on the goal, you only have one eye on the path. > Objectives can, ironically, be obstacles to innovation and creativity. This, like much of the Zen worldview, is self-refuting. If objectives can be obstacles that leave me with only one eye on the path, then the new objective is just to focus on "the path" of innovation and creativity. My objective may have changed , but I still have an objecti…
A lot of "zen" wisdom is vague and even illogical. Koans are a great (if not the great) example.
They don't intend to teach you anything. Instead, they create doubt in your beliefs so that you can see possibilities you were previously blind to.
In this instance perhaps the difference is using the "objective" as a starting point rather than a desired end result.
Re: The Myth of the Objective
#7I appreciate the work and research that went into this. However, I can't help but feel as if some of these statements aren't very concretely true, or untrue. For example, ok, if I get tunnel vision and just focus on one objective, I might lose sight of other paths. I can see what you mean, but let's put that into practice. "If you focus on profit, you might lose focus on innovation." Ok, but if I focus solely on inno…
This is why it's important to have passions outside of those that pay the bills. And, if your passions and finances are entangled, which is the goal for most, it's important to build structures that allow times of absolute creativity (time in the goalless path). A writer still must spend time editing his work, which is a different process than creating. So, if you have profit in the back of your mind throughout the process, as the essay notes, you will stifle yourself. If you have an editing process, where you line up your creative expressions with profit, you're basically doing what a writer does when he edits.
Bill Walsh's The Score Takes Care of Itself is a fun book that, as the title suggests, deals with this idea.
Re: The Myth of the Objective
#8Surely the human taking 70 steps to find an interesting image is _less_ aimless than the computer that took 30,000 steps and didn't find anything interesting? In other words a non-local goal was somehow forming in their mind drawing them down a particular path? Or am I missing something?
Re: The Myth of the Objective
#9This is mostly a problem when your thinking about objectives admits only one at a time. Many more opportunities arise when we find an interesting compromise in full awareness of the conflicts among multiple objectives.
Re: The Myth of the Objective
#10The article is terrible - it is effectively saying "being objective" is not good for achieving that "objective". This is complete non-sense without untangling the epistemic roots for said words, the author may have had.
It's apparent that it's actually saying that being too "greedy" (i.e too low a horizon) can be bad for achieving an objective. This is well known to both Control theorists, RL practitioners, and many other non-STEM people (in marketing/politics/sociology etc.).
This triviality has nothing at all to do with Zen or any of the things Westerners take for being "rustic" and "warm and fuzzy".