[post] Question Your Assumptions: initial commit (#92)

data/posts/0026-e2m-st-new-devops-perspective.md

@@ -17,7 +17,7 @@ it means. With this in mind, what does DevOps mean to you?" Unsurprisingly, each
 
 Since reading Accelerate [[1](https://itrevolution.com/product/accelerate/)] a few years ago, my working for any
 discussion around DevOps has been: _"DevOps is a collection of engineering practices and methodologies to deliver more
-value, faster, in a more stable way to the end user."_ I have not been satisfied with this definition ore perspective
+value, faster, in a more stable way to the end user."_ I have not been satisfied with this definition or perspective
 and recently I have found it lacking. A quick follow up question asking about the specific engineering practices and
 methodologies can quickly lead to a opinion heavy debate over Trunk Based Development vs GitFlow, Continuous Delivery vs
 Continuous Deployment, and how much testing is needed, where it's needed and what needs to be tested.

data/posts/0027-st-question-your-assumptions.md

@@ -0,0 +1,91 @@
+!! title: Always Question Your Assumptions
+!! slug: st-question-your-assumptions
+!! published: 2024-02-05
+!! description: Double-loop learning and questioning assumptions.
+
+---
+
+Training dogs holds a very special place in my heart. There is very little that brings me more satisfaction and joy than
+to work with and train an intelligent canine. I have found that consistency, almost to an extreme, is the key of
+developing and maintaining desired behavior. 
+
+The traditional learning loop that is proposed and studied extensively in psychology for learning for both animals and
+humans is single-loop learning. An agent is placed into a world, receives feedback information, makes a decision,
+experiences the feedback from the decision, receives more feedback to make another decision. And so on and so forth _ad
+infinitum_.
+
+> Single-loop learning does not result in deep change to our mental models--our understanding of the casual structure of
+> the system, along with the boundary of the model (which variables are included and which are excluded) and the time
+> horizon we consider relevant--our framing or articulation of a problem (Sterman, 2000)
+
+The famous Skinner Box experiments shows this well. A rat is placed into a box that has at least one lever connected to
+some feedback. Depending on the research question, the lever could deliver different types of feedback: positive
+reinforcement, positive punishment, negative reinforcement, and negative punishment. The overall idea of the Skinner Box
+is to test different operant conditioning research questions in isolated and controlled environments (Nickerson, 2024).
+After a few times in the box, rats show the behavior of running over and immediately pressing the lever. From a
+single-loop learning perspective, the box is the world and throughout the experiment stays constant. The rat is the
+agent. The agent presses a lever and receives feedback and quickly builds a mental model of how the world works. The
+world is held constant, feedback is delivered, decisions are made and behavior is formed and executed with continued
+experimentation.
+
+> We are taught from an early age that every event has a cause, which in turn is an effect of some still earlier cause:
+> "Inventory is too high because sales unexpectedly fell. Sales fell because the competitors lowered their price. The
+> competitors lowered their prices because ..." Such event-level explanations can be extended indefinitely, in an
+> unbroken Aristotelian chain of cause and effects, until we arrive at some First Cause, or more likely, lose interest
+> along they way (Sterman, 2000).
+
+In a different Skinner Box experiment, Skinner experimented with food delivery regular interval food delivery with
+pigeons and found that the pigeons associated whatever behavior they were doing right before the food delivery with the
+appearance of food (Skinner, 1948). A cause-effect relationship was formed between behavior and reward even though there
+was no relation between the cause and effect. Anthropomorphically, the pigeons assumed that it was from the event of
+their behavior that caused the event of the food appearance and formed a superstition. A mental model was formed of the
+world that it was their behavior that caused the food to appear. However, when the regular interval of the food delivery
+was stopped, it was observed that the pigeon's learned "superstitious" behavior deteriorated. When the regular food
+delivery started back up, a completely new behavior was "learned" at the same rate as before.
+
+Single-loop learning assumes that the world is constant and not changing. The Skinner Box doesn't change...until it
+does. In the pigeon experiment, the world doesn't stay constant as it did the experiment with the rats. The period of
+the appearance of food changes and so does the observed behavior of the pigeon's mental model. From the anthropomorphic
+perspective of the pigeon, the pigeon receives positive reinforcement feedback for a certain behavior when the food
+appears--even though there is no relation--so it decides to keep doing that behavior. The feedback from the system
+continues. When the feedback stops--the regular intervals of food delivery stops--the behavior continues but
+deteriorates over time as the perceived feedback stops. The feedback that indicates that it is not the behavior that
+causes the food updates the pigeon's mental model in relation. When the regular interval food delivery is resumed,
+a new cause-effect relationship starts, even though the delivery is still not related to the behavior. In the studied
+cases, a new cause-effect "superstitious" behavior was observed (Skinner, 1948). 
+
+In double-loop learning, the feedback doesn't just affect the decisions in the world. Feedback also updates the mental
+models, decision rules, decision making strategies, and the system itself (Sterman, 2000). The resulting behavior from
+the system is different than before because the system is different than before.
+
+> Systems Thinking is double-loop learning: information feedback about the real world no only alters our decisions
+> within the context of the exiting frames and decision rules, but also feeds back to alter our mental models. As our
+> mental models change, we change the structure of our systems, creating different decision rules and strategies. The
+> same information processed by different decision rules and strategies now yield a different decision (Sterman, 2000).
+
+There is are lists of things that impede learning at each point in double-loop learning: the real world is very complex
+and difficult to reason about with accuracy, selective perception, biases, ambiguity, misperceptions of feedback,
+unscientific reasoning (even by scientists), judgemental biases, defensive routines, inconsistent decision making, and
+performance as goal are just some. These all have something in common: a strong underlying bias that currently held
+assumptions are more accurate that something else, even in the face of disconfirming evidence of the held assumptions.
+
+Identifying and questioning all assumptions is paramount to learning in complex systems. As we try to work towards a
+specific system goal, have we defined the boundaries well enough? Is there a variable that we have intentionally or
+unintentionally not included in the model that has a large effect on the behavior of the larger system? What is the
+stated goal of the system that we are studying? Does the behavior of the system move towards that goal, or is there a
+goal that it is moving towards in action that is different than the stated goal? 
+
+When we start questioning all of our assumptions, we allow flexibility in our mental models to conform to the observed
+world instead of demanding the world conform to our mental models. Our perspectives shifts. It becomes easier to relate
+to other humans because our mental models of the world remain fluid.
+
+> Each participant in a conversation employs a different mental model to interpret the subject. Fundamental assumptions
+> differ but are never brought into the open (Sterman, 2000).
+
+---
+
+## Resources
+
+1. [Charlotte Nickerson; _Skinner Box: What is an Operant Conditioning Chamber?_; 2024](https://www.simplypsychology.org/what-is-a-skinner-box.html)
+2. [B. F. Skinner; _'Superstition' in Pigeons_; 1948](https://psychclassics.yorku.ca/Skinner/Pigeon/)
+

frontend/src/lib/assets/data.json

@@ -9,14 +9,13 @@
   "skillsData": {
     "leadership": [
       "curiosity first",
+      "systems thinking",
       "psychological saftey",
       "organizational alignment",
-      "strategic thinking",
-      "systems thinking"
+      "strategic thinking"
     ],
     "poeple management": [
       "psychological saftey",
-      "output oriented",
       "high performance: purpose + expectations + feedback",
       "effective feedback with the PSBIQ model",
       "situational leadership: delagate, support, coach, or direct"