Do we want to encourage mindless risk taking?
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Hi, Atobe. Hmm - I cannot imagine that a container cabin would constitute particularly civilised living. My commiserations. Sorry for taking so long to post a response – work has kept me rather busy of late.
I toyed around with the idea of politics at university, but I took a calculated risk.
The party that asked me to run was not very well organised, and I declined their invitation to run for elections with them. Instead, I stuck around as an advisor to the party and helped design their campaign. The key element that I designed into their campaign was to bring under public scrutiny the lack of action on the incumbent student union president's part, and sure enough, it worked and we won the election. On the day the results came out, I warned the new president that the challengers in the next year's election would have seen this and would use the same tactic on her, and so she should spend a certain proportion of her time out and about, being seen by the student population to be doing something. Sadly, she did not take that bit of advice and spent most of her term behind locked doors in a legal battle with the union manager instead. As a matter of course, she lost the next election.
By that time, I had decided that politics was not an activity that I wanted to be involved in for a number of reasons. First, the personalities that I had to deal with were ruled more by their hearts and gonads than they were by their heads - that made working with them difficult, if not impossible. Second, there is only one hard and fast rule of politics: you're damned if you do and you're damned if you don't. My time is much better spent on things other than dealing with this factor. Finally, I suppose that this is the influence of the Commandos, but I take invisibility to be my most powerful weapon. During this president's term, I used my influence with the student union to get the academic staff to revise some of their policies, in particular instituting a "three strikes and you're out rule" that applied to students who disrupted lectures. The academic staff were terrified of student union action if they threw students out of lecture theatres, and so I brokered a very quiet agreement between the union and the staff to respect the three strikes rule. If a student was thrown out of the class after three warnings, the union would not back the student's complaints. After brokering that deal, I had my head of department pretty much at my beck and call. If I was visible, my actions would have been under so much public scrutiny and interference that I would never have been able to get anything done.
Ultimately, after a year of experimentation, I decided that politics was not really my thing, and decided to leave it to people with bigger egos. Besides, my current role has me traipsing between Melbourne and Los Angeles, with a few other countries thrown in down the track, and I rather like the current setup.
I read through Lee's article again, and I can see how the polemic tone of the article could raise adverse reactions. Being one of those who believes in Ernest Hemingway's claim that "Auto racing, bullfighting and mountain climbing are the only true sports - the rest are just games", I was annoyed at Lee's treatment of racing. That, however, was more a case of poor writing and choice of analogy than anything else. Factoring all of that out, the key point still makes sense.
In my opinion, the key statement here is "The former kind of risk-taking behaviour is what we want to encourage. Only if we have enough of such men and women will we be able to compete with the rest of the world as venture capitalists, scientists, etc.". It is not so much that there is anything wrong with bungee jumping or motor sports (although the poor standard of Lee's writing does seem to point things in that direction), but that the propensity to take risks for its own sake may not only be inapplicable, it may be hazardous.
One of my favourite movie quotes comes from Ronin: "Lady, I never walk into a place that I don't know how to walk out of". It encapsulates the spirit of calculated risk-taking: never allow yourself to get into a dead end. Whenever I supervise an Honours student's thesis (this is the first year since 1998 that I have not taken a student on), I question their research design before they even begin to try to propose it. I take them through every step of the process from beginning to end and ask them what they expect to happen at each stage. After that I ask them what they would do if the expected result did not eventuate. Every single time, my students get stumped by the second question, because they fail to come up with contingency plans and develop options for themselves in the event that something goes wrong. Some students have listened and learned to plan accordingly; these are the ones who eventually understood the reason for having to produce a thesis. A few did not listen; they all passed, but their results could have been much better.
What stood out about this latter group of students was that they were firmly stuck on the idea that their thesis must be earth-shattering. My response to them was invariably that such a goal is fine, as long as it does not come at the cost of the basic obligation to produce a piece of research that is as close to technically perfect as possible. Again, an adage in motor racing is, “To finish first, first you must finish” (it seems rather odd that many of these truisms come from the sport that Lee pans). The students who did not keep this operating principle in mind ended up committing errors that first-year undergraduate students would not have been forgiven for, all because they were too busy trying to prove that they had found the Holy Grail of their field. The old phrase “ho kwa bo ho chia” perfectly characterizes such theses; at face value they showed great promise, but once the markers looked into the detail, the deficiencies in the research showed up even more clearly against the intention of the study.
This is not to say that I discouraged my students from doing anything special with their research; I simply ensured that they were aware of the basic requirements to be fulfilled before they got on to the fancy stuff. The last thesis I supervised is a prime case of this. A month into supervision, I looked at the concept of the study and realized that it was in fact an attempt to conduct a Master’s thesis within the constraints of an Honours thesis. I knew that it would go one of two ways: it would be a brilliant victory if it worked, or a complete disaster if it did not. Over the next six months, my mission was to constantly pull my student back to the essential principles of research design and statistical analysis, making sure the product was not technically flawed in any way. Ultimately, it worked – my student got First-Class Honours, and would probably have gotten the highest mark in the class had she not handed the damned thing in a week late.
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The difference between this last student and the others is that she understood and accepted, albeit reluctantly, the fundamental requirement of calculated risk-taking: before you go out and do anything extraordinary, make sure that all of the ordinary bases are covered.
Writing a thesis is not a matter of making a split-second decision; it is, however, no less a matter of making a timely decision, because a false move could take months to fix. One of the lecturers who sends her students my way has specifically said that she does so because of my reputation for forward planning, by which I ensure that costly mistakes do not occur down the track, in the course of bending every available rule to push the studentsÂ’ performance envelopes.
This highlights the nature of calculated risk-taking as a happy medium that needs to be struck. On one end of the scale we have the mentality that goes, "Oh, no, we must not deviate from the ordinary; let's stick with what has worked in the past". On the other end, we have, "This is boring - let's do something completely different". The danger of the first approach is that at the rate business, and indeed life in general, progress these days, standing still guarantees that you will go backwards; on the other hand, throwing out the baby with the bathwater by invalidating things that genuinely work is equally unwise.
To tie all of this back to Lee's point, I would not necessarily decide to exclude somebody from my team if he bungee jumps. However, if this individual was so addicted to the rush of bungee jumping that he went out of his way in other arenas to get the same rush, I would have grave concerns about how he would affect my team's work. I certainly would not want some cowboy coming along and derailing a carefully laid strategy simply for the thrill of it.
In the course of writing this post, I have realized (to some embarrassment) that we have in fact glossed over one of the basic tenets of this discussion. Going back to Remaking Singapore, are we talking about risk-taking, or are we in fact talking about lateral thinking, of which risk-taking is a part?
Captain Roger Courtney, RN, said to recruits of the Folboat Section of the Special Boat Squadron in 1942, “Are you TOUGH? If so, get out. I need f***ers with intelligence.”. Being gung-ho is not all it takes to conquer new frontiers. It is only part of the equation under the aegis of lateral thinking, so that workable solutions may be devised for problems that arise. To generate a novel thought, one must have the willingness to risk deviating from the tried and tested; keep in mind, however, that this willingness is subservient to the goal of generating the optimal solution. Coming up with a new approach for the sake of novelty may lead one to miss the point of the entire exercise, which would make it a wasted effort and would jeopardize everything that had hitherto been carefully established. -
Hi Gendaken, from your very interesting post, you certainly show that you are one of those few individuals who have your life under control.
You should reconsider providing your expertise and experience to any one of the Opposition Parties, as they certainly do lack “willing” and “calculated risk takers” to provide them with back-up research, objectivity, and sense of direction in the execution of their goals.
In any case, from your travel pattern, I doubt if you will be able to make it.
Concerning politics are for those with a “super ego complex” - I am not so certain about this, although the "super ego" may raise its ugly head at a much later stage when one “has arrived” at a certain stage when one is widely recognized internationally; and this will require the person to be conscious of the pitfalls when the super ego blind other alternative views.
To be in politics, a person will need certain degree of purpose, commitment, and strong sense of dedication; as well as a large amount of sacrifice to oneÂ’s own interests.
It is admirable that our Singaporean Opposition Politicians have made that sacrifice, some at tremendous costs to themselves and their families – a result of miscalculated risks, or mindless risks to satisfy egos ?
Is there any price for one's ego ?
I believe that those who have taken up the cudgel and enter politics, have done so with a personal feeling of disgust at the present political scene, and have taken up politics to change the situation with whatever dent they can make on the determined politics practiced by the Ruling Party.
While some Opposition personality may not have the finesse in delivery, one should not condemn and dismiss the person in disgust; but perhaps engage the person so as to improve the situation - so as to allow that person to be more effective in the desire to represent others at the national level.
In surgically removing the other factors surrounding the conditions that formed mindless risk takings, you have certainly presented calculated risk takings in a more acceptable and reasoned approach of facing LifeÂ’s challenges.
It is interesting the manner in which you have peppered your posts with some lines taken from past movies seen and books read, and I certainly see that we have arrived at some common ground on several points.
There will always be risks in any human endeavors, from the simple activity that a child first set out to learn to ride a bicycle, to his constant desire to ride the bicycle just to get away from his school work, to the change of his preference from bicycle to skate boarding, to stunt skate boarding, and graduating onwards to motorbikes and cars.
Should we inhibit or moderate or monitor the child in his gradual advancement towards a higher skill on wheels ? Or should we encourage the child to take risks and assist him to graduate from one skill to another by giving the best environment to learn those skills – much as what is being done in the SAF ?
There will come a time that one has to set loose the individual to allow him to step out and learn to exercise his decision making ability, learning from the errors of his own decisions, and savoring the tastes of success.
I will certainly agree with you that any “psychotic types” - (intended to be more derogatory term than medical) - that need regular spikes of adrenalin surges will be tough to work with.
Perhaps the ability to evaluate situation, decision processes, and decision making can be nurtured into an individual, and at the end what is within the personÂ’s make-up will see how much of that nurturing will remain to assist him further in his Life.
Towards this end, it will be dependent on Psychologists, like you, to develop systems and programs to help parents and educators in developing or refining such “skills”.
At times I wonder what makes some individuals so highly motivated in any enterprise – business, or politics, or personal - despite encountering so many failures and remain faithful in one’s ability and purpose; while some others will give up at the first failure and never to reconsider into the same activity again.
Mindless recklessness at work for those who persist ? -
Well Atobe, the reason why I keep things under control is that it allows me the freedom to run a few things on the ragged edge! Apologies, by the way, for taking so long to post – it has been a busy week.
In general, I certainly do not dismiss members of the opposition in disgust, but I do not have enough faith in what I see at present. As I mentioned before, I treasure my invisibility because scrutiny interferes with my goals. I would have to take a very carefully calculated risk if I were to back any member of the opposition. Such an individual would have to be savvy enough to understand the rules of the game, intelligent enough to use those rules to advantage and canny enough to maintain my invisibility. I can see no such person in Singapore's political scene. For the moment, the situation is not set for such an endeavour.
Speaking of endeavours, you are right in saying that almost every action we perform carries a certain amount of risk, and my philosophy has always been to minimise, if not eliminate that risk, in order to ensure success. I have often been found out on a limb, literally and figuratively, trying to achieve things that many others wrote off as being impossible or too complex. Certainly in my younger years, I had my fair share of failures, often with spectacular results. However, underlying all of those adventures was the sense that the formula was intrinsically right, even though some variables were off the mark. Along the way in secondary school, I developed for myself what I fondly call the Boeing school of life: you visit the site of the accident and pick through the wreckage, working out what went wrong and how to prevent it from going wrong again. After that, never revisit the crash site.
I cannot speak on the behalf of others about what drives others to persist despite repeated failures, but I can clearly remember what set me on that path. I was in Primary 2 when a test result showed my IQ to be 142. These days, of course, I know that the figure has little real meaning, but it was a rather heady experience for an eight-year-old, and from that point on, nobody could presume to tell me anything that did not entirely make sense to me. To some extent, the obnoxious eight-year-old lives on - I refuse to believe that something is impossible until I find it out for myself.
The next milestone was the day of my passing-out parade. That evening, I sat in my room staring at the beret in my lap and a thought occurred to me: up to that point, I had been running about trying to prove something, but I had neglected to consider what I was trying to prove and who I was trying to prove it to. From that point, I decided that I had to be my own compass, and working out how that was to be achieved has been my biggest challenge to date.
I am fortunate in that I have experienced the influence of a number of individuals who had met this challenge before I did. I watched and learned from them, and right now I know enough about it to use those lessons for myself, but I have as yet not learned enough to pass those lessons on. Perhaps it is one of those things that one has to see rather than hear.
There is a certain freedom in being able to define one's goals for oneself, but it comes at a price. Nobody is there to answer your questions and you become your harshest judge, one that you cannot walk away from, ignore or berate into submission.
A case in point comes from this week. There is a project that I am working on at the moment, and for the life of me I could not understand my boss' vision of how it has to be done. My boss can be quite an abrasive individual (as Americans are wont to be), but I have already told him that he has to try much harder if he wants to upset me. What did annoy me, and what kept annoying me until I got the answer, was that I did not have a clear enough understanding of what was required of me, to the point that I could almost instinctively take the correct course of action. Along the way, I think I got my boss to tear some of his hair out, because I kept getting it wrong. I could have simply gone with exactly what he prescribed, but that was not satisfying – I knew what worked, but I did not know how it worked – so I kept working at defining the underlying principles until I got it right. I have been in this sort of situation plenty of times before, and until the problem was solved, I was continuously harangued by that harshest of judges – myself.
Should we inhibit children from taking risks so that they can learn? Certainly not. That said, I think a modicum of resistance should be applied, so that at very least these children can be prepared for they naysayers they will inevitably encounter in the wider world. Given the general tendency for people to react to environmental influences, perhaps the “psychotic” (in the non-medical sense ) risk-takers could be from environments on either end of the inhibition scale. They could have been so inhibited that they now have an extreme reaction against any constraints, or on the other end of the scale, they may never have been aware of the existence of such constraints in the first place. As with most things, inhibition needs to be applied in moderation.
As you suggested, the ability to take calculated risks by properly evaluating situations and making logical decisions is something that I believe can be nurtured. This of course raises the question of what the key elements in such a nurturing process would be. I will have to think about this one for a while and see if I can come up with a cogent theoretical framework within which such a process could be carried out.