Mental models and the 7Es LO29423

From: AM de Lange (amdelange@postino.up.ac.za)
Date: 10/31/02


Replying to LO29398 --

Dear Organlearners,

Terje Tonsberg < tatonsberg@hotmail.com > writes

>I would like to expand on what At was saying about Mental
>Models (MM) by looking at this label's usefulness for
>understanding behavior via the 7Es (those not interested have
>thereby been forewarned:)

Greetings dear Terje,

Thank you for a fascinating contribution. To read how someone else works
with the 7Es is truely rewarding. I am going to restrict myself only to
the first one. If i tackle the others, i will certainly explode with
excitement ;-)

>Liveness: One severe problem with mental models is that
>they impose a dead structure on a live organism subject to
>continuous internal and external changes to explain behavior.
>It is a little like studying a corpse to understand the behavior
>of a live person. You are not studying the thing itself.

I like it. I will go so far as to say that information, despite the
explosion of it, is a corpse since every "parcel" of it is dead! As i used
to say to my students "A book cannot give birth to a book because it is
dead. Only your living knowledge can give birth to a book" It is the
knowledge which dwells within a person which makes the information in a
book alive when it gets imbedded into that knowledge.

Where does this liveness ("becoming-being") of knowledge comes from? It
has been "inherited" from my creativity! It is essential to my creativity.
So, when i create, i learn. The cummulative outcome of all my learning is
my knowing.

Where does this liveness in my creativity comes from. It is here where i
have an outlook far different from anybody else. The "being" comes from
the "energy conservation" within me. The "becoming" comes from the
"entropy production" within me. The LEC (Law of Energy Conservation) and
the LEP (Law of Entropy Production) are the two most profound laws of the
universe. It is because of them that we have a Mother Earth with life upon
it. It is the liveness ("becoming- being") of Mother Earth so precious. It
is because of that that we now how a such a central subject as Ecology
which led to the "school" Ecological Psychology. One day, when
psychologists really take LEC and LEP into consideration, a much needed
paradigm shift will happen.

Why do Mental Models (MMs) have such a curious effect on human behaviour
(change)? The entropy production in a MM is very little, if any. No change
("becoming") can happen without any entropy production. When no entropy is
produced, a system is in equilibrium. This is what is so curious about
MMs. They are in equilibirum. And when they get pushed out of equilibrium
by a deluge of entropy in the form of information, they try their best to
get back to equilibrium as fast as possible. In other words, MMs have
little liveness and avoid more liveness like the pest.

With care and best wishes

-- 

At de Lange <amdelange@postino.up.ac.za> Snailmail: A M de Lange Gold Fields Computer Centre Faculty of Science - University of Pretoria Pretoria 0001 - Rep of South Africa

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