The Art and Science of Intuitive Decision Making

At age 16, Albert Einstein had a puzzling thought, what would a light beam look like if you could travel alongside it ? Over the next decade, as a he gained a much deeper understanding of physics, the question continued to bother him. It was a question, he came to realize, that revealed an inconsistency in the views held by his fellow physicists. They were convinced—quite sensibly, most people would say—that time is absolute, that it passes at the same rate for everyone, regardless of where they are or how they happen to be moving.

While working as a clerk at the patent office in Berne, Switzerland, Einstein threw himself into the task of resolving this inconsistency. After a year of intense but fruitless effort, he was ready to give up. As a last gasp measure, he decided to describe the problem and his efforts to solve it to his friend Michele Besso. They met on a beautiful spring morning in 1905. During their conversation, Einstein later wrote, “a storm broke loose in my mind”. It dawn on him that he could resolve the inconsistency by giving up the assumption that time absolute. He went home to ponder this insight and the next day paid Besso another visit. Without even saying hello, Einstein blurted out, “Thank you. I’ve completely solved the problem.” Five weeks later, Einstein sent off the paper containing his solution and thereby laid the foundation for the theory of relativity.

Introduction:
When do you get your best ideas? When do you have your “Aha!” moment?

It’s a well-known secret that great ideas come to you as flashes of insight, often when you least expect them. It’s probably happened to you—in the rest-room, shower, or while watering your plants, stepping onto a train, or stuck in traffic, falling asleep, swimming, watching sunrise or sunset, or brushing your teeth in the morning. Suddenly it hits you. It all comes together in your mind. You connect the dots. It can be one big “Aha!” or a series of smaller ones that together help you in your decision making. The fog clears and you see what to do. You decide. It seems so obvious. A moment before you had no idea. Now you do.

If this kind of flash of insight has ever happened to you, welcome to the club. Consider some of the greatest achievements in human history, through the ages, this “flash” has been a key element: how Einstein discovered theory of relativity, how Steve Jobs designed iPhone, how Bill Gates founded Microsoft, how the Google folks conquered the Internet, and so on. It’s how innovators get their innovations, how artists get their creative ideas, how visionaries get their vision, how scientists make their discoveries, and how good ideas of every kind arise in the human mind.

Historically, you will find reference to flashes of insight in eastern philosophy (Sun Tzu’s The Art of War from China-450BC, Miyamoto Musashi’s Book of five rings from Japan-1645 and the classic Bhagavadgita from India-400BC), western classical military strategy, global business strategy, the grand history of scientific discovery, and the newer field of cognitive psychology, as well.
Fast forward to 21st century, behavioral, cognitive and neurosciences have made great strides in explaining how these “flashes of insight” work.

Our conscious mind is only able to process approximately 50 bits of information a second, while our unconscious mind processes approximately 11 million bits per second. This means our unconscious mind processes information 220 thousand times faster than the conscious mind.

Sometimes our conscious mind picks up messages from the subconscious, understandings about a particular situation that we can’t find any real rational basis for but turn out to be true. We often call these experience “Hunch, Gut Feeling or Intuition”. Whatever name you want to call it by doesn’t really matter. The important point is that this is a vast and powerful resource of the human mind and can give you access to knowledge almost instantly that is out of reach of our logical, conscious mind.

Here’s an example;
You are talking to someone and they are lying to you, but covering up it very well. There are subtle cues given off by the body when someone is being dishonest, and your subconscious will pick up on these, but in most cases it won’t override the constant stream of conscious thought along with all the beliefs and pre-conceptions you have about the person you are speaking to, so those messages get ignored. Now people with a strong intuition will be far more likely to naturally pick up on this feeling that something isn’t quite right. But what about the rest of us ? What if your intuition isn’t quite as good as you’d like it to be ?

Well the good news is your intuition can be developed, nurtured and engaged in real-world decision making !

Most organizations today are facing fast-paced, dynamic change and rising uncertainty in business environment. Organizations, big and small, depend every day on the ability of their leaders and staff to make good decisions in crisis situations. This is particularly so, for the armed forces, police, fire brigade, hospitals and other emergency services.

The threat of high decision costs, increased time pressure, inadequate information and fast-paced change, along with other dynamic factors triggered by new economic and technological forces have exacerbated the need for better decision making tools that will perform satisfactorily under ambiguous conditions.

Since many of the requirements for rationality are becoming more difficult to satisfy, organizations have begun to embrace more holistic approaches to decision making. These factors have led management researchers to question the effectiveness of rational decision-making as the only viable alternative. New conceptual frameworks include exploration of less tangible concepts, such as intuition.

However, in recent years there has been resurgence of interest in intuition, perhaps because of some dissatisfaction with rationality (management studies have shown that linear rational models do not perform satisfactorily for businesses operating under rising pressure and ambiguity. rational decision-making strategies have failed to reach the 50% success mark). Some psychologists are now arguing that much of cognition occurs automatically outside of consciousness and in the realm of intuition.

Mostly, decision-making processes are partially driven by emotion, imagination, and memories crystallized into occasional insights. A typical multidimensional approach to decision making should encompass rationality, as well as heuristics, insight, and intuition

Intuition is a non-sequential information processing mode, which comprises both cognitive and affective elements and results in direct knowing without any use of conscious reasoning. Knowledge of intuition has made significant advances in recent years, and it can now be understood as a composite phenomenon involving interplay between knowing (intuition-as-expertise) and sensing (intuition-as-feeling).

This program is based on extensive research into intuitive decision-making and judgement, catalyzed by recent developments in behavioral, cognitive and neuro-sciences and business psychology, reinforced by the recent advances in decision support systems in using such an integrated model for the development of decision programs.

Exemplary personalities and their thoughts on Intuition:
 Albert Einstein (Theoretical physicist who is widely considered one of the greatest physicists of all time. Best known for the theory of relativity, Nobel Prize in Physics for his explanation of the photoelectric effect and "for his services to Theoretical Physics".) «The only real valuable thing is intuition. There is no logical way to the discovery of these elemental laws. There is only the way of intuition, which is helped by a feeling for the order lying behind the appearance.

 John Naisbitt (Former executive with IBM and Eastman Kodak, American writer in the area of futures studies. Author of several international best sellers like "Megatrends" and "Re-inventing the Corporation". «Intuition becomes increasingly valuable in the new information society precisely because there is so much data.»

 Alexis Carrel (French surgeon, biologist and eugenicist, Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine): «All great men are gifted with intuition. They know without reasoning or analysis, what they need to know. Intuition comes very close to clairvoyance; it appears to be the extrasensory perception of reality.»

 Henry Reed (British poet): «Intuition is the very force or activity of the soul in its experience through whatever has been the experience of the soul itself. It is as if the intuitive sense acting through the soul is what makes the raw events into food for the soul.»

 Immanuel Kant (German philosopher): Intuition and concepts constitute... the elements of all our knowledge, so that neither concepts without an intuition in some way corresponding to them, nor intuition without concepts, can yield knowledge.

 George Crumb (American composer of modern and avant garde music): In general, I feel that the more rationalistic approaches to pitch-organization, including specifically serial technique, have given way, largely, to a more intuitive approach.

 Robert Graves (English poet, scholar, and novelist): «Intuition is the supra-logic that cuts out all the routine processes of thought and leaps straight from the problem to the answer.»

 Lao Tzu (ancient Chinese philosopher): The power of intuitive understanding will protect you from harm until the end of your days.

 Anne Wilson Schaef (writer and lecturer): «Trusting our intuition often saves us from disaster.»

 Andie MacDowell (American screen actress): I think women have an innate ability to be intuitive with people that they truly love, but they have to trust that inner voice, and I think it is there. I think we are more intuitive than men.

Key References:
 Agor, W. H. (1986 January/February). How Top Executives Use Their Intuition to Make Important Decisions. Business Horizons, 29(1), 49-53.

 Dane, E., & Pratt, M. (2004). Intuition: Its boundaries and role in organizational decision-making. Academy of Management Proceedings, 1, 1-6.

 Janney, J. J., Dess, G. G. (2004 November). Can real-options analysis improve decision-making? Promises and pitfalls. Academy of Management Executive, 18(4), 60-75.

 Fredrickson, J. W. (1983). Rationality in Strategic Decision Processes. Academy of Management Proceedings, 17-21.

 Ireland, R. D. & Miller, C. C. (2004, November). Decision-making and firm success. Academy of Management Executive, 18(4), 8-12.

 Mankins, M. (2004 May). Making strategy development matter. Harvard Management Update, 9(2), 3-5.

 Mueller, G. C., Mone, M. A., & III, Vincent L. B. (2000). Strategic decision making and performance: Decision processes and environmental effects. Academy of Management Proceedings, 1, 1-6.

 Sadler-Smith, E. & Shefy, E. (2004 November). The intuitive executive: Understanding and applying 'gut feel' in decision-making. Academy of Management Executive, 18(4), 76-91.

mohan ravuru

Ten Commandments to deal with a dynamic universe

While change and uncertainty have always been a part of life, what has been shocking over the last year has been both the quantum and suddenness of change.

For many people who were cruising along on placid waters, the wind was knocked out of their sails. The entire logic of doing business was turned on its head. Not only business, but also every aspect of human life has been impacted by the change. What lies ahead is even more dynamic and uncertain.

Here is a proposal of ten commandments to deal with a dynamic universe around us:


1. Be alert for the first signs of change

Change descends on everyone equally; it is just that some realize it faster. Some changes are Sudden but many others are gradual. While sudden changes get attention because they are dramatic, it is the gradual changes that are ignored till it is too late.

You must have all heard of story of the frog in boiling water. If the temperature of the water is suddenly increased, the frog realizes it and jumps out of the water. But if the temperature is very slowly increased, one degree at a time, the frog does not realize it till it boils to death. You must develop your own early warning system, which warns you of changes and calls your attention to it. In the case of change, being
forewarned is being forearmed.


2. Anticipate change even when things are going right.

Most people wait for something to go wrong before they think of change. It is like
going to the doctor for a check up only when you are seriously sick or thinking of maintaining your vehicle only when it breaks down. The biggest enemy of future success is past success. When you succeed, you feel that you must be doing something right for it to happen. But when the parameters for success change, doing the same things may or may not continue to lead to success.

Guard against complacency all the time. Complacency makes you blind to the early signals from the environment that something is going wrong.

3. Always look at the opportunities that change represents.
Managing change has a lot to go with our own attitude towards it. It is proverbial half-full or half empty glass approach. For every problem that change represents, there is an opportunity lurking in disguise somewhere. It is up to you to spot it before someone else does.

4. Do not allow routines to become chains.
For many of us the routine we have got accustomed to obstructs change. Routines represent our own zones of comfort. There is a sense of predictability about them. They have structured our time and even our thought in a certain way. While routines are useful, do not let them enslave you. Deliberately break out of them from time to time

5. Realize that fear of the unknown is natural
With change comes a feeling of insecurity. Many people believe that brave people are
not afflicted by this malady. The truth is different. Every one feels the fear of unknown. Courage is not the absence of fear but the ability to manage fear without getting paralyzed. Feel the fear, but move on regardless.

6. Keep renewing yourself
This prepares you to anticipate change and be ready for it when it comes. Constantly ask yourself what new skills and competencies will be needed. Begin working on them before it becomes necessary and you will have a natural advantage. The greatest benefit of your education lies not only in what you have learnt, but in working how to learn. Formal education is the beginning of the journey of learning. Yet I do meet youngsters who feel that they have already learnt all there is to learn. You have to constantly learn about people and how to interact effectively with them. In the world of tomorrow, only those individuals and organizations will succeed who have mastered the art of rapid and on-going learning.

7. Surround yourself with people who are open to change
If you are always in the company of cynics, you will soon find yourself becoming like
them. A cynic knows all the reasons why something cannot be done. Instead, spend time with people who have a "can- do" approach. Choose your advisors and mentors correctly. Pessimism is contagious, but then so is enthusiasm. In fact, reasonable optimism can be an amazing force multiplier.

8. Play to win

I have said this many times in the past. Playing to win is not the same as cutting corners. When you play to win, you Stretch yourself to your maximum and use all your potential. It also helps you to concentrate your energy on what you can influence instead of getting bogged down with the worry of what you cannot change. Do your best and leave the rest.


9. Respect yourself

The world will reward you on your successes.
Success requires no explanation and failure permits none. But you need to respect yourself enough so that your self-confidence remains intact whether you succeed or fail. If you succeed 90 per cent of the time, you are doing fine. If you are succeeding all the time, you should ask yourself if you are taking enough risks. If you do not take enough risks, you may also be losing out on many opportunities. Think through but take the plunge. If some things do go wrong, learn from them.

I came across this interesting story some time ago:

One day a farmer's donkey fell down into a well. The animal cried piteously for hours as the farmer tried to figure out what to do. Finally he decided the animal was old and the well needed to be covered up anyway it just wasn't worth it to retrieve the donkey. He invited all his neighbors to come over and help him. They all grabbed a shovel and begin to shovel dirt into the well. At first, the donkey realized what was happening and cried horribly. Then, to everyone's amazement he quieted down. A few
Shovel loads later, the farmer finally looked down the well and was astonished at! What he saw. With every shovel of dirt that fell on his back, the donkey was doing some thing amazing. He would shake it off and take a step up. As the
farmer's neighbors continued to shovel dirt on top of the animal, he would
shake it off and take a step up. Pretty soon, everyone was amazed as the donkey stepped up over the edge of the well and totted off! Life is going to shovel dirt on you, all kinds of dirt. The trick is too not to get bogged down by it. We can get out of the deepest wells by not stopping. And by never giving up! Shake it off and take a step up!

10. In spite of all the change around you, decide upon what you will never change: your core values

Take your time to decide what they are but once you do, do not compromise on them for any reason. Integrity is one such value. These have contributed to our success, including our parents and others from our society. All of us have a responsibility to utilize our potential for making our nation a better place for others, who may not be as well endowed as us, or as fortunate in having the opportunities
that we have got. Let us do our bit, because doing one good deed can have multiple
benefits not only for us but also for many others. Let me end my talk with a
small story I came across some time back, which illustrates this very well.

This is a story of a poor Scottish farmer whose name was Fleming. One day,
while trying to make a living for his family, he heard a cry for help coming from a nearby bog. He dropped his tools and ran to the bog. There, mired to his waist in black muck, was a terrified boy, screaming and struggling to free himself. Farmer Fleming saved the boy from what could have been a slow and terrifying death. The next day, a fancy carriage pulled up to the Scotsman's sparse surroundings. An elegantly dressed nobleman stepped out and introduced himself as the father of the boy Farmer Fleming had saved.

"I want to repay you, "said the nobleman. " Yes," the farmer replied proudly. "I'll make you a deal. Let me take your son and give him a good education. If he's anything like his father, he'll grow to be a man you can be proud of." And that he did. In time, Farmer Fleming's son graduated from St. Mary's Hospital Medical School in London, and went on to become known throughout the world as the noted Sir Alexander Fleming, the discoverer of Penicillin. Years afterward, the nobleman's son was stricken with pneumonia. What saved him? Penicillin. This is not the end.

The nobleman's son also made a great contribution to society. For the nobleman was none other than Lord Randolph Churchill, and his son's name was Winston Churchill.


Let us use all our talent, competence and energy for creating peace and happiness for the world around us."

Digital Montage: Mac 2

Digital Montage : Mac

Uncommon SI Prefixes

Y: 10^24 yotta
Z: 10^21 zetta
E: 10^18 exa
P: 10^15 peta
T: 10^12 tera
G: 10^9 giga
M: 10^6 mega
k: 10^3 kilo
h: 10^2 hecto
da: 10^1 deka
d: 10^-1 deci
c: 10^-2 centi
m: 10^-3 milli
mu: 10^-6 micro
n: 10^-9 nano
p: 10^-12 pico
f: 10^-15 femto
a: 10^-18 atto
z: 10^-21 zepto
y: 10^-24 yocto

Thought Provoking Graduation Addresses

Graduation Address by Dr. David Byrd, Associate Professor of Surgery, University of Washington


Good afternoon, doctors. Get used to the sound of it. You earned it. Good morning to your families, friends, and supporters. This is a wonderful day. You will leave here today bound for all corners of the country. Every human emotion is present around you from elation, joy, and anxiety, to confusion, boredom, and even sadness.
You are starting your careers at the beginning of a new direction in medicine resulting from the explosion in information about the human genome. Within the next 25-50 years, we will likely have detailed predictions about the genetic susceptibility to nearly all diseases. A check-up may consist of a history form, a total body imaging scan and a blood sample all channeled into an informatics template, complete with diagnosis and treatment recommendations. You may spend much of your time with patients discussing the results of these recommendations and methods of prevention. Do not underestimate the impact of genetic technology on health care. Look ahead, stay informed, and stay focused.
In the next month, most of you will begin your internship, fresh with enthusiasm, energy, compassion, and a fair knowledge base. You will quickly become exhausted, you will make mistakes that will be pointed out to you in constructive and less-than-constructive ways, and your ego will sink to a level only rivaled by the beginning of your third year clerkships. You will be convinced that you have actually lost knowledge during your first year. You will be out of balance, professionally and personally. But then you will begin to rally as you learn the rules of residency, adjust to sleep deprivation, and watch your smiling patients go home from the hospital cured of their problems by your intervention. You will discover that you actually know a great deal of clinical medicine. Here comes the risk that your ego will rise out of proportion to your capabilities. Residency is similar to a blindfolded skydive. You will survive it and you will be changed by it.
I received a valuable lesson during my fourth year of medical school. I was not someone who awakened each morning passionately ready to "seize the day." I went to one of my professors and mentors, Dr. Earl Peacock, and asked him how he seemed to live each day with passion for his work. Without hesitation, he answered "Frequent collisions." He was describing purposely seeking encounters with others or situations where one is put off balance and forced to change direction, stop and think, or act in a different way than the day before. There will be collision opportunities in your clinic practice that will strengthen your vigilance and patient skills if you see them and let them change you. I challenge you to not overlook these opportunities.
When you begin your clinical practice, you will feel a profound sense of responsibility for each of your patients. There will be no attending to walk with you and behind you, only colleagues who are available only if you ask for their help or advice. You will feel the pressure of time management. In the hospital setting, you will be confronted with life-threatening illness. You will see that patients and families want and need more from you than medical opinions. They need you to sit down with them and talk to them and to listen. They will ask you about the role of faith in the treatment and recovery of their disease. Some may ask you about your personal faith and you will be forced to work out your answer to that question. You may recall that you have passed by the hospital chaplain and numerous clergy over the months or years with barely a thought. If you think about it, you will be surprised by the near total absence of dialogue or discussions among health care professionals about the impact of faith and religion on illness and recovery. Don't shy away from these opportunities for collision.
In the clinic setting, you will hone your clinical skills to interact with the grateful patient, the demanding patient, and the angry patient. It is in the routine clinic visit that your clinical vigilance will be tested. It is easy to be lulled into complacency that each patient is healthy until proved otherwise. Remember that your patients will tell you what the diagnosis is, but you have to be listening.
I want to tell you a story to bring the doctor-patient relationship back to the center today. About two years ago, I had one final patient in melanoma clinic after a long afternoon. This was a routine three-month follow-up to see a very pleasant man in his 60s about two years out from his treatment. He had a fairly early melanoma with an excellent chance of cure. I went in the clinic room with my surgery intern, we warmly shook hands, and I asked him how he was doing. He answered with a smile, "Physically fine." I was faced with an unexpected decision about the direction of this clinic visit. He had given me complete control of the next step, knowing that I was running behind and the day was long. The quickest "out" that I had was to say, "I'm glad that you're not having symptoms, let me examine your shoulder." I'm fully convinced that he would have unconditionally accepted my "feint," without jeopardizing our good relationship. Instead, I asked, "Tell me what is going on." He calmly said, "My wife died last night." I was silent for a moment, absorbing the shock. I looked at my intern, whose mouth was literally open, and we both sat down.
My patient explained that his healthy wife had fallen down stairs several days before and had been in a nearby hospital's intensive care unit on life support with a massive head injury. He and his grown children had been at her bedside and had watched her go peacefully the night before. He had recently retired and they had been enthusiastically planning their new lives together and now she was gone. I asked him why he was in clinic today and he said he just needed to keep moving, doing the errands, chores, and visits that had already been scheduled. He didn't want quiet time alone. I asked him how he and his children were doing and he felt well surrounded by their love and support. But they wouldn't understand how, even in his grief and profound sense of loss, he was also mad as Hell at something, or someone, or at God. How could life be this unfair, how could she be taken away from him?
I listened quietly. My patient felt like screaming but didn't know how and thought it was somehow not appropriate. I asked him what he was going to do over the next two weeks to take a break. He said he had been planning to join a friend of his for a week of fishing as he does this time each year, but wasn't going because of the circumstances. He confirmed that the fishing trip would be after his wife's funeral and memorial service. Feeling less courage than I projected, I carefully but firmly asked him if he wanted to go fishing. He looked at me as if I had pulled a blinder off, and after a few seconds, said a definitive "Yes." I said, "I want you to go fishing. You have my permission to go fishing. And when you're out there in the woods where no one can hear, you have my permission to slam your fishing rod against a tree and scream at the forest, at God, or at the squirrels." He smiled with relief and tears in his eyes, I examined him, and we confirmed that he did not have a recurrence of his melanoma. The visit was about 30 minutes over the scheduled time. As we left his room, I looked at my intern and said, "That experience has nothing to do with melanoma and everything to do with medicine." This is the kind of opportunity that the practice of medicine will give you. My wish for you is that you never let the scheduling, financial, and political obstacles you will encounter keep you from recognizing and sharing the pearls to be found in the relationships with your patients. My patients help me to be a better person, a better husband, and a better father.
As your practice grows, you will find your balance professionally. It is less likely that you will feel balanced in your personal life. Many of you will marry and have families. I can say without reservation that starting a family and having children will change you forever. Those of you who have parents and family here today should look carefully into their eyes. You will see an unconditional love and pride in their eyes that seems to defy reason, and it does. The wonderful thing about it is that when you are in their shoes years from now, that feeling will become crystal clear to you. My wife Kathy and sons Adam and Stephen fill my soul. Adam, who is in the audience today, knows that there is a golden chain with unbreakable strength that connects our hearts forever. Do not let your families slip away because of the great demands of medical practice. Do anything you can to achieve this balance in your family life. It will complete you as a person. I have never met a retiring physician who wished he or she had spent less time with loved ones.
I want to end with a recurring dream that I have and that I hope to have always. I dream that I'm walking away from presenting at a national meeting or from an honor such as this, feeling light-headed and with a well-stroked ego, and a small, elderly, slightly disheveled smiling woman comes up to me. With complete sincerity in her question, she asks "Are you important?" The result is always the same. I see with humble clarity that we all enter and leave this world in the same profoundly simple way. I answer, "Yes, I am very important, just like you." We go arm in arm and the dream ends. She is my balancing post.
Ladies and gentlemen, it has been an honor and a privilege to speak to you this morning. Now go forth like the wind, seek your own wonderful collisions, and discover your own stories. Thank you for listening.

Using Feedback at workplace...baby steps

USING FEEDBACK TO BUILD

Introduction

All careers involve other people. Every workplace revolves around interactions with a wide variety of people. Their different perspectives of you have an impact on your career. Answering the question, How Do Others See Me? What If I put myself in others' shoes , How would I look ? provides you with information to check out your assessment of yourself and to examine whether your reputation supports your career goals.

You can get and use feedback from people throughout your organization to learn what people think and say about you. You can then use that knowledge to enhance skills, change performance habits, emphasize strengths, further develop your weaker areas, and create effective career plans.

Naturally, different people see you in different roles and situations. By comparing their view of your skills and potential with your own, you can test your self-image against reality and thus develop PERSPECTIVE on how people view you and your work. This is an excellent way to get valuable information about your reputation/self-image. With that broad, accurate self-image, you will be able to set more realistic and more reachable career goals.

Here are some tips for you to :

· Assess your reputation; and

· Learn how to obtain feedback.


REPUTATION

Understanding your reputation is a critical first step in gaining perspective. Your reputation consists of the stories others tell about you. These stories take on a life of their own. Rumors and anecdotes enhance or limit your career opportunities. The further removed people are from firsthand experience of your performance, the more their assessments are based on your reputation. Remember, if you do not manage your reputation, other people will!

Who are two or three people in your organization who have power over or can truly influence your reputation?


If you asked these people to describe your abilities, what would they say are your most valuable competencies and skills? (You don’t need to actually ask these people the questions at this point. This is only your perspective of how they view you.)


What would these people say are your major liabilities?

Why would they say this? Name the specific actions/behaviors/events that would influence their assessment of you. Be specific!

What do you say are your most valuable competencies and skills?

What do you say are your major liabilities?

Compare your perspective with the perspective of others. Write down any similarities and/or differences you notice.

Think about your career aspirations. What would you like people to say about you to help you achieve your goals? (e.g., “You’re admired by your customers.”)

What would you need to say or do to have others see and describe you that way? (e.g., team player, talk with customers frequently, provide recommendations for product enhancement). List three actions you could take to manage your reputation.

Cognitive Science-a bit of history and perspectives

The intellectual developments that paved the way for Cognitive Science began in the 1940s and 1950s. The most significant events were outgrowths of the conceptual invention (via mathematical description) of computer machines by the British mathematician, Alan Turing, in 1950. The first digital computers -- also known as "universal Turing machines" -- were built shortly thereafter. Turing and others soon realized that these computers could be programmed to perform complex "intellectual" tasks previously performed only by humans, tasks such as playing chess, proving mathematical theorems, and understanding language.

Pioneers in this new field of computer science began to make progress toward these goals by programming computers to simulate mental processes. For example, Allen Newell and Herbert Simon's famous program, the General Problem Solver (GPS), was able to play chess and to prove theorems remarkably well for a program written in the early 1960s. Understanding natural language has proven to be a more difficult task, but progress is also being made in that domain. Surprisingly, the supposedly "simple" process of perceiving the visual world, which is not a uniquely human capability at all, has turned out to be among the hardest capabilities to simulate in computers. Current research in computer science is aimed at further progress in all of these domains.

In response to this enterprise -- dubbed "artificial intelligence" by its practitioners -- philosophers began to formulate a new approach to the age-old problem of the relation between mind and brain. Their idea was to explore a particular analogy suggested by the work in artificial intelligence: that mind is to brain as program is to computer. Thus was born the notion that minds are essentially "program like" entities that "run" on brains instead of computers. This proposal spawned a major philosophical debate about the nature of mental events. It centered on new issues, such as whether a computer could really "understand" language or really "have" conscious experiences as the result of running the right program, as some believed and others disputed. This debate is on-going, with Berkeley philosophers Searle and Dreyfus playing central roles in the dispute.

The closely related idea that mental activity could be described as information processing emerged in psychology at about the same time. This was partly due to the direct influence of work in artificial intelligence, especially via Newell and Simon's proposal that a computer program was a psychological theory of how people performed the task it simulated. Other psychologists were also exploring information processing as a way to break the grip of Behaviorism on psychology. The behaviorists, who had dominated psychology for decades, claimed that the only proper object of study for scientific psychology was overt behavior, thus ruling out any reference to internal mental states. The information processing approach stated that mental events could be described as a structure of operations for constructing and transforming internal representations and gave a principled way in which internal events could be specified rigorously and tested scientifically. As a result of the paradigm shift often referred to as the "cognitive revolution," information processing has now replaced Behaviorism as the dominant force in psychology.

Related ideas were also revolutionizing the field of linguistics at about the same time. The publication of Noam Chomsky's influential book, Syntactic Structures, in 1957 marked the birth of this movement. He proposed a transformational approach to grammar in which the "surface structure" of sentences was derived from an underlying "deep structure" of primitive linguistic units by a series of rules or transformations. The formal structure of these transformations was closely related to finite state automata in computational theory and to the information processing approach in psychology. Chomsky has now revised his theory several times, and others have developed competing approaches, including "cognitive linguistics".

During the same period, new techniques were being pioneered in neurophysiology that allowed scientists to begin to understand the workings of the brain as an information processing device. For example, new methods of staining individual neurons showed how they projected from one area of the brain to another, allowing anatomists to map out the large-scale "wiring diagram" of certain brain regions. Even more importantly, neurophysiologists developed methods for recording the activity of individual brain cells. This technique allowed Nobel Laureates David Hubel and Thorsten Wiesel to determine the patterns of retinal stimulation that caused cells in visual cortex to fire. Several decades of work building on their pioneering studies have increased our understanding of the physiological mechanisms underlying vision which serves as a model for other areas of the brain.

More recent advances in physiology have come from various brain scanning and imaging techniques, such as computer-assisted tomography (CT), magnetic resonance (MR), and positron emission topography (PET) methods. These have allowed human brains to be studied in ways heretofore impossible. For example, scientists can now identify specific regions of brain damage in neurological patients so that symptoms can be correlated with anatomical location. Using these methods in conjunction with those of cognitive psychology, cognitive neuroscientists are beginning to map out the function of major areas of the human brain.

During the 1970s, researchers in different fields started to recognize the relevance of work in neighboring disciplines and to learn something about it. This interaction marked the true birth of Cognitive Science as a scientific endeavor. Important milestones in the history of this movement were the founding of Society for Cognitive Science in 1979, the funding of a large-scale program by the Sloan Foundation in 1981 and the foundation of the journal Cognitive Science in 1977. In the intervening years, programs and departments of Cognitive Science have been established at major American universities at both the undergraduate and graduate levels. Cognitive Science is now well on its way toward becoming an independent and interdisciplinary academic discipline.