Dogmatism, Software and a story of 3 unequal Gods

Andrea L. on LinkedIn: #softwaredevelopment #sotfwareengineering | 30 comments

This post triggered a few ideas, so I’ll be consolidating them in this write-up.

These concepts are highly applicable to various real-world scenarios. We have an abundance of individuals (I prefer to avoid the term ‘people’ as it conveys a ‘herd’ vibe) who cling to dogmatic and incorrigible ideas in the current settings — not just limited to religions, cults, or other static notions.

There are more underlying beliefs and dogmatic practices intertwined in the daily routine of anybody, requiring a disciplined, active, and conscious effort to address them.

Sharing my version here.

I delve deep enough to access first principles and analytical philosophies, allowing me to identify, develop, and leverage reusable ideas across different contexts and domains. It requires utmost care to avoid taking things out of context, as doing so often leads to losing their meaning and validity. Therefore, I do not hesitate to make necessary amendments.

To illustrate, if I were to re-formulate how I handle dogmatism in my mental model, I could easily describe it using standard jargon from software design.

I frequently engage in reflection (though the frequency is influenced by various constraints, and it’s somewhat of an art), and I reset my caches thoroughly. However, as I need to recompute most things from first principles with updated information, there’s a performance hit. In certain contexts, I start from scratch, even eliminating most of my persistent storage, resulting in a ‘down-time’ with cold data building.

To minimize this downtime and performance impact, I distribute the cache invalidation and persistence storage resetting in parts, allowing for near zero-down-time and no performance hit. Additionally, to increase the Time To Live (TTL), the validity period of cached entries, I always strive to tie as much context as possible. It’s crucial to understand that the validity and perception often change with the level of abstraction.

One of my powerful tools is the ‘pre-trans fallacy’, although it’s not a silver bullet (nothing is) and I don’t use it exactly for the original purpose intended by Ken Wilber, with carefully defined application, it becomes an effective tool. Here, I was tempted to use ‘in the arsenal,’ but I actively avoid such war/killing-related metaphors as they are, in my opinion, unsuitable and unavoidable at all possibilities.

‘My perceptions are context-bound, always.’ [1]

It’s very tricky to get a measure of dogmatism. For instance, the statement [1] is still dogmatic.

And they are overwhelming and prevalent more often than not.

When I encounter/write/think the below then the ‘dogmatic’ alarm is activated

• terms like ‘always’, ‘complete’, ‘totally’…
• phrases like ‘no matter what’, ‘regardless of the context’…
• superlatives
• static magic numbers [examples: there are 3 ways to do this, 4 phases of history, 283 categories, 5 senses etc]
• And many more…

Funny enough, these are ‘always’ tied to a bit of dogmatism, ‘regardless of the context’.

How to harmonize this circular, or more precisely, the infinitely regressing spiral?

Kindly approach my version of intellectual gymnastics as skeptically as possible that I use to expunge the last remnants of dogmatism from my mental model and world outlook.

Perhaps an unnecessary but an interesting interlude: In ancient times, a profound dispute arose between Brahma, the creator, and Vishnu, the preserver, over who was the greater deity. Unable to settle the dispute themselves, they sought the wisdom of Shiva, the destroyer.

In response, Shiva manifested as a majestic Linga, a pillar of divine fire, extending infinitely in both directions, beyond the sight of any being. He declared that the one who could reach either the top or the bottom of the Linga would be deemed greater.

To demonstrate their prowess, Brahma transformed into a graceful swan and soared upwards in pursuit of the Linga’s apex. At the same time, Vishnu metamorphosed into a mighty boar and delved deep into the earth, seeking the Linga’s base.

Time seemed to stand still as countless years passed by, and still, neither Brahma nor Vishnu could find an end to the resplendent Linga. Their efforts taught them the humbling lesson of the immeasurable vastness and eternal nature of the Divine. This goes on as one accepted the defeat but the other tried to cheat but that’s out of scope for now…

Well, there are many interpretations of the above story, and the primary intention also differs. Perhaps it aims to encourage people to revere the unfathomable, also leading to some positive outcomes/side-effects like understanding roles, synergy, and avoiding analysis paralysis.

However, my illustration/tweak to this concept would be somewhat unconventional.

Through exploration, delving deeper and reaching higher, the other two gods (explorers) brought the unfathomable into existence.

The credit for this “creation” goes to the substance/entity that facilitated** the exploration and the entities that utilized them. It’s as simple as that.

Understanding that there’s no perfect or complete system that arises solely from a seed (from a finite set of axioms) is essential to finding peace with the ‘unfathomable’ or the ‘ineffable’.

Indeed, by embracing this very nature and delving deeper into it, or reaching higher with broader abstractions and a holistic perspective, we can enhance our understanding over time, expanding the space, spacetime, or the metaphorical “pie,” so to speak. Moreover, this acceptance and simplification alleviate distractions and help me find my inner peace.

Epilogues:

1. we do approximations all the time, consciously or not. So at times ‘good enough’ is ‘good enough’ and assumptions, sticking to certain abstraction levels are acceptable — depending on the requirements. For example every time I re-read this I am editing and improving a bit, now I time boxed and called it ‘good enough’ to be released. Doesn’t mean it’s anywhere near perfect.
2. Need to keep in mind that every representation/listing is an approximation not exact — this way we can safely skip (in fact extract/factor out) adding ‘and more’ to each and everything
3. ** in my coherent mental model the ‘substance/entity that facilitated’ is highly primitive and `mindless`
4. I used ChatGpt to grammar, spell check, and even re-write a few parts. My unconventional writing style, with quotes, braces, and slashes (to cram more context and loosely couple the terms with meanings), didn’t always align perfectly. But this is yet another example of a ‘mindless’ substrate (ChatGpt) facilitating the explorer (that I am :) )
5. Thank you to my lovely wife for introducing me to most of these techniques that I described above and for encouraging me to become a successful practitioner for the last 10 years and counting
6. Decouple notions and treat them in context, only providing what each deserve. For instance enjoying an interesting story doesn’t need to be coupled with buying the intended meaning/propaganda. This may sound contradictory as this write-up deals with many aspects not ‘decoupling’ and focusing on a single ‘topic’. I have tried my best to deal each individual item inside dedicated sub-contexts — hence decoupled — but also integrated — a lot of room left for improvements though
7. Also reinterpret adequately and authentically. Re-posting/sharing a content (no matter how great, non-dogmatic it is), the very act could be dogmatic if the Authentic perspective/extension/re-interpretation is missing.
8. Actively transfer concepts across contexts and reuse as much as possible. Need to do this with utmost care as one in a some context is NEVER readily available for another ( my inner Dogmatism Detector alarms and emboldens ‘NEVER’)— there are always exceptions (here it goes again, a tad minor this time) — sometimes, some things are optimal (goes without saying) in multiple contexts. Anyways, this rhetorical emphasis is for better risk aversion.
9. Yeah, it’s apparently difficult/extremely tricky to get rid of Dogmatism completely but of course can do it to a great extent and help oneself and others enjoy more spacetime. And yes, by this time it must be clear that getting rid of something completely is impossible and that’s never the goal in the first place.
10. From the above passage (9.) it’s somewhat evident that tracking and emboldening the ‘terms’ will not help to identify ‘dogmatism’ because it depends on higher-order meaning/context
11. Because I don’t want to conform to the psychologically comforting number 10, here comes number 11. Isn’t writing fun and also a potentially reflective activity to a great extent?