Jim Taylor's Columns - 'Soft Edges' and 'Sharp Edges'

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Published on Wednesday, April 27, 2016

What’s your “Complexity Quotient”?

Everyone knows that intelligence is not uniform. Some people have stratospheric IQs; others sink below par.
Everyone also knows that intelligence doesn’t necessarily correspond to ability to think. Mensa members can be just as dogmatically fossilized as Homer Simpson. They may know far more about far more things, but they can lock onto their conclusions like a crocodile’s jaws.
For a short period, during my journalistic career, I did occasional interviews with an Anglican priest named Brian Freeland -- then head of religious programming for the CBC. I always came away feeling that I had been allowed to peer into a bewildering whirlwind of ideas.
I went looking for answers; I came away with more questions.
Back in the late 1960s, my friend Don Sawatzky attempted to measure the complexity of human thinking. At the time, Don was developing his doctoral dissertation; he would go on to become a widely respected professor of educational psychology at the University of Alberta.
“Traditional measures of IQ are simply predictors of success in school,” Don explained. “It is questionable whether this generalizes to success in life.”

Measuring complexity
No one else had explored this field. So Don had to develop his own testing methods and procedures, using students and volunteers.
Don identified three components of complexity.
First, the number of dimensions considered. Some people focus on very few dimensions -- as if issues could be reduced to black/white, male/female, left/right. Others incorporate multiple dimensions into their analysis.
Second, discrimination among those dimensions. Which dimensions matter more? Which ones take priority over others? To use a trivial example, the colour of a witness’s gloves should not invalidate the accuracy of her observations. An inability to discriminate between relative values reduces complexity to chaos.
Finally, integration of information. How well can the person discern a coherent pattern within the complexity?

First you make it harder…
In a sense, it’s a circular process.
First you must first be willing to make the process more complicated, by adding extra factors to assess. Then you filter out the less important factors. Finally, you integrate the significant factors into a unified vision.
Which may, in fact, be the same as the one that a single-dimensional thinker came up with. Or it may not. Either way, though, it’s better founded.
Don Sawatzky called it “conceptual complexity.”
There were some surprises in his research. Rural students tended to see more dimensions than urban students, for example. Don hypothesized that rural students were accustomed to seeing people in a variety of roles -- storekeeper, hockey coach, town councillor -- where urban students might encounter each person in only one role.
Looking back, Don says, “In retrospect, I wish I had pursued this research - but life got in the way!”
I too wish he had pursued the subject. Or someone had.
Most of us, I suspect, intuitively develop some kind of complexity assessment. But it can take years to realize that this person leaps to conclusions; that one bogs down in details. This one can’t break free from lessons learned in Sunday School; that one rejects anything tainted by religious beliefs.
I’d love to know a person’s “Complexity Quotient” to know how much credence to give their opinions.
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Copyright © 2016 by Jim Taylor. Non-profit use in congregations and study groups, and links from other blogs, welcomed; all other rights reserved.
        To comment on this column, write jimt@quixotic.ca
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YOUR TURN

Cliff Boldt thought last week’s column -- suggesting that life and lakes both need some shaking up for health -- was a “really cool metaphor. A parable, sort of.”
Charles Hill and Isabel Gibson also expressed appreciation.

Dale Perkins took the metaphor and ran with it: “The phenomenon of believing the 'contented life' is the 'good life' is so ingrained into our psyche that we consider it absolutely true, all the time. Disruption of our normal routines and patterns is generally considered to be an abomination, and we must do everything we can to return to normalcy. Isn't that the prescription we legislate for all illnesses of the mind/psyche? "They" should do therapy or take a drug or ??? to regain a contented life -- and whole industries are set up to feed those illusions. 
“However, realizing that life absolutely needs turmoil now and then to stay healthy, doesn't compute for most of us in our present-day culture. I despair that current ecclesiastic enterprises simply cannot fathom this perspective -- they expect and insist on normalcy and prescribed rules and regulations to dictate how a proper church enterprise has to operate. And so we permit Micro-managers to run every show we license in the United Church (and likely true of all denominational enterprises) to ensure that  they run according to the Manual or the prescribed By-laws or regulations we've developed over the decades. And consequently our structures appear to be running 'like silk' and we can relax and believe they are operating the way they are supposed to run, and everyone -- including god -- is pleased. However, in the mean time they die and cannot sustain life any longer.”

Peter Scott wrote, “On my first pastoral charge an elderly parishioner told me how much she disliked the sermons of one of my predecessors. ‘But,’ she said, ‘I learned more from his sermons than those of any other preacher we ever had.’ I guess he riled up the waters of her lake.”

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PSALM PARAPHRASES

It felt like time for a psalm paraphrase about spring. Here’s my version of Psalm 67.

1   Send us mild temperatures and gentle breezes, God; 
Make your sun shine softly and your rain fall regularly. 
Then we will know that you smile upon us, and bless us.
2   Then all will recognize your kindness, your power to save.
3   And the people will praise you, God. All the people will praise you.
4   Then nations will know you are not capricious. 
You do not favor one over another. 
You do not give rain to one and drought to another; 
You do not feed one and starve another.
6   The earth pours out its produce without stinting; 
like our God, it withholds nothing.
7   Who then are we to withhold anything from others? 
As God has blessed us, let us bless others.
5   Then indeed will all the peoples praise you, God; all nations will know you and praise you.

For paraphrases of most of the psalms used by the Revised Common Lectionary, you can order my book Everyday Psalms from Wood Lake Publishing, info@woodlake.com.

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YOU SCRATCH MY BACK…
Ralph Milton has a new project, called Sing Hallelujah – the world’s first video hymnal. It consists of 100 popular hymns, both new and old, on five DVDs that can be played using a standard DVD player and TV screen, for use in congregations who lack skilled musicians to play piano or organ. More details at www.singhallelujah.ca
Isabel Gibson's thoughtful and well-written blog, www.traditionaliconoclast.com
Wayne Irwin's "Churchweb Canada," an inexpensive service for any congregation wanting to develop a web presence, with free consultation. <http://www.churchwebcanada.ca>
Alva Wood's satiric stories about incompetent bureaucrats and prejudiced attitudes in a small town are not particularly religious, but they are fun; write alvawood@gmail.com to get onto her mailing list.
Tom Watson writes a weekly blog called “The View from Grandpa Tom’s Balcony” – ruminations on various subjects, and feedback from Tom’s readers. Write him at twatson@sentex.net

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TECHNICAL STUFF

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Author: Jim Taylor

Categories: Soft Edges

Tags: complexity

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