Failure is Just Information

You've heard it over and over again: never give up. But when your brilliant idea finds few buyers, the cause you fought for appears doomed or your long term relationship is broken, walking away may be the best choice. Unfortunately, our society talks a good deal less about the merits of quitting than the promise that with enough effort we'll realize our most cherished desires.

If only it were that simple. How does one decide when to quit, though? This recent thought from a creative professional on the web site 99u helps:

“But what if we didn’t think of success and failure as our only two outcomes of any idea? Instead, we would view quitting as making better use of our time elsewhere. ”

Binary choices, particularly binary choices about what we really value, mislead. When caution and the evidence would suggest a different course of action, thinking of rejection as information rather than failure can re-frame the pending decision in helpful ways.

I hope to see you this year at the IdeaFestival!

Stay curious™

Wayne

Image: Some rights reserved by angermann

Embrace the Danger of New Ideas

We hope to see you at IdeaFestival 2016! Just a gentle reminder: Early Bird festival passes are now on sale - this special price will end at 10a EDT on May 2. Visit our web site to order. #staycurious #IF16 #embracethejourney

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To stay up to date with all things IdeaFestival, follow us on Twitter and Instagram @IdeaFestival, check out our YouTube channel at youtube.com/IFTV and like our Facebook page at facebook.com/ideafestival

Stay curious™

Wayne

In Germany, a Space Tango with the President

Working the Hannover Messe trade show in Germany, Twyman Clements, CEO of the Lexington, Ky startup Space Tango, talked earlier today with President Obama and German Chancellor Merkel about innovations in space.

Clements described Space Tango's important work in the research and development of medical solutions in micro-gravity for applications on Earth, referred to as "exomedicine." Space Tango has designed and tested hardware that will make real-time, space-based exomedicine research possible.

The lab should arrive at the International Space Station later this year.

The two leaders are looking at a 3-D printed model of Kysat-2, a Kleenx-box sized spacecraft from Kentucky Space that successfully orbited in late 2013.

Space is a growth opportunity. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration is working to commercialize low Earth orbit. The private sector, for example, now resupplies ISS crews. An area of the station has been designated a national lab and is open to organizations wishing to do research. And companies like SpaceX and Boeing will soon begin to ferry astronauts to the orbiting laboratory.

Twyman, who appears just over the left shoulder of the president, enjoyed a once in a lifetime opportunity to explain Kentucky's role in the business of space.

You can ask him about it at the next IdeaFestival, scheduled for Sept. 27 - 30. Early Bird passes are on sale through May 2.

Stay curious™

Wayne

Food for Thought

Image: Some rights reserved by Larsfl

In its referential ability the human brain, we now know, is different in degree, not kind, from other animal brains.

Chimpanzees, but also other primates, appear to infer others’ mental state, a requirement for showing deceitful behavior. Even birds seem to have knowledge of other individuals’ mental state, as magpies will overtly cache food in the presence of onlookers and then retrieve and move it to a secret location as soon as the onlookers are gone. Chimpanzees and gorillas, elephants, dolphins, and also magpies appear to recognize themselves in the mirror, using it to inspect a visible mark placed on their heads.

These are fundamental discoveries that attest to the cognitive capacities of nonhuman species—but such one-of-a-kind observations do not serve the types of cross-species comparisons we need to make if we are to find out what it is about the brain that allows some species to achieve cognitive feats that are outside the reach of others.

So what simple but profound technological innovation might account for the human brain's ability to build upon this understanding, its ability "to ponder its own constitution," AND all the technological innovations that have followed in the course of human history?

The surprising answer might be cooking, says Brazilian neuroscientiest Suzana Herculano-Houzel:

As it turns out, there is a simple explanation for how the human brain, and it alone, can be at the same time similar to others in its evolutionary constraints, and yet so different to the point of endowing us with the ability to ponder our own material and metaphysical origins. First, we are primates, and this bestows upon humans the advantage of a large number of neurons packed into a small cerebral cortex. And second, thanks to a technological innovation introduced by our ancestors, we escaped the energetic constraint that limits all other animals to the smaller number of cortical neurons that can be afforded by a raw diet in the wild....

And what do we do that absolutely no other animal does, and which I believe allowed us to amass that remarkable number of neurons in the first place? We cook our food.

Read The Paradox of the Elephant Brain at Nautilus. Have a great weekend!

Stay curious™

Wayne

Lost and Found

Image: Some rights reserved by Andreas.

“You are lost the moment you know what the result will be. Juan Gris”

I know I'm not the only one who can forget where he laid his car keys. Like many of you, it happens far more often that I care to admit. But perhaps my power is extra special - I not only lose the keys, but return to the car only to forget where I was going.

Described at Mindhacks blog as the "doorway effect," this problem of destination is not so much a lapse in memory, but a mismatch between our surroundings an the ongoing catalog of purpose that guides us through daily life. The result leaves us wandering, or, in my case, searching the house for keys that I had only moments before.

Tom Stafford at Mindhacks:

When things are going well, often in familiar situations, we keep our attention on what we want and how we do it seems to take care of itself. If you’re a skilled driver then you manage the gears, indicators and wheel automatically, and your attention is probably caught up in the less routine business of navigating the traffic or talking to your passengers. When things are less routine we have to shift our attention to the details of what we’re doing, taking our minds off the bigger picture for a moment. Hence the pause in conversation as the driver gets to a tricky junction, or the engine starts to make a funny sound.

The way our attention moves up and down the hierarchy of action is what allows us to carry out complex behaviours, stitching together a coherent plan over multiple moments, in multiple places or requiring multiple actions.

The Doorway Effect occurs when our attention moves between levels, and it reflects the reliance of our memories – even memories for what we were about to do – on the environment we’re in.

As I was reading this it occurred to me that the mismatch between memory and purpose might also offer an important benefit: an informed distraction and a purposeful change in environment can free our minds to forget.

That's a lot like how I envision the IdeaFestival working. One session on the entrepreneurial life followed by another hour on the great unanswered questions in cosmology followed by interpretive demonstrations from Creative Capital and Art Without Walls artists - the time spent can leave us lost in very special and expansive ways. Letting go of any one "result" - our preoccupations before sliding into a seat at the Kentucky Center for the Arts - can solve the problem of destination in wonderfully unexpected ways.

I hope to see you at IdeaFestival 2016 this year! The first of many speaker announcements can be found here. And Early Bird festival passes are now on sale. But please don't wait too long - remember, the price will never be lower.

Stay curious™

Wayne