System-think Snapshots
One of the tools to aid systems-think is making mind maps. As you know, gathering information on a topic of your choosing is one thing, arranging it in logical connections in a system is quite another. If mind maps were easy to forge, you wouldn’t need to make them. That’s why reductionism, which temporarily side steps the need to think system, is the default to the cognitive exertion of system think and fatal to solving the Cat 3 problem. For genuine, authentic Cat 3 system matters, like Plan A, reductionism is poison. As the ultimate Cat 3 system problem, all efforts by humanity worldwide to fix Plan A in pieces and parts have been dismal failures. With such a perfect failure record, we surmise that system think is above the mentor line.
Over the years, we created mind maps to help us get past defects in our concepts. The cognitive exercise was never wasted effort but it is always a PITA. A selection from our extensive library of mind maps is provided below for you to see their value in structuring complexity so that a human mind can better understand the challenge it faces. This exercise is fundamental for entropy extraction, where you need to impose a structure to increase order.
With mind maps, it is impossible to fall into the trap of simple causes and simple consequences. That feature alone makes the effort worthwhile. It’s a sorcerer’s apprentice situation and you have to devise a stop rule. We never found one that was all-occasion.
In practice, there are people with a graphic bent who can’t think in any other way but by mind maps. The great majority, however, looks at your mind map as proof you don’t belong in their club. Keeping your thinking to yourself keeps you socially neutral. Expressing your thinking on a chart for all to see, labels you as one unlikely to be obedient to the authority of groupthink. How can you trust anyone who thinks outside the appointed channels?
Each mind map has a theme and as learning continues the themes change while the 2nd Law eats away at the lot. For Plan B, mind maps become too dense and intricate to be useful. If you were to mind map all the cascading consequences of Plan A that are now known, it would be too cumbersome to be of value.
The mind maps that follow belong in the Plan B library as artifacts of our life-long effort. The most popular mind map software company, Inspiration, is closing its business before 2022 year’s end. This is undoubtedly a lagging indicator of the intentional dumbing down of species Homo. When calamity strikes, Homo will blame it on fate.
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