Systems – AJATT | All Japanese All The Time / You don't know a language, you live it. You don't learn a language, you get used to it. Fri, 31 Jul 2020 10:17:32 +0900 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=5.1.13 There Is A Magic Silver Bullet /there-is-a-magic-silver-bullet/ /there-is-a-magic-silver-bullet/#comments Thu, 20 Jun 2013 14:59:08 +0000 /?p=25238 This entry is part 5 of 5 in the series Systems

“We don’t know one-millionth of one percent about anything.” ~ Thomas A. Edison

AJATT, this website, is a bit like the Matrix. There’s been more than one, it’s just that you only know this one. The original AJATT.com existed for a brief couple of months, before being accidentally deleted by a delightfully incompetent hosting company that shall remain nameless but I’m not bitter.

So, in this original AJATT incarnation, there was a post about there being “no silver bullets” and how there was no magic method that would help you and solve all your problems. I’d been reading too much Fred Brooks and making blanket negative declarations made me feel important 1. Sort of a “look at these chumps looking for silver bullets; I’ma learn them a thing or two”.

Anyway, so (and this never happens, but) I was wrong. There is at least one magic silver bullet. There is one thing you can do that will lead you to success in getting used to languages. What is it?

Looking for silver bullets is the silver bullet. The very act of seeking awesome solutions — magic silver bullets — is itself what will lead you to find something or some combination of things. You keep asking high quality questions, and you start getting high quality answers. Just to keep things moving, you might want to keep using regular bullets while you search for them magic ones, but…yeah, I mean, you don’t stop driving cars until you can figure out how to travel faster than light speed, right?

Don’t worry too much about going wrong. As Norman Schwarzkopf once said, I don’t have the exact quote but basically: it’s easier to change course than to get started; it’s easier to correct course than to get started. You’re better off starting off in the wrong direction than not starting. Being stationary is worse than being wrong.

Looking back, I don’t even think I believed myself while I was writing that “there’s no silver bullet” crap. Because, personally, I’m always looking for magic bullets; Like Pocahontas, I’m always looking just around the river bend for some easy or easier way to make things awesome; like a programmer or a gambling addict, I always feel like I’m on the cusp of something. So perhaps what I really meant to say was: don’t wait for silver bullets 2. Keep looking for silver bullets but don’t wait for them. Don’t let their immediate absence hold you back or otherwise delay you. Yeah. That’s it.

Keep looking for better tools, but use the crappy ones you have right now while-u-wait. Good tools are nice and even game-changing, but your swing matters even more than your clubs. So keep swinging. 3

People will often delight in telling you that some problem “can’t” be solved — you “can’t” learn kanji; it “can’t” be easy; humans “can’t” fly. I know this because I’ve been one of these people; there’s a perverse pleasure and security in certainty, even negative certainty — indeed, in the most recent Batman movie, Bane tortured Wayne with the hope of escape from the dungeon. The suggestion was that straight up despair would be better — easier to deal with emotionally; this may well be true.

But there’s a significant difference between impossibility and ignorance. If in doubt, chalk the difficulty up to ignorance — it’s not impossible: you just don’t know how yet. But if you keep looking for hows, you’re bound to to find something. It may not be what you’re expecting, it probably won’t even be labeled right (a website for English learners revolutionized how I learned Japanese), but there’ll be something. To quote Edison: “We don’t know one-millionth of one percent about anything”. So we can’t speak to what’s possible or impossible, only to what we’ve experienced so far.

As they used to say on The X-Files: the magic bullet you seek is out there. OK, so they never said that. But they would have if the show were about getting used to languages 😛 .

“It is not the possession of truth, but the success which attends the seeking after it, that enriches the seeker and brings happiness to him.” ~ Max Planck

Notes:

  1. I’m not saying Fred Brooks did that; I was just…that was my caricatured perception of…you get the point…
  2. “Do not wait; the time will never be just right. Start where you stand, and work with whatever tools you may have at your command, and better tools will be found as you go along.” ~ Napoleon Hill
  3. “Many amateur golfers think they need expensive clubs. But it’s the swing that matters, not the club. Give Tiger Woods a set of cheap clubs and he’ll still destroy you.

    People use equipment as a crutch. They don’t want to put in the hours on the driving range so they spend a ton in the pro shop. They’re looking for a shortcut. But you just don’t need the best gear in the world to be good. And you definitely don’t need it to get started.” ~ 37signals

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The Search for the System: How I Found One, Why You Need One /the-search-for-the-system-how-i-found-one-why-you-need-one/ /the-search-for-the-system-how-i-found-one-why-you-need-one/#comments Mon, 16 Jul 2012 05:59:10 +0000 /?p=7356 This entry is part 3 of 5 in the series Systems

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
~ Arthur C. Clarke

As much as I love “Star Trek”, I’m actually rather weak on the movies, especially the TOS ones (the The Original Series ones — I know, redundant redundant, right?). I’ve seen all the TNG ones and the 2009 one, but only two of the TOS ones. So I don’t know what Spock was searching for. But I do know what I was searching for: The System. A system. That would work. I was searching for a way of what I like to call “handling the atom”.

Those of you who are old enough may be aware of the clusterhump of buckfuttery that is JSL (Japanese as a Second Language (?)) education. And, well, Chinese too. The complete absence of a system. The system is the lack of a system.

They give you a list of kanji and test, but no method — no system — of learning them.
They present them in an unsystematic order where an unsystematic teacher using unsystematic criteria unsystematically grades you based on her whims and moods.

And this is why the people who do (somehow) learn Japanese are taken for gods.
As Arthur C. Clarke would say if he were here: any sufficiently advanced learning method seems like magic.
The people who do learn Japanese, who do learn kanji, seem magical. They are like little buddhas. They have achieved englightment. They have that Confucian virtue. They have superhuman discipline. They are exceptions. They are outliers. They are them. They are they.

Well, bollocks.
I know none of that is true because I know me. I know I am lazy. I know that I spend every last penny you pay on hookers and blow. And blow on hookers and…just…
What I’m saying is I know I’m a bad person. I know I’m a lazy person. And I’m always me. I’m not lazy here but hardworking there: I am 100% lazy. All the time.
And so I know that what gave me literacy — and therefore power — in Japanese was a system. Not my character. Not magic. Not far king “kanji genes”.

A system.

Do strawberries have “cake genes”?
No.
Then how is it that strawberries can be turned into cake and smoothies?
Answer: systems called “recipes”.

I sought a system.
I knew that…I could learn one Japanese word. I knew I could do that.
And I knew that I could learn one kanji. I was good to go.
So the only trick was to learn another word, learn another kanji…and keep the one I had learned before.
My mind was a bucket and I needed to block — or at least slow down — the leakage.
I needed to be able to add words and kanji faster than I was losing them.

I sought a system to do that.
And a guy called Chris Houser led to me to the SRS.
And the SRS was the answer — an answer. It was the glue that held everything together. That gave direction and traction and meaning to the rest of my (immersion) experience.
And after that, I was like, how you say in a-Japanese — an ogre with an iron club.
And Japanese was a baby seal.
And it wasn’t going to be pretty.
Because now success was just a matter of time. A matter of hits.

Not character.
Not magic.
Not enlightenment.
Not meditation.

Time.

I knew that if I had an efficient, deliberate, predictable, inevitable — in a word, systematic — way of handling the “atoms” (words, kanji etc.) of Japanese, of ensuring that I retained them, in such a way that I could tell you with exceedingly high levels of confidence that for any given word, 6 weeks, 6 months and 6 years 1 later, I would still know that word…I knew if I could handle the atoms then a “chain reaction” would take place; I could reach “critical mass 2. I would become unstoppable. I could learn arbitrary amounts of Japanese, arbitrary numbers of kanji and use them with perfect precision.

What SRS taught me was that 90% confidence was good enough. “Perfect” was unnecesary. I could afford to forget some stuff — indeed, native users did and do all the time. And I would still be awesome.

This is the awesome power of a system.
And this is also why systems can be so damaging.
The double-edged nature of the nucular metaphors I am using is not lost on me.
Systematic racism, systematic gassing of human beings, systematically letting Irish people starve to death, systematically burning people. It’s not very cool.
So that’s why you reflexively hate systems and that’s why the phrase “the system” came to mean something bad.

But it’s also why you need systems. Because without them, you’re stuck believing in magic.
But with them, you become the magician.

Magicians don’t believe in magic. They just do it.
Don’t believe in magic. Be the magician. Do it.
Don’t be shocked or awed. It’s just a system at work. The system is the magic. And there’s about as much magic in the system as there is magic in a magic trick. Which is to say none at all.

So get a system. Buy a system. Build a system. Use a system.
Just make sure it’s a good one.

Notes:

  1. (← oh, calm down…please, we are not playing that number game)
  2. Yeah, I’m back to misusing physics metaphors again 🙂 . I guess I’m hoping that lampshading my pseudoscience will make it less pseudoscientific. You’re all: “No. No, it won’t.”
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Why The System Won’t Set You Free /why-the-system-wont-set-you-free/ /why-the-system-wont-set-you-free/#comments Sun, 15 Jul 2012 14:59:36 +0000 /?p=7372 This entry is part 4 of 5 in the series Systems

“The art of progress is to preserve order amid change and to preserve change amid order.”
Alfred North Whitehead

Why won’t a given system set you free?
Because you can’t change it.

A system you can’t change is a prison. A man-made system you can’t change is a cult. The assumption is that the system was perfect when it was created. This is arrogance of the bad kind. (Yes, there is a good kind).

So there is, arguably, only one reason why the system won’t set you free: immutability.

As long as you can change the system, you at least have the opportunity for correction and improvement — for kaizen (改善) 1. Or even for all-out abandonment.

The system will set you free. But only if it’s somewhat mutable — only if it can be changed to fit you. And only if you’re willing to mutate it. Generally speaking, we can go further and faster in shoes 2, but only if the shoes fit, and only if you’re open to changing shoes (in the event that they don’t fit).

You’re not a loser just because you can’t or won’t do certain things I and other people suggest. AJATT is not a religion. Changing end goals is giving up. Changing means isn’t. And the system is always only a means, a tool.

Set your system free so it can set you free.

Notes:

  1. 仕事の改善ルール PHPハンドブックシリーズ
  2. we’ll allow that Abebe Bikila and other old school runners from the highlands of East Africa collectively hock a gigantic loogie in the general direction of this assertion
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The System Will Set You Free /the-system-will-set-you-free/ /the-system-will-set-you-free/#comments Thu, 28 Jun 2012 14:59:35 +0000 /?p=7312 This entry is part 2 of 5 in the series Systems

Not a line you’d necessarily expect from a smoothie-guzzling quasi-hippie like me, who spends too much time exposed to the Steve Pavlinas, Tim Ferrises and Chris Guillebeau’s of the world — and a few years ago even burned his suits like so many feminists’ bras 1 (for real — I’ll tell you the whole story one day).

Let me ‘splain.

Systems are the human superpower. Bad systems are the villains. Good systems are the heroes.
Systems are powerful beause systems never sleep.

A system — a good system — will set you free.

Boundaries set you free.
Limits set you free.
Easels create creativity.
There is no such thing as writer’s block on Twitter — think about that.
Why is that?
Because Twitter is a better system.

A game is a system.
There are rules.
There are limits.
When it’s good (even in a limited sense), it’s better than RL for many people.
Mothers routinely leave their children in the car to die, because of the very good (in a limited sense) systems that are the games that are pachinko and slot machines.

Humans don’t fly because we became more righteous.
We don’t fly because we are the descendants of Orville and Wilbur Wright.
We don’t fly because there was a sudden genetic mutation in 1903 or even 1867.
We don’t fly because we or they singly or even collectively achieved enlightenment.
We don’t fly because we were exposed to gamma rays or bitten by radioactive spiders.
We don’t fly because aliens came through the Stargate and gave us Goa’uld technology.

We fly because we have systems to produce, maintain and manage flying machines (which are themselves systems). We have runways and ATC and radio and manufacturing plants and inspections and a whole mess of other stuff.
We have systems built upon systems.
We fly with amazement-destroying regularity because of good systems.

Human + Good system = Superhuman. . But what’s cool is that this reflects the process of learning in general, if we define learning as a process of “connecting the unknown to the known”" id="return-note-7312-2" href="#note-7312-2">2

Systems are like a recipe.
A good recipe can make even “bad” ingredients taste good.
Think: bread and butter pudding.
Literally made of trash: stale bread.
80% trash.
100% delicious. Tastes of awesome.
Such is the power of systems.

Cheese is rotten milk. Milk has literally gone bad.
But there’s a system. A good system. So it, too, tastes awesome.

Why has the word “system” become a by-word? Why do I hate on the school system like women hate on better-looking women (I was gonna go with something Nazi-related here, but sexism is the new thinking man’s irony, so…)?
Because systems are powerful.
Super powerful. Like I said before, systems never sleep.
And they’re neutral.
They are epic in either direction. Epically bad. Epically good.

The best countries to live in aren’t the best all over.
A crack den in Vancouver or a mansion in Myanmar, where would you rather live?
Rhetorical question. The Myanmar mansion wins hands down.
The best countries to live in aren’t good all over. They’re just good more widely, more consistently. Good more systematically. Good on average.
Similarly, SRS helps you remember kanji on average — more often than not.
It’s not perfect, but it’s more than good enough for practical purposes.

You don’t need to be smarter. You don’t need to become a better person. You don’t even need to work harder.
You are good enough as you are. Maybe you, like me, are human garbage — arrogant, lazy, selfish, lustful, distrustful of authority, incapable of playing nice with others: a real “piece of work”. It doesn’t matter. You’ll do.
Systems, recipes, algorithms turn sewage water into potable water again.
All you need is to find or make a better system, a recipe that will make you tasty.

Acute, patchy awesomeness is all well and good.
But you probably want your awesomeness the same way you want your drugs and Dr. Dre albums: chronic.
You want the chronic.
You want chronic awesomeness. I do too.

So don’t blame Japanese. Japanese is not “hard”. Kanji is not “hard”. Japanese just is. Kanji just is.
They merely exist.
Blame your system. Your system for getting used to Japanese and kanji is broken or non-existent. I know. I double know. I know from past experience and I know from present observation.

Lately, I’ve been hanging out with college kids. They’re on Study Abroad in Japan. Ostensibly learning Japanese.
But there is no system. There is just forgetting and cramming and forgetting. There’s just suffering and self-hate. There’s just magical thinking. Knowledge is being hemorrhaged (if, indeed, it is ever being acquired at all).

Don’t believe in magic.
Be the magician. Be the superhuman.
Get a (better) method.
Get a (better) system.
The system. A system. Your system.
Will set you free.


PS: Sorry for my crap writing. It’s good to have a good recipe, and but 3 it’s even better to not starve 🙂 . I’d rather just write you something period than write nothing while waiting for something good. Sometimes you just take what’s there.

Notes:

  1. Or…Chinese generals’ ships (破釜沉舟)…
  2. We can easily “prove” — and my use of this term is looser than your Mom — this by contrapositive. More often than not, when you take a human being out of the network of systems that supports him, you find him unable to function at whatever level he had previously enjoyed. It’s not that the person is dumb, it’s just that the system is “smart”, after a fashion. And I really wish that that sentence sounded less disempowering and anti-individualistic than it does.

    My point isn’t to put down the individual. I’m just saying, if you’re cold, you don’t learn how to raise your body temperature, you get warm clothes? And you and your clothes combine into this new, “superhuman” organism that can…survive and thrive in the cold? Sorta…

    Yeah…this example’s falling apart, isn’t it? 😀 . But what’s cool is that this reflects the process of learning in general, if we define learning as a process of “connecting the unknown to the known”

  3. new word 😛
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Sanity: Bad For You, Bad For The World /sanity/ /sanity/#comments Thu, 21 Jun 2012 14:59:41 +0000 /?p=6847 This entry is part 1 of 5 in the series Systems

Less than eighty years before I was born, in a country built on murder and piracy, a country that did not recognize international patents and copyright law, a country that until only forty years earlier, had allowed human beings to be bought, sold and used as cattle…two bicycle repairmen flew through the air.

People had been in the air before. There’d been balloons for ages. There’d been gliders. But this was special. This was powered flight. This was heavier-than-air flight. “Proper” flight.

What happened? What had changed?

Well, the laws of physics had not changed.
The size and strength of the Earth’s gravity field had not changed.
The laws of the country had not changed.
Human DNA had not changed.
Human beings had not collectively become any more or less intelligent.

People had tried to fly before. Smart people. Plenty died trying, like that one German guy who jumped off a cathedral with wings 1.

So what had changed?

Methods had changed. The method(s) people were using to try to fly had changed. No more flapping 😀 . And after enough tries and enough tweaks, the changes were good enough to produce real, human-powered flight.

The “no more flapping” part is important.
Although I read and watch a lot of X-Men, I’m still quite convinced that human beings aren’t born with the ability to fly. Even eagles are born flightless, but they kind of grow into it. Humans can’t even do that.

But we fly now. A lot. We fly better than we drive — certainly more safely. During my teens, two of my friends died in separate car accidents in separate countries. None of my friends have ever so much as thrown up while flying. We fly better than birds — higher, faster, comfier. We fly so much we complain about it.

We fly 2.
Step back and take that in.
Because this is not something sane people do.

You (most likely) and I were born after the jet age, so we take all this for granted. But there is a healthy madness in flying. Before those crazy bicycle repairmen from North Carolina did their thing — and even for some time afterwards — normal, sane people must have been like: “of course those idiots are dying trying to fly; they’re rebelling against [insert deity] and Nature; if human beings had been intended to fly, they’d have wings; it never says anything about flying in [insert book of desert legends]”.

↑ That’s the kind of bull#### logic that sane people have.

You cannot afford to be sane.
The world cannot afford sanity.
Sane individuals and sane groups — sane societies — achieve nothing and amount to nothing.

You need to be insane. Insane enough to think you can. And insane enough to keep trying and tweaking and testing methods until you figure it out.

Nothing we’re doing here, on this website, is as awesome as human powered effing flight.
All we’re doing is trying to imitate sounds and lines that hundreds of millions of other people have already invented and demonstrated  over and over and over again.

And maybe we’re having trouble with even that, but it doesn’t mean it can’t be done.
You don’t need to be born an eagle to outfly an eagle.
You just need to be insane.

Wanna fly?

  1. Stop thinking and doing things that don’t help you fly.
  2. Start thinking and doing something — anything — else.
  3. Go back to step (1), until you..
  4. Fly, I mean, write, read, understand and speak Japanese.

The Earth’s gravity field did not need to change in order for human flight to become possible. It’s just as strong as it’s been since…pretty much there was an Earth to speak of. Japanese does not need to change in order for you to use it.

You’re not stupid, but your methods probably are.
Don’t ask for an “easier” language.
Ask for an easier method.

Notes:

  1. His mistake wasn’t trying. His mistake was failing to make failure cheap.
  2. “We” is a strong word. It’s not like I helped. But I did have the controls of that glider one time
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