Unpredictable Situation Quotes

...repeated trauma in childhood forms and deforms the personality. The child trapped in an abusive environment is faced with formidable tasks of adaptation. She must find a way to preserve a sense of trust in people who are untrustworthy, safety in a situation that is unsafe, control in a situation that is terrifyingly unpredictable, power in a situation of helplessness. Unable to care for or protect herself, she must compensate for the failures of adult care and protection with the only means at her disposal, an immature system of psychological defenses.

Man, being an American scientist sucks sometimes. You think in random, unpredictable units based on what situation you’re in.

Our lives hang in the balance of unpredictable situations. One minute you're driving down the road whistling a tune, the next moment the car right in front of you spins out of control and crashes. How you prepare for those unpredictable occurrences determines whether you live or die. Always leave an empty lane to your right or left for escape.

...human behavior is fragile and unpredictable and often at the mercy of the situation. Every individual still, of course, has a choice as to how to behave, it's just that for many people the situation is the key determinate in that choice.

Big data does not predict anything beyond the assumption of an idealized situation in a stable system.

In an unknown situation, humility about one’s knowledge is paramount.

A small event as tiny as a drop of a pin can change the direction of your entire life

Claims for correct intuitions in an unpredictable situation are self-delusional at best, sometimes worse.

Physically agile, this squishy strategist and tentacled tactician uses its intelligence and agency to intuit situations, anticipate outcomes, invent solutions, and improvise, remaining relevant for nearly 300 million years.

There is nothing like a doorbell to precipitate the potential into the kinetic. When you stand outside a door and push the button, something has to happen. Someone must respond; whatever is inside must be revealed. Questions will be answered, uncertainties or mysteries dispelled. A situation will be started on its way through unknown complications to an unpredictable conclusion. The answer to your summons may be a rush of tearful welcome, a suspicious eye at the crack of the door, a shot through the hardwood, anything. Any pushing of any doorbell button is as rich in dramatic possibility as that scene in Chekhov when, just as the Zemstvo doctor's only child dies of diphtheria and the doctor's wife drops to her knees beside the bed and the doctor, smelling of carbolic, takes an uncertain step backward, the bell sounds sharply in the hall.

Almost no abuser is mean or frightening all the time. At least occasionally, he is loving, gentle, and humorous and perhaps even capable of compassion and empathy. This intermittent, and usually unpredictable, kindness is critical to forming traumatic attachments. When a person, male or female, has suffered harsh, painful treatment over an extended period of time, he or she naturally feels a flood of love and gratitude toward anyone who brings relief, like the surge of affection one might feel for the hand that offers a glass of water on a scorching day. But in situations of abuse, the rescuer and the tormentor are the very same person.

The responses of traumatized children are often misinterpreted...Because new situations are inherently stressful, and because youth who have been through trauma often come from homes in which chaos and unpredictability appear "normal" to them, they may respond with fear to what is actually a calm and safe situation. Attempting to take control of what they believe is the inevitable return of chaos, they appear to " provoke" it in order to make things feel more comfortable and predictable. Thus, the "honeymoon" period in foster care will end as the child behaves defiantly and destructively in order to prompt familiar screaming and harsh discipline. Like everyone else, they feel more comfortable with what is "familiar". As one family therapist famously put it, we tend to prefer the "certainty of misery to the misery of uncertainty".

I wanted to cry from the frustration. The conclusion to my thoughts directed me to a dead end. There really was no way out of this. It couldn’t be controlled. Whatever was going to happen, it was out of my hands. Life is a bitch that way; an unpredictable mess of choices and consequences, and people caught in the middle. I’d been the unlucky one caught in the centre of this bizarre kind of situation, and the more I thought about it, the more hopeless I felt.               This was going to get ugly, and there wasn’t a damn thing I could do.               With a deep breath, I made my decision.

In a world without forgiveness, evil begets evil, harm generates harm, and there is no way short of exhaustion or forgetfulness of breaking the sequence. Forgiveness breaks the chain. It introduces into the logic of interpersonal encounter the unpredictability of grace. It represents a decision not to do what instinct and passion urge us to do. It answers hate with a refusal to hate, animosity with generosity. Few more daring ideas have ever entered the human situation. Forgiveness means that we are not destined endlessly to replay the grievances of yesterday. It is the ability to live with the past without being held captive by the past. It would not be an exaggeration to say that forgiveness is the most compelling testimony to human freedom.

My father’s unpredictable and arbitrary rages made any situation, no matter how benign, into a potential minefield.

We don't know where we come from and where we go, we fill the missing links with whatever our imaginations can provide us

Life is unpredictable. Situations will move at their own pace, especially the ones we have no control over. We find ourselves at times, angry at a possible scenario in a situation that hasn’t even happen yet. Then, the exact opposite happens. Looking back at the thoughts wasted and false anguish, we’re all better off with patience and an open mind.

When we try to contain reality, to define it, to write down its laws, we fail. We should recognise the universe its right to be unpredictable! - Rossana Condoleo www.rossanacondoleo.com

On the surface a borderline personality can be very difficult to identify, despite the underlying volcanic turbulence. Unlike many people afflicted with other mental disorders—such as schizophrenia, bipolar (manic-depressive) disease, alcoholism, or eating disorders—the borderline can usually function extremely well in work and social situations without appearing overtly pathological. Indeed, some of the hallmarks of borderline behavior are the sudden, unpredictable eruptions of anger, extreme suspiciousness, or suicidal depression from someone who has appeared so “normal.” The

As we face inseparable technological and existential conditions, we enter an era of Techistentialism. AI will increasingly provide insights that enable more-informed predictive decision-making, humans should remain wary of an inadvertent reliance on prescriptive algorithms dictating specific decisions. Complex and uncertain environments inherently involve unknown unknowns; these are situations where we need to be agile despite the lack of immediate answers.

The state should confine itself to establishing rules applying to general types of situations and should allow the individuals freedom in everything which depends on the circumstances of time and place, because only the individuals concerned in each instance can fully know these circumstances and adapt their actions to them. If the individuals are able to use their knowledge effectively in making plans, they must be able to predict actions of the state which may affect these plans. But if the actions of the state are to be predictable, they must be determined by rules fixed independently of the concrete circumstances which can be neither foreseen nor taken into account beforehand; and the particular effects of such actions will be unpredictable. If, on the other hand, the state were to direct the individual’s actions so as the achieve particular ends, its actions would have to be decided on the basis of the full circumstances of the moment and would therefore be unpredictable. Hence the familiar fact that the more the state “plans”, the more difficult planning becomes for the individual.

The Dialectical Dilemma for the Patient The borderline individual is faced with an apparently irreconcilable dilemma. On the one hand, she has tremendous difficulties with self-regulation of affect and subsequent behavioral competence. She frequently but somewhat unpredictably needs a great deal of assistance, often feels helpless and hopeless, and is afraid of being left alone to fend for herself in a world where she has failed over and over again. Without the ability to predict and control her own well-being, she depends on her social environment to regulate her affect and behavior. On the other hand, she experiences intense shame at behaving dependently in a society that cannot tolerate dependency, and has learned to inhibit expressions of negative affect and helplessness whenever the affect is within controllable limits. Indeed, when in a positive mood, she may be exceptionally competent across a variety of situations. However, in the positive mood state she has difficulty predicting her own behavioral capabilities in a different mood, and thus communicates to others an ability to cope beyond her capabilities. Thus, the borderline individual, even though at times desperate for help, has great difficulty asking for help appropriately or communicating her needs. The inability to integrate or synthesize the notions of helplessness and competence, of noncontrol and control, and of needing and not needing help can lead to further emotional distress and dysfunctional behaviors. Believing that she is competent to “succeed,” the person may experience intense guilt about her presumed lack of motivation when she falls short of objectives. At other times, she experiences extreme anger at others for their lack of understanding and unrealistic expectations. Both the intense guilt and the intense anger can lead to dysfunctional behaviors, including suicide and parasuicide, aimed at reducing the painful emotional states. For the apparently competent person, suicidal behavior is sometimes the only means of communicating to others that she really can’t cope and needs help; that is, suicidal behavior is a cry for help. The behavior may also function as a means to get others to alter their unrealistic expectations—to “prove” to the world that she really cannot do what is expected.

While an adolescent remains inconsistent and unpredictable in her behavior, she may suffer, but she does not seem to me to be in need of treatment. I think that she should be given time and scope to work out her own solution. Rather, it may be her parents who need help and guidance so as to be able to bear with her. There are few situations in life which are more difficult to cope with than an adolescent son or daughter during the attempt to liberate themselves. —ANNA FREUD (1958), “Adolescence

The tunnel is about 20 feet long. Or 7 meters. Man, being an American scientist sucks sometimes. You think in random, unpredictable units based on what situation you’re in.

A mild degree of unpredictability in your behavior can help you to protect yourself in situations of conflict. Say

When we are in control of everything and we have great panels of push buttons whereby the slightest touch fulfills every wish, what will we want then? We will eventually want to arrange to have a special, red button marked “surprise” built into the panel. Touch that button and what happens? We will suddenly disappear from our normal consciousness and find ourselves in a situation very much like the one we are now in, where we feel ourselves to be a little bit out of control, subject to surprises, and subject to the whims of an unpredictable universe.

FAILURE IS NOT AN OPTION. Nobody in the startup world could have such a mug, I mused; it would be ridiculous. My experience is full of situations where reality proved too unpredictable to avoid failure.

Almost no abuser is mean or frightening all the time. At least occasionally, he is loving, gentle, and humorous and perhaps even capable of compassion and empathy. This intermittent, and usually unpredictable, kindness is critical to forming traumatic attachments. When a person has suffered harsh, painful treatment over an extended period of time, s/he naturally feels a flood of love and gratitude toward anyone who brings relief. But in situations of abuse, the rescuer and the tormentor are the very same person.

My father’s unpredictable and arbitrary rages made any situation, no matter how benign, into a potential minefield. An innocuous remark or a dissenting voice would trigger his anger and set off a series of explosions from which there was no refuge. The house shook as he shouted,

Situations in life can be random, unpredictable and even heart-breaking. The way you handle the situation can make you a better person, or an empty shell. Don’t wallow in self-pity. You can’t change what has already taken place. Smile when life hurts. Laugh when life hurts. No one will know the difference, except you.

Many organizations and militaries use VUCA as an acronym to describe the disruptive state of the world, given its Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, and Ambiguity. UN-VICE is an updated way of capturing the state and velocity of the world, with our acronym for UNknown, Volatile, Intersecting, Complex, and Exponential: - UNknown: Recognizing that you can’t know anything perfectly, and that many of our decisions are based on assumptions. Increased uncertainty lowers the value of ad-vice and requires increased self-reliance. - Volatile: Our world, and change itself, is evolving faster than ever before. Volatility is not inherently good or bad; it is simply impactful. In volatility we see shifting speed, texture, and magnitude of the changing environment. - Intersecting: The broader our filters, the more we realize that what we observe overlaps with other things. Boundaries are disappearing, connecting new areas through combinations. - Complex: These more-than-complicated systems have unreliable input-output relationships and cannot be summarized or modeled without losing their essence. Unpredictable situations with unknown unknowns. - Exponential: A nonlinear type of change that increases in its growth rate. To an observer, this change may happen gradually, then suddenly. Rapid acceleration of seemingly-small shifts.

The llluminati Reptilian-hybrids are terrified of unpredictable people and situations and they are obsessed with controlling all sides to control the outcome. We see this in the way the global economy is controlled, not even by open competition in what we call 'capitalism', but by 'cartelism'. The market is rigged to ensure the desired outcome.

As soon as two people have resolved to give up their togetherness, the resulting pain with its heaviness or particularity is already so completely part of the life of each individual that the other has to sternly deny himself to become sentimental and feel pity. The beginning of the agreed-upon separation is marked precisely by this pain, and its first challenge will be that this pain already belongs separately to each of the two individuals. This pain is an essential condition of what the now solitary and most lonely individual will have to create in the future out of his reclaimed life. If two people managed not to get stuck in hatred during their honest struggles with each other, that is, in the edges of their passion that became ragged and sharp when it cooled and set, if they could stay fluid, active, flexible, and changeable in all of their interactions and relations, and, in a word, if a mutually human and friendly consideration remained available to them, then their decision to separate cannot easily conjure disaster and terror. When it is a matter of a separation, pain should already belong in its entirety to that other life from which you wish to separate. Otherwise the two individuals will continually become soft toward each other, causing helpless and unproductive suffering. In the process of a firmly agreed-upon separation, however, the pain itself constitutes an important investment in the renewal and fresh start that is to be achieved on both sides. People in your situation might have to communicate as friends. But then these two separated lives should remain without any knowledge of the other for a period and exist as far apart and as detached from the other as possible. This is necessary for each life to base itself firmly on its new requirements and circumstances. Any subsequent contact (which may then be truly new and perhaps very happy) has to remain a matter of unpredictable design and direction. If you find that you scare yourself.

They’re both technicians. They don’t have intelligence. They have what I call ‘thintelligence.’ They see the immediate situation. They think narrowly and they call it ‘being focused.’ They don’t see the surround. They don’t see the consequences. That’s how you get an island like this. From thintelligent thinking. Because you cannot make an animal and not expect it to act alive. To be unpredictable. To escape. But they don’t see that.” “Don’t you think it’s just human nature?” Ellie said. “God, no,” Malcolm said. “That’s like saying scrambled eggs and bacon for breakfast is human nature. It’s nothing of the sort. It’s uniquely Western training, and much of the rest of the world is nauseated by the thought of it.” He winced in pain. “The morphine’s making me philosophical.” “You want some water?

It is not realistic to put legal constraints on war powers. Law works through general prospective rules that apply to a range of factual situations. International relations and national security are too fluid and unpredictable to be governed by a set of legal propositions that command general assent secured in advance. Laws governing war make us feel more secure but they don’t actually make us more secure

The primary difference between the classical layer and the quantum layer is that the classical layer deals with facts and the quantum layer deals with probabilities. In situations where classical laws are valid, we can predict the future by observing the past. In situations where quantum laws are valid, we can observe the past but we cannot predict the future. In the quantum layer, events are unpredictable.

From that mild dissociation, I quickly went into a deeper dissociative state if there was conflict around me, if someone expressed strong emotions, or if something unpredictable happened. Although these difficult situations triggered me, they brought out behavior that helped me do well when the going got tough. I loved solving problems and getting into the thick of things and also had well-developed skills in reading people and anticipating their needs.

I feel gratitude to the Buddha for pointing out that what we struggle against all our lives can be acknowledged as ordinary experience. Life does continually go up and down. People and situations are unpredictable and so is everything else. Everybody knows the pain of getting what we don’t want: saints, sinners, winners, losers. I feel gratitude that someone saw the truth and pointed out that we don’t suffer this kind of pain because of our personal inability to get things right.

Most decisions, and nearly all human interaction, can be incorporated into a contingencies model. For example, a President may start a war, a man may sell his business, or divorce his wife. Such an action will produce a reaction; the number of reactions is infinite but the number of probable reactions is manageably small. Before making a decision, an individual can predict various reactions, and he can assess his original, or primary-mode, decision more effectively. But there is also a category which cannot be analyzed by contingencies. This category involves events and situations which are absolutely unpredictable, not merely disasters of all sorts, but those also including rare moments of discovery and insight, such as those which produced the laser, or penicillin. Because these moments are unpredictable, they cannot be planned for in any logical manner. The mathematics are wholly unsatisfactory. We may only take comfort in the fact that such situations, for ill or for good, are exceedingly rare.

THE FOOL WHO FEEDS THE MONSTER. I knew I had to find this century-old drawing, though I wasn’t sure why. As I rode the escalator through the glass canyon of the atrium and into the bowels of the central branch of the Los Angeles Public Library to search for it, it struck me that I wasn’t just looking for some rare old newspaper. I was looking for myself. I knew who that fool was. He was me. In addiction circles, those in recovery also use the image of the monster as a warning. They tell the story of a man who found a package on his porch. Inside was a little monster, but it was cute, like a puppy. He kept it and raised it. The more he fed it, the bigger it got and the more it needed to be fed. He ignored his worries as it grew bigger, more intimidating, demanding, and unpredictable, until one day, as he was playing with it, the monster attacked and nearly killed him. The realization that the situation was more than he could handle came too late—the man was no longer in control. The monster had a life of its own.

Having a narcissistic parent is an early manifestation of a phenomenon termed by some as “co-narcissism.” Alan Rappoport describes this as unconsciously adapting to and supporting the narcissistic patterns of another person. He argues that this pattern starts in childhood, with the child having to adjust and calibrate to the narcissistic parent. Narcissistic parents are not tuned into their children, and the narcissistic parent largely views the child as an object with which to satisfy his or her needs. Narcissistic parents will be overly indulgent and intrusive about some things and detached and uninterested in others. Children in these situations often believe life is unpredictable and strive hard to please “unpleasable” and distracted parents. If you grow up like this, you learn that you are valued for what you did, but only if it was aligned with your parent’s wants and needs. It can be a confusing way to grow up and also the perfect set-up for accepting narcissistic behavior as “normal” and then tolerating it from a partner or in other close relationships.

And yet—and this was even more frightening still—I could also feel something within me come undone. Even today, all these decades later, I cannot explain it with any greater accuracy. I found myself suddenly imagining a long, fat, chalked line stretching across a flat burned earth. To one side was what I had known, a neat-bricked city of windowless structures, the stuff and facts I knew to be true (I thought, unbidden, of my staircase, its names of those wiser than I, and was at once embarrassed for myself, for finding myself in this situation, in speechless thrall to an anthropologist). And on the other side was Tallent’s world, the shape of which I could not see, for it was obscured by a fog, one that thinned and thickened in unpredictable movements, so that I could discern, occasionally, glimpses of what lay behind it: nothing more than colors and movements, no real shapes; but there was something irresistible there, I knew it, and the fear of succumbing to it was finally less awful than never knowing what lay beyond that fog, never exploring what I might never again have the opportunity to explore. And

In contrast to advice, our UN-VICE is not a suggestion of behavior or a mandate. Instead, our UN-VICE is a way to decipher changing circumstances imaginatively. All advice should be carefully considered, combined with an emphasis on developing and trusting our own capabilities. In our increasingly UN-VICE world, the value of recommendations is rapidly decreasing. Systemic disruption has devalued ad-vice; instead, we offer our best UN-VICE. Inspired by Richard Feynman, we must explore unanswered questions, rather than adhering to unquestionable answers. Zen Master Suzuki Roshi said “In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert’s there are few.” Our UN-VICE draws from the three stages of the Japanese martial arts concept shuhari. In the first stage, shu, the student masters the established fundamentals. In the second stage, ha, the learner practices and experiments with novel approaches, guided by their own unique perspectives. In the third stage, ri, they break loose from confining rulebooks to adapt freely to any situation. Shuhari is a journey, a continuous process of learning, experimenting, and letting go.

Adventures are not predictable and moderately exciting, with predetermined outcomes. Adventures are things going wrong: situations you don't expect, friends who betray you, equipment that fails when you most need it, enemies who are stronger and even smarter than you, and the possibility--no, the certainty, at times--that you will be injured or die. And it is for the real adventures--the ones where your knowledge, your skills, and your strength of character are necessary to complete your assigned mission--that the carefully designed training adventures here in the Academy prepare you.

The pain of heartache often comes in unpredictable episodes of intense pain that come and go. These episodes are called grief “spasms”—you feel overwhelmed by your sense of sorrow. You may hurt physically and feel like you have the flu. Consumed by your own pain and situation,you feel disconnected to everyone else and life takes on a surreal, hazy quality. Stumbling through each day, you feel taxed by the most mundane tasks. All you can think about is how much you hurt. The intensity of your feelings may frighten you, but this is normal. You’re not losing control; you’re not going crazy. You are grieving.

That was the first time I ever heard that miserable excuse for hackneyed formula writing. Our hero wouldn’t act that way. Our lead won’t allow her character to act that way. Our people wouldn’t act that way. No, indeed not. What they can do is act the same damned predictable way each and every week, in each and every new situation. Never mind that human beings are irrational and unpredictable and an amalgam of good and bad and smart and dumb, never mind that the most universal reason that most of us do anything, even if it gets us in trouble or messes us up, is that It Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time.

Micromanagement fails because no one person can control multiple people executing a vast number of actions in a dynamic environment, where changes in the situation occur rapidly and with unpredictability. It also inhibits the growth of subordinates: when people become accustomed to being told what to do, they begin to await direction. Initiative fades and eventually dies. Creativity and bold thought and action soon die as well. The team becomes a bunch of simple and thoughtless automatons, following orders without understanding, moving forward only when told to do so. A team like that will never achieve greatness.

Complex and unpredictable The claims work best in well-ordered situations. Well-ordered domains are structured and stable. We know what causes the effects we want to achieve. We can think systematically about well-ordered domains because we know how they work. We can calculate what decisions to make and how to predict the future. However, we don't usually live in that world of clarity. Much of the time we find ourselves in a different world-a world of shadows where we don't know all the causes or how they work, we can't pin down all the knowledge we need in order to be successful, and we aren't sure we understand the goals.

What It’s Like to Be a Six I’m always imagining and planning for the worst. I often don’t trust people who are in authority. People say I am loyal, understanding, funny and compassionate. Most of my friends don’t have as much anxiety as I do. I act quickly in a crisis, but when things settle down I fall apart. When my partner and I are doing really well in our relationship I find myself wondering what will happen to spoil it. Being sure I’ve made the right decision is almost impossible. I’m aware that fear has dictated many of my choices in life. I don’t like to find myself in unpredictable situations. I find it hard to stop thinking about the things I’m worried about. I’m generally not comfortable with extremes. I usually have so much to do it’s hard for me to finish tasks. I’m most comfortable when I’m around people who are pretty much like me. People tell me I can be overly pessimistic. I am slow to start, and once I do get started I find myself continuing to think about what could go wrong. I don’t trust people who give me too many compliments. It helps me to have things in some kind of order. I like to be told I am good at my job, but I get very nervous when my boss wants to add to my responsibilities. I have to know people for a long time before I can really trust them. I am skeptical of things that are new and unknown.

Tell your kids (if they’re ten or older) something like this: “I just read something really interesting—that there are four things about life that make it stressful: new situations, situations that are unpredictable, situations where you feel you could be hurt, criticized, or embarrassed, and situations where you don’t feel you can control what’s happening. It’s interesting, because in my job I get most stressed when I feel I’m expected to make something happen but I can’t control everything that is necessary to make it happen. Are there things that make you stressed?” By identifying stress in your own life and talking about it, you are modeling stress awareness—a critical step in curbing the effects of stress. As the saying goes, “You’ve got to name it to tame it.

The very idea that negative emotions can be useful can seem preposterous to those who are experiencing them. To get beyond such understandable skepticism, here are four good reasons for thinking that symptoms have evolutionary origins and utility. First, symptoms such as anxiety and sadness are, like sweating and coughing, not rare changes that occur in a few people at unpredictable times; they are consistent responses that occur in nearly everyone in certain situations. Second, the expression of emotions is regulated by mechanisms that turn them on in specific situations; such control systems can evolve only for traits that influence fitness. Third, absence of a response can be harmful; inadequate coughing can make pneumonia fatal, inadequate fear of heights makes falls more likely. Finally, some symptoms benefit an individual’s genes, despite substantial costs to the individual.

I found myself suddenly imagining a long, fat, chalked line stretching across a flat burned earth. To one side was what I had known, a neat-bricked city of windowless structures, the stuff and facts I knew to be true (I thought, unbidden, of my staircase, its names of those wiser than I, and was at once embarrassed for myself, for finding myself in this situation, in speechless thrall to an anthropologist). And on the other side was Tallent's world, the shape of which I could not see, for it was obscured by a fog, one that thinned and thickened in unpredictable movements, so that I could discern, occasionally, glimpses of what lay behind it: nothing more than colors and movements, no real shapes; but there was something irresistible there, I knew it, and the fear of succumbing to it was finally less awful than never knowing what lay beyond that fog, never exploring what I might never again have the opportunity to explore.

I did well at the Department of Justice. Some of my parts were hard workers. My well-developed memory helped me remember people: their names and positions and what they said during meetings. Rather than making me seem checked out, my dissociation made me seem calm and collected. In fact, the general dissociative state I was always in helped me function very well. I collected information, interacted on a personal and professional level, and was quite adept at managing most tasks in my life from this superficially numb and calm place. Most people, including me, didn't notice. This way of being and interacting was really all I knew. From that mild dissociation, I quickly went into a deeper dissociative state if there was conflict around me, if someone expressed strong emotions, or if something unpredictable happened. Although these difficult situations triggered me, they brought out behavior that helped me do well when the going got tough.

Our overview of lagging skills is now complete. Of course, that was just a sampling. Here’s a more complete, though hardly exhaustive, list, including those we just reviewed: > Difficulty handling transitions, shifting from one mind-set or task to another > Difficulty doing things in a logical sequence or prescribed order > Difficulty persisting on challenging or tedious tasks > Poor sense of time > Difficulty maintaining focus > Difficulty considering the likely outcomes or consequences of actions (impulsive) > Difficulty considering a range of solutions to a problem > Difficulty expressing concerns, needs, or thoughts in words > Difficulty understanding what is being said > Difficulty managing emotional response to frustration so as to think rationally > Chronic irritability and/or anxiety significantly impede capacity for problem-solving or heighten frustration > Difficulty seeing the “grays”/concrete, literal, black-and-white thinking > Difficulty deviating from rules, routine > Difficulty handling unpredictability, ambiguity, uncertainty, novelty > Difficulty shifting from original idea, plan, or solution > Difficulty taking into account situational factors that would suggest the need to adjust a plan of action > Inflexible, inaccurate interpretations/cognitive distortions or biases (e.g., “Everyone’s out to get me,” “Nobody likes me,” “You always blame me,” “It’s not fair,” “I’m stupid”) > Difficulty attending to or accurately interpreting social cues/poor perception of social nuances > Difficulty starting conversations, entering groups, connecting with people/lacking basic social skills > Difficulty seeking attention in appropriate ways > Difficulty appreciating how his/her behavior is affecting other people > Difficulty empathizing with others, appreciating another person’s perspective or point of view > Difficulty appreciating how s/he is coming across or being perceived by others > Sensory/motor difficulties

Nothing is isolated. Do one thing, however small, and it will affect something else on the other side of the world" "But the surest way to slow your own progress is to rush yourself into situations you’re not yet ready for.”" "When you’re pushed to extreme fear or anger, your body magnifies your energy tenfold, sometimes a hundredfold. It isn’t like this for everyone" “I was wrong. Passion is bright and warm . . . but passion has a dark side too. It links with fear. Our hearts fill with terror at the thought of harm coming to our loved ones, don’t they? You cannot have love without fear. The two coexist. In you, your alignment with passion instead fed your fear and fury. It made you darker. The more you love someone, the more unsteady your powers become. Your growing passion for Enzo made you volatile. It led to you losing control over your powers, powers that had grown to dangerous strengths. That, coupled with your anger and bitterness, has made you incredibly unpredictable.

Specialist or Strategist? Isn’t it true that the more you practice, the better you get? Yes, but, and this bears repeating, the intuitive mastery we are striving for is not brilliant skill at predictable tasks. As the late science fiction author, Robert Heinlein, pointed out, specialization is for insects. Humans need the mystifying ability to cope with the unpredictable and ambiguous challenges posed by thinking adversaries in the real world. Since kendo masters practice hard, don’t we need to put in long hours to develop super competence? The answer is absolutely yes. However, sixteen hours at the office doing the same things day after day simply make you a workaholic (and very likely a micromanager); they do not per se confer an intuitive skill useful in competitive situations. Tom Peters suggests that you can spot who is going to do great things by what they do on airplanes. They don’t pull out the laptop and grind spreadsheets. Instead, they “read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance for the umpteenth time,” or pick up insights on human behavior from the great novelists.

If subjective confidence is not to be trusted, how can we evaluate the probable validity of an intuitive judgment? When do judgments reflect true expertise? When do they display an illusion of validity? The answer comes from the two basic conditions for acquiring a skill: an environment that is sufficiently regular to be predictable an opportunity to learn these regularities through prolonged practice When both these conditions are satisfied, intuitions are likely to be skilled. Chess is an extreme example of a regular environment, but bridge and poker also provide robust statistical regularities that can support skill. Physicians, nurses, athletes, and firefighters also face complex but fundamentally orderly situations. The accurate intuitions that Gary Klein has described are due to highly valid cues that the expert’s System 1 has learned to use, even if System 2 has not learned to name them. In contrast, stock pickers and political scientists who make long-term forecasts operate in a zero-validity environment. Their failures reflect the basic unpredictability of the events that they try to forecast.

We have to make a consideration: emotional states are deeply influenced by external events, and here lies the problem. Since the external events are unstable, namely, that they are in perpetual change - a situation that Buddhist tradition defines as “impermanence” - they are very difficult to be managed, and this bring people to panic. This difficulty to experience a reality in which nothing is permanent, that all is in constant motion- change, belongs to the human incapacity to accept the discontinuity of an occurrence of events that are always unpredictable and new. Impermanence is a principle that is a natural thing, but, in relation to the social and interhuman fields, this becomes a problem: especially in the last ten years, we can witness scenarios where instability, turbulence and uncertainty, frantically increase and continue to increase. Instability and change are perceivable everywhere - from the personal interaction between people to economic instability: in poor words, we don’t know what the future will bring to us and we feel a continuous pressure. People feel a need for safety and stability, but this is an impossible thing in the conditions in which society finds itself, and here lies one of the main reasons why tensions, anxiety, and panic have became common situations.

The problem of distributing bathroom tissue to workers presents inherent challenges for any office management system due to the inherent unpredictability of usage—not every facility usage transaction necessitates the use of bathroom tissue, and when it is used, the amount needed (number of squares) may vary quite widely from person to person and, for a given person, from one transaction to the next. This does not even take into account the occasional use of bathroom tissue for unpredictable/creative purposes such as applying/removing cosmetics, beveragespill management, etc. For this reason, rather than trying to package bathroom tissue in small one-transaction packets (as is done with premoistened towelettes, for example), which can be wasteful in some cases and limiting in other cases, it has been traditional to package this product in bulk distribution units whose size exceeds the maximum amount of squares that an individual could conceivably use in a single transaction (barring force majeure). This reduces to a minimum the number of transactions in which the distribution unit is depleted (the roll runs out) during the transaction, a situation that can lead to emotional stress for the affected employee. However, it does present the manager with some challenges in that the distribution unit is rather bulky and must be repeatedly used by a number of different individuals if it is not to be wasted.

Life Is an Ambiguous Stimulus In a very real sense, life is an ambiguous stimulus. Does survival of a heart attack indicate that death is imminent or that one has been given a new lease on life? Is falling in love an assurance of a lifelong partnership or the first sign of an inevitable heartbreak? Many human situations are complex and their meanings subtle. Thus, to make sense of and gain agency over our experiences, we engage in the process of self-reflection. Through self-reflection, people come to realize that their lives are filled with uncertainty about their own identities, their relationships with others, and their environmental circumstances. Because living involves adaptation to irregular changes and perturbations from the environment, the process of self-reflection reveals the indefinite nature of life. The uncertainty stemming from threatening stimuli whose nature is unknown or unpredictable evokes stress and a sense of loss of control. In response to uncertainty, we are driven to make meaning of our experiences and in so doing to reduce uncertainty. Indeed, a series of cunning experiments demonstrated that the sense of lacking control promotes illusory pattern perception in ambiguous situations. Hence, people consciously or unconsciously attempt to regain a sense of control by projecting patterns onto the chaos of their lives. This meaning-making process hinged on the appraisal of stressors and their meaningful integration into our autobiographical narratives.

A few minutes later Elizabeth watched Lucinda emerge from the cottage with Ian, but there was no way to guess from their closed expressions what they’d discussed. In fact, the only person betraying any emotion at all was Jake Wiley as he led two horses into the yard. And his face, Elizabeth noted with confusion-which had been stormy when he went off to saddle the horses-was now wreathed in a smile of unrestrained glee. With a sweep of his arm and a bow he gestured toward a swaybacked black horse with an old sidesaddle upon its back. “Here’s your mount, ma’am,” he told Lucinda, grinning. “His name’s Attila.” Lucinda cast a disdainful eye over the beast as she transferred her umbrella to her right hand and pulled on her black gloves. “Have you nothing better?” “No, ma’am. Ian’s horse has a hurt foot.” “Oh, very well,” said Lucinda, walking briskly forward, but as she came within reach the black suddenly bared his teeth and lunged. Lucinda struck him between the ears with her umbrella without so much as a pause in her step. “Cease!” she commanded, and, ignoring the animal’s startled grunt of pain, she continued around to his other side to mount. “You brought it on yourself,” she told the horse as Jake held Attila’s head, and Ian Thornton helped her into the sidesaddle. The whites of Attila’s eyes showed as he warily watched her land in his saddle and settle herself. The moment Jake handed Lucinda the reins Attila began to leap sideways and twist around in restless annoyance. “I do not countenance ill-tempered animals,” she warned the horse in her severest tone, and when he refused to heed her and continued his threatening antics she hauled up sharply on his reins and simultaneously gave him a sharp jab in the flank with her umbrella. Attila let out a yelping complaint, broke into a quick, animated trot, and headed obediently down the drive. “If that don’t beat all!” Jake said furiously, glowering after the pair, and then at Ian. “That animal doesn’t know the meaning of the word loyalty!” Without waiting for a reply Jake swung into his saddle and cantered down the lane after them. Absolutely baffled over everyone’s behavior this morning, Elizabeth cast a puzzled, sideways glance at the silent man beside her, then gaped at him in amazement. The unpredictable man was staring after Lucinda, his hands shoved into his pockets, a cigar clamped between his white teeth, his face transformed by a sweeping grin. Drawing the obvious conclusion that these odd reactions from the men were somehow related to Lucinda’s skillful handling of an obstinate horse, Elizabeth commented, “Lucinda’s uncle raised horses, I believe.” Almost reluctantly, Ian transferred his admiring gaze from Lucinda’s rigid back to Elizabeth. His brows rose. “An amazing woman,” he stated. “Is there any situation of which she can’t take charge?” “None that I’ve ever seen,” Elizabeth said with a chuckle; then she felt self-conscious because his smile faded abruptly, and his manner became detached and cool.

emotionally immature people are more like an amalgam of various borrowed parts, many of which don’t go together well. Because they had to shut down important parts of themselves out of fear of their parents’ reactions, their personalities formed in isolated clumps, like pieces of a puzzle that don’t fit together. This explains their inconsistent reactions, which make them so difficult to understand. Because they probably weren’t allowed to express and integrate their emotional experiences in childhood, these people grow up to be emotionally inconsistent adults. Their personalities are weakly structured, and they often express contradictory emotions and behaviors. They step in and out of emotional states, never noticing their inconsistency. When they become parents, these traits create emotional bafflement in their children. One woman described her mother’s behavior as chaotic, “flip-flopping in ways that made no sense.” This inconsistency means that, as parents, emotionally immature people may be either loving or detached, depending on their mood. Their children feel fleeting moments of connection with them but don’t know when or under what conditions their parent might be emotionally available again. This sets up what behavioral psychologists call an intermittent reward situation, meaning that getting a reward for your efforts is possible but completely unpredictable. This creates a tenacious resolve to keep trying to get the reward, because once in a while these efforts do pay off. In this way, parental inconsistency can be the quality that binds children most closely to their parent, as they keep hoping to get that infrequent and elusive positive response.

The information in this topic of decision making and how to create and nurture it, is beneficial to every cop in their quest to mastering tactics and tactical decision making and are a must read for every cop wanting to be more effective and safe on the street. My purpose is to get cops thinking about this critical question: In mastering tactics shouldn’t we be blending policy and procedure with people and ideas? It should be understandable that teaching people, procedures helps them perform tasks more skillfully doesn’t always apply. Procedures are most useful in well-ordered situations when they can substitute for skill, not augment it. In complex situations, in the shadows of the unknown, uncertain and unpredictable and complex world of law enforcement conflict, procedures are less likely to substitute for expertise and may even stifle its development. Here is a different way of putting it as Klein explains: In complex situations, people will need judgment skills to follow procedures effectively and to go beyond them when necessary.3 For stable and well-structured tasks i.e. evidence collection and handling, follow-up investigations, booking procedures and report writing, we should be able to construct comprehensive procedure guides. Even for complex tasks we might try to identify the procedures because that is one road to progress. But we also have to discover the kinds of expertise that comes into play for difficult jobs such as, robbery response, active shooter and armed gunman situations, hostage and barricade situations, domestic disputes, drug and alcohol related calls and pretty much any other call that deals with emotionally charged people in conflict. Klein states, “to be successful we need both analysis (policy and procedure) and intuition (people and ideas).”4 Either one alone can get us into trouble. Experts certainly aren’t perfect, but analysis can fail. Intuition isn’t magic either. Klein defines intuition as, “ways we use our experience without consciously thinking things out”. Intuition includes tacit knowledge that we can’t describe. It includes our ability to recognize patterns stored in memory. We have been building these patterns up all our lives from birth to present, and we can rapidly match a situation to a pattern or notice that something is off, that some sort of anomaly is warning us to be careful.5

This is the most telling distinction of all. No matter how much analytical tasks in the real world depend on expert intuition, there is a difference between doing a task and deciding which task to do. Expert intuition helps you fight a fire, but does it help you decide which fire to fight? Does expert intuition tell you how to organize your firehouse to be ready to fight the right fires or to decide where to put your firehouse in the first place? Expert intuition makes you better at tactics, but what makes you better at strategy? Expert intuition works for familiar situations, but what about new ones? What good is expert intuition—drawing elements from the past—when the future is unpredictable? If you automatically apply the past to the future, and the future is different, you’re making a big mistake. That’s where strategy comes in. Expert intuition works for the small picture but not the big one. For the bigger picture we need something else.

he had been brought up to believe that a certain distance—cool, disciplined relations—was essential in a marriage. Passion was something for brothels and affairs. Emotions were the biggest threat to a marriage. They were unpredictable. Georg looked down on people who were unable to keep a cool head; he preferred those he could rely on at any time and in any situation.

You need to be careful to stay out of Charlie’s line of sight,” Steve said to me. “I want Charlie focusing only on me. If he changes focus and starts attacking you, it’s going to be too difficult for me to control the situation.” Right. Steve got no argument from me. Getting anywhere near those bone-crushing jaws was the furthest thing from my mind. I wasn’t keen on being down on the water with a huge saltwater crocodile trying to get me. I would have to totally rely on Steve to keep me safe. We stepped into the dinghy, which was moored in Charlie’s enclosure, secured front and back with ropes. Charlie came over immediately to investigate. It didn’t take much to encourage him to have a go at Steve. Steve grabbed a top-jaw rope. He worked on roping Charlie while the cameras rolled. Time and time again, Charlie hurled himself straight at Steve, a half ton of reptile flesh exploding up out of the water a few feet away from me. I tried to hang on precariously and keep the boat counterbalanced. I didn’t want Steve to lose his footing and topple in. Charlie was one angry crocodile. He would have loved nothing more than to get his teeth into Steve. As Charlie used his powerful tail to propel himself out of the water, he arched his neck and opened his jaws wide, whipping his head back and forth, snapping and gnashing. Steve carefully threw the top-jaw rope, but he didn’t actually want to snag Charlie. Then he would have had to get the rope off without stressing the croc, and that would have been tricky. The cameras rolled. Charlie lunged. I cowered. Steve continued to deftly toss the rope. Then, all of a sudden, Charlie swung at the rope instead of Steve, and the rope went right over Charlie’s top jaw. A perfect toss, provided that had been what Steve was trying to do. But it wasn’t. We had a roped croc on our hands that we really didn’t want. Steve immediately let the rope go slack. Charlie had it snagged in his teeth. Because of Steve’s quick thinking and prompt maneuvering, the rope came clear. We breathed a collective sigh of relief. Steve looked up at the cameras. “I think you’ve got it.” John agreed. “I think we do, mate.” The crew cheered. The shoot lasted several minutes, but in the boat, I wasn’t sure if it had been seconds or hours. Watching Steve work Charlie up close had been amazing--a huge, unpredictable animal with a complicated thought process, able to outwit its prey, an animal that had been on the planet for millions of years, yet Steve knew how to manipulate him and got some fantastic footage. To the applause of the crew, Steve got us both out of the boat. He gave me a big hug. He was happy. This was what he loved best, being able to interact and work with wildlife. Never before had anything like it been filmed in any format, much less on thirty-five-millimeter film for a movie theater. We accomplished the shot with the insurance underwriters none the wiser. Steve wanted to portray crocs as the powerful apex predators that they were, keeping everyone safe while he did it. Never once did he want it to appear as though he were dominating the crocodile, or showing off by being in close proximity to it. He wished for the crocodile to be the star of the show, not himself. I was proud of him that day. The shoot represented Steve Irwin at his best, his true colors, and his desire to make people understand how amazing these animals are, to be witnessed by audiences in movie theaters all over the world. We filmed many more sequences with crocs, and each time Steve performed professionally and perfected the shots. He was definitely in his element. With the live-croc footage behind us, the insurance people came on board, and we were finally able to sign a contract with MGM. We were to start filming in earnest. First stop: the Simpson Desert, with perentie lizards and fierce snakes.

Will they achieve a uniformity in censorship methods among the various regimes?” “Not uniformity. They will create a system in which the methods support and balance one another in turn....” The Director General invites you to examine the planisphere hanging on the wall. The varied color scheme indicates: the countries where all books are systematically confiscated; the countries where only books published or approved by the State may circulate; the countries where existing censorship is crude, approximate, and unpredictable; the countries where the censorship is subtle, informed, sensitive to implications and allusions, managed by meticulous and sly intellectuals; the countries where there are two networks of dissemination: one legal and one clandestine; the countries where there is no censorship because there are no books, but there are many potential readers; the countries where there are no books and nobody complains about their absence; the countries, finally, in which every day books are produced for all tastes and all ideas, amid general indifference. “Nobody these days holds the written word in such high esteem as police states do,” Arkadian Porphyrich says. “What statistic allows one to identify the nations where literature enjoys true consideration better than the sums appropriated for controlling it and suppressing it? Where it is the object of such attentions, literature gains an extraordinary authority, inconceivable in countries where it is allowed to vegetate as an innocuous pastime, without risks. To be sure, repression must also allow an occasional breathing space, must close an eye every now and then, alternate indulgence with abuse, with a certain unpredictability in its caprices; otherwise, if nothing more remains to be repressed, the whole system rusts and wears down. Let’s be frank: every regime, even the most authoritarian, survives in a situation of unstable equilibrium, whereby it needs to justify constantly the existence of its repressive apparatus, therefore of something to repress. The wish to write things that irk the established authorities is one of the elements necessary to maintain this equilibrium. Therefore, by a secret treaty with the countries whose social regime is opposed to ours, we have created a common organization, with which you have intelligently agreed to collaborate, to export the books banned here and import the books banned there.” “This would seem to imply that the books banned here are allowed there, and vice versa....” “Not on your life. The books banned here are superbanned there, and the books banned there are ultrabanned here. But from exporting to the adversary regime one’s own banned books and from importing theirs, each regime derives at least two important advantages: it encourages the opponents of the hostile regime and it establishes a useful exchange of experience between the police services.” “The

Most broadly, they refer to the ability to deal with confusing and unpredictable situations and information. One

Homo ferus: wild human. An unpredictable, nocturnal creature usually found in trees. Caution: may cause bewilderment and disorientation. Also, prone to teasing.

Living in a capricious world means accepting that we do not live within a stable moral cosmos that will always reward people for what they do. We should not deny that real tragedies do happen. But at the same time, we should always expect to be surprised and learn to work with whatever befalls us. If we can continue this work, even when tragedies come our way, we can begin to accept the world as unpredictable and impossible to determine perfectly. And this is where the promise of a capricious world lies: if our world is indeed constantly fragmented and unpredictable, then it is something we can constantly work on bettering. We can go into each situation resolved to be the best human being we can be, not because of what we’ll get out of it, but simply to affect others around us for the better, regardless of the outcome. We can cultivate our better sides and face this unpredictable world, transforming it as we go.

The varied players—objects and events, currently present or recalled from memory—do not pluck the strings of any violins or cellos and do not press the keys of countless pianos, but the metaphor captures the situation. Objects and eventsdo “play,” in the sense that they, as distinct entities within the organism’s mind, can act on certain neural structures of the organism, “affect” their state, and change those other structures for a passing moment. Over the “playing time,” their actions result in a certain kind of music, the music of our thoughts and feelings and of the meanings that emerge from the inner narratives they help construct. The result may be subtle or not so. Sometimes it amounts to an operatic performance. You can attend it passively, or you can intervene, modify the score to a greater or smaller extent, and produce unpredicted results.

The responses of traumatized children are often misinterpreted. This even happened to Sandy at some points in foster care. Because new situations are inherently stressful, and because youth who have been through trauma often come from homes in which chaos and unpredictability appear “normal” to them, they may respond with fear to what is actually a calm and safe situation. Attempting to take control of what they believe is the inevitable return of chaos, they appear to “provoke” it in order to make things feel

Žižek's argument here is twofold. Firstly, founding itself upon classical biology, contemporary cognitive science presupposes that every organism is a self-contained system in harmony with itself seeking homeostasis and self-preservation, which prevents it from coming to terms with the psychoanalytical concept of Todestrieb. Representing a malfunction in biology, whereby a person no more strives for pleasure and satisfaction, for the minimal possible level of distress and affliction, but rather for pain and even self-destruction, psychoanalysis identifies this apparently negative moment of short circuit within the biological machine with one of the defining traits of human subjectivity and thus of culture itself. Instead of being a mere haphazard disorder or a contingent feature of a sick mind, Todestrieb comes to represent a necessary feature of the singularity of our being: the condition of the possibility of psychopathological self-destruction is ultimately linked to our very freedom because the two are structurally homologous. Secondly, what Žižek adds to this argument for the supremacy of psychoanalysis over reductionist biology is the following insight: if there were nothing but the self-contained, deterministic system of the neuronal interface of the brain, then why is there (self-)experience at all? Why is there not just blind existence, a mere mechanism that auto-develops according to its own laws? Why does the nonconscious trembling of brute matter in its dynamic pulsations need to be aware of itself? Since the category of subjective experience is superfluous, unnecessary, to the materialism displayed by science, the mere fact of experience proclaims that neurobiological activity is not-all—that there is a gap, a series of interstices, which arise within its logical fold as a kind of unpredictable short circuit to which, perhaps, phenomenal reality arises as a response. Naming the place of this rupture the subject itself, Žižek's own work on cognitive science consequently tries to underline the inherent difficulty that the discipline has (for this very reason) to explain the emergence of consciousness, insofar as it points to a limit-situation within which the discourse itself breaks down.

Difficulty seeing the “grays”; concrete, literal, black-and-white thinking Difficulty deviating from rules or routine Difficulty handling unpredictability, ambiguity, uncertainty, or novelty Difficulty shifting from original idea or solution Difficulty adapting to changes in plan or new rules Difficulty taking into account situational factors that would suggest the need to adjust a plan

handy acronym for what makes life stressful—N.U.T.S. NOVELTY Something you have not experienced before UNPREDICTABILITY Something you had no way of knowing would occur THREAT TO THE EGO Your safety or competence as a person is called into question SENSE OF CONTROL You feel you have little or no control over the situation5

Look at stocks as part ownership of a business. 2. Look at Mr. Market—volatile stock price fluctuations—as your friend rather than your enemy. View risk as the possibility of permanent loss of purchasing power, and uncertainty as the unpredictability regarding the degree of variability in the possible range of outcomes. 3. Remember the three most important words in investing: “margin of safety.” 4. Evaluate any news item or event only in terms of its impact on (a) future interest rates and (b) the intrinsic value of the business, which is the discounted value of the cash that can be taken out during its remaining life, adjusted for the uncertainty around receiving those cash flows. 5. Think in terms of opportunity costs when evaluating new ideas and keep a very high hurdle rate for incoming investments. Be unreasonable. When you look at a business and get a strong desire from within saying, “I wish I owned this business,” that is the kind of business in which you should be investing. A great investment idea doesn’t need hours to analyze. More often than not, it is love at first sight. 6. Think probabilistically rather than deterministically, because the future is never certain and it is really a set of branching probability streams. At the same time, avoid the risk of ruin, when making decisions, by focusing on consequences rather than just on raw probabilities in isolation. Some risks are just not worth taking, whatever the potential upside may be. 7. Never underestimate the power of incentives in any given situation. 8. When making decisions, involve both the left side of your brain (logic, analysis, and math) and the right side (intuition, creativity, and emotions). 9. Engage in visual thinking, which helps us to better understand complex information, organize our thoughts, and improve our ability to think and communicate. 10. Invert, always invert. You can avoid a lot of pain by visualizing your life after you have lost a lot of money trading or speculating using derivatives or leverage. If the visuals unnerve you, don’t do anything that could get you remotely close to reaching such a situation. 11. Vicariously learn from others throughout life. Embrace everlasting humility to succeed in this endeavor. 12. Embrace the power of long-term compounding. All the great things in life come from compound interest.

Senior Wal-Mart officials concentrated on setting goals, measuring progress, and maintaining communication lines with employees at the front lines and with official agencies when they could. In other words, to handle this complex situation, they did not issue instructions. Conditions were too unpredictable and constantly changing. They worked on making sure people talked. Wal-Mart’s emergency operations team even included a member of the Red Cross. (The federal government declined Wal-Mart’s invitation to participate.) The team also opened a twenty-four-hour call center for employees, which started with eight operators but rapidly expanded to eighty to cope with the load. Along the way, the team discovered that, given common goals to do what they could to help and to coordinate with one another, Wal-Mart’s employees were able to fashion some extraordinary solutions. They set up three temporary mobile pharmacies in the city and adopted a plan to provide medications for free at all of their stores for evacuees with emergency needs—even without a prescription. They set up free check cashing for payroll and other checks in disaster-area stores. They opened temporary clinics to provide emergency personnel with inoculations against flood-borne illnesses. And most prominently, within just two days of Katrina’s landfall, the company’s logistics teams managed to contrive ways to get tractor trailers with food, water, and emergency equipment past roadblocks and into the dying city. They were able to supply water and food to refugees and even to the National Guard a day before the government appeared on the scene. By the end Wal-Mart had sent in a total of 2,498 trailer loads of emergency supplies and donated $3.5 million in merchandise to area shelters and command centers. “If the American government had responded like Wal-Mart has responded, we wouldn’t be in this crisis,” Jefferson Parish’s top official, Aaron Broussard, said in a network television interview at the time.

This brain state is the most important skill for any wayfinder in any culture and any situation. I spend a lot of time talking about the reasons for my clients’ emotional swings and their life choices, but I’ve learned there are two ways to make such a choice: from a place of verbal thought, which has very little effect because it isn’t rooted in their deepest perceptions, and from a place of Wordlessness, which makes every thought and action much, much more powerful. If you know how to drop into Wordlessness, you’ll be so aware of your situation and your own responses to it that you’ll go straight toward your best life, no matter how obscure it may seem or how many obstacles lie before you. At a time when social change is so rapid and the pressures on each person so unpredictable, Wordlessness is a skill you truly need to find your way.

When commuters were told to strike up a conversation, most had a positive experience and rated their commute as better than usual, and those who typically worked on the train reported that the trip was no less productive when they talked to a stranger. There is a lot of research like this suggesting that human beings are bad at affective forecasting. Not just in short-term situations like the train study, but in the long term, too. We seem particularly bad at forecasting the benefits of relationships. A big part of this is the obvious fact that relationships can be messy and unpredictable. This messiness is some of what prompts many of us to prefer being alone. It’s not just that we are seeking solitude; it’s that we want to avoid the potential mess of connecting with others. But we overestimate that mess and underestimate the beneficial effects of human connection. This is a feature of our decision making in general: we pay a lot of attention to potential costs and downplay or dismiss potential benefits.

In all, it is important to recognize the complexity and perhaps even unavoidable contradictions that reside within human morality. Its multiple sources and layers can never be applied consistently in all situations, given the messiness and unpredictability of human social life.

Over time (as with other addictions, such as to sugar or sex, or drug or alcohol dependency), our body needs more and more intense experiences to receive the same chemical “hit.” Our subconscious leads us into situations where we can get that hit in increasingly powerful doses: unpredictable relationships, news media that leave us feeling scared and angry, social media that allow us to pick fights online. This is why we are drawn to vent to friends and chronically complain; these behaviors help us remain in a heightened state. Nonactivated peace is dull and unfamiliar. Our body and mind seek the familiar, even if it is painful, and many of us are left ultimately feeling ashamed about and confused by our behavior.

In some ways someone as conservative as Tyler was the perfect choice to lead an exploratory mission. Tyler’s whole ethic was war-like, imperious: control the world by telling it what it is. Meet challenges through resistance and attrition. It hurt him so much to be in an unpredictable situation precisely because that was where he thrived. He would begin a process of simplification through classification and he would negotiate a corridor through it. He was addicted to it, energised by it, metabolising strangeness and novelty, turning the real world

And even if we make good plans based on the best information available at the time and people do exactly what we plan, the effects of our actions may not be the ones we wanted because the environment is nonlinear and hence is fundamentally unpredictable. As time passes the situation will change, chance events will occur, other agents such as customers or competitors will take actions of their own, and we will find that what we do is only one factor among several which create a new situation.

I find it disquieting to see the term paradox entering management literature in a way that indicates that it can be ‘managed’. I suppose I should expect this because of the sense of omnipotence that plagues American management, the belief that no event or situation is too complex or too unpredictable to be brought under management control. (Farson, 1997: 15)

Developmental evaluation likewise centers on situational sensitivity, responsiveness, and adaptation, and is an approach to evaluation especially appropriate for situations of high uncertainty where what may and does emerge is relatively unpredictable and uncontrollable.

And I took my own frustration and anger from being born into a situation that felt contrary to who I was.

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Gertrude Chandler Warner discovered when she was teaching that many readers who like an exciting story could find no books that were both easy and fun to read. She decided to try to meet this need, and her first book, The Boxcar Children, quickly proved she had succeeded. Miss Warner drew on her own experiences to write the mystery. As a child she spent hours watching trains go by on the tracks opposite her family home. She often dreamed about what it would be like to set up housekeeping in a caboose or freight car--the situation the Alden children find themselves in. When Miss Warner received requests for more adventures involving Henry, Jessie, Violet, and Benny Alden, she began additional stories. In each, she chose a special setting and introduced unusual or eccentric characters who liked the unpredictable. While the mystery element is central to each of Miss Warner’s books, she never thought of them as strictly juvenile mysteries. She liked to stress the Aldens’ independence and resourcefulness and their solid New England devotion to using up and making do. The Aldens go about most of their adventures with as little adult supervision as possible--something else that delights young readers. Miss Warner lived in Putnam, Connecticut, until her death in 1979. During her lifetime, she received hundreds of letters from girls and boys telling her how much they liked her books.

Stepping out and stepping up can be an intimidating experience, especially in social situations where the outcomes are unpredictable and uncertain. Have you ever been reluctant to . . . • Say "no?" • Request help? • Ask for a raise? • Stand up to a bully? • Talk about tough topics? • Confront a friend or spouse? • Speak up and share your opinion? • Begin a conversation with a stranger? • Deliver a presentation or speak in public? • Talk about the “white elephant” in the room? • Befriend people who are much different than you? • Make sales calls because you don’t want to be rejected? • Approach a new group of people at a networking event? • Go to an event by yourself where you did not know anyone?

Stepping out and stepping up can be an intimidating experience, especially in social situations where the outcomes are unpredictable and uncertain. Have you ever been reluctant to . . . • Say "no?" • Request help? • Ask for a raise? • Stand up to a bully? • Talk about tough topics? • Confront a friend or spouse? • Speak up and share your opinion? • Begin a conversation with a stranger? • Deliver a presentation or speak in public? • Talk about the “white elephant” in the room? • Befriend people who are much different than you? • Make sales calls because you don’t want to be rejected? • Approach a new group of people at a networking event? • Go to an event by yourself where you did not know anyone? Each of these scenarios can strike fear in the hearts of many because each involves risk and potential discomfort. Life holds endless circumstances with a broad and diverse range of challenge or conflict that require you to be brave.

Extroverts typically . . . • Process information externally by verbalizing, collaborating, brainstorming, discussing, sharing their ideas, and communicating until they achieve desired results. • Are rejuvenated and re-charged by being around people, interacting with friends and family, and having dynamic conversations. • Enjoy the excitement and adventure of a new situation or setting. • Tend to be more colorful, unpredictable, daring, stylish, and cluttered in their clothing, home furnishings, offices, and surroundings. • Love meeting new people and making new friends. They enjoy variety and engaging on all levels. • Are very spontaneous, resilient, and adapt well to change.

Gallio submits a request to the Prefect of the Province of Judaea, in writing, to bring in a disciple from the leadership group. He doesn’t care which one, probably Peter. The way Cassius Gallio sees it he can play Peter off against Judas: the two former colleagues in separate rooms, neither of them sure what the other may confess. Then in the same room, to wonder how much pain the other can bear. Not that the interviews need descend into violence. The anticipation of pain is often enough. Pilate refuses Gallio’s request, also in writing. He’s covering his back. Pilate has seen no evidence to incriminate the disciples, and this is the Middle East. The zealots in the mountains are unpredictable, and in this particular region a riot could start a war. Cassius Gallio should avoid inflaming the situation, and an arrest would be a negative at this time.

Relationships are complicated, sometimes interesting and can often appear unpredictable. This is just the type of situation that mathematics can help you with. The simplest relationships between things have a property that we call ‘transitivity’ and it makes life simple.

To be sure, repression must also allow an occasional breathing space, must close an eye every now and then, alternate indulgence with abuse, with a certain unpredictability in its caprices; otherwise, if nothing more remains to be repressed, the whole system rusts and wears down. Let's be frank: every regime, even the most authoritarian, survives in a situation of unstable equilibrium, whereby it needs to justify constantly the existence of its repressive apparatus, therefore of something to repress.

Just as this trait has its upsides, like all traits, it also has its downsides too. People high in conscientiousness experience more guilt. They are well suited to predictable environments but less well suited to unpredictable situations that require fluid adaptation. They are sometimes workaholics. There can be an obsessive or compulsive quality to them.

The biggest misconception with survivors of abuse is that they’re choosing to stay. Anyone in our situation would leave if it were that easy. But when someone is threatening your life daily, sometimes staying seems like the safer choice. Even if you know, it’ll kill you one day. The unpredictable abuse is still predictable, and that can be a little less scary than trying to rebuild a life on your own with the constant fear that this person will come after you and snatch it away. All that hard work—gone. And sometimes your life, too.

The planning process in a startup can be described more accurately as situational decision making, an imperfectly informed, just-in-time, default strategy. The rapid and likely erratic evolution of events in a startup is so unpredictable that any other type of planning just won’t work. Entrepreneurs must make decisions—often ones that prove, in retrospect, to have been of enormous strategic importance—on the spur of the moment, with little or no information, let alone algorithmic analyses of likely outcomes of one decision versus another.

They’re both technicians. They don’t have intelligence. They have what I call ‘thintelligence.’ They see the immediate situation. They think narrowly and they call it ‘being focused.’ They don’t see the surround. They don’t see the consequences. That’s how you get an island like this. From thintelligent thinking. Because you cannot make an animal and not expect it to act alive. To be unpredictable.

For all his unpredictability and rough edges, this act alone shatters any lingering doubts I had about his feelings. My heart flutters, and the lines between gratitude and burgeoning affection blur. The complexity of our situation and the stark reality of our worlds all fade in the face of a kind gesture. Damien. What have you done to me?

In general, systems are made of things and ideas; connections between them; and a surrounding field. That should all sound familiar. It is how we have described the situations we can change by adding and subtracting. Systems earn the “complex” tag when their behavior is unpredictable because of the dynamic interactions within them.