Lessons

Problem Solving

This picture of CAMELOT at dock is how she looked as I started this piece sitting in her aft cabin.

As I have said elsewhere, CAMELOT [link] is a continuous exercise in problem solving. Every component of a boat is a response to a series of challenges, answered by an idea, tested in reality.

It works - or not. And your life can depend on it. The sea is a great teacher.

Here CAMELOT is being fitted with her Top Yards (missing for over 20 years) - the most recent project in 14 years of problem solving.

This picture makes a appropriate masthead for the essay that follows.

Lessons from Work and Life

Throughout this web site, I have told various stories. Some extracted from observation, some derived from direct experience. These stories proved powerful lessons about how things work and how they fail when certain aspects of reality are ignored

Basically, I am a designer and an engineer. Not a typical engineer, as commonly thought, because I mostly engineer systems and organizational processes and structures. These things are thought somehow to be less subject to reality that “hard” things like buildings. Having engineered buildings and other “objective” things, also, and I can attest that they are no different.

Sometimes, people find me too intense - too “negative.” Too prone to find fault. Well, maybe so. However, I found out a long time ago that bad things can happen [link] when you don’t pay attention to critical processes and structures. The process of engineering is systematically attenuating the risk of failure in a system or structure. No engineer can tell you that s/he KNOWS something will work. But it can be said that EVERY known risk has been systematically reduced in every known possible way to a point that makes economic sense. Good engineers, generally, sleep well at night. Any kind of engineering is a process. Done correctly, this process has multiple layers of fail-safe sub-processes built in. Looking at every way a system can fail is the essence of good engineering. Imagining innovative solutions, to be tested, is the art. Making sure these insights are put to work with diligence is the practice. There was a time in our society, when the ENGINEER was thought of in lofty terms. The engineer was expected to be on the front of social change and progress - this was expected to be good. A century of unintended consequences [rbtfBook] have dulled this expectation and, today, the engineer is often looked at as a threat or, more often, a dull hack who runs some necessary calculations without imagination of conscience. And, over time this has become true as reality tends to follow expectations - meanwhile, the unintended expectations keep piling up.

I don’t mean to be a pain in the ass - I just want to get the screws in the table leg [link] the best way possible. I never deliberately pick a fight nor do I relish going against the grain of society, I do so only when the stakes are high and I judge it is time to get a system bogged down in its own self-referential inertia moving again. I do this as gently as possible and and I seek to replace my divots to every extent that I can. I can a great deal about this. Life would be much easier for me if I did not. I do not know why I care and, no matter the personal consequences, I cannot stop caring.

At any rate, there is gold to be extracted from the experience of many years pushing things to their limits while searching for the eloquent solutions and seeking ways to attenuate the risks; of being a social entrepreneur; of living humanist ideals; of seeking to make things better; of sleeping well at night. I share it here. It may be useful to for your own understanding and application to your own quest [link]. It certainly, along with Matt Taylor FAQ [link] and Rules-of-Engagement [link], assists in a due diligence process in regards your working or having a relationship of any kind with me. I keep learning and working to get better, however, there is little probability I will change that much, at the core, from what I am today. I see no reason to. You are hereby put on notice.

Lessons learned from:

Rebuilding and Sailing a Wood Sailing Vessel [link]

NASA [link]

Being a Cowboy [link]

The F-15 [link]

Licensing and transferring our system to a large consulting company [link]

Building in New York in the 1960s [link]

Writing a Patent [link]

Being an entrepreneur [link]

Growing up in WWII [link]

living in a society for which one has little feeling [link]

Designing and building NavCenters - then using them and tranfering them [link]

The 777 [link]

Swimming Pools [link]

Being a disruptive technology [link]

The process of Biomimicry [rdtfBook] is to study Nature and see how she solves problems and then to apply these lessens to human technologies. The organic design process [link] is, similarly, to study Nature and to apply the principals learned as active design elements when making human artifacts. Humans are part of Nature not separated as we often feel as a result of arrogance and living in the world that we have thus far created. One can have one year’s experiences 40 times or 40 years experience 40 times [link]. The difference between one and the other is the degree of attentiveness brought to day-today experience. To extract lesions in the form of processes, principles and rules from one’s own life experience and to diligently apply them to the future conduct of that life is the art of living a useful and happy life; it is the act of gaining knowledge [link]. I have done this. And, while I consider some of my experiences positive and others negative, I do not look back on them in this light. Nor, do I look back in moral judgment in regards how other’s choose to act - they have their own reasons and accountability. I report it. I remember it and take it into account when dealing with them - or choosing not to - next time. I believe that moral judgments should be reserved to the self and, therefore, I take full responsibility for my experience, who I am and what I do. No other viewpoint is practical. I seek to discover where I did it well and where I did it poorly. I seek to do it better in the future. As a Humanist, I do not think that philosophy should focus on humans. I think that philosophy, as Whitehead said [link], should state principles so clearly that individuals can see that these principles match their experiences, brings meaning to them and, therefore, can be trusted as a guide to their actions. In moral terms, a philosophy should describe a code of conduct that humans can effectively act within. This code should facilitate the advancement of life in all its forms. It should promote the art of living. It should expand the human experience. A philosophy, in a mind, should be an agent of creation.

Rebuilding and Sailing a Wood Sailing Vessel

1988 - to Present

There are probably few things within a single human’s scale that provides such a rich and composite experience as building (or rebuilding) and sailing a wooden boat. In my case, this was more a partial experience than if it had done it all my own, nevertheless, CAMELOT has been a great teacher.