Empowerment Skills
Without skills there can be no empowerment, but you also need to be skillful in your selection of skills.
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Competence in almost any skill can raise your empowerment potential in some way. But some skills are more productive than others, like the ability to select and regulate information, what we might call information-control skills. To be empowered, you need skills that solve your problems. Since computers are so important these days, you need computer skills. And you need to know your way around the Internet, which brings us back to using information-control skills. A dedicated search engine helps.
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Having just made up the term -- information-control skills -- I'd better say what I mean. It's related to information overload, where we suffer from the semblance of information, or from more "information" than is useful, implying it doesn't contribute to good decision-making. The excess is noise.
The idea of information-control skills is closely linked to my notion of pattern recognition skills. (See also here.) Information is an essential part of living. Without it, we'd be blind. Perception means organizing information into meaningful constructions. When you suffer from information overload, you aren't able to structure information in a useful or meaningful way -- you don't have a way of dealing with it.
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Whether speaking to a friend, engaging in sports, or playing the stock market -- a few among an unlimited supply of situations -- you have to be able to recognize patterns. This is the way we package information. We put it together in clumps and respond to those clumps. We call this chunking, or acting in context. It is the gestalt nature of experience. (When constructing a simulation, for instance, we get an equivalent gestalt by chunking the information through formal models. This becomes a virtual reality within a virtual reality.)
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Problems are a fact of life, because we have freedom of choice. Were we not free, like the falling stone, there would be no decision-making -- everything would be pre-established. There would be no need even to be conscious. But what happens to us is not completely determined. We have options almost all the time, and we have to choose among them. Because of freedom, we have the ongoing responsibility, as well as the burden, of selecting a particular course of action, with all its consequences, good and bad. Once chosen, the actions are deterministic -- until we choose again. But we always strive for the best.
What are Problem-Solving Skills?
The expression 'problem solving skills' is actually redundant, because all skills serve to solve a problem of some kind, else what's a skill for? Take the "simple" skill of drinking a glass of water. In this case the skill itself defines the problem, which is to drink water.
Is this what we normally mean by problem solving skills, or what we term general problem solving skills?
Let's begin with a statement by psychologist John R Hayes, who says that general problem solving skills are:
... skills that can be used by anyone in solving problems that occur in everyday life.
What are Problems?
Writers of problem solving books seem to agree that a problem exists for you when there's a difference between where you are and where you wish to be and you don't know how to get there. In other words, a person in state X has a problem if the person wants to be in state Y but can't manage to reach the goal. A problem solving skill, then, is a skill that enables the person to achieve the goal. Using this as a criterion, drinking water from a glass would generally not be a problem. As we often say, "That's no problem."
Solutions to Problems
Everyday problems are specific. The same can be said of their solutions, which is to say that each solution has a unique history. Consider, again, the problem of drinking a glass of water. Lifting the drinking glass to your lips, tilting it, and swallowing the water as it flows out of the glass would be a special way of dealing with this problem, calling for a skill that you know how to perform, because you've learned. In this respect, all problem-solving skills are unique in application.
In another sense, all problem-solving skills are general. Using a drinking glass for drinking is a general solution in that it can be applied, with only minor variations, to many situations, involving a variety of different glasses under various drinking conditions. The same can be said for all problem-solving skills.
We do in fact have a hierarchy of problem solving skills. At one extreme we can place all of the skills that apply narrowly to specific situations, and at the other extreme the most general problem solving techniques that might apply to many problem situations. It is the latter that are often identified as general problem solving skills. They are commonly applied to problem situations that we don't know how to solve.
To develop this idea a bit more, suppose you had burned your hands so badly at work that you can't hold the drinking glass. What do you do then?
What is Really the Problem?
In the water-drinking example, the problem is simply the need to ingest water. This of course has nothing to do with a glass container, except for the value of the glass as a means to carry the liquid. You might instead open the tap by striking the handle with your elbow, say, and drinking directly from the tap. But suppose, again, that the handle is too short and won't budge when you strike it. What then? Well, you might resort to the old "get someone to help you" trick. But I'm sure there are many other possibilities. Using expressed techniques in problem solving skills, you can uncover most of them.
Skills and Meta-Skills
General problem solving skills stand apart from skills you perform in daily life more or less without thinking. If you had a way to deal directly with every need or goal situation, like drinking some water, you wouldn't need general problem solving skills. Comparing them to skills or behaviors you apply almost automatically to deal with the daily problems, general problem-solving skills can be seen to be meta-skills. They help you when you don't have a ready-made solution.
You can also think of skills in terms of the categories: simple and complex. (See J J G Van Merrienboer.) In that event, the ordinary skills you apply more or less without thinking would be simple skills, and those that require thought would be complex skills. An example of the former could be the pressing of an ON/OFF button, and an example of the latter might be the need to deal with a labor relations problem in a large corporation.
While I don't believe that any skills are truly simple, automatic or readily applied skills can be considered simple in the sense that little or no attention is needed to apply them. You could even be doing other things at the same time. Complex skills, on the other hand, can require a great deal of agonizing and not just a little bit of creativity. While all problems may need general problem solving aids to some degree, it is the complex skills that would seem to benefit the most from them. Indeed, many of the latter are less than ordinary. They may even be said to describe unprecedented situations.
Examples of General Problem Skills
General problem solving skills are aids that help you define a problem and solve it. To understand a problem, you have to have a way of representing it. To solve it, you need to generate an appropriate way to deal with it.
First you need to understand what you're dealing with. One way to make sense of a problem situation is to create images that represent its various aspects. These images are internal representations, as Hayes refers to them. Another technique is to generate external representations. Drawing sketches or diagrams, for example. Or writing equations. We often used analogies, as well. The way you structure a problem makes a difference, because each structure brings out its own brand of information.
Often, clarifying the problem is enough to let you solve it. But sometimes it doesn't do a thing for you. Under the latter conditions, you need ways to search for a solution. Among the methods, listed by Hayes, are:
Clear and imaginative thinking are key ingredients in general problem solving. Inductive as well as deductive techniques are valuable. Creative Thinking is especially valuable, because it takes you out of ruts, i.e., out of stale, ineffective habits of thought. Thinking out of the box, s they say. It takes a certain amount of courage, too, because adopting offbeat ideas is risky. Techniques in simulation help to bring out these skills.
These are the types of skills you need as general problem solving tools. For the details, you might consult the literature on the subject.
This Web site is dedicated to the science of skills (i.e., applying scientifically-based simulations for personalized skills diagnostics to solve problems).
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Computers are powerful computing or data processing devices. They raise the power level of your personal information processing skills. When connected to other computers, like those on the Internet, they multiply the potential of your information access. But the benefits can only be derived after you decide to learn about them.
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