Pick 97 - Navigating From the Stern

 Ever notice that most political and financial decisions are made by observing the wake of history rather the waves of the future? Some folks would say this keeps us from repeating the mistakes of the past. But is that really true? 

Photo by Joseph Barrientos on Unsplash
 

The problem with observing the wake of the ship to navigate, is that it only confirms past successes but is of no help when encountering new challenges. Our fixation with the past often gives us false hope because no situation is ever the same when we encounter it in a different context. Also, this fixation keeps us from dealing with difficulties that we have never encountered before. While the wake of the ship may assure us that we made it through ok, the tidal wave in front of us makes no such promise. 

Good leaders base their judgement on past experience; highly effective leaders anticipate future  events and meet them head-on. As Robert Kennedy once explained, "There are those that look at things the way they are, and ask why? I dream of things that never were, and ask why not?"

Pick 96 - Binary Thinking

 In our world of digital reality, there can only be one of two answers to any problem: black or white, yes or no, stop or go, love it or list it, buy or sell, now or later, fast or slow, good or bad, the right door or the left one.

 

Like the young man in Frank R Stockten's 1882 short story, The Lady or the Tiger, we are faced with issues that seem to offer only two possible solutions. All too often, both solutions have negative consequences.

 

Since computers are digital devices, they only recognize binary data. Every program, video, image, and character of text is represented in binary.

 

Is it trinary or ternary?

A ternary computer (also called a trinary computer) is a computer that uses ternary logic (three possible values) instead of the more common binary logic (two possible values) in its calculations.

 

Mathematically, ternary coding is more efficient than binary coding. It is little used in computation because technology for binary processing is already established and the implementation of ternary coding is more complicated, but remains relevant in algorithms that use decision trees and in communications. Perhaps we should add that while computers work best with binary logic, such restrictive thinking should not constrain the human mind. Otherwise, we may doom ourselves to resolving global conflicts with war or peace solutions.