How I Learned to Change My Mind - DevOpsDays SV 2016

As engineers we rarely have time to do indepth troubleshooting or research for each unique situation. We do what the vast majority of professions do, we create rules of thumb that aren't perfect or optimal, but good enough. Some of these are timeless, “Always test your backups.” Some of dubious quality, “It’s always the network.” We naturally create these rules based on our experiences. As we become more experienced or learn new things, we rarely reprocess past experiences and information to prune or update our thinking. Using some of the techniques from cognitive behavior therapy we can learn to let go of long held beliefs that are now more superstition than useful approximations of reality.

Transcript

1. @ramin_dk Hi, I’m Ramin.
2. How I learned to change my mind and became a better engineer DevOpsDays SV 2016 @ramin_dk
3. This is the way we’ve always done it. Disturbingly Common @ramin_dk
4. Myth of the bad apple Sidney Dekker @ramin_dk
5. Why? Why? Why? Smart people, same problems @ramin_dk
6. “The most useful piece of learning for the uses of life is to unlearn what is untrue.” Antisthenes - 400 BC @ramin_dk
7. @ramin_dk Red Queen Hypothesis
8. 10 Mb/s => 10 Gb/s 100 IOPS => 100000 IOPS 10 MFLOP => 354 GFLOP Our shifting firmament @ramin_dk
9. We are pattern finding maniacs The human brain @ramin_dk
10. Rely on experience first. If it fails, then use science and logic. We rarely start from scratch @ramin_dk
11. “Any approach to problem solving, learning, or discovery that employs a practical method not guaranteed to be optimal or perfect, but sufficient for the immediate goals.” -- Wikipedia Heuristics - definition @ramin_dk
12. • Experience • Data • Cognition • Time Donella Meadows @ramin_dk
13. Our bounds of rationality grows over time In hindsight, it’s obvious @ramin_dk
14. blindspots misconceptions and bias We are not that logical @ramin_dk
15. Optimized to find a solution, not an optimal soution The human brian @ramin_dk
16. Based on old data and less experience Expired heuristics @ramin_dk
17. A heuristic based on bad or incomplete data Superstition @ramin_dk
18. “Replace maladaptive... coping skills, cognitions, emotions and behaviors with more adaptive ones” -Wikipedia Cognitive Behavior Therapy @ramin_dk
19. CBT is a huge field, we’re cherry picking Just the cognitive @ramin_dk
20. Someone to help you think Outside perspective @ramin_dk
21. Words rather than thoughts Words and facts @ramin_dk
22. Do we understand what has happened here or are we guessing Reprocessing @ramin_dk
23. We have assigned results far out of proportion to our actions General example @ramin_dk
24. We initially have no idea how the result appeared The reality @ramin_dk
25. A good postmortem is your best defense Better heuristics @ramin_dk
26. • Overgeneralization • Filtering • Polarization Context matters, avoid @ramin_dk
27. Questions? Thank You! @ramin_dk
28. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Queen_hypothesis 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heuristic 3. https://medium.com/@garywiz/five-things-old-programmers- need-to-remember-e78caf0b0973#.361en9sfi 4. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Einstellung_effect 5. http://randymatusky.com/2015/02/25/the-hidden-learning- potential-behind-the-einstellung-effect/ 6. http://bigthink.com/endless-innovation/humans-are-the- worlds-best-pattern-recognition-machines-but-for-how-long 7. http://www.kegel.com/c10k.html 8. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IOPS 9. http://www.amazon.com/Drift-into-Failure-Sidney- Dekker/dp/1409422216 10. http://www.amazon.com/Thinking-Systems-Primer- Meadows-Donella-ebook/dp/B005VSRFEA/ 11. http://io9.gizmodo.com/5746904/how-pigeons-get-to-be- superstitious 12. http://psychcentral.com/lib/15-common-cognitive-distortions/ 13. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubber_duck_debugging 14. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_behavioral_therapy Appendix @ramin_dk