Many may look at the title of the book (Nonsense: The Power of Not Knowing, by Jamie Holmes) or the title of this entry and feel threatened or think that the word “ambiguity” carries negative connotation, but this books sets out to change your outlook on the most common views on confusion, chaos, the unknown, and the ambiguous. The prologue hooks readers with a fascinating story of an operative seeking to use confusion to gain intelligence effectively from Nazi targets who then uses the same theory turned on its head to teach French in one week to students with epic failures in language.
Through a series of stories and anticdotes, Homes seeks to explore what happens when we are confused, the basis for knowledge that can be found in confusion, and using the ambiguous to explore innovation. He makes his basic claims in the beginning of the book:
1– The evolution of technology creates a need for the future resource to be adept at dealing with the ambiguous therefore breeding innovation. In essence, computers work in and can be programmed for just about any kind of finite and structured formula, but innovation and creativity, a product of the ambiguous, will be necessary as the market depends more and more on programming.
and
2– “Aversion to uncertainty” can be “picked up subconsciously from those around us” and can lead to the tendency to “revert to stereotypes, jump to conclusions and deny contradiction.” Why is this important? Because it means that many of our preconceptions may be something we have picked up, learned and can, in turn, unlearn by recongnizing stressors and our aversions and learning to overcome them and to see them as opportunities.
I will admit that when I first started to get into the second or third story, I wondered if this book was a somewhat sloppy collection of stories leading me in circles around a rather ambiguous topic that did not yet make sense in the concrete. However, I was enjoying the stories and their outcomes and as I continued to dive deeper, I was able to intertwine them much in the same way the author did and realized that there is no better way to illustrate the practicality of such an abstract conept than to show audiences how the concept has been applied through the wide lense of human experience, especially when your thesis statement is that “…what matters most isn’t IQ, willpower, or confidence in what we know. It’s how we deal with what we don’t understand.
The concepts of the book and the story-book style of not simply telling us the theories, but leading us to the conclusions through illustration appeals to my personality. I would recommend it to anyone of just about any personality, though, as its work is deep and vast and for just about anyone open to the learning experience. It has inspired me to explore the application of the thesis and theories in similar settings of the classroom and of life. What would the world look like if we embraced our inner innovator? What would it look like if we explored confusion and ambiguity and turned the connotations of these words to celebrate diversity, creativity and the journey of learning? What would it look like if the world didn’t fear the unknown but if we would seek to explore the unknown?
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