Use[use]th

This is the most helpful article you've ever read. Because it's about benefit and getting it.

I was prompted to write it by communication with a highly respected moderator of one of the sites where I publish. And before that, almost every comment that you leave on my articles. And in the meantime - almost everything that I see at work every day. And before the current work - the previous one, and before it - another one, and so on until the very point at which I realized that there is a benefit and how to extract it.

First and foremost

The most important thing to know about benefit is that it is subjective, or relative.

Now you have read this, and you think - yeah, I already know this. Try to remember this the next time you write a comment like “nothing useful here”, or discuss the benefits of something with someone, or even think about the benefits alone. I assure you, remembering the subjectivity of benefit is extremely difficult. It is always much easier to consider utility as an objective property of the object of study - an article, book, film, tool, etc.

Now I am not opposing myself to you - it is just as difficult for me at the right moment to remember the subjectivity, the relativity of benefit. We are in the same boat, and there are about 7 billion of us in it.

What does "subjectivity" mean? Everything is simple. There is an object - an article, a book, a film, a tool, a technique, etc. There is a subject - you, or me, or Gena, or a wonderful moderator of one site. And then the object met the subject - Gena read the article. And draws a conclusion.

The traditional conclusion of the average Gena is that there is no use in the object. Let's omit the cases when our Gena is not adequate - let him be quite a decent person, a quality subject. What is missing from the phrase "there is no use in an object"?

Based on the subjectivism of usefulness, two words are missing - “for me”. The object is of no use to me. Doesn't sound so bad anymore, does it? After all, apart from Gena, the article is read by Vasya, Seryozha and Vika. Let's say Vika says otherwise - "there is a benefit for me in the object."

If the unfortunate, by a strange coincidence, meet in the comments to the object, then sparks can fly, minuses turn red and transitions to personalities. And it is enough, when expressing your opinion, to clarify that there is or is not a benefit “for me”, as, it seems, there will be nothing to get to the bottom of. And the final verdict - whether there is a benefit or not - simply will not follow, because it will not make any sense.

Of course, someone will still write that there is no benefit, but everyone around will immediately understand that a person simply attracts attention to himself. Because it is no longer about spoiling the mood of the author, as it usually was. The man, if you face the truth, throws mud at everyone present. To simplify, he says: "you are all wrong."

After all, there is a contradiction. One says - "I found here a benefit for myself." So there is a benefit. The other says, "There's no use here." It means that the first one who finds a benefit is wrong.

But what about the author? This guy is on the side. If we look at the benefit as a subjective phenomenon, then the author does not participate in this equation at all. Yes, he created an object. But when the subject came, the author was no longer around.

Of course, he can try to catch up with the setting sun, starting additional explanations in the comments, but this, in my opinion, is an erroneous position - the author will never learn how to write good texts if the thought “okay, I’ll explain later, in the comments, just in case". But this only applies to articles. Books - to a much lesser extent, because. they are edited. In implementation projects, which are also objects for benefit, the author generally sticks out for months next to the subject, helping him to benefit.

So, the next time you talk or write about the benefits of something, try adding two magic words: there is no benefit to me in an object.

But this is not the whole truth. Does the word “no” in the phrase “there is no use in an object” bother you? Maybe Gena was in a hurry?

Extraction

There is such a common phrase - to benefit. So commonplace that the meaning inherent in it is no longer perceived. Now stop and think about this phrase and what is behind it.

For example, you read some article. You know that you can read very differently. It can be done briefly, diagonally, paying attention only to the phrases highlighted in type. You can read, all the time thinking about something of your own, and not understand the meaning of what you read at all. You can read, paying attention only to the literacy of the author. You can read only to find something to catch on in your comment. You can read thoughtfully, analyzing each example and conclusion. You can print it out and read it with a pencil, taking notes in the margins and highlighting what seems interesting. After reading, you can write an annotation yourself, highlighting the main meaning of the article. Etc.

What is the difference? With purpose and effort. I will not discuss the goals now, they are not related to the topic of the article. We will assume that the reader, our subject, has such a goal - to benefit.
Then the effort remains. Benefit efforts. This is, perhaps, the most difficult and unpleasant thing in getting benefits - you have to try to extract it.

There is another common expression - "chewed and put in the mouth." If we continue this analogy, then you are your body, and the object from which you need to benefit is the food that has been placed in you. Your task is not just to pass the object through yourself, but to get the maximum out of it - proteins, fats, carbohydrates, vitamins, microelements, etc.

Some of this work will be done by itself - for example, thanks to the intestinal microflora. But most of the work will have to be done by you. First, work on the teeth, tongue and salivary glands. Then the esophagus will suffer for a minute. Then the stomach will transfer this mess from wall to wall for several hours, while simultaneously performing chemical processing of food with gastric juice. Then several sections of the intestine will start working, each of which will perform its own function, including the physical one - to push food further. And finally, there will be a catharsis.

Everything that the body does with food is to benefit. Yes, sometimes it happens that the only benefit from the work of the body will be the speedy removal of it from the body - well, there is such food. But, in most cases, you will have to tinker to extract the benefits.

Now imagine that you, as a human body, have stopped making efforts to benefit. They started by stopping chewing and swallowing, like people who are in a coma or deliberately decided to starve themselves to death. What will happen next?

Depends on your environment. If there are people who want to help you, then they will either insert a tube into your throat to feed you liquid food, or they will force-feed you. That is, they will make the object easier to benefit from. Moreover, they will do it instead of you, because this object is no longer “too tough” for you. In the same way, for example, I can’t handle articles in Chinese, no matter how useful they are, I simply won’t be able to even begin to benefit.

If, in addition to refusing to chew food, your body turns off the other stages of its processing, then that's it. In books, however, they say that the intestines will still work, because. it has its own nervous system, but few intestines.

To benefit from food, the body makes tremendous efforts. Nothing without this. We just got used to it and don't perceive these efforts as efforts.

To benefit from other objects, you will have to make an effort. Well, that is, you, of course, have a choice, unlike your body, but the formula remains the same: if you want a benefit, make an effort to extract it.

Let's return to the end of the previous section: "there is no use in the object." Now, realizing that the efforts of the subject are needed to extract the benefit, we can modify the phrase: "I could not extract any benefit from the object." Although, it still sounds soft. In most cases, it sounds like this: "I did not try to extract any use from the object." Well, after - "but I dare to say that there is no benefit there."

Agree, "I could not benefit" sounds a little different than "there is no benefit." It seems that it is no longer so absolutely, tendentious and self-confident. But that's not the point.

The main thing is that the subject of conversation, the active principle, the center of finding and receiving benefits are radically changing. Now it is not an object, but a subject. Man is no longer talking about the object, but about himself and his ability to benefit.

Like that. Grandpa bought a smartphone. Grandfather rummaged, poked, and so, and so - no way.
In the first case, he says: ugh, demonic invention, no use from it! What feelings do you have for your grandfather? Want to help him? What do you think of a smartphone?

In the second case, he says: damn it, such a thing, but I don’t have enough brains to use it, it’s a pity to tears. Now what are the feelings? Want to help him? What is your opinion about the smartphone?

For a long time, just in case, I try not to write comments like “this is useless material”. The goal, one might say, is mercantile - suddenly someone thinks about the benefits just like me. Then he will read my comment as "I am an idiot, unable to understand the material and benefit from it." Many people think I'm an idiot, I don't want to make it worse.

But, as you understand, this is not all.

location of benefit

Above, I used, in general, rather primitive definitions of benefit and its location. I said that the object is useful, but the subject cannot extract it.
But things are a little more serious. Consider systems thinking.

Any system consists of objects, their properties and connections. In our case, the system is simple - an object and a subject with their own properties, and the relationship between them. The connection is created when you study an object and continues to live for a while. Which one depends on you (memory, interest in the material, etc.), the technique for placing an object in space (reminders of new comments, etc.).

So, where is the benefit? If you believe what is written in this article, then a simple conclusion suggests itself: the benefit is a property of the object. Static such property, with a certain value. But if the property is static, then it does not depend on the subject, right? For example, this article has a benefit of 100 units, whatever that means.

Then we take our second thesis: the benefit must be extracted from the object, and the ability for this very extraction belongs to the subject, and not to the object. Hence, the ability to benefit is a property of the subject. Is that how it works?

But that doesn't seem to be the full explanation. Above, we talked about how you can read an article, and how different the result can be. This means that the same subject can, depending on his internal state, derive a different amount of benefit from the object. So right?

There are two options here. Either we stop considering the subject as static, endowing it with props and state, as in React, or we transfer the previous paragraph from the subject to the connection. Let the connection also have properties. So, it seems more logical.

Communication is the way you study a particular object, the characteristics of this way, the efforts made, etc. The amount of benefit that you will derive from the object depends on the quality of the connection.

And now we take a step aside, and try to understand what does not fit into this model. Recall the film "A Beautiful Mind", which seems to be based on real events. Who does not remember, I will tell one scene.

The protagonist of the film is John Nash, a future scientist, but for now a graduate student at Princeton. He tries to come up with some theory of equilibrium, but nothing happens. She comes with friends to a bar, girls also come there - beautiful and somewhat pretty. Friends begin to argue over who will look after the beautiful, remembering Adam Smith's lessons about competition as the engine of trade.

John is enlightened. If everyone rushes to the beautiful one, they will interfere with each other, and no one will get it. And pretty girls will be offended and leave. Guys will be left without girls. And if everyone goes to the pretty ones, ignoring the beautiful one, then everyone wins. All guys have girls, no one has offended anyone. Well, perhaps, the beautiful will be offended.

After this conclusion, John jumps up, thanks the beautiful woman and runs away. Beautiful, of course, has no idea what she was thanked for. This situation, according to the film, helped John get off the ground and complete the theory for which he later received the Nobel Prize.

So, back to our model. The subject is clear - this is John. The object is clear - girls, guys, and in general - a certain task. The connection is also clear - John was a witness, and almost a participant in this situation. And most importantly, the benefit that John was able to extract is understandable.
Attention, the question is: where did he benefit from?

Above we discussed that the benefit is derived from the object. But it is clear that in this case, the object did not have the benefit that John had. Let me remind you that he got off the ground in a theory that none of the participants in the situation in the bar knew about.

Neither the guys, nor the girls, nor the bartender, nor the bottles knew about this theory and dead center. This information was not in any of the parts of the object.

The slippery question - was this benefit in the subject? According to various theories, the brain knows the answers to all questions. But there is no way to test this theory, so I propose to assume that there was probably information in the brain, but since it was not extracted before meeting the object, it is easier to assume that it is not there.

You yourself have probably often found yourself in this situation, and in the comments I often see this - like “it was also spinning in my mind, I just couldn’t formulate it”, or “here, this key thought was not enough to move, but I knew!"

So, John did not benefit from the object, and not from the subject. The connection remains. Could he benefit from the connection?

It was not the first time he was in the bar, and the girls come there regularly, once John even tried to talk to them, but nothing came of it. Such a connection, that is, a similar situation, arose before. It's probably not related.

Then what? Let's go back to systems thinking, which says - hey guys, don't try to find the answer by looking separately at objects and relationships, it's not always helpful. There is also such a thing - emergent, or emerging properties. These are properties that appear in an enabled system and cannot be seen by looking at objects and relationships in isolation, as we discussed above.

Emergent properties, so to speak, are the properties of the system as a whole when it is running. Of course, if we dig deep and carefully, we will find where these properties come from. But, in all likelihood, the cause of their occurrence will be complex. The point will be in the properties of the object, and in the properties of the subject, and in the properties of the links. The stars aligned, in short.

So the benefit came out of nowhere. And this happens very often.

You read a text about cyclists in Amsterdam, and remember that you forgot to take a salary certificate at work to get a visa - you want to go to the sea in Greece in the summer. The text was neither about a visa, nor about Greece, nor about you, nor about the sea.

You watch the movie The Matrix and decide to quit smoking. Nobody smokes in The Matrix. No one talks about the benefits of a healthy diet - on the contrary, they periodically eat cookies.

I, along with my daughter, listen to the audiobook “Dunno in the Sunny City” in the car, and it dawns on me why the head of the department where I am implementing changes is resisting. Dunno didn't have this information.

I listen to Metallica's "Ronnie Rising Medley" (from the tribute album "This is your Life" dedicated to Ronnie James Dio) on my way to work and decide to quit my job. And what they sing in the song - I have no idea, because. I don't know English.

You understand that in any of the examples, if you look at it, you can trace the chain of inference and understand how the initial information led to a conclusion, decision or action. That is, to the benefit. You can do this if you are the subject.

In the same way, if you wish, you can build this chain in any system where the benefit has happened. Sometimes it's interesting, for fun, but you can't do it all the time. Too many such situations arise every day, including unconscious ones. Even you.

But most importantly, the chain will be different every time. This chain is the emergent property. A unique, one-time, inimitable miracle. Today, the object evokes in you a feeling, a decision, a thought, an insight, and in a year - nothing, or just the opposite.

Therefore, I propose not to look for causal relationships too often and persistently. It is better to accept and use the fact: benefits can arise at least where, at least when, and at least in any combination.

Benefit does not sit in articles, books, films, tools, techniques, companies, friends, organizations, communities, social networks. The benefit is not in you. The benefit does not lie in the way and behavior you read articles and books, watch movies, use tools and techniques, hang out with friends and companies, work in organizations, participate in communities and social networks.

There is no benefit at all. The benefit arises when the object, the subject converge, and a connection arises between them.

It sounds kind of stupid and naive, doesn't it? It seems like, the benefit is a miracle, manna from heaven, which descends like the Blue Bird, under no circumstances do you understand? What to do now? Study and wait? What the hell is going on with these systems?

No, it is precisely the understanding of receiving benefits through systems that allows you to correctly place emphasis and find leverage. Remember, after all, that systems thinking is not only about analysis (why is that?), but also about changing systems. If the benefit system is not working, it needs to be changed.

That's what we'll do next time. And let's talk about the fact that there is no benefit in getting a benefit. Let's talk about Bruce Lee.

Source: habr.com