The COSMOS-Web Field, First Principles for Tornados
Thanks to: Hubble Deep Field, COSMOS-Web Field, Uncertainty, Socrates, Collaboration, First Principles, Dr. John Campbell
When my problems seem huge, I am helped by finding things that make them look small
In 2004, NASA released an image called “The Hubble Deep Field”. Simply put, Hubble stared into a patch of what was thought to be empty space but ended up seeing 10,000 galaxies in a tiny patch of “dark sky”. That image told us that there was far more to the universe than we had imagined.
Just this week, an international team of scientists (astronomers, astrophysicists, and the like) released something of an update. Built from data from the James Webb Space Telescope, the image is huge. Just for perspective, if you printed out the original Hubble Deep Field image on a standard piece of printer paper, this new image would include that bit of printer paper but, to scale, would be the size of a wall mural about 13 feet square. Containing over 800,000 galaxies the “COSMOS-Web Field is a snapshot of the Universe, not “in time” so much as “in all times” – some of the light captured in the image is over 13 billion years old while other images come from light only about 2 million years old.
Cooler than “an image”, the COSMOS-Web Field is an interactive tool where you can play with the new image. Here you can view it in different wavelengths, zoom in or out, and even change the colors to observe various features that are otherwise not obvious. Here is the full article I stumbled onto. Fun times!!!
Two other things to note about this article.
1) If you read the article, you will see that there is a section at the end that is titled “Lots of Unanswered Questions”. That part describes how much was learned from this new image, but how in our learning, we found still more that we do not know or even understand. That, like so much these days, might sound disheartening. But that is how you know you are growing … not by the number of “final answers” you discover but by the number of new questions you realize you have uncovered and then dare to ask. After all, it is doubt, not certainty, that marks wisdom, and it is only by questioning that anyone has ever gained knowledge. The lesson: to keep growing, hang out with those who have questions rather than those who are certain they have found all the answers.
2) Remember how I said this image happened because international scientists collaborated on it? Those things … science and international collaboration … still happen, and, I truly believe, will keep happening. The Lesson: truly good things, things like Collaboration and Discovery and Truth and Imagination and Wonder and Knowledge, cannot be constrained forever … some things just are like that, they insist on bubbling up and escaping their fetters, and you never, ever, bet against those things in the long run.
First Principles
Geez. Where to start? Even though I am no longer “in the business”, I still bleed for it, even live for it in more ways than I can even explain. I certainly vibrate on the same frequencies as those who still work there. And there is chaos now – not chaos, really, I guess, since there is more known now than there was just a week ago. Now there are new facts, actual options to consider, but even those raise questions.
Those with fewer years are asking “Do I resign with benefits until the end of the year and then look for something to replace what (for many) was the dream of a lifetime? And if I do, how do my skills and my experience of service to the public translate on the ‘outside’?” Others farther along in their careers ask “Do I retire earlier than I would have wanted or planned to, and, if so, then what? Am I done working? Is this really when I want to be looking for something new?” Still others are asking, “What if I decide to stay? Will there be anything here to stay with, an organization, a function, a project or program; will there be a demand for my science, my engineering, my supporting role, my leadership?”
In the whirlwind it is so easy to see the swirling and so hard to see the firmness. But that has to be the goal.
“First Principles”, my old boss used to call them. He always brought them up when I was in a panic and just knew I didn’t have time for them. In science and engineering, they are the things in textbooks, the theorems, the “Laws”. In projects they are the standards, the “procedural requirements”, sometimes even the “statute”. They are our lighthouses and guide stars.
But what are the First Principles for … this? I am sure I don’t know them all. Maybe I don’t know any of them. But I do know some things that are true.
· Among the most fundamental of the “First Principles” is “Know yourself”. This is hard to achieve when you are in a tornado, so hopefully you have spent some time on it well in advance of whatever tornado you find yourself in. But regardless of that, we start where we are, not where we wish we were. So, act, or don’t act, with thought and with knowledge of yourself. The “first principle” therefore, is: Time spent right now recalling, reviewing, or re-discovering, or even discovering your true values, the things that really matter to you, your real areas of excellence, is time worth spending. A corollary to this is the famous line by Richard Feynman, “You must never fool yourself and you are the easiest person for you to fool.”, so be sure to run your thoughts by someone other than yourself.
· When large organizations say, “Our people are our most important asset”, they really and truly mean it, but they don’t mean it as a statement about individuals so much as they mean it as a statement about ‘workforce’ and the vast self-interest they have in having a great workforce. That means that it is an error to interpret the statement EITHER as a lie (as in, “they don’t care about us”) OR as about yourself in particular (as in, “each one of us is the most important asset”). The first principle, therefore, is: “The only person for whom you, specifically you, are the most important asset is, literally, you.” What follows from this first principle is that you, like the organization, have to act in your own self-interest. Your love of ‘the agency’ or ‘the mission’, your commitment to ‘the project’ are a consideration in that self-interest, but sometimes it is more about assets and liabilities, about things that fit easily into spreadsheets, and you mustn’t ignore that.
· Change is a constant feature but the rate isn’t constant – sometimes there are trickles of it and sometimes there are bursts of it. When the bursts pass, there is a strong tendency to try to recreate the thing that had been, the stability, the comfort of what was, what is known. This tendency is wrong because we should never build for the past but for the future. The first principle, therefore, is: Whether with ourselves or the organizations we lead, the right thing, always the right thing, is to create the thing that we will need in the future and not the thing we loved in the past. Note that this same thing is true regardless of whether the change was a trickle or a burst, but we almost never think that the trickle merits a rethinking, even though the effect over time is the same as a burst.
Stay safe and sane. Take care of yourself in the ways you need to. Help others, if you can, in the ways that they need help.
This storm passes. Whatever your plan for it, remember that there is more living behind it, so include in your plans how you will thrive there as well.
J