Weekly Musings ©
J. Sweeney - March 2013
“It is important to remind ourselves that in all other regards, there was probably nothing remarkable or special about Mitochondrial Eve...” - Daniel C. Dennet, 1995
It was my fortune to enjoy food, drink, and good conversation with extraordinary persons more than once this week. So, it is with some difficulty that I return to work and graduate studies, when my inclination is instead to reflect and connect the various ideas on offer during those conversations, especially in light of recent readings. My friends at Penn will likely chide me for bothering to read books and articles not assigned for our next cohort weekend. Indeed we are suffering from volume as a small ship from water in a storm. Still, we must obey to some degree when there are questions with which our mind is obsessed, and leave for tomorrow those tasks that are designated by well-intentioned school masters. Three intelligent and competent women invited me to join their sorority for an afternoon, let this be my thank you - muses to my musings.
Two and a half years ago I joined the Haverford School faculty as the new Mathematics Department Chair. Part of the orientation was a short course in decision making, taught by staff from the Decision Education Foundation. I like a new idea, and any new framework for thinking is always a treat, so I entertained the notions presented. But, I did push back on one assumption regarding the arrow of time as running in one direction with regard to the causality of valuing decisions. Not surprisingly these rationally inclined advocates of good decision making wanted us to adopt ideas from capital markets, especially the idea of “sunk costs” - once an investment is made, it is made and all future decisions should be made on a future looking basis regardless of past decisions. They included the present state of the market, capital investments, etc. as being of fixed value. For example if you already built a factory here but now thought that having one in Indonesia would be more profitable, even after taking into account all building and transfer costs, than you should build in Indonesia... rational. However, I wanted to entertain the notion that current decisions could actually change the value of past decisions, and thus have a reversed time causal relationship with events.
I don’t remember my specific example at the time, but this will suffice. Imagine you are contemplating a decision today such as changing employers. Most Americans would tell you to think about the opportunity, what security you’ll be giving up, how it will affect your family, will you miss colleagues, have more or less opportunity for advancement, etc. They’ll be asking how it will affect your future. However, you have already made a myriad of choices and memories at the current firm; going to staff parties, taking on interesting projects, serving various clients (well or poorly), is there anything but future value to these information artifacts? What if your choice could raise or diminish their value to you for years to come?
Perhaps this is too abstract, so let me introduce “Mitochondrial Eve”.
You may recall from cellular biology that mitochondria are the oxygen processing “energy-factories” organelles or plastids within our eukaryotes (in other words cells within cells). They have their own DNA. This symbiotic relationship, cells within cells, has been the case for about 1.4 billion years, so if it is news to you blame FOX. Anyway, we all know that every human’s DNA is made up of 50% from one parent and 50% from the other... well, not quite. All of us have mitochondrial DNA as well, and all of it comes only from the female parent. “If you are a male, all of the mitochondria in your cells are in an evolutionary cul-de-sac; they will not get passed on to any offspring of yours, who will get all of their mitochondria from their (biological) mother.” - (Dennett, 1995) This startling notion means that my MomMom, mother of eight children, grandmother to dozens, great-grandmother already to fifteen, only has two grandchildren, two of my biological sisters that will pass on her mitochondria. Her deceased husband passed on none.
If we walk backwards from every living human being today through their biological mother’s mitochondrial DNA tree we will eventually arrive at the closest direct female ancestor; Mitochondrial Eve (Cann, et al, 1987). However, if something were to happen today to some set of humans, say a plague, that culled the tree, the new Eve would be a descendant of that Eve. Somehow future events is changing the fact of who is Mitochondrial Eve, often thousands of years later.
I like this notion. It is on the edge of telling us something about the nature of decisions and time...
Anyway, for now I will not draw a direct link from that example to my proposal, but will skip ahead.
Instead of thinking of the future consequences of decisions, what if we began to manage the portfolio of our past experiences and tried to maximize their value by way of current decision making. For example, staying at the firm or going might be about trying to increase the frequency of people (including yourself) recalling favorably your treatment of a particular customer. Hmm... not quite the stuff I am looking for...
How about this? You have a collection of pictures with photos of times with your friends. If you increase the value of those relationships going forward; reconnecting, hanging out with them, getting to know their children, attending celebrations of their life, etc. you are potentially increasing the value of those old photos. You will cherish them more, and concurrently value those memories more because of your choices (including reflecting on them) made today!
So, we can think of all of our past experiences, memories, and objects from the past as a portfolio of assets whose value we should be trying to increase as you go forward.
Recently I encouraged my colleagues at PennGSE to only ever speak positively about our program to each other and outsiders. Doing so creates a stronger reputation and brand for our program and thereby improves our future prospects. But, it also raises the value of our past decision to choose Penn!
Years ago I began the habit of writing Weekly Musings ©. Life got busy and I let the habit atrophy. Choosing to write again should enrich my future, and hopefully offers something of value to my readers. It also raises the value of my old writing... somehow.
This is not developed theory. But I wanted to capture it now. Hopefully, someday in the future, I will develop it further thus raising the value of the decision to spend time writing it today.
Thanks for reading, and thank you very much if you are one of the very special women who spent time talking with me this week. You know who you are. Hopefully this raises a bit the value of that past decision.
